Re: History and stories

Dear Ruth,

In this playing around with Marx, you have led me to something very
interesting... many thanks.

You wrote: when i say the end of history i really only mean the end of one kind-the
kind that thinks it is universal history-

I pondered if a concept of history for Marx is a universal schema of
history; or as you wrote:

>  > that history of the kind described by Marx is already over, as a
> > plausible kind of political temporal/spatial schema,

When I think of the idea of generalised history I think of Hegel or
the class struggle historians whose work became an ideology in support
of the right of the capitalist class to become the ruling class,
instead of the old Feudal rulers. (Marx didn't discover the class
struggle idea of history.)

What then does Marx understand by history? It is a complicated
problem since Marx didn't just add Feuberbach's materialism to
Hegel's idealist history to produce a materialist view of history.
Hegel's dialectical history, a teleological progression towards the
Absolute, does not fit into Marx's historical materialism. One cannot
simply replace the Absolute with ecomonic relations of production and
keep the dialectical part. 

For Marx history is contingent. History does not  happen in a
determined teleological way as a general notion of history but is
contingent on the ecomonic relations of production. We are no longer
in the realm of a generalised history. For Marx history is a type of
specific and not the specific which is an elision of the general.
>From Marx we can see history as singularity not in relation to the
general but in relation to the ordinary. These singularity are not
determined by class struggle or economic conditions but are
contingent on the ordinary everyday relations of production. Hence,
when Marx writes;  the first time something happens, it makes
history, the second time, a farce, he precisely illustrates this
singular concept of history in relation to the ordinary.

For Hegelian notions of history, history is an infinite progression,
devoid of the relation to the ordinary, but composed of the
extraordinary which defines the dialectic of history which becomes
universal history. Here there can be no other history. Marx saw it
differently. The concept of history he proposes is far more complex,
difficult even, then the easy way out Hegel follows. For Marx,
history produces singularity which makes history finite and
real. Hisory becomes a product. That is something is produced through
artifice. History becomes a fiction, in the sense that a fiction is a
production, an artifice, etymologically speaking.

Lets go to the etymology of history. History (historia) is a
journaling, a recording, a news gathering. Here we can see using Marx
that this is also contingent singularity in relation to the ordinary.
For the writing of history this has great consequences. For feminists,
general history which is the story of patriarchy need not be the only
story possible, as an Hegelian like notion of history would have it.
There are other stories, ultimately an infinitude of stories
tangential to singularity proposed in Marx's concept of history. 

This brings me back to narrative and stories, in my first posting to
the list. Instead of there only being a limited number of stories
that can be told, an idea produced from an Hegelian like notion of
history along with formal distinctions such as genres which must also
be limited by this idea of history, there are in concrete real matter,
an infinite number of stories. There is no limit to the number of
stories that can be told.

The above is a sketch of a concept of history, there are difficulties
to be answered, no doubt, and areas that need further
elaboration and clarifying.

best wishes

Chris Jones.

ps... I don't think my video of a naked man in chains  was an
attempt to fetishise but something else, in the poetry video clip. The
question I ask is: did it work? Your comment was perceptive and to
the point. 










On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, you wrote:

> 
> when i say the end of history i really only mean the end of one kind-the
> kind that thinks it is universal history- its a political/stylistic choice
> and, as you go on to say, another kind of arrogation/ valuation- 
>  

> a little like the certainty of atheism? i prefer D's arguments for the
> multiplicty of time as unliveable as more probable, with revolutionary
> moments off the rational calender. time  out of joint, at the borders of the
> liveable, as the fracturing force of the bit parts called history. not equal
> to, not greater than but differentiating from..logically, is the history of
> class oppression really worth adding to (languages of equivalence)?
> 


>  > that history of the kind described by Marx is already over, as a
> > plausible kind of political temporal/spatial schema,
>