王汎森：怎样写一篇优秀论文

王汎森：怎样写一篇优秀论文

作者:王汎森发布时间: 2014-05-22 15:29
我在念书的时候，有一位欧洲史、英国史的大师 Lawrence Stone ，他目前已经过世了，曾经有一本书访问十位最了不起的史学家，我记得他在访问中说了一句非常吸引人注意的话，他说他英文文笔相当好，所以他一辈子没有被退过稿。因此文笔清楚或是文笔好，对于将来文章可被接受的程度有举足轻重的地位。内容非常重要，有好的表达工具更是具有加分的作用，但是这里不是讲究漂亮的 style ，而是论述清楚。
（一）尝试接受挑战，勇于克服
研究生如何训练自己？就是每天、每周或每个月给自己一个挑战，要每隔一段时间就给自己一个挑战，挑战一个你做不到的东西，你不一定要求自己每次都能顺利克服那个挑战，但是要努力去尝试。我在我求学的生涯中，碰到太多聪明但却一无所成的人，因为他们很容易困在自己的障碍里面，举例来说，我在普林斯顿大学碰到一个很聪明的人，他就是没办法克服他给自己的挑战，他就总是东看西看，虽然我也有这个毛病，可是我会定期给我自己一个挑战，例如：我会告诉自己，在某一个期限内，无论如何一定要把这三行字改掉，或是这个礼拜一定要把这篇草稿写完，虽然我仍然常常写不完，但是有这个挑战跟没这个挑战是不一样的，因为我挑战三次总会完成一次，完成一次就够了，就足以表示克服了自己，如果觉得每一个礼拜的挑战，可行性太低，可以把时间延长为一个月的挑战，去挑战原来的你，不一定能做到的事情。不过也要切记，硕士生是刚开始进入这一个领域的新手，如果一开始问题太小，或是问题大到不能控制，都会造成以后研究的困难。
（二）论文的写作是个训练过程，不能苛求完成精典之作
各位要记得我以前的老师所说的一句话：“硕士跟博士是一个训练的过程，硕士跟博士不是写经典之作的过程。”我看过很多人，包括我的亲戚朋友们，他之所以没有办法好好的完成硕士论文，或是博士论文，就是因为他把它当成在写经典之作的过程，虽然事实上，很多人一生最好的作品就是硕士论文或博士论文，因为之后的时间很难再有三年或六年的时间，沉浸在一个主题里反复的耕耘，当你做教授的时候，像我今天被行政缠身，你不再有充裕的时间好好探究一个问题，尤其做教授还要指导学生、上课，因此非常的忙碌，所以他一生最集中又精华的时间，当然就是他写博士、或是硕士论文的时候，而那一本成为他一生中最重要的著作也就一点都不奇怪了。
不一定要刻意强求，要有这是一个训练过程的信念，应该清楚知道从哪里开始，也要知道从哪里放手，不要无限的追下去。当然我不是否认这个过程的重要性，只是要调整自己的心态，把论文的完成当成一个目标，不要成为是一种的心理障碍或是心理负担。这方面有太多的例子了，我在普林斯顿大学念书的时候，那边旧书摊有一位非常博学多文的旧书店老板，我常常赞叹的对他说：“你为什么不要在大学做教授。”他说：“因为那篇博士论文没有写完。”原因在于他把那个博士论文当成要写一本经典，那当然永远写不完。如果真能写成经典那是最好，就像美丽新境界那部电影的男主角 John Nash 一样，一生最大的贡献就是博士那二十几页的论文，不过切记不要把那个当作是目标，因为那是自然而然形成的，应该要坚定的告诉自己，所要完成的是一份结构严谨、论述清楚与言之有物的论文，不要一开始就期待它是经典之作。如果你期待它是经典之作，你可能会变成我所看到的那位旧书摊的老板，至于我为什么知道他有那么多学问，是因为那时候我在找一本书，但它并没有在旧书店里面，不过他告诉我：“还有很多本都跟他不相上下。”后来我对那个领域稍稍懂了之后，证明确实如他所建议的那般。一个旧书店的老板精熟每一本书，可是他就是永远无法完成，他梦幻般的学位论文，因为他不知道要在哪里放手，这一切都只成为空谈。
（三）论文的正式写作
1. 学习有所取舍
到了写论文的时候，要能取也要能舍，因为现在信息爆炸，可以看的书太多，所以一定要建构一个属于自己的知识树，首先，要有一棵自己的知识树，才能在那棵树挂相关的东西，但千万不要不断的挂不相关的东西，而且要慢慢的舍掉一些挂不上去的东西，再随着你的问题跟关心的领域，让这棵知识树有主干和枝叶。然而这棵知识树要如何形成？第一步你必须对所关心的领域中，有用的书籍或是数据非常熟悉。
2. 形成你的知识树
我昨天还请教林毓生院士，他今年已经七十几岁了，我告诉他我今天要来作演讲，就问他：“你如果讲这个题目你要怎么讲？”他说：“只有一点，就是那重要的五、六本书要读好几遍。”因为林毓生先生是海耶克，还有几位近代思想大师在芝加哥大学的学生，他们受的训练中很重要的一部份是精读原典。这句话很有道理，虽然你不可能只读那几本重要的书，但是那五、六本书将逐渐形成你知识树的主干，此后的东西要挂在上面，都可以参照这一个架构，然后把不相干的东西暂放一边。生也有涯，知也无涯，你不可能读遍天下所有的好书，所以要学习取舍，了解自己无法看遍所有有兴趣的书，而且一但看遍所有有兴趣的书，很可能就会落得普林斯顿街上的那位旧书店的老板一般，因为阅读太多不是自己所关心的领域的知识，它对于你来说只是一地的散钱。
3. 掌握工具
在这个阶段一定要掌握语文与合适的工具。要有一个外语可以非常流畅的阅读，要有另外一个语文至少可以看得懂文章的标题，能学更多当然更好，但是至少要有一个语文，不管是英文、日文、法文 …… 等，一定要有一个语文能够非常流畅的阅读相关书籍，这是起码的前提。一旦这个工具没有了，你的视野就会因此大受限制，因为语文就如同是一扇天窗，没有这个天窗你这房间就封闭住了。为什么你要看得懂标题？因为这样才不会有重要的文章而你不知道，如果你连标题都看不懂，你就不知道如何找人来帮你或是自己查相关的数据。其它的工具，不管是统计或是其它的任何工具，你也一定要多掌握，因为你将来没有时间再把这样的工具学会。
4. 突破学科间的界线
应该要把跨学科的学习当作是一件很重要的事，但是跨学科涉及到的东西必须要对你这棵知识树有帮助，要学会到别的领域稍微偷打几枪，到别的领域去摄取一些概念，对于本身关心的问题产生另一种不同的启发，可是不要泛滥无所归。为什么要去偷打那几枪？近几十年来，人们发现不管是科学或人文，最有创新的部份是发生在学科交会的地方。为什么会如此？因为我们现在的所有学科大部分都在西方十九世纪形成的，而中国再把它转借过来。十九世纪形成这些知识学科的划分的时候，很多都带有那个时代的思想跟学术背景，比如说，中研院的李院长的专长就是物理化学，他之所以得诺贝尔奖就是他在物理和化学的交界处做工作。像诺贝尔经济奖，这二十年来所颁的奖，如果在传统的经济学奖来看就是旁门走道，古典经济学岂会有这些东西，甚至心理学家也得诺贝尔经济奖，连John Nash 这位数学家也得诺贝尔经济奖，为什么？因为他们都在学科的交界上，学科跟学科、平台跟平台的交界之处有所突破。在平台本身、在学科原本最核心的地方已经 search 太多次了，因此不一定能有很大的创新，所以为什么跨领域学习是一件很重要的事情。
常常一篇硕士论文或博士论文最重要、最关键的，是那一个统摄性的重要概念，而通常你在本学科里面抓不到，是因为你已经泡在这个学科里面太久了，你已经拿着手电筒在这个小仓库里面照来照去照太久了，而忘了还有别的东西可以更好解释你这些材料的现象，不过这些东西可遇而不可求。 John Nash 这一位数学家为什么会得诺贝尔数学奖？为什么他在赛局理论的博士论文，会在数十年之后得诺贝尔经济奖？因为他在大学时代上经济学导论的课，所以他认为数学可以用在经济方面来思考，而这个东西在一开始，他也没有想到会有这么大的用处。他是在数学和经济学的知识交界之处做突破。有时候在经济学这一个部分没有大关系，在数学的这一个部分也没有大关系，不过两个加在一起，火花就会蹦出来。
5. 论文题目要有延展性
对一个硕士生或博士生来说，如果选错了题目，就是失败，题目选对了，还有百分之七十胜利的机会。这个问题值得研一、博一的学生好好思考。你的第一年其实就是要花在这上面，你要不断的跟老师商量寻找一个有意义、有延展性的问题，而且不要太难。我在国科会当过人文处长，当我离开的时候，每次就有七千件申请案，就有一万四千个袋子，就要送给一万四千个教授审查。我当然不可能看那么多，可是我有个重要的任务，就是要看申诉。有些申诉者认为：“我的研究计划很好，我的著作很好，所以我来申诉。”申诉通过的大概只有百分之十，那么我的责任就是在百分之九十未通过的案子正式判决前，再拿来看一看。有几个印象最深常常被拿出来讨论的，就是这个题目不必再做了、这个题目本身没有发展性，所以使我更加确认选对一个有意义、有延展性、可控制、可以经营的题目是非常重要的。
我的学生常常选非常难的题目，我说你千万不要这样，因为没有人会仔细去看你研究的困难度，对于难的题目你要花更多的时间阅读史料，才能得到一点点东西；要挤很多东西，才能筛选出一点点内容，所以你最好选择一个难易适中的题目。
我写过好几本书，我认为我对每一本书的花的心力都是一样，虽然我写任何东西我都不满意，但是在过程中我都绞尽脑汁希望把他写好。目前为止很多人认为我最好的书，是我二十几岁刚到史语所那一年所写的那本书。我在那本书花的时间并不长，那本书的大部分的稿子，是我和许添明老师同时在当兵的军营里面写的，而且还是用我以前旧的笔记写的。大陆这些年有许多出版社，反复要求出版我以前的书，尤其是这一本，我说：“不行。”因为我用的是我以前的读书笔记，我怕引文有错字，因为在军队营区里面随时都要出操、随时就要集合，手边又没有书，怎么可能好好的去核对呢？而如果要我重新校正一遍，又因为引用太多书，实在没有力气校正。
为什么举这个例子呢？我后来想一想，那本书之所以比较好，可能是因为那个题目可延展性大，那个题目波澜起伏的可能性大。很多人都认为，我最好的书应该是剑桥大学出的那一本，不过我认为我最好的书一定是用中文写的，因为这个语文我能掌握，英文我没办法掌握得出神入化。读、写任何语文一定要练习到你能带着三分随意，那时候你才可以说对于这一个语文完全理解与精熟，如果你还无法达到三分的随意，就表示你还在摸索。
回到我刚刚讲的，其实每一本书、每一篇论文我都很想把它写好。但是有些东西没办法写好，为什么？因为一开始选择的题目不够好。因此唯有选定题目以后，你的所有训练跟努力才有价值。我在这里建议大家，选题的工作要尽早做，所选的题目所要处理的材料最好要集中，不要太分散，因为硕士生可能只有三年、博士生可能只有五年，如果你的材料太不集中，读书或看数据可能就要花掉你大部分的时间，让你没有余力思考。而且这个题目要适合你的性向，如果你不会统计学或讨厌数字，但却选了一个全都要靠统计的论文，那是不可能做得好。
6. 养成遵照学术格式的写作习惯
另一个最基本的训练，就是平时不管你写一万字、三万字、五万字都要养成遵照学术规范的习惯，要让他自然天成，就是说你论文的脚注、格式，在一开始进入研究生的阶段就要培养成为你生命中的一个部份，如果这个习惯没有养成，人家就会觉得这个论文不严谨，之后修改也要花很多时间，因为你的论文规模很大，可能几百页，如果一开始弄错了，后来再重头改到尾，一定很耗时费力，因此要在一开始就养成习惯，因为我们是在写论文而不是在写散文，哪一个逗点应该在哪里、哪一个书名号该在哪里、哪一个地方要用引号、哪一个要什么标点符号，都有一定的规定，用中文写还好，用英文有一大堆简称。在 1960 年代台湾知识还很封闭的时候，有一个人从美国回来就说：“美国有个不得了的情形，因为有一个人非常不得了。”有人问他为什么不得了，他说：“因为这个人的作品到处被引用。”他的名字就叫 ibid 。所谓 ibid 就是同前作者，这个字是从拉丁文发展出来的，拉丁文有一大堆简称，像 et. al. 就是两人共同编的。英文有一本 The Chicago Manual of Style 就是专门说明这一些写作规范。各位要尽早学会中英文的写作规范，慢慢练习，最后随性下笔，就能写出符合规范的文章。
来源: 知识分子&思想| 责任编辑：李燮
7. 善用图书馆
图书馆应该是研究生阶段最重要的地方，不必读每一本书，可是要知道有哪些书。我记得我做学生时，新进的书都会放在图书馆的墙上，而身为学生最重要的事情，就是要把书名看一看。在某些程度上知道书皮就够了，但是这仍和打计算机是不一样的，你要实际上熟悉一下那本书，摸一下，看一眼目录。我知道现在从计算机就可以查到书名，可是我还是非常珍惜这种定期去 browse 新到的书的感觉，或去看看相关领域的书长成什么样子。中研院有一位院士是哈佛大学信息教授，他告诉我他在创造力最高峰的时候，每个礼拜都到他们信息系图书室里，翻阅重要的信息期刊。所以图书馆应该是身为研究生的人们，最熟悉的地方。不过切记不重要的不要花时间去看，你们生活在信息泛滥的时代，跟我生长在信息贫乏的时代是不同的，所以生长在这一个时代的你，要能有所取舍。我常常看我的学生引用一些三流的论文，却引得津津有味，我都替他感到难过，因为我强调要读有用、有价值的东西。
8. 留下时间，精致思考
还要记得给自己保留一些思考的时间。一篇论文能不能出神入化、能不能引人入胜，很重要的是在现象之上作概念性的思考，但我不是说一定要走理论的路线，而是提醒大家要在一般的层次再提升两三步， conceptualize 你所看到的东西。真切去了解，你所看到的东西是什么？整体意义是什么？整体的轮廓是什么？千万不要被枝节淹没，虽然枝节是你最重要的开始，但是你一天总也要留一些时间好好思考、慢慢沉淀。 conceptualize 是一种非常难教的东西，我记得我念书时，有位老师信誓旦旦说要开一门课，教学生如何 conceptualize ，可是从来都没开成，因为这非常难教。我要提醒的是，在被很多材料和枝节淹没的时候，要适时跳出来想一想，所看到的东西有哪些意义？这个意义有没有广泛连结到更大层面的知识价值。
傅斯年先生来到台湾以后，同时担任中央研究院历史语言研究所的所长及台大的校长。台大有个傅钟每小时钟声有二十一响、敲二十一次。以前有一个人，写了一本书叫《钟声二十一响》，当时很轰动。他当时对这二十一响解释是说：因为台大的学生都很好，所以二十一响是欢迎国家元首二十一响的礼炮。不久前我发现台大在每一个重要的古迹下面竖一个铜牌，我仔细看看傅钟下的解释，才知道原来是因为傅斯年当台大校长的时候，曾经说过一句话：“人一天只有二十一个小时，另外三小时是要思考的。”所以才叫二十一响。我觉得这句话大有道理，可是我觉得三小时可能太多，因为研究生是非常忙的，但至少每天要留个三十分钟、一小时思考，想一想你看到了什么？学习跳到比你所看到的东西更高一点的层次去思考。
9. 找到学习的楷模
我刚到美国念书的时候，每次写报告头皮就重的不得了，因为我们的英文报告三、四十页，一个学期有四门课的话就有一百六十页，可是你连脚注都要从头学习。后来我找到一个好办法，就是我每次要写的时候，把一篇我最喜欢的论文放在旁边，虽然他写的题目跟我写的都没关系，不过我每次都看他如何写，看看他的注脚、读几行，然后我就开始写。就像最有名的男高音 Pavarotti 唱歌剧的时候都会捏着一条手帕，因为他说：“上舞台就像下地狱，太紧张了。”他为了克服紧张，他有习惯性的动作，就是捏着白手帕。我想当年那一篇论文抽印本就像是我的白手帕一样，能让我开始好好写这篇报告，我学习它里面如何思考、如何构思、如何照顾全体、如何用英文作脚注。好好的把一位大师的作品读完，开始模仿和学习他，是入门最好的方法，逐步的，你也开始写出自己的东西。我也常常鼓励我的学生，出国半年或是一年到国外看看。像现在国科会有各式各样的机会，可以增长眼界，可以知道现在的餐馆正在卖些什么菜，回来后自己要作菜也才知道要如何着手。
最后还有一点很重要的，就是我们的人生是两只脚，我们不是靠一只脚走路。做研究生的时代，固然应该把所有的心思都放在学业上，探索你所要探索的那些问题，可是那只是你的一只脚，另外还有一只脚是要学习培养一、两种兴趣。很多人后来会发现他的右脚特别肥重（包括我自己在内），也就是因为忘了培养左脚。很多很有名的大学者最后都陷入极度的精神困扰之中，就是因为他只是培养他的右脚，他忘了培养他的左脚，他忘了人生用两只脚走路，他少了一个小小的兴趣或嗜好，用来好好的调解或是排遣自己。
去年夏天，香港《亚洲周刊》要访问我，我说：“我不想接受访问，我不是重要的人。”可是后来他们还是把一个简单的对话刊出来了，里面我只记得讲了一段话：做一个研究生或一个学者，有两个感觉最重要 -- 责任感与罪恶感。你一定要有很大的责任感，去写出好的东西，如果责任感还不够强，还要有一个罪恶感，你会觉得如果今天没有好好做几个小时的工作的话，会有很大的罪恶感。除非是了不得的天才，不然即使爱因斯坦也是需要很努力的。很多很了不得的人，他只是把所有的努力集中在一百页里面，他花了一千小时和另外一个人只花了十个小时，相对于来说，当然是那花一千个小时所写出来的文章较好。所以为什么说要赶快选定题目？因为如果太晚选定一个题目，只有一年的时间可以好好耕耘那个题目，早点选定可以有二、三年耕耘那个题目，是三年做出的东西好，还是一年的东西好？如果我们的才智都一样的话，将三年的努力与思考都灌在上面，当然比一年还要好。
（四）营造卓越的大学，分享学术的氛围
现在很多人都在讨论，何谓卓越的大学？我认为一个好的大学，学校生活的一大部份，以及校园的许多活动，直接或间接都与学问有关，同学在咖啡厅里面谈论的，直接或间接也都会是学术相关的议题。教授们在餐厅里面吃饭，谈的是“有没有新的发现”？或是哪个人那天演讲到底讲了什么重要的想法？一定是沉浸在这种氛围中的大学，才有可能成为卓越大学。那种交换思想学识、那种互相教育的气氛不是花钱就有办法获得的。我知道钱固然重要，但不是唯一的东西。一个卓越的大学、一个好的大学、一个好的学习环境，表示里面有一个共同关心的焦点，如果没有的话，这个学校就不可能成为好的大学。
来源: 知识分子&思想| 责任编辑：李燮
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新文化史三人谈：档案是“虚构”出来的吗

新文化史三人谈：档案是“虚构”出来的吗

http://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1344792
程美宝 刘北成 俞金尧 岳秀坤

2015-06-25 16:41 来自 私家历史
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2015年6月19日下午，“档案·故事·历史——新文化史三人谈”在首都师范大学文科楼举行。原定嘉宾之一刘永华教授因病无法前来，“三人谈”的主角为清华大学历史系教授刘北成、中国社会科学院世界史所研究员俞金尧和中山大学历史系教授程美宝。首都师范大学历史学院岳秀坤老师主持了本次沙龙。嘉宾们从新出版的《档案中的虚构》中译谈起，就叙事史的复兴、档案与历史、故事与历史、时间与历史、语言学转向与历史研究等问题展开广泛的讨论。以下是讨论纪录。
沙龙现场：刘北成、俞金尧、程美宝、岳秀坤（左起）

岳秀坤：各位老师，各位同学，非常感谢各位来首都师范大学参加我们今天的读书会活动“档案·故事·历史——新文化史三人谈”。2006年某一天，在新街口外大街上有个叫小西天的地方，有一家麦当劳。我跟刘永华老师去拜访刘北成老师，在这家麦当劳里聊天、吃饭，聊天的结果就是“历史—人类学译丛”的工作计划。在此之前北京大学出版社出过几种关于社会史、文化史的书，想在这个领域往前推进，必须得到真正懂行的专家的指导。刘永华老师留学加拿大麦吉尔大学历史系，当时在厦门大学历史系任教，他有一个计划，精选国外文化史、人类学方面的著作，译介成中文。我们的想法合在一起商量过以后，仍然心里没有底，于是到了小西天，找到刘北成老师，在麦当劳“密谋”。之后计划就开始执行，慢慢出书，2009年至今已经有7种问世，第一种《马丁·盖尔归来》和最新的一种《档案中的虚构》都是同一个作者——娜塔莉·泽蒙·戴维斯——的作品。

我们今天特别邀请了三位嘉宾，来和大家一起谈谈通常被称为“新文化史”的这一类史学作品。他们是清华大学刘北成教授、中山大学程美宝教授、中国社科院世界史所俞金尧研究员。刘永华老师因为突然生病发烧，不能远行，很遗憾不能参加我们今天的活动。

清华大学张小军教授曾经有一篇著名文章说，“历史人类学”是一个被历史学抢注了的本来属于人类学的名词。之所以出现这个现象，是因为在中国南方的中山大学和厦门大学的历史系，有一些学者很早就致力于传统史学与人类学方法的结合，重视田野调查得到的历史信息，进而成立了“历史人类学研究中心”之类的专门机构，一般又被称为“华南学派”。其中一位女学者，是我一直非常敬畏的，因为她很少露面，很少有公开的演讲、公开的消息，很多人不知道她长什么样子。包括刘北成老师，一直知道她，但从未谋面。我们先请中山大学的程美宝教授发言。



娜塔莉·泽蒙·戴维斯（中）

从叙事史的复兴到怎么看档案

程美宝：我今天跟明天都是来叨光的，因为我既不是做世界史或欧洲史；“历史—人类学译丛”据说我是编委，但我一点事都没做过，也没去麦当劳吃过饭，也没做过翻译和任何的校对，只是为了每次拿到样书，不敢退出编委会。我非常荣幸能够在这个场合和各位老师、同学交流，而且我也知道北京各种文化活动、学术活动都比较多，这是非常难得的机会。所以当北大出版社请我参加这个活动的时候，本来我的日程另有安排，后来就改了。我也感到对不起岳秀坤，明天我开一天会就要走，所以我觉得提前来、多做一点事好像比较好，趁这个机会也可以跟大家交流一下，沟通一下。《档案中的虚构》的中译本我还没有拿到，所以赶快翻出自己以前在旧书店买的一个英文版，匆匆忙忙看了一下，结合自己的一些想法，随便谈几句。 我刚好这个学期在开一门叫“海外中国研究”的课，按道理读的应该都是欧美英语世界关于中国研究的文章或者书籍。最后两周读的就是最近有很多讨论的沈艾娣的《梦醒子》，在译成中文之前我已经跟学生读过很多年了。一般读到这本书时我同时会让学生读Lawrence Stone在1979年的一篇文章《叙述的复兴》（Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History）。《档案中的虚构》这本书也是题献给Lawrence Stone，感觉挺凑巧——我带学生读这篇文章的时候，这本书的中译本刚好出版，并举办这场活动，所以我觉得不妨从Lawrence Stone谈起。这两天微信上也正在流传关于戴维斯的访谈，是一篇很长的文章，我因此对她多了一些了解。可能你们都读过Lawrence Stone的东西，他是英国一个做家庭史的大家。在1979年写这篇《叙事史的复兴》的时候，开宗明义就讲，他只是想讲近年来他能够看得出来的在历史学家当中兴起的一个现象或者一种潮流——我们要记住那已经是三十多年前的事了——他也说明，讨论“叙事史的复兴”，并不等于说历史的写作只有一种方法，我们都知道有很多种方法，也不等于说新的就必然完全取代旧的，就像刚才岳老师提到的“历史—人类学”等名堂的兴起一样，它的兴起不等于它就取代了以前很多种东西。往往一个新的东西的出现是对过去某些情况的反弹，或者某些情况走到极端的时候，就有人会去思考和反思，希望走出另一些路子来。

Lawrence Stone那篇文章说，“叙事史的复兴”的背景是史学界对当时三种主要的历史写作潮流有所不满，一是（某种）马克思主义的模型——所谓的马克思史学有很多种，他所指的是基于企图对人类历史发展阶段达至通盘理解的宏大的分析框架。第二是年鉴学派——我们今天还是奉其为一个重要的潮流，不觉得它应该过气或者已经过气，但在70年代末这个学派已经受到很多历史学家的抨击。第三是美国的计量历史学，我们知道计量历史学也不只是美国的，但他特别指出是美国的计量历史学。这些简单来讲，都是带有追求庞大的结构性分析的色彩，或者很容易推向某种功能论的分析，而衍生出来的历史学的各种潮流。这也是更早的历史学非常希望跟社会学“结婚”或者合流这一趋势的结果。

所以Stone注意到，似乎是针对这三大股潮流，而出现人们试图“回归”或者“复兴”叙事史的一种趋势。他也解释了为什么会有这样的回归，这当然与历史学继续和其他学科结盟或者合作有很大关系，在这些学科当中他特别点出人类学——有趣的是，人类学本质上也是追求结构和倾向于功能论的解释的，而当时的历史学恰恰是反对或者针对刚才所说的那三种过于追求结构性分析或者功能主义解释的史学趋势，而跟人类学结合，并且是希望产生出一个既不完全是结构性的、又针对功能论的解释的一种研究方法。这个本身是相当有意思的。

现在所谓叙事史的复兴，或者旧的历史写作的新情况是什么样？相信大家都很熟悉，有些是梁启超在《新史学》就已经提出的，现在的叙事史再不是帝王将相的历史或者名士的历史，而是普通人的历史。有些当然是梁启超一百多年前不会提到的，例如Stone就说到新的叙事史不再仅仅是说个人的故事，而是从个人的故事看出怎样的社会。第三，这些个人的故事都是要脉络化的。他的这篇文章很长，发表在《过去与现在》（Past and Present）杂志上，相当具有划时代的意义。联系Lawrence Stone这篇文字和戴维斯的这本《档案中的虚构》，我自己的感受是，叙事史有很多种，包括戴维斯自己之前写的《马丁·盖尔归来》。
程美宝

这本书的主题是“档案中的虚构”。档案是很重要的前提。什么是档案？我们研究生常说我今天去了哪个档案馆，拍了很多东西回来。我其实很害怕学生有这样的一些反应，他们看档案的时候往往不知道为什么看，他只是认为自己“掌握”（或者现在喜欢用“占有”）某一类档案，已经拍了多少份，便感到很满足。但是如何去读这个档案，如何在那么多档案中进入某个档案，其实是相当困难的。

我们现在说历史人类学的做法是进村就找庙，到人家家里就翻有没有族谱啊有没有地契啊，看完就走，等等。要在档案中找对材料可能比起进村找庙到人家家翻族谱还困难，因为它太多了，公私机构都太多档案了。你该如何开始？这个前提是很重要的。官方档案或者某个机构的档案，它们之所以成为档案，是因为它背后有一套制度、有权力结构，文件之间有一定关系和脉络的；它的生产有一定目的性的，它在生产的时候，给什么人看，不打算给什么人看等等，都有很多考虑。它跟其他的史料比较，也因而有其特性。

我们也看到，戴维斯在这本书的前面讲了很多制度的问题，有些人说，你做历史人类学就不讲制度史了吗？不是。你不明白“制度”，就读不懂文献，特别是像档案这种文献。戴维斯也提到文学的研究如何提醒我们对文类或者文风的注意。所以阅读这些档案的时候，考虑的就不只是档案的内容可以给我们什么。如果大家看过这本书的话，你会发现好像一天到晚都是杀人、都是血腥的、男男女女之间的事件。作者似乎不想让我们只是把注意力放在内容上，还想让我们明白这样的文本、文体的结构是如何来的，人们是基于怎样的考虑这样说话、这样记录，希望达到什么样的目的。当然其中很主要的目的就是要得到赦免，因为大部分案件都牵涉到杀人，你不想在杀人以后被处死，所以你需要讲一个什么样的故事才可以打动法官或者国王，得到赦免。

但是，我想她也不纯粹是想讲一个史料学的问题，只是要讲这些档案的文类、文风、结构是什么。如果我们说历史人类学有什么追求的话，始终还是一个“人”的问题——大写的“人”。在这些故事里的男男女女，他们是怎样“活”的，而这本书所讨论的就是生死存亡、怎么才能够活下去的问题。尽管她也提到整个制度显示出国王的权力在这个过程中上升了，但是既然我们不只想知道那些国王是怎样，法官是怎样，教会的人怎么样，普通男男女女的喜怒哀乐，大概都是她想探讨的。

所以如果说《档案中的虚构》跟过去的叙事史有什么不一样，其中一个比较明显的写作方式就是，她作为一个历史学家的这个“我”，在书里是相当明显的。这个“我”贯彻到最后一章、最后一段的时候——我觉得特别有意思——她不断反问自己，当我们在读这些档案的时候，“我”是什么样的感觉？明明都是很血腥的杀人事件，为什么我会觉得可笑，这些事件本身是不应该让人发笑的。她最后说，可能是因为写成了故事，所以有了距离感，所以我们觉得可笑。她在将本书题献给Lawrence Stone的时候，说他既是“一个优秀的历史学家，也是一个很好的说故事的人”。我想戴维斯是以“一个说故事的人”来提示我们，以前的人如何说故事，故事本身又如何制造一种距离感，使得你看到这些已经是四五百年以前的血腥事件，变成一些可笑的事。我就先抛砖引玉讲这些。
赦罪书

“讲故事的人”：从本雅明到戴维斯

刘北成：大家下午好！昨天岳秀坤告诉我刘永华不能出席，让我很有失落感，因为这个“三人谈”，有永华老师、美宝老师，其实我坐在旁边聆听学习就好了。因为美宝老师和永华老师都是在国外学习相关专业。他们回国以后，用相关方法做了大量的有关中国历史的研究，在这方面是真正的行家里手。今天幸亏还有一个“冒名顶替”的“马丁·盖尔”，俞金尧老师。刚才秀坤讲了，做这套书是06年开始的，时间很长了。我们可以看到，做一套好的丛书很不容易。刘永华老师，还有出版社的编辑等等，都做了非常多的工作，我算是击掌助兴的。当然，我也是一个读者，是一个受益者。我可能比在场的各位提前几天拿到这本书，认真读了，此外，我也读了一些有关戴维斯的外文文献，对这本书有一些感想，就来与大家分享一下。

我觉得这是一本非常有意思的书。在这本书里，我特别注意到，第一章的标题就非常有意思——“讲故事的时代”（The Time of Storytelling）。可能有些人会忽略这个标题，或者会注意到“讲故事”，但是注意不到“时代”。先说“讲故事”（Storytelling），这可以说是戴维斯毕生的一个关注和追求。戴维斯在一篇文章里讲到，我们这些历史学家、做历史的人，有一个共同的角色（common role），是什么呢？就是“讲故事的人”（storyteller）。
讲故事的人

“讲故事的人”的这个概念，在学术史上被特别提出来，可能要归功于本雅明，他在1930年代（大概是1932年）一篇文章就叫《讲故事的人》（Storyteller）。本雅明所谓“讲故事的人”指的是近代早期的一些游客，有旅行者，也有出外归来的商人，还有靠岸的水手。这样一批人给各地带来很多的故事（story）。按照本雅明的分析，这样一种对异国他乡趣闻轶事的口头讲述实际上是一种传播的方式。随着近代印刷术的兴起、书本的出现、电讯的发展，讲故事的人就逐渐衰落了——就像本雅明最爱说的，“光晕”（aura）消失了。

这种“讲故事的人”的角色，本来是历史上或者说早期文化史上的一个媒介现象。我们却发现，在上世纪七八十年代，这样一种概念、角色，又被一些人主动地重新承担起来，特别是一批历史学家和人类学家，他们重新把这个名字当作一个很光荣的称号，放在自己身上。这体现了当时知识思潮、学术思潮的一个转向：认为历史学，以及人类学等等，不是完全建立在很长时间以内（或者在上世纪前期）盛行的那种“科学”的概念之上，那种纯粹的，所谓能够用现代科学方式验证的方法基础之上的。正如戴维斯在这本书前言里面讲到，包括历史学在内，不仅仅是一个经验的研究，还有一个文学的维度。特别是当我们“叙述”的时候，就有文学的参与。也就是说，历史学家和历史上的研究对象一样，一起来制作这个故事。历史学家也好，人类学家也好，其实都是在制造故事，这是一个非常重要的意识，应该说对历史学的生产及功能就有了自省，发生了变化。

当然，戴维斯在这本书里也讲到，这里说的fiction，也并不是指凭空制造、无中生有、异想天开的东西，其实是对现有材料，对一定的文献、一定的档案资料所做的加工。这和那些小说作家有很大区别。不管怎么样，她很明确的一点是，我们在座的这些人，都是讲故事的人（storyteller）。

另外一点，看戴维斯的著作，我们会发现，她特别偏爱那些有故事的档案、资料，或者是我们能够根据它们制造出故事的档案材料。这是她的偏好，而且在这方面可以说她是最突出的一个史学家。观察她在《马丁·盖尔归来》《档案中的虚构》里面，是怎么利用历史上的、或者档案中的、或者文献里面的那些故事，来制造新的故事，我觉得是非常有意思的事。

回到第一章的题目。我看到这个书的时候，就想到这样的问题：为什么戴维斯把16世纪称作“讲故事的时代”。我联想到福柯的《性史》。福柯把16、17世纪称作age of confession，“忏悔的时代”或者“告解的时代”，按照福柯的说法，那是一个“话语爆炸的时代”，人们不断在诉说、在讲。当时最典型的话语形式是什么呢？是在神父面前忏悔、告解。我们可以想象，告解的内容许多是有关两性关系的。无论天主教的神父，还是新教的牧师，他们在这方面的知识最多，是那个时代的sex expert；而且他们要向告解的人做出各种各样的指导，甚至教他们怎么样才能生出孩子。
福柯

但是戴维斯给我们呈现的是另外一部分内容，是什么呢？就是那些赦罪书，和凶杀相关、请求国王赦罪的那些文献。在这些文献里面，我们会发现这些请求赦罪的文献和我们现在的上诉书是不一样的。现在犯罪上诉，大概会按照动机、现场情况、个人身世、他的教养、还有后果及赔偿等范畴，非常系统地、一条条地来做阐述。但戴维斯查看了大概四千多份这样的赦罪书后发现，16世纪不是用这样的一种说理的方式，而是用讲故事的方式，向国王请求赦罪。

为什么在那个时代人们需要用讲故事的方式来请求赦罪？这是很值得研究的。当然戴维斯给我们提示了一些。我们看法国的文学艺术的历史，会发现16世纪法国才产生了小说。在这之前，在中世纪法国有什么样的文学呢？有史诗，最著名的是《罗兰之歌》。还有一些骑士文学，游吟诗人的一些诗篇，主要是在贵族（中下层贵族）中发生的文学形式。到16世纪的时候，法国开始有了两部非常重要的文学作品。一部是大家都知道的拉伯雷的《巨人传》，这是一篇长篇小说，其实是由一系列游记式的短篇构成的所谓长篇。再一个，在《档案中的虚构》里提到的当时国王弗朗索瓦一世的姐姐玛格丽特·德·纳瓦尔王后，她有一部非常著名的《七日谈》，模仿意大利薄伽丘的《十日谈》写成，里面有七天、72个故事。这两部作品在当时的文学艺术发展史上是非常重要的。

为什么这时候会产生小说这样的文学作品？而且，仔细看它谈的是什么样的内容？是市民的生活，是农民的生活，是普通人所遭遇到的各种各样奇奇怪怪的事情。《七日谈》这样的作品，文学史通常会讲它是模仿《十日谈》写的，但实际上它的土壤到底是什么？我们看了戴维斯的研究，就会发现，它的土壤是当时法国那么多的故事，已经成形的故事，仅她考察过的赦罪书就有四千份。在社会中、人们口口相传的故事还有很多，可能不一定关于死亡，也许是那些风流韵事或者我们现在讲的各种八卦。我觉得这是一个非常重要的提示，特别是在历史研究受到后现代的影响、出现语言学转向、文学转向之后，如何来解读那些文献，解读那些档案。“讲故事的时代”这个说法给我们提示了那个时代的特征、一个非常重要的特征 。

再一个体会，其实戴维斯在书里也有提示，她做了一个比较：法国的这种赦罪书比较多，英国的就比较少，而且后来这种赦罪书越来越少。这是为什么？为什么是在16世纪的时候特别多？读了《档案中的虚构》，我有一个想法，我发现16世纪正是一个讲故事能够决定人生死的时代，这个很有意思。要是能够讲好一个故事，你就能活命。换言之，在一个凶杀案件中，你能够讲好一个故事，就能够让行政权力干预司法，国王就能够赦免你。讲故事和司法、和政治权力有非常直接的联系。为什么在英国就比较少，而且后来越来越少？戴维斯在书里讲到，是由于君主权力的变化和法制、法律的细化。戴维斯的书我觉得有意思的一个地方就在于，不像我们平常看到的那些学术论著，她的那些insights都在中间的点评里面。戴维斯的这句话让我想到，到18世纪后期，才出现了意大利贝卡里亚的《论犯罪与刑罚》，“罪”与“罚”之间建立起明确、稳定的关系。这是一个现代化的过程。罪和罚之间的关系越明确，这种靠着讲故事来获得赦免的可能性才越小。所以戴维斯讲的这种赦罪书，也让我们能够联想到近代早期法国王权的兴起和近代法律史的发展，这是一个非常有意思的暗示。通过赦罪书，我们或许能够窥见这个时期的政治权力结构和司法制度。

最后，希望我的体会能够引起大家对这本书的兴趣；我又特别担心，如果我“剧透”了，会不会降低了别人看这本书的兴趣，是不是会影响到出版社的收益？谢谢大家！
档案馆

讲故事的“时代”

岳秀坤：肯定会有非常正面的影响。刚才两位老师都有各自非常精彩的评论，我听了以后也是深受启发：我读书的时候怎么没有发现呢？这里面确实有差距。我还想再听美宝老师继续给我们谈谈，刚才她没来得及谈完的东西。刚才刘北成老师在讲的时候，美宝老师随手写了很多她的笔记，透露一部分也可以。

程美宝：我很习惯做笔记，因为我永远是一个学生，所以听到了什么就会做笔记。我刚才看到中译本，就马上翻翻看是怎么翻译的，还没有时间去评价翻译得怎么样。可是刚才刘老师提出一个问题，第一章的主题，中文是“讲故事的时代”，我就觉得time这个词很难翻译，究竟是“时代”，还是“时间”，还是“时代 / 时间”？“时代”好像是把这一章前面的部分充分表达了，但是当中论及的“时间”问题，就没有表达出来。什么意思呢？如果我没有记错，好像书中有一些部分讲到，这些文献或者档案的时间性是不太清晰的，那些人叙述这些故事的时候，对“时间”本身不是很清晰的。我就想到，一直到18世纪早期，那些所谓的“报纸”上新闻报道里的“时间”就是很不清晰的。今天一般是日报，所以你知道事情什么时候发生。但是那个时候的报纸会说：“好像是三天前，突然之间，一个窗口掉出一具尸体”，这个也叫“新闻”。所以刘北成老师提到各种前前后后文体的出现，包括我们今天以为很客观的叫做“新闻”的文体，其实都有一个时间性不强的类似的阶段。

第二，刚才我听的时候想到另一个问题——司法的语言，这包括在法庭上怎么说话。尽管我们今天都说要有证据，但是在我比较熟悉的英国（香港）法律体制中，你可以不用律师，可以自己去申辩，所以也有人写过书讲，特别是在香港这种本来是英语的法律情境当中，那些人用广东话申辩的时候是什么样，我觉得这挺有趣。这种storytelling，即便在今天罪与罚比较清楚的司法情境当中，可能还是有一些可写的后续的故事。

第三，《档案中的虚构》写作的方式，刚才刘老师点到一点：作者没有长篇大论去讲我们从中会看出什么来，通常都是用插入内容的点评方式。其实某种程度上，陈寅恪写东西也是这样，一段很长的史料，再接上按语。这种按语的体例我们今天拿来写论文肯定是不行的，但是等你成“家”的时候，可以考虑这样写作。这可能也是我们历史学家作为“讲故事的人”可以思考的问题。
俞金尧

档案是客观的吗

岳秀坤：我们请俞金尧老师谈谈他的看法。

俞金尧：我刚才听了程老师和刘老师的发言，也有一点启发。现在我们只是说，历史写作也是用一种叙事的方式，用来表达我们的研究对象。无论是《马丁·盖尔归来》，还是《档案中的虚构》，都涉及一些讲故事的人。为什么是讲故事呢？刘老师刚才讲了16世纪的背景，我想更重要的是我们对讲故事的兴趣。我们历史学在20世纪下半叶，尤其是六七十年代到八九十年代转型的过程当中——刚才程老师所讲的“叙事史的复兴”，讲故事重新得到重视，那是因为对以前在六七十年代流行的社会史讲究大叙事、大结构、大进程、宏大叙事的一种反思甚至是反叛，认为历史还是叙事才是最重要的，而叙事有点类似于讲故事的形式。我们知道现在历史学在后现代的冲击下，最突出的问题是，以前我们认为客观的东西、真实的东西，以为是非常真实的东西，开始被怀疑了。

通过语言学的转向，我们发觉，所有历史呈现出来的东西，无论是历史的资料、研究的对象，还是我们研究以后来表达的一些东西，实际上都是通过语言来进行的。真实的事件已经发生了，不可能重现，我们所呈现的、我们讲出来的东西，是通过语言的途径或者手段。而语言有它的主观性，我们表达一件事情，作为写作者，有主题思想、有目的、有主线，这个文章为什么这么做？为什么这么起头？如何遣词造句，文章的结构、段落如何设置，其实就是一个制作的过程。他可能会以一个非常客观、中立的立场来写历史事件，但是实际上在写作的过程当中，已经采用了文学的那种写作方式。语言这个东西，不是一个纯粹客观的东西。人写文章的时候，用词都是经过选择的。所以我以前也一直搞不懂，为什么说历史研究跟写小说没有差别，我以前以为小说是虚构的，历史怎么可能是虚构的？实际上，所谓历史写作也是“虚构”，并不是说历史的写作等同于小说的虚构，因为历史事实不是你想怎么写就怎么写。但是在写作方式上、使用的语言上，从方法上来说，跟文学创作是一样的。从这个意义上讲，我们反过来回想以前所谓客观的证据，所谓的史料、档案——我们常说档案是第一手资料，是最客观的——如果从语言学角度去分析这些档案，我们会发现这些档案本身就是一些文本。
原始档案

《档案中的虚构》里面讲的很多司法上的案例，要请求国王赦罪，这里首先涉及赦罪书要怎么写？他的目的是什么？就是要免死，怎么样才能让写出来的东西打动国王、取得国王的赦免呢？其构思、写作就很有技巧了。当然基本的事实不可能是“没有杀人”，但是他肯定要为自己的赦免讲出理由，这些理由对他来说肯定是最有利的，最能够引起别人的同情。所以这个赦罪书的制作过程当中，其实也是动用了文学的手法——当然文学手法不等于说完全虚构。为了达到免死的目的，赦罪书的起头、结尾、中心思想、情节都要讲得让别人相信：你确实应该免死。从这个意义来说，即使是档案资料也有一些文学制作方面的痕迹。我的理解是这样，所谓的真实的材料、最原始的档案，也是由语言构成，也是通过与写小说相通的文学方式来制作的一篇东西。

我们在历史研究过程当中常常发现，同样一个故事，可能有不同版本，不同的人会有不同的说法；在文献档案的制作过程当中也会有大量主观的东西，或者说非客观的东西。对我们来说，就要抱着一种谨慎的态度去辨别，对不同版本我们要进行比较，看看怎么样的语言表述是最接近真实的。但是我们说，历史是“虚构”的东西，或者是用文学的方式写作的，并不是说历史可以随心所欲地写。我们感觉到，以前所谓绝对的客观，绝对的中立、公正，其实也是不存在的；但是反过来，说历史也可以像写小说一样来写，那恐怕也是不行的，毕竟求真是我们历史学的底线，怎么样保持客观和主观之间的平衡，这是我们以后历史研究当中特别需要注意的。

我想新文化史有一个很重要的启示意义就在这儿：当我们认为很多东西是非常客观的时候，就要对它保持一份警惕，要去分析这些文本到底是怎么形成的；或者就像刘老师刚才说的，这个文本形成，每个时代都有每个时代语言的风格，我们把这个文本放在当时的条件下，知道它是在什么样的背景下产生的，这对我们理解它所讲述的事情真伪是很有帮助的。





录入编辑：饶佳荣澎湃新闻报料：4009-20-4009 澎湃新闻，未经授权不得转载
关键词 >> 新文化史,档案,虚构,叙事史,历史人类学,宏大叙事,故事,语言转向

恐襲熱潮回看「文明衝突論」： 從陶傑與梁文道的「民族性」論爭談起

[國際學海迷津08] 恐襲熱潮回看「文明衝突論」：
從陶傑與梁文道的「民族性」論爭談起

近日，筆者兩位啓蒙老師陶傑先生和梁文道先生就「民族性」展開論爭，對啓迪民智貢獻良多。筆者當年的博士論文對民族主義略有涉獵，但兩位列出的書單中，不少都未有讀過，實在慚愧。就「民族性」的說法是否科學客觀這問題，筆者卻聯想到我放在國際關係第一課討論的「文明衝突論」：一方面，這是近年在現實社會最有影響力的國際關係理論，放在今天「伊斯蘭國」肆虐、西方各國內部出現極端「獨狼」的環境，此論作者亨廷頓教授猶如先知。另一方面，這卻是近年學界最看不起的理論之一，由動機、蒐證到方法論，都被主流學者批判得遍體鱗傷，筆者出道參加的第一個學術會議，主題就是批判（其實幾乎是「批鬥」）文明衝突論；假如亨廷頓不是享負盛名的哈佛教授，受到的攻擊只會更不留情面。這是筆者在過去十年常常思考的問題：究竟應該用怎樣的態度看待這悖論？更進一步，又應該怎樣看待學術和社會的關係？


單就學術規範而言，「文明衝突論」確是各界學者拿來批判的理想稻草人，常見被詬病的清單如下：

1.「文明」的定義不是靜止的，而是每一刻都在變動的，所以如何定義不同「文明」就充滿歧義，例如「中原文明」和「荊楚文明」是否同一文明，又或衝突發生後、會否倒果為因出現新文明，都令這理論變得膚淺，「一切都指向同一個問題」。

2.「不同文明之間會衝突」的假設，建基於不同文明圈之間有涇渭分明的邊界，但全球化時代有眾多「複合國家」，不可能有簡化的「衝突」或「不衝突」的二元對立。

3. 根據數據，死人最多的戰爭，不少反而是「文明內部衝突」，例如兩伊戰爭就是伊斯蘭文明內部的派系鬥爭，天主教和新教在愛爾蘭的衝突也十分慘烈，反映文明內部的同質性可能帶來更多爭端。

4. 不同文明之間沒有衝突的反例太多，令文明衝突論本身難以成立，例如印度雖然和伊斯蘭文明的巴基斯坦衝突，卻和同屬伊斯蘭文明的孟加拉友好，因此此論的前瞻價值十分有限，「伊斯蘭邊境特別血腥」只是以偏概全。

5. 即使衝突出現了，也很難論爭是否基於不同文明，例如同一場印巴、以巴衝突，也可以說是基於不同利益，甚或有學者製造了一個「性文明衝突論」。

6. 要定義「衝突」也不容易，不少文明在政治層面衝突、經濟層面合作（例如中華文明和西方文明），或相反（例如西方文明和日本文明），總之不容易有全方位衝突出現，個別層面總能築起防火牆。

7. 亨廷頓稱發生文明衝突的地方為「斷層」，但「斷層」不能涵蓋文明內部的獨狼襲擊；但假如把個人行為也歸納到「文明衝突論」，要定義每一個人精神層面所屬的文明圈，例如參與「伊斯蘭國」的西方人，就幾乎是不可能的任務。

8. 由於亨廷頓是有影響力的學者，他提出「文明衝突論」本身，就會被野心家利用來論證他們的擴張行為，令理論成為一個自我實踐的預言，反映此論本身出發點就是偏頗，乃至政治不正確。

這些批判，在純學術角度而言，基本上大多是成立的。問題是「文明衝突論」這類理論，已傾向國際關係的「趨勢學」，不可能純粹用科學數字來論證，也不可能純粹用人文學科的定義來論證。這類理論的基本組成部份，和學術期刊要求大相徑庭，大概包括：

1. 基礎數據和原始資料，但這些數據的用途只是作為指引，而不是絕對規範；

2. 社會學、心理學等理論，如何預測大眾怎樣回應上述數據，但重點是大眾不會仔細分析數字、也不會刻意接觸數字，只會基於自己的日常認知回應，所以理論也是用來指引，而不是絕對規範；

3. 以現實主義分析有哪些「行動體」，會利用上述大眾可能出現的回應，進一步誘導到某一方向，將之變成政治綱領或社會運動；

4. 以上包含數字、觀念、政治運動的現象，可以怎樣被綜合為一個理論，並有一定前瞻和推演價值。

這樣說可能比較抽象，但我們據一些現實例子，就能清楚明白。在經濟學範疇，量化模型大行其道，但近年最重要的國際經濟危機，即第一波金融風暴出現前，卻沒有多少經濟學家能準確預測。冷戰終結自然也是國際關係的大事，但同樣沒有哪個理論能事前預測，馬後炮的倒有不少。中國崛起雖然有跡可尋，但基於二十年前的數據數據，在六四事件後，即時看好中國的人少之又少。能分別推演這些現象的理論或觀點，則一般被學者認為難登大雅之堂。

換句話說，隨著學術研究越來越規範，有前瞻性的新理論卻越來越難出現，因為要經過數字專家把關的量化評審、再經過理論專家把關的定義評審、還得經過道德專家把關的政治正確觀，再生存下去的新理論，幾乎已不存在。而上述「趨勢學」的方法論，幾乎註定在學術過程中被砍掉。問題是社會科學畢竟永遠不可能和科學看齊，也不可能和哲學看齊，因為整個「實驗室」都是現在進行式的，而且充滿不完全理性的突變，也充滿政治不正確的可能性。

然而，全球化時代最重要的新特徵之一，就是知識下放和普及化。學界從前多少能壟斷知識傳播的途徑，因此是否符合學術規範變得很重要。但今天任何人都能較容易接觸任何資訊、乃至近年大行其道的「大數據」，民間提出不完全符合傳統學術規範、卻可能更能捕捉大趨勢的理論框架，可能性正越來越大。在20世紀，學術界的規範化是一件大事，促進了知識進一步整合和傳播，但在21世紀，學術界的高度規範化，卻很可能成為社會科學知識繼續創新和傳播的障礙，這是象牙塔中人應該自省的。

小詞典：文明衝突論（Clash of Civilizations）

美國學者亨廷頓（Samuel Huntington）在冷戰結束後發表，1996年擴展為《文明衝突與世界秩序的重建》一書，主張冷戰結束後，原來的兩大陣營對立已不存在，但世界秩序還是會根據其他準則而衝突，由於西方主導的全球化會影響大量其他地方的既有秩序，新興大國也不會滿足於西方主導的全球化，最終會逼使他們以激烈方式反彈，造成不同文明圈之間持續鬥爭的現實。

沈旭暉 信報財經新聞 2015年6月29日

New Qing History and Pamela Crossley — message to the readers of this blog

New Qing History and Pamela Crossley — message to the readers of this blog

Posted on June 5, 2015 Updated on June 5, 2015

Dear readers,

This blog actually isn’t a blog. It was meant to be one, but then the painful realities of modern academe with its constant maelstream of administration and heavy teaching loads prevented me from doing more than posting texts from the Chinese-speaking world related to the aim of the blog. I actually never got around to do what I originally had in mind, that is commenting on these texts. Hence the aim as it is now is limited to documenting Chinese debates on what history is, how to write it and how to interpret Chinese history in particular. In principle, I am not interested in texts dealing with particular events in the past, however, from time to time even texts of this type are posted, but only if the event discussed is central to competing Chinese master-narratives.

In posting I refrain from commenting on or highlighting specific parts of the texts, at times I structure the texts copied mostly from the internet by adding lines between text and headlines or by other purely formal changes to the layout to make it more readable. The original site (URL) from which the text is copied is always mentioned. The texts posted are not selected because I happen to like or dislike the position expressed in them, but because they throw light on Chinese debates on what history is or should be. When covering whole debates such as the current exchange of opinions on New Qing History I try my best to cover all sides. I can’t guarantee that I do not at times overlook some contributions, but if that happens it is not a deliberate omission. The blog (based on wordpress) is linked to my twitter, google+ and facebook accounts. Here too nothing is commented on or highlighted, because wordpress does nothing else but automatically forwarding the blog postings to these social media to ensure wide coverage.



In the context of a recent exchange of opinions on MCLC concerning a book Viren Murthy and I edited, an exchange which was triggered by a review written by Joshua Fogel, Pamela Crossely, one of the Qing historians criticized in this debate on New Qing History, expressed her views on this exchange. Here she makes the following unjustified, unfair and actually insulting claims, inserted into her views on the exchange between Fogel and Murthy/Schneider, but in fact unrelated to the book the discussion originally was about. For the original see here (MCLC) and here (Crossley’s blog), fifth paragraph on MCLC:



As for hatchet jobs, I have a little idea what they are, having recently had one slice into me from the hands of Professor Zhong Han under the encouragement of CASS. A very small number of individuals have been busy in the social media making sure that this screed is circulated as widely and as often as possible; let us assume that it never crossed their minds that they were doing the work of the PRC academic commissars for them. One of these people is actually called Axel Schneider; he not only gleefully tweets and retweets, but makes a point of prominently displaying passages he particularly relishes. By a small irony, they relate precisely to questions of incidental errors (an allegation that Axel is unlikely to know is justified or not) of the sort the Axel says don’t matter in his book (and i do agree), but justify repeated amplification when directed against me. I don’t know Axel and he doesn’t know me, but I regret to say that he has given me the sense that ad hominem –or in this case ad feminam– attacks are something he finds very entertaining when perpetrated at the expense of somebody else, even (or especially) when relating to subjects he evidently knows very little about. [note: Tweets can be made to disappear by their author, and I expect these will, but they remain in timelines, out-quotes from Twitter, and searchable Twitter archives.] So being acquainted with actual hatchet jobs and their celebration by colleagues who so far as I know I have never harmed, I will probably betray some skepticism regarding whether a reasoned, evidentiary-based review of a whole book is actually a hatchet job.



Here is the link to the original posting she is referring to.

(A) From this posting it is obvious that I have not highlighted anything except the headings. The posting appears once on wordpress and once on my twitter, google+ and facebook accounts, here too just in its original form, no comments, no highlighting. It is clear that Crossley’s claim — referring to me — that “he not only gleefully tweets and retweets, but makes a point of prominently displaying passages he particularly relishes” simply is counterfactual.

(B) Anybody who visits my blog and bothers to search just once for “New Qing History” will find out that I have posted many texts related to this debate representing various positions on this question. I have not singled out anybody or any specific position within this debate. As the blog is about Chinese debates on history, there is no reason to exclude certain publications just because I, or Pamela Crossley for that matter, happen to dislike them. Posting them does not amount to endorsing them nor does it amount to not endorsing them — endorsement just isn’t the issue. Hence Crossley’s remark “let us assume that it never crossed their minds that they were doing the work of the PRC academic commissars for them. One of these people is actually called Axel Schneider” is off the point, in fact it is a flabbergasting insult.

(C) Crossley seems to assume that somebody of Chinese background criticizing her research is doing the work of PRC academic commissars. Whether that’s the case here I do not know and in fact I do not care as far as the decision of whether or not I post a text is concerned, simply because the position of a PRC academic commissar is as much part of the debates in China on history — in fact a powerful part — as the position of anybody else, hence it deserves to be documented and eventually analyzed and discussed. Is Pamela Crossley or anybody else for that matter so sacrosanct that people like me interested in how history in China is being conceptualized can not post these texts (and the replies and counter-replies etc.)?

(D) She concludes this paragraph with the sentence “I regret to say that he [referring to me] has given me the sense that ad hominem –or in this case ad feminam– attacks are something he finds very entertaining when perpetrated at the expense of somebody else, even (or especially) when relating to subjects he evidently knows very little about”.



Crossley does not know me, we never met. I do not know how she knows what I know and what not. I also do not know how she comes to the conclusion what kind of person I am. However, let me conclude by expressing my indignation about this remark. Who does Crossley think she is?



As academic debates are based on the principles of freedom of expression and of evidence-based and theoretically informed argumentation, I invite all the readers of this blog, all those who are interested in the nature of academe in general and the nature of Chinese concepts of history and historiography in particular to join the discussion, be it by adding comments to this posting, be it by joining the debate on MCLC.

Kind regards,

Axel Schneider

Rethinking the Zombie: A Response to Joshua Fogel

Rethinking the Zombie:
A Response to Joshua Fogel


By Viren Murthy and Axel Schneider

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright May, 2015)


Viren Murthy and Axel Schneider, eds., The Challenge of Linear Time: Nationhood and the Politics of History in East Asia. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014. 301 pp. ISBN13: 9789004260139; E-ISBN: 9789004260146 (Hardback: €115, $149)

We are grateful to Joshua Fogel for providing us an opportunity to reflect on our edited volume, The Challenge of Linear Time, and giving it some publicity. We of course take full responsibility for the various typographical and grammatical errors that Fogel points out, and we recognize his work in the field of Sino-Japanese cultural and intellectual history. However, Fogel’s lengthy review brings out another side of him: he seems engaged in a war against theory, which perhaps stems from an insecurity about his own mode of scholarship.

We can catch a glimpse of this insecurity already in 1994, when Fogel reviewed Stefan Tanaka’s Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Fogel’s book on Naitō Konan appeared in 1984, and was one of the first English-language books on Japanese sinology. However, the early 1980s were also a time when the linguistic turn and a number of critical theories were beginning to influence the humanities and Area Studies. In 1993, the publication of Tanaka’s Japan’s Orient took the study of Japanese sinology to a new level. Tanaka drew on a huge range of theories to rethink the role of Japanese sinology in relation to larger theoretical and epistemological issues connected with the Japanese empire and the construction of geographical space. Whether we agree with Tanaka’s analysis or not, we cannot deny that he made an immense contribution by engaging with theoretical issues. In this context, Fogel might have perceived his own mode of research slipping into the past and in 1994, he wrote a fairly hostile review. He claimed that Tanaka’s enmity for Japanese orientalists “comes across in snide comments as well as a new style that seems to have come of age with postmodernism, argument by innuendo rather than by evidence (which, presumably, still smacks of benighted enlightenment positivism).”[1]

It is difficult to read this sentence without thinking of the aphorism, “Each time we point, we simultaneously point three fingers back at ourselves.” As part of a larger movement to defend positivistic scholarship and shield area studies from theory, Fogel himself has written reviews filled with snide remarks and innuendo, and we have to understand his review of our book in this context. Our book of course does not offer a sustained argument as did Tanaka’s, and rather than postmodernism, this time Fogel singles out Marxism for attack.

Fogel provides a key to understanding his own review of our work when he offers us advice about how we could have organized our edited volume: “One theme that would have been good to treat thematically throughout the essays is the zombie-undead.” For the most part, Fogel is silent about why the zombie would be a theme that runs through the book, but at the end of the review, he recalls a conversation he had with Frederic Wakeman:

Many years ago, I mentioned to the late Fred Wakeman that I had actually read a work that dated the emergence of postmodernism to 1972. He responded (as best I can remember): “[expletive deleted], that’s just when Marxism died.” The idea occurred to me that Marxism, like the religion that it has become, may be the undead philosophy of our time. When postmodernism arose and most thought Marxism dead and gone—and then especially after the collapse of the Stalinist dictatorships around the globe and melioration of all but one or two—we entered the era of the culture wars. It was not a happy time in the academy with the advent of political correctness, but at least the peoples of Eastern Europe and elsewhere seemed to be headed for better times. But, now that postmodernism is moribund or perhaps dead and gone, zombie Marxism is on the rise, stalking the world, reminding everyone to never forget class (who would?), that “global capitalism” is an ever-present threat, appearing in rustification theme restaurants in China, and the like. Might I suggest that everyone dust off their tattered copies of One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse and (re)-read it? Either that or rent Love at First Bite (1979), starring George Hamilton.

This passage suggests the larger goals that motivate Fogel’s review, such as a critique of what Fogel perceives as the return of Marxism, which according to Fogel is dead. However, we must ask: What allows Fogel to make such claims? When we ask this question, we see that the real undead animating Fogel’s review is not Marxism but two paradigms that we thought had long passed away: the Cold War paradigm, with its characteristic anti-Marxism, and its twin, the Area Studies paradigm, with all its essentialism. Despite the many critiques that have been issued of both these paradigms, like zombies they haunt Fogel’s review.

In the early 1980s, Fogel could pretend as if Marxist and postmodern theory did not exist, but by 1994, when such theories became salient in the study of Asia, he began to lash out at books attempting to bring theory and scholarship together. In his reactive fervor, Fogel apparently internalized the Cold War and Area Studies zombies. Because Fogel misrecognizes these zombies, his review of our book reveals that he is either not able or not willing to engage carefully with the core themes of the volume.

If Fogel himself had probed some of the ideas he mentioned in the above passage, he might have navigated a bit more successfully through the essays in the volume. By invoking Marcuse, Fogel shows that he is at least aware of new interpretations of Marxism, which conceive of capitalism as more than merely an economic system. However, if Fogel really understood the books that he cites, then he would not have been prone to such misunderstandings of the essays in our volume.

We can see this by examining his reading of Murthy’s essay. The essay is important to Fogel not because its author is one of the editors of the book but because it is the only one among the ten essays in the volume that explicitly invokes a Marxist project. So the fixation on zombie Marxism in such a volume, while perhaps flattering to Murthy, reveals to us Fogel’s fear of Marxism’s return, along with his incomprehension of the Marxist project.

After asserting that Murthy’s study of Tan Sitong’s famous Renxue is “unobjectionable,” Fogel goes on to ask questions about the author’s use of Lukács. He asks “Did Tan or Zhang live in a capitalist society? Were they at all engaged in anything related to capitalism?” If Fogel were even a casual reader of Lukács and Marcuse, he would have understood that the very definition of capitalism is at stake here. The “long citation” of Lukács to which Fogel refers is precisely about modern bureaucracy, which Lukács sees as intimately connected to capitalism. Lukács wanted to expand our conception of capitalism beyond the market and economics to include the cultural and political structures that made market exchange possible. Murthy grants that in late-nineteenth-century China, unlike in England, we would not find a fully developed market. However, since the Self-strengthening Movement in the 1860s, Chinese elites were involved in a project to make China wealthy and powerful in a way that would be incomprehensible outside the context of capitalism and imperialism. In other words, since the various unequal treaties associated with the Opium War, China was thrust into the global capitalist system of nation-states and consequently intellectuals such as Tan and Zhang could not avoid contending with issues related to the modern capitalist world, including new forms of time, constitutions, and concepts of equality and freedom. Lukács makes a controversial claim that these various aspects of capitalism become generalized because of the spread of the commodity form. Fogel might disagree with such a statement, but his review merely issues blanket criticisms while ignoring the arguments.

Because Fogel overlooks the nature of Lukács’ call to conceptualize the commodity at a more fundamental level that includes thought and culture, he fails to grasp Murthy’s various references to philosophy. For example, Murthy mentions Aristotle in his discussion of the notion of linear time. Fogel comments, “correct me if I am wrong, but Aristotle did not live in anything remotely resembling a capitalist society.” Georg Lukács (in the book that Fogel himself cites), Alfred Sohn-Rehtel, and others have written about how Plato’s and Aristotle’s respective philosophies were conditioned by the partial prevalence of commodification in ancient Athenian society, but their theories need not detain us here. More important, Fogel just fails to read what Murthy wrote: “While this vision of time can be found in Aristotle, we must emphasize that it becomes widely institutionalized and universal in capitalism” (52). Aristotle can be useful in discussing linear time, even though such abstract notions of time were not generalized in ancient Athens.

Fogel’s reading of Murthy shows how Cold War zombies prevent him from understanding Marxist theory, but in his critique of Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik’s essay, the zombies produce statements that are even more out of place in a scholarly review. Fogel suggests: “Why not come right out and say that Mao had lost his marbles and this whole campaign was insanity run amok?” Do such statements really shed much more light on the Campaign to Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius than Weigelin-Schwiedrzik’s essay does? Fogel’s critique, if one can even call it that, fails to consider how the intellectual discourse of the 1970s concerning Legalism and Confucianism was not only connected to issues of politics, privilege, and equality, but to a debate about history and time. According to Weigelin-Schwiedrzik’s argument, in this campaign, Mao, who had been a proponent of linear time, returns to a cyclical understanding of time. Fogel, in his obsession with fending off Marxism, again fails to read this article properly.

As the previous example already shows, the zombies haunting Fogel prevent him analyzing the core theme of the book, i.e. linear time. Axel Schneider’s essay is brushed away with the awkward remark that it has been published before, as if this would invalidate its argument. Schneider introduces Liu Yizheng’s conservative critique of linear time and progress, a critique that recently has become the focus of much research in China. This critique, in Schneider’s view, ultimately had to fail, because Liu wasn’t able simultaneously to argue for a theory of history based on Confucian ethics and bring forward concrete plans for China’s political and economic modernization. Dismissing this essay with the aforementioned remark, Fogel simply ignores the analysis presented and hence he also overlooks how Kuo Ya-pei and Schneider each deal with the theme of the book, linear time, in different ways. Another missed opportunity to engage with the volume in a meaningful manner.

This lack of understanding and of earnest engagement pervades Fogel’s review. But let us move on to how his review embodies the ghost of Area Studies and promotes its essentialism. With respect to the opening essay, Fogel writes: “Can there be a bigger mistake in East Asian studies than beginning an anthology with an essay by Naoki Sakai? Maybe, but doing this virtually ensures setting the stage with incomprehensibility.” We are tempted to rewrite Fogel’s question with him as the object of critique. “Can there be a bigger mistake than to allow Joshua Fogel to review anything theoretically sophisticated? Perhaps, but asking him to write such a review will clearly lead to useless mudslinging and misunderstanding.” The review is in tone condescending and partly insulting. It is polemical, ideologically motivated, and thus an intellectual failure—we were surprised to see a review published in this form. It reminded us of the wise dictum “suaviter in modo, fortiter in re,” which of course turned upside down means that a failure to keep good manners is more often than not an indication of the author’s unwillingness or inability to bring forward substantial and sober arguments.

Once we ask why Fogel fails to comprehend and bring forward sober arguments, we find certain structures of Area Studies emerging. In particular, based on the Area Studies model, scholars have interpreted Japanese thinkers in terms of indigenous traditions and contexts. Sakai’s work has been path-breaking precisely because he refuses this paradigm and underscores how many if not most Japanese thinkers were extremely well versed in European thought and consequently go beyond the dichotomy of East and West. However, because of Sakai’s attention to the philosophical contexts of Japanese thinkers, his essays, and, in particular, his contribution to our volume, require seriously engaging with philosophical concepts.

Fogel appears unwilling to engage the philosophical complexity of Ienaga’s, Maruyama’s, or Sakai’s arguments and consequently makes embarrassing comments. For example, he cites Sakai saying, “history is invariably a story, and also tied to narration,” but naively asks: does this mean “we just make it up as we go?” Such statements overlook the vast literature about narrative, fiction, and history, which is not all simply relativistic. We do not experience time in terms of discrete now-points or linear time, but rather in terms of a narrative or story. This fundamental structure informs our lives, fiction, and, of course, the writing of history. None of this implies that “anything goes.” Moreover, far from being a relativist, it is Sakai rather than Fogel who forces us to think seriously about the fascist and imperialist pasts of Japanese postwar liberal intellectuals.

Fogel and the zombies do not allow us to understand the complexity of postwar Japanese texts. Fogel cites Sakai saying, “The second problematic is that of the negativity in terms of which they articulated the issues of subjectivity to the formation of historicist consciousness” and comments “your guess is as good as mine.” Fogel’s use of this common expression is an excellent example of negating the heterogeneity embodied in “you,” the reader(s). In Fogel’s statement, the I is the same as the “you” (the reader), so of course “your guess would be as good as mine.” He has totally receded from the Sakai statement in despair and then attempts to universalize his bewilderment by suggesting that faced with Sakai’s prose all guesses are equally valid. This would only be true in a land where all readers were Joshua Fogels or at least shared his framework—he negates readers with different orientations and backgrounds, who might not need to guess. But such a homogenizing perspective actually conceals the conditions of Fogel’s own review. It is ironic that, even as his review embodies (a somewhat crude) negativity, he fails to understand what negativity means. Sakai’s point is that because Japanese thinkers, and Ieanaga and Maruyama in particular, were immersed in German idealism and other philosophical texts, they were fascinated by the problem of negativity, the ability to distance oneself from an object, criticize it and eventually change it. They further understood negativity, subjectivity, and historical consciousness together. Being conscious of making history implies being able to re-conceptualize, criticize and change things based on one’s own perspective—a negativity that emerges from the subject. In Sakai’s view, despite their emphasis on negativity, neither Ienaga nor Maruyma could avoid the pitfalls of positivist essentialism, especially when it came to discourses about geographical space.

When Fogel recedes from Sakai’s text, he expresses a purely negative relation to the words on the page and it is precisely this stance that makes it impossible for him to make sense of the concepts in front of him. However, because Fogel does not understand this negativity, he unknowingly grafts the results of his retreat from the words and concepts on the page onto the text itself. Such a lack of consciousness of the negative often leads to positivism and essentialism—the projection of an essence onto an object, while eliding one’s own subjective activity in constructing the object.

In his critique of various authors in the book, Fogel makes the ghost of positivist essentialism shine through. Take the following examples. When discussing Schneider’s work, he writes: “Unlike the previous two essays [Sakai and Murthy] which salt and pepper their paragraphs with German expressions, but who do not appear to know the language, Schneider is a native speaker.” No evidence is given to show that either Sakai or Murthy made mistakes in German or used German carelessly. In Fogel’s eyes apparently only native German speakers appear to know German and have direct insight into German philosophical terms. The zombie of essentialism strikes again. If that is the case, then shall we assume that Fogel and other non-Japanese who study Japan do not really know Japanese? This point would not be worth belaboring if Fogel did not make a similar assumption with respect to Sun Ge. He writes: “Nakajima has the distinct advantage over Sun Ge in that he clearly knows something about the work of Takeuchi and the context in which it emerged.” Why is this so clear just from reading the two essays? Of course, it is because Nakajima is Japanese and has an innate access to Takeuchi’s work, just as Schneider was born speaking philosophical German. I suppose it is of no import that Sun has published a monograph on Takeuchi, which has been well-received in both Japan and China, along with numerous articles on the subject, while, as far as we know, this essay is one of the only essays that Nakajima has published on Takeuchi. Such assumptions along with a lack of knowledge about Takeuchi make it difficult for Fogel to understand the content of Sun Ge’s essay. Consequently, Fogel cannot understand why Takeuchi is associated with the right wing. Sun’s point is precisely that Takeuchi defies the usual Cold War categorizations of right and left. Indeed, although Takeuchi praised Mao, he could be associated with the right because of his support for the Greater East Asia War, his essay on Ōkawa Shūmei, and his continued promotion of pan-Asianism, which was intimately associated with imperialism. Here again, when Japanese and Chinese intellectuals fail to conform to Fogel’s preconceptions, he stops reading. The zombies take over.

We should thank Fogel for providing us a key in his final paragraph to understanding his review. We would like also to make one comment with respect to how to understand our book. Fogel begins his remarks by noting that the “only thing that keeps the book together, then is the binding.” It is true that there is no overarching ideology or theoretical framework that brings the book together. The book was a result of a conference on nationalism, modernity, and history writing, and all of the essays grapple with how intellectuals in China and Japan wrote history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how they reconstructed narratives about the past in various media. Given that this was the period when the discourse of linear time and progressive history began to dominate East Asia, most authors discussed in the volume could not avoid dealing with this issue. Fogel’s review points out the ways in which Murthy and Kuo attempt to address the theme of linear time, and in this response we have shown how Weigelin-Schwiedrzik and Schneider deal with this central theme of the book. We could list the ways that other essays address this theme and perhaps should have done this more effectively in the introduction. But we hope that readers of the book will enjoy the variety of styles encompassed in the book, and we look forward to further dialogue about our volume.

[1] Joshua Fogel, “Review of Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History.” Monumenta Nipponica vol. 9, 1 (1994): 108-112.

The Challenge of Linear Time: Nationhood and the Politics of History in East Asia

The Challenge of Linear Time:
Nationhood and the Politics of History in East Asia


Edited by Viren Murthy and Axel Schneider

Reviewed by Joshua Fogel
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright May, 2015)


Viren Murthy and Axel Schneider, eds., The Challenge of Linear Time: Nationhood and the Politics of History in East Asia. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014. 301 pp. ISBN13: 9789004260139; E-ISBN: 9789004260146 (Hardback: €115, $149)

Let me begin with an admission. I forced myself to read the first two-thirds of this book and so hated it that I had to put it aside—in the ultimately vain hope that the editor of these reviews would forget about me and the book. What I forgot, however, was that, in the era of computers, nothing ever gets forgotten—the MCLC book review editor emailed to remind me of my approaching submission deadline. I know both editors of this book (Murthy and Schneider), not well, but I like them both and think of them as good scholars. But what I had read of this collection at that point was beyond bad. The good news is that the last third of the book—actually, the last four essays—is much better. So, here is my honest review.

First things first—this is the most poorly edited book that I have ever set eyes on: countless typos, impossibly bad grammar, gibberish masquerading as prose, and a totally haphazard inclusion/exclusion of Chinese characters. For example, in the “List of Contributors,” seven of the ten authors are scholars with Chinese or Japanese names, but only one has characters next to his Romanized name. The editors would like us to believe that the central theme of the volume has to do with “linear time,” but only a few of the essays even mention this topic, let alone address it. The only thing that keeps the book together, then, is the binding. The editors’ introduction basically just attempts to summarize the themes of each of the ten essays that follow.

Can there be a bigger mistake in East Asian studies than beginning an anthology with an essay by Naoki Sakai? Maybe, but doing this virtually ensures setting the stage with incomprehensibility. As I forced myself to read this essay, an old song by Peter, Paul, and Mary kept floating through my head, “I Dig Rock and Roll Music” (1967); in that classic, they spoof several then-current singing styles, and they note of The Mamas and The Papas: “They got a good thing goin’ / When the words don’t get in the way.” Wow, do the words ever get in the way of this essay—and there’s no music to save anything. I’m sure an editor would have helped this essay, but I doubt s/he could have saved it.

Entitled “Negativity and Historicist Time: Facticity and Intellectual History of the 1930s,” a distinctly opaque title never fully explained, Sakai looks at works written by two exceedingly famous historians of thought in Japan, Ienaga Saburō and Maruyama Masao, during the Pacific War. Both of these men are well known for their leftist, pro-democracy political bent in the postwar era, but Sakai attempts to demonstrate that, earlier, both drew on the works of 1930s philosophers whom no one would confuse with the left: Tanabe Hajime and Miki Kiyoshi. This could be extremely interesting, but the words (Sakai’s) get in the way. For example (and this could be multiplied many times): “The second problematic is that of the negativity in terms of which they articulated the issues of subjectivity to the formation of historicist consciousness” (16). Your guess is as good as mine. At one point, Sakai decides that periodization is an issue to be discussed, and he closes his section on the topic thusly: “We must now inquire into the ways periodization works with a view to negativity and subjectivity. For, history is a matter of the individual’s praxis” (21). What could this possibly mean? Two paragraphs later: “First of all, history is invariably a story, and always tied to narration virtually in all the languages.” Infelicities of language aside, does this mean we just make it up as we go? And, when he concludes his next section on history and facticity, Sakai writes: “[I]t is understandable that the historical is grounded in the future-oriented facticity (jijitsu-sei) of the subject, and necessarily mediated by negativity” (25). Doesn’t help much, does it?

Earlier in his essay, Sakai makes it clear that he is going to be leveling serious criticism at Ienaga and Maruyama: “It goes without saying that Ienaga and Maruyama are both engaged in the imperialist enterprise of demonstrating the exceptional character of Japan in Asia, of its leadership in the modernization of Asian people” (17). If “it goes without saying,” then what is the point of this kind of postmortem character assassination? He goes on a bit later: “One can hardly fail to recognize that they are, wittingly or otherwise, committed to a certain exceptionalist logic similar in structure to that of Eurocentrism.” Again, “hardly fail to realize” and “wittingly or otherwise” are condescending in the extreme. The same paragraph continues in this vein, but this should suffice.

One point Sakai makes is both terribly interesting and important to future scholarship in the intellectual history of the 1930s. Tanabe, Miki, and others were highly critical of what he calls “Japanese fascism,” but that does not mean they opposed Japanese imperialism in Asia. There has been a tendency, he points out, in both Japanese and Western scholarship to conflate the two.

When he turns to closer examination of Maruyama’s famous study of Tokugawa-period intellectual history, the ship runs aground again. This book, which two generations of English readers have now been able to access (even if we have reasonably good Japanese) thanks to Mikiso Hane’s 1974 translation, is found wanting in many regards. In a note, Sakai writes: “Hane’s translation facilitates readers’ immediate comprehension, so I have objection to it” (41). Again, an editor would have been helpful here, but more to the point: why is comprehension objectionable? Sakai goes on to opt for utter obfuscation, which is apparently a good thing. When he shortly thereafter tries to trace the root of Maruyama’s historicism to German sources, he claims: “I cannot identify the second context in terms of specific texts, but I am convinced that Maruyama was inspired by Carl Schmitt on a number of issues” (41). This strikes me as argument by innuendo—at best. Associating anyone who has demonstrated firmly pro-democratic, anti-“fascist” ideas over many decades with the likes of the unreconstructed fascist Schmitt without evidence is scandalous. (The bibliography is a mess—47-48).

Viren Murthy’s study of Tan Sitong’s famous Renxue (仁學) is unobjectionable. It is not immediately clear why ren in the title is translated as “cosmic love.” This is, of course, an interpretive translation, and possibly an overdetermined one. Murthy claims in a footnote that the usual rendering of “benevolence” won’t work here, because he believes “Tan invokes it [ren] as an ontological ground rather than merely a moral maxim” (49). Why he believes this is not clarified, nor for that matter why an “ontological ground” should lead us into “cosmic” dimensions. Later, he states that Tan understood ren (now mysteriously translated by Murthy as “benevolence”) “as the cosmological ground of the universe” (57). Can something be an ontological ground and a cosmological ground at the same time? I’m genuinely not sure. Murthy goes on: “this substance is extremely difficult to pin down and is peculiarly hybrid.” What does this mean? That it’s a difficult concept to describe? That would be true of any philosophical concept. Does deeming it “hybrid” help us to understand it? We soon, though, see that the hitherto surreptitious viper is “global capitalism.” Now that postmodernism is dead, Marxism is apparently enjoying a rebirth—I would prefer to see it, in line with a subsequent essay in this volume, as a zombie that refuses to die. Somehow then, the young—very young—Tan Sitong was responding to global capitalism.

In an effort to illuminate, Murthy writes: “The practice of philosophy and the dialectic of time and history point to deeper structural changes. Following Georg Lukács’ analysis of German idealism, I contend that Tan and Zhang [Taiyan]’s philosophical concepts, such as equality, abstract time, and evolution are intimately associated with the logic of global capitalism” (50). Soon thereafter we meet up with a long quotation from Lukács and a footnote, but there is no such work cited in the bibliography. The text referred to here is dated 1971 and, hence, must be the much belated English translation of Lukács’s famous History and Class Consciousness which will soon be celebrating the centennial of its original publication. (Marxist classics never die, it seems.) Why would Lukács be invoked here? This is, by the way, Lukács the rebel—he would soon be forced into self-criticism and repentance—picking up what he perceived as subterranean Hegelian threads in Marx. But, what could this possibly have to do with late-nineteenth-century China? “One can understand Zhang and Tan as expressing aspects of China’s process of entering the global capitalist system of nation-states” (50). Can one? How? I think only by reading healthy doses of what one wishes to find into the text under scrutiny.

To his credit, Murthy tries to tie his argument to the issue of time, the putative central theme of this volume. Capitalism changes our conception of time—no argument there. But, then he cites Aristotle to demonstrate the issue of time and change. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Aristotle did not live in anything remotely resembling a capitalist society. There are many philosophers cited from antiquity to modern times—from China and the West. Much of this reads like so much Salba sprinkled over a mess of potage. For example, for some inexplicable reason, Baruch Spinoza is referred to (59), but no text by Spinoza is mentioned, and frankly it remains unclear to me if Murthy knows anything of the extremely difficult philosophical work of this Dutch thinker. And, what any of it has to do with Tan Sitong is beyond this reviewer. (When Murthy quotes Tan quoting Jesus as saying “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” it might have helped to note here that Jesus, if he actually ever said this, was actually quoting Leviticus 19:18.)

In his conclusion, Murthy notes: “We have seen how the theories of Tan Sitong and Zhang Taiyan react to and express different dimensions of internationally circulating discourses related to global capitalist modernity” (80). I’m not sure who this “we” refers to. Did Tan or Zhang live in a capitalist society? Were they at all engaged in anything related to capitalism? I have strong doubts. One final note—in the bibliography, Murthy cites the writings of Zhang Taiyan, about whom he has written a book, and he has the wrong character for Zhang’s name (should be: 章). Again, where were our editors?

Axel Schneider follows his co-editor with an essay entitled “Nation, History and Ethics: The Choices of Post-Imperial Historiography in China.” Schneider has long been working on those scholars of the early twentieth century to whom, for lack of a better adjective, we often refer as “traditional” or “conservative.” In fact, he has been working on this so much that this essay is reprinted from a volume published in 2012. Unlike the previous two essays which salt and pepper their paragraphs with German expressions, but who do not appear to know the language, Schneider is a native speaker. This doesn’t mean he necessarily knows what he’s talking about, but we can at least be reassured that he knows the terms he tosses about.

This essay is actually a case study of one important but little known historian, Liu Yizheng, who will also be the topic of a later essay in this volume by Ya-pei Kuo. A closer look at the footnotes reveals that, indeed, there have been more than a handful of studies of Liu, but he is still relatively unknown. Schneider begins his account of Liu’s writings with an early textbook to which he contributed, Lidai shi lüe 歷 代史略, translated differently in Kuo’s essay, though both mention that it was “an adaptation” (Schneider, 91) “based on” (Kuo, 281) Naka Michiyo’s Shina tsūshi. Schneider gives “1899” as the publication date of Naka’s work, which is wrong. It should be 1888-1890; 1899 was the date of a Shanghai reprint edition. I’m not sure if either Schneider or Kuo actually investigated what they summed up as “adaptation” or “based on,” because Naka’s book was written in literary Chinese. Did Liu et al. simplify the text, modernize the grammar, cut and paste material in the book? As I understand it, the Chinese merely removed the Japanese reading punctuation from the text and reprinted it, but I haven’t studied this issue for some years. It might have been of interest to tell readers that Naka’s book was the first comprehensive history of China written in the modern period in any language, and that it ends with the fall of the Song. I’m beginning to wonder if Schneider or Kuo have ever seen Naka’s original work.

The principal reason Schneider singles out Liu for analysis is the centrality of ethics to Liu’s historical sensibility. As he notes: “It seems to me that one of the, if not the most fundamental difference between the development of history as a discipline in the modern West and in China is the position of ethics. In the West, historicism drew reason and ethics into history, thus relativizing and undermining them, ultimately leading to a fundamental epistemological and moral crisis, which is in a way at the root of current post-modern concerns” (102). In China, by contrast, ethics is central to historical concerns. This is an interesting observation, if it is true. “[I]n a way at the root of” is a slippery phrase—it’s like being “in a way” pregnant. In the end, Schneider stakes out a position critical of Joseph Levenson—referring to his book on Liang Qichao of over sixty years ago—which is refreshing. It’s time to move on from hero worship.

At this point, the volume under review turns to an altogether different kind of essay. Sun Ge, who seems to have become some sort of Chinese expert on Japan, the basis for which escapes me, offers an interpretation of the writer Takeuchi Yoshimi (1910-1977). Takeuchi was a gifted, leftwing Japanese scholar of modern Chinese literature who wrote extensively on Lu Xun, among other topics. Why this essay was translated (by Murthy) is incomprehensible. It adopts a lecturing, almost hectoring style on “how to write history.” But, it intersperses annoying, chatty verbiage. The one interesting aspect of this piece is how Takeuchi is read and understood in China, especially after the translation and publication of a collection of essays by him in 2005: Jindai de chaoke 近代的超克 (Overcoming of modernity). Sun wants us actually to believe that “the study of Chinese literature and thought was not actually his real goal” (113). Okay, I’ll bite. “He used this study as a medium in order to establish Japanese thought…. [This 2005 book] also presents an outline of a Japanese thinker who shoulders social responsibility while searching amidst reality.” Takeuchi was certainly committed to social causes, and he certainly wrote extensively about Sino-Japanese relations. But, without a doubt, his most influential work was a 1944 biographical study entitled Ro Jin (Lu Xun). What does “searching amidst reality” mean? Does that mean he was a realist?

Here’s an inkling of the kind of conclusion-jumping this essay excels in: “on the one hand, he does not consequently simply negate the pan-Asianism of the early Meiji period, although, after 1890, the latter was inextricably linked to invasion in a complex formation, and finally fell into fascist ideology” (114). This sort of reasoning involves a lot of stretching. Why 1890? What happened that made every pan-Asian impulse thereafter “inextricably linked” to imperialism and hence to fascism? In fact, as Sun notes: “some ‘critics of Takeuchi’ grasped the risky part of his intellectual practice and plainly stated that he was a fascist” (115). Something must be wrong with this translation. How anyone could conclude that Takeuchi had rightwing sympathies, let alone was a fascist, is inane. It is one thing to disagree with a fellow scholar—quite another to label his ideas “fascist.” Sun attempts some fancy footwork to avoid disagreeing with such ideas. It is difficult to say whether her legerdemain or those who pronounced Takeuchi a fascist is more idiotic.

But, wait, there’s more. Sun is also apparently a philosopher of history: “The process of history is just like a person who plans to take an airplane and encounters a thunderstorm” (117). There have been many statements about what the historical process most resembles, but this is arguably the most bizarre simile on the topic yet. There is more silliness of this sort—actually, lots more—but it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Fortunately, Sun does not seem to be one of those bent on assassinating Takeuchi’s character, as she notes how instrumental he was in bring two generations of Japanese scholars into the study of modern Chinese literature and history. How she expresses this is a bit odd, though: “if one reads the work of Takeuchi, you will find that his real perspicacity does not consist in telling his contemporaries what they should do…. Rather, his perspicacity lies in his acute sensitivity to the fact that history moves” (119). Glad as I am to know that Takeuchi is not ordering me around, does one need Takeuchi to know that “history moves”? What does this mean? Then, after noting that reading Takeuchi “is the best object to help us train to read history,” she claims: “One could say that in both China and Japan, our intellectual training has not provided us an effective means of dealing with Takeuchi” (120-21). Huh?

The next essay by Nakajima Takahiro of Tokyo University also concerns Takeuchi Yoshimi. Unfortunately, it cannot possibly have been read by an Anglophone editor prior to publication. The English is utterly execrable—including inconceivable grammar (e.g., “Confucian norms do not binding the for people” [142]). Nakajima has a distinct advantage over Sun Ge in that he clearly knows something about the work of Takeuchi and the context in which it emerged, but, as with Sakai, the words get in the way. He also thinks it’s very important to bring Takeuchi into comparison with Walter Benjamin, but it is unclear why. If one can read through the language—no mean feat—there are interesting points hiding here and there that concern how postwar Japanese have dealt with Japan’s war responsibility and the rise of Communist China. Also, the footnotes for this chapter are cited in a fashion unlike all the others, and the bibliography and notes are packed with typos and errors, and there are no characters at all to help.

In her contribution to this volume, Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik examines the campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius (in that order) that took place in China in the last years of the Cultural Revolution. She focuses on the recurring—as if from the grave?—theme of “restoration,” though it remains unclear just what the leadership of this movement feared might be restored. Lin Biao and Confucius were both very dead at the time. Attention to the unification of China 2200 years earlier by Qin Shihuang (also quite dead) may have been meant to imply that there was fear of a restoration of decentralized rule, as had been the case prior to the Qin. Was this a crusade to stir up the people to support centralized control over the country by the Party and Mao? Sounds like it.

When Weigelin-Schwiedrzik actually turns to discussing the campaign, it is often difficult to separate her recounting the details and presumed motivations of the leadership from her own analysis. For example: “That Lin Biao and Lin Liguo had made plans to assassinate him [Mao] and fled the country had made it clear to him that the 9th Party Congress had chosen the wrong successor” (162-63). Did anyone besides Mao believe this at the time? Does anyone now? In her conclusion, she notes that this campaign “did attract quite a number of intellectuals” (174). Really? Or, were they forced to participate? I kept saying to myself as I read this frequently repetitious essay: Why not come right out and say that Mao had lost his marbles and this whole campaign was insanity run amok? Of course, that might be somewhat less than the proper scholarly style in which to sum things up, but there is the parallel danger of over-intellectualizing this admittedly bizarre affair.

We now come to the last third of the book, and it is as if the editors miraculously awoke from sleeping with the dead and began stalking the authors much more closely than before. Liu Long-hsin’s highly focused piece on the PRPH (Popular Reading Publishing House, Tongsu duwu biankanshe 通俗讀物編刊社) in the 1930s addresses a theme all but absent from Western historiography and a fascinating one at that. Many familiar names—Gu Jiegang, Lao She, Fan Wenlan, and Xu Bingchang, among others—are known to us, but their activities in preparing popularized works in Chinese history and culture are much less well known. There is a great deal of detail here, but it is worth the effort, as this is mostly new material. Liu ultimately attributes the decline of the PRPH’s efforts to a lack of money and leftist inclinations that the Guomindang would not brook.

There are, unfortunately, a fair number of typos and errors that the editors (if they even saw this essay) either missed or simply passed on. I shall spare readers the typos, but here is a sampling of other mistakes or infelicities: tanci 彈詞 is translated “twang singing” (186)—something like “storytelling accompanied by stringed instrument” might have been better; Yuan mishi (197) should probably be Yuanchao mishi (if what is meant is the Secret History of the Mongols); and all the Japanese terms in the doggerel translated on p. 199 are mistranscribed (the same is true of the one Japanese item in the bibliography)—Chinese characters are only haphazardly included in the text, making it difficult to assess things properly.

And, they just keep getting better, at least temporarily. Haiyan Lee’s marvelous essay is by far the jewel in the decrepit crown. To be fair, it would have shined anywhere. Moreover, the zombie imagery she evokes could nicely have provided the motif for this whole volume, but that would have called for some editorial leadership. Lee examines the bizarre background and subsequent exposé of a museum not far from Chengdu, a museum housed in a former landlord’s estate with a horrific “water dungeon” allegedly used for torture. It all could be brushed aside easily as just one more ghastly tale from the socialist crypt, but Lee uses it to develop a much more nuanced and meaningful critique of state socialism in China. And, it’s devastating.

Employing theory as a condiment rather than as a blunt object, the ghoulishness of the whole tale—I shan’t recount it here, because Lee’s beautifully written account deserves to be read itself—begins to make larger sense. She is especially strong in this early segment in demonstrating how the Communists turned class status through the chengfen 成分 system into a heritable trait. What she doesn’t mention is that China had not had identifiable classes (Marxist or otherwise) for the millennium preceding the Communist revolution. With the chengfen system, classes became castes, a status assigned at birth that simply could not change, and class antagonism became a kind of racism. After 1949, especially after collectivization, putative former landlords would no longer have been wealthy, blood-sucking vampires, but they (and their offspring) were repeatedly brought out—like the living dead—for humiliation, torture, and often execution.

I have not done justice to this marvelous piece of scholarship, but I shall return to the imagery it invokes below. This essay is the best scholarly critique of Chinese socialist ideology that this reviewer has ever read. Nuff said.

The last two essays in this volume are let downs, but most anything would have been after Lee’s piece. Hon Tze-ki looks at the traditionalist scholars associated with the journal Guocui xuebao 國粹學報 in the early twentieth century, and he notes their distinctive use of guangfu 光復 (restoration) and geming 革 命 (revolution). When Zhang Binglin, for example, called for a restoration, he meant the ouster of the Manchus and a return to Han Chinese rule. Because these guys were not strict Confucians, like many of their opponents in the reformist camp, they looked for cultural sources among other ancient schools and rediscovered the zhuzi 諸子 (non-canonical) philosophers of the late Zhou. This is an interesting and important point, but it is hardly news. Shimada Kenji made it over half a century ago, and he was preceded by other Japanese scholars writing in the 1920s. Still, Hon brings to light a number of nearly forgotten guocui scholars who deserve our attention and whose writing style is often difficult to penetrate.

This volume’s final piece by Ya-pei Kuo concerns (as noted above) Liu Yizheng and in particular his Zhongguo wenhua shi 中國文化史 (History of Chinese culture). Kuo devotes considerable space to what Liu meant by wenhua (281-82), because “culture” as we now use that term doesn’t cover the broad range of the Chinese term at that time. Interestingly, this breadth of meaning closely parallels Naitō Konan’s use of the term at the same time; in his view, the history of China was the history of its culture. A closer look at sources of knowledge or influence, even across political borders, would have been instructive here.

When Kuo starts to unpack some of Liu’s ideas, though, I for one would like to have seen some critique applied. For example, Liu argued that China’s “first national trait was moderation”—zhong 中, and, for that reason, the land acquired the toponym Zhongguo. There is, of course, not a scintilla of evidence for such a weird statement; if there is, it would have been good to mention it. Later, we learn of his idea that China gained its balanced name on the basis of a unanimity of “‘all citizens of the nation’” (289). How would such a poll have been taken during the Zhou dynasty? Kuo should get points, though, for trying to engage the putative theme of the volume via Liu Yizheng’s historical views.

How to ultimately assess this volume? Most of it should never have been published. It is increasingly becoming apparent that Brill does not copy edit. That should not be understood as a license to publish anything written in the Roman alphabet. Certainly, one should not abdicate responsibility for work that will go out into the world under one’s name, editorial or authorial. Sadly, the really good work in this book—first and foremost, that of Haiyan Lee—may get lost in the muck and mire of the rest.

One theme that would have been good to treat thematically throughout the essays is the zombie-undead one that Lee handles so nicely. Many years ago, I mentioned to the late Fred Wakeman that I had actually read a work that dated the emergence of postmodernism to 1972. He responded (as best I can remember): “[expletive deleted], that’s just when Marxism died.” The idea occurred to me that Marxism, like the religion that it has become, may be the undead philosophy of our time. When postmodernism arose and most thought Marxism dead and gone—and then especially after the collapse of the Stalinist dictatorships around the globe and melioration of all but one or two—we entered the era of the culture wars. It was not a happy time in the academy with the advent of political correctness, but at least the peoples of Eastern Europe and elsewhere seemed to be headed for better times. But, now that postmodernism is moribund or perhaps dead and gone, zombie Marxism is on the rise, stalking the world, reminding everyone to never forget class (who would?), that “global capitalism” is an ever-present threat, appearing in rustification theme restaurants in China, and the like. Might I suggest that everyone dust off their tattered copies of One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse and (re)-read it? Either that or rent Love at First Bite (1979), starring George Hamilton.

Joshua Fogel
York University

The World on a Couch

September 8, 1985
The World on a Couch
By ARNOLD A. ROGOW

FREUD FOR HISTORIANS
By Peter Gay.

n "The Next Assignment," his presidential address to the American Historical Association in December 1957, William L. Langer urged his fellow historians to deepen their understanding of history through the "exploitation of the concepts and findings of modern psychology." By "modern psychology" he did not mean, as he made clear, "classical or academic psychology" but psycho-analysis "and its later developments and variations as included in the terms 'dynamic' or 'depth psychology.' " He added that despite the "prodigious impact" of psychoanalysis on many, perhaps even most, fields of knowledge, historians had "maintained an almost completely negative attitude" toward Freud and the teachings of psychoanalysis.

While there is no record of whether that address was followed by polite or enthusiastic applause, psychoanalytic training institutes have not been overwhelmed - either then or in the decades since - by a flood of applications from historians. Although a small number of young historians, usually referred to now as psychohistorians, have accepted Langer's assertion that the "newest history" should be based on "penetration in depth," the negativism of historians and social scientists in general toward psychoanalysis has changed relatively little during the past three decades. One does not exaggerate much in observing that in the academic world, psychoanalysis, far from being an idea whose time has passed, is an idea whose time has not yet come.

In "Freud for Historians," Peter Gay, perhaps the most eminent of the psychohistorians, takes sharp and informed issue with his naysaying colleagues and broadens and deepens our understanding of the contributions psychoanalysis and history can make to each other. A professor of history at Yale and since 1976 a research (nonmedical) candidate in psychoanalytic training at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, Gay is one of those rare academics whose competence in psychoanalysis is hardly less than his expertise in historical research.

His argument is that the relationship between historians and psychoanalysts has been bedeviled by misunderstandings, prejudices and failures on both sides. On the one hand, most historians wrongly imagine the main thrust of psychoanalysis is to reduce everything to a psychiatric cause springing from a single trauma, and they believe that psychoanalysts are wholly uninterested in objective reality and the varieties of human experience. On the other hand, most psychoanalysts do not care much whether their theories and concepts are relevant to historians, and many are indifferent to questions of scientific or historical fact. The result, as Gay says, is not only mutual suspicion and distrust but research findings that, because they are poorly grounded in history or psychodynamics, are woefully incomplete or, even worse, wholly wrong.

Gay does not spare psychoanalysts. He notes their tendency to rely on Freud's assertions as adequate proof of psychoanalytic propositions and their "almost unrelieved clinical preoccupation [and] passionate inwardness." Nor is he unaware that the psychohistorian (and any nonanalyst who makes use of psychoanalytic concepts) "must be prepared to face skepticism from Freud's followers almost as much as from his denigrators." But he is far more critical of historians who denigrate psychoanalysis than he is of the ultra-orthodox Freudians whose scientific world is the couch, and only the couch.

Thus historians as distinguished as Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., Lawrence Stone, Arthur Link, Kenneth S. Lynn, David E. Stannard, G. R. Elton and G. Kitson Clark, among others, are treated as uninformed and unfair critics of psychoanalysis, and not without cause. The most doctrinaire of Freud's disciples could not be more closed-minded than Schlesinger in declaring, according to Lynn, "that he had never read Freud and did not intend to." Also difficult to credit, much less accept, is Lawrence Stone's presumed belief that Freud held the sexual drive to be uniform from individual to individual, whereas, as Gay correctly notes, Freud knew only too well that the sexual drive varies enormously. On the whole, after reading "Freud for Historians," one has difficulty believing that psychoanalysts are as ignorant of history as historians are of psychoanalysis.

If that ignorance were overcome, historians and psychoanalysts might discover they have much to contribute to, and learn from, each other. Without some collaboration between them, there is little likelihood anyone will undertake what Gay sees as this generation's next assignment - a comprehensive history of the defenses against anxiety and how they vary by origins, epoch and social postion. Nor are we likely to know more about the psychodynamics of self-interest, which historians assume to be a powerful motivating factor in the behavior of nations, classes, groups and individuals, if the subject continues to be of little interest to either historians or psychoanalysts. F REUD suggested that we are never entirely free of our childhood wishes, fantasies and fears. In Gay's words, "the great lover is merely seducing his mother over and over again . . . the muscular bully is forever testing his little prepubertal manhood . . . the rational scientist finds himself bedeviled by superstitions he has preserved intact from primitive stages of his mental organization [and] politicians are only gratifying their own boyhood fantasies while they arouse those of others." If that is true, historians and psychoanalysts must consider the dismal possibility that "history is nothing more than an infinite regress, cruelly and interminably extended, in which superannuated little boys and girls solemnly replay the games of their tender years." Gay is careful to qualify such an assertion, but the fact remains -historians and psychoanalysts have been exasperatingly slow in attempting to make connections between regressive tendencies in the human psyche and the horrors of the century in which they have lived.

But "Freud for Historians" is unlikely to convince Gay's colleagues that "all history is in some measure psychohistory." And probably many psychoanalysts who read the book will not agree that "psychohistory cannot be all of history." Before rejecting Gay's argument, however, historians would do well to remind themselves that historians since Thucydides have not hesitated to speculate about psychological influences in human behavior, although they have done so with far less knowledge of such behavior than Freud and his followers possess. After all, it was not a psychohistorian or a psychoanalyst but Thomas Hobbes who in 1629 commented approvingly that in the writings of some historians, "there be subtle conjectures at the secret aims and inward cogitations of such as fall under their pen; which is also none of the least virtues in a history, where conjecture is thoroughly grounded, not forced to serve the purpose of the writer in adorning his style, or manifesting his subtlety in conjecturing."

Arnold A. Rogow is the author of "James Forrestal: A Study of Personality, Politics and Policy." His "Thomas Hobbes: Radical in the Service of Reaction" will be published next year.