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The Problematic Authority of (World) History*
HEATHER SUTHERLAND
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
| Recent articles in this journal reflect fundamental differences of opinion on the intellectual and political roles of world history. Discussion of such abstract questions is often confined to periodicals such as History and Theory, on the assumption that pragmatic practitioners would rather get on with their work than speculate as to its philosophical foundations. However, world historians cannot, and should not, allow themselves this luxury. Like other disciplines in the social sciences or humanities that aspire to universal validity, history too must confront the realities of cultural difference, political interest, and the colonial past.1 As long as history was framed in conventional categories (national, imperial) this confrontation could be postponed, but the rapid growth of world history has stimulated renewed critical attention, particularly from postcolonial theorists, anthropology, area studies, and "non-Western" history.2 Although readers may be familiar with the broad lines of this debate, a few quotations might refresh memories. |
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In 2003 Jerry Bentley noted that received grand narratives of "the Enlightenment, scientific, nationalist, liberal, democratic, capitalist, industrial, Marxist, modernization, technological and other varieties" have been "rightly" lambasted "because they badly misrepresent the experiences of people beyond Europe." However, he was not impressed by the proffered alternatives: "inversions of Enlightenment-derived narratives that make history not a story of reason, progress, prosperity, freedom, liberation, equality, or justice, but rather a record of imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, subjection, domination, self-interest, exploitation, and in some instances also resistance by the oppressed."3 In a footnote he cites Foucault and the subaltern studies historians from India who, he believes, illustrate such inversion. By 2005 he was more directly personal: he described Arif Dirlik as "harnessing scholarship to a political agenda," and critics such as Vinay Lal and Ashis Nandy as having a left-wing bias, an ideological deviation comparable to that of the religious and patriotic right in the United States.4 Bentley illuminates the perils of national glorification, but underestimates Dirlik's stance when he describes it as "Marxist" and primarily ideological. |
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This became clear when Dirlik himself subsequently defined his position:
I have never undertaken to write a history of the world, or thought of myself as a world historian. What I have done is to write critically of the practice of world history: of the world conquest and ideological structures it generated that produced the notion of "world history" in the first place; of the hegemonic implications of the idea when viewed from perspectives outside of Euro-America; of the closely connected methodological and ideological problems presented by the spatial and temporal presuppositions that almost inevitably shape all world histories; and lastly, and perhaps most importantly from a personal standpoint, of the naïve political and ideological hopes invested in world histories, motivated most recently by visions of global multiculturalism ....5
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