What to Do with History, Revise or End It?

Towards Everyone Being a Historian

Endism
Elizabeth Clark who has written an excellent summery of postmodernist
historical theory points out that the idea of the end of history has been argued
by lots of historians since Peter Novick took it up in That Noble Dream; The
Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession. As Clark suggests,
this idea indeed has been advocated by postmodernist historians, many of
whom use it as an important tool to criticize conventional history. Keith Jenkins
and Alun Munslow, famous for their vehement attack on empiricist historians,
take up Endism as an independent chapter of their compilation The Nature of
History Reader in which recent important works that argue for the end or the
death of history are introduced.
Of course, the phrase the end of history is famous as an argument of Francis
Fukuyama, who defended the liberal-democratic constitution by regarding it as
the final stage of human development. However, postmodernist historians use it
with quite a different meaning. Contrary to Fukuyama, who defends the status
quo, they use the end of history in order to criticize what they think of as the
problem of the modern and replace this conceptualization with others that have
been ignored in modernity. As Michel Foucault used the phrase the death of
man not to mean despairingly that every human being should die, but in the
sense that men of modern society, who insist on their superiority to non-modern
others, should die out; they used the phrase the end of history in the sense
that history peculiar to modernity which has played a role in oppressing others
should die out. It is because of this that Jenkins replied to the Munslows
question, As your reflections on history have developed since Re-Thinking
History you have become more extreme, writing more and more not only on the
problematical nature of history per se but on its possible end on the end
of history. So, if I can put it this way, is there not so much an irony but a
paradox or even a contradiction here? that Jenkins is optimistic about the

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kinds of histories that are now being written of an experimental kind beyond the
limits of the academic genre then it seems histories per se are still deemed to
be required. And I am also optimistic about living in a world without history if
what passes for history, however imagined, is a block to the imagining of things
that, in the name of emancipation and empowerment, are altogether more
relevant and to the point.

History under Revision
As this exchange suggests, what underlies the argument for the end of
history is the presupposition that the real past is lost because of the existence
of history. Judging from the common-sense thought that recognition of the past
is possible because there is history, this claim would seem extremely strange.
However, this argument is not so strange if we consider the constructed nature
of history.
Lets take memory as an example. Individual memory becomes extinct with
its holders death. Innumerable memories should have become extinct through
such a process continuing up to the present day. However, not all memories
have been lost. Some remain, having been handed down in one way or another.
To preserve memory continually, those who convey it are necessary. Those who
convey it are historians in a broad sense and the medium through which
memory is transmitted to the later age is history. As De Certeau pointed out,
history exists in order to cover the absence and the death of the past. However,
there is a great difference between the past and history, because histories
constructed in different contexts have to be transformed into something
different from what the past was. Although the main objective of history is the
representation of the past, the past already extinguished cannot, in different
contexts where other persons live and make history, be presented as it really
was.
The past that was before now and the histories that we have now are
different. If this is so, it is arguable that the presence of history is the cause of
the absence of the past. Postmodernist historians insist that both proper history
and public history are to be criticized in the sense that such histories, which we
are forced to share in common, typically expel the real past from our
recognition. Needless to say, it is French philosophers and theorists such as
Barthes, Derrida, Lyotard, and Baudrillard who propounded deconstructionist
ideas, which paved the way for criticizing history in modernity. They inherited

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Saussures idea on linguistics and opened the way for the linguistic turn in
historiography. Richard Rorty made this term popular and it is Hayden White
who extensively developed the argument by pointing out that history
constructed in literary form does not correspond with the real past because its
form is regulated by the rules of language that have nothing to do with the past
itself.
On the contrary, however, most historians make more of revising history, in
order to construct or reconstruct history, although their standpoints vary
considerably depending their standpoints. Historians such as Holocaust deniers
insist that any history that presents the Holocaust as a real event should be
revised because the Holocaust was constructed with the help of often one-sided
post-war ideology. Academic historians insist that history should be revised
again and again because the discovery of new sources, the utilization of new
methods, the emergence of new historical agents, subjects and places require
it. Indeed, newly found sources that have been kept secret or remained
unknown for a long time are often used to revise history hitherto accepted.
Various methods imported from other disciplines have certainly introduced a
variety of new approaches to history. The extension of the domain of history
produced by newcomers such as underdogs, activist gay scholars, anti-
colonialists, and feminists have contributed to the revision of elitist, Europe-
centered, and male-centered conventional history. In this way, academic history
is under perpetual revision. The history of the French Revolution now takes more
account of the peasants in the Vendee than of the Sans-Culotte in Paris. Irish
history has begun to put equal weight on both unionist and separatist
movements.
Can it be true that the revised history must always be better than the pre-
revised? Certainly not. If it were true, we would have to agree with Holocaust
deniers. This is not the viewpoint we should take. Then why do most academic
historians consider it better to revise history? It is because they believe that
history should be progressive, or rather, historiography should be progressive.
History has to be revised to continue to be progressive. History, always open to
perpetual revision, would get nearer to the truth about the past. This is why
academic historians affirm the necessity of revising history. On account of this,
they insist that their history is not closed as deconstructionist historians
maintain. They feel that nothing is wrong with the idea that history is always
under revision and progressing in order to get better.

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Shared History under the Unified World
However, I have my doubts. In a book published sixteen years ago, History in
the Borderless Age, I explained my reasons. Though I dealt with a diversity of
issues, one of my main points was my objection to the unification of history by
way of perpetual revising. My argument was contrary to the commonly
accepted view that revising is important in the development of objectivity in
historiography. Why then did I express opposition to the unification of history
and the development of objectivity in historiography? It comes from my doubts
about national histories or the process of the nationalization of history, which
many academic historians share. Academic historians often criticize national
history because it lacks objectivity and universality. However, compared with
local and regional history, national history can be regarded as more objective
and universal. As is often pointed out, national history is constructed in parallel
with the establishment of history as a scholarly discipline during nation-state
building in the modern age. In this process of professionalization, historians
protected by the state criticized local and regional histories as mythical, poetic,
fictional and provincial and demanded to replace them with more
comprehensive national ones. That is to say, they sought to revise history that
had been local and regional, and make it suitable to the demand of the nation-
state in a more universal and often more objective form.
It goes without saying that national history is now under severe criticism.
Historians, claiming that their history is scientific, criticize national history in
terms of its national aspects. They hold that science should not and could
never be nationalistic, so they insist upon revising history that still retains
national aspects and replacing it with a scientific version that could be shared
more commonly with every people of the world. The World history that we share
nowadays is the effect of such efforts. We now accept world history or
transnational history more than national history because we regard the former
as more scientifically valid than the latter.
It is easy to criticize national history as unscientific. First of all, to repeat it
again, science should not and could never be national. History only for and
within national space, in other words, history whose writers and audience who
have the same nationality, written in the national language, and
understandable only by a limited group of people, cannot be considered
scientific. However such history might be shared with the people; a narrative

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putting great men and great events together in a national place has a great
similarity to the form of art, not that of science as Hayden White points out.
It goes without saying that one of the main arguments of White is the role of
tropes in historiography. Metaphorical expression plays an important role in
world history. For example, we often use the terms, Renaissance, Reformation,
Industrial Revolution, and Imperialism, to describe modern history. These are
metaphorical expression. Calling the age before the Renaissance the dark age
is a metaphor as well. Ancient times, middle ages, and modern times are
also a kind of metaphors.
In addition, what is more important is the part-and-whole relationship. For
example, the event termed "the Industrial Revolution" consists of elements that
include the emergence of machinery production, steam engines, the factory
system, the increase of the production capacity, and the appearance of class
struggles and more. The Renaissance is explained by Boccaccio, Chaucer and
Michelangelo, and their works. The standard used in the selection and the
evaluation of the individual parts as constituting the whole are purposeful. As
for the Reformation, practice such as the Indulgences is handled as something
symbolizing the corruption of the church in the Middle Ages and dealt with
negatively. In contrast, reformers such as Luther, Calvin, and Huss are treated
affirmatively. As for modernization, events that symbolize feudalism and
reaction are treated negatively, whereas, on the other hand, westernization,
democracy, freedom, and the civilizing process are referred to affirmatively. As
Lyotard pointed it out, the most basic form of the metanarrative of modern
times has been the dichotomy that excludes subjectivity; the individual, and
others. It is not very difficult to find a plot and an ideology based on ethical and
aesthetic value judgment behind the world history we usually share.
The problem is why such a world history is shared. The world history we share
now is not what we shared in the distant past. Most people knew only the
history of the group and place in which they belonged and lived. Until the
coming of the unified world, which was promoted relentlessly in the modern age
as so-called globalization developed, such people knew only the history of
immediate groups and places. Even if they used the term, world history, such
world history was extremely near-sighted. Its sphere of recognition was very
narrow and limited. Most people who lived in European society did not know
Asian history, and the people who lived in Asian society did not know European
history. Contrary to this earlier stage of affairs, we who live in modern times

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share world history. Is this a desirable thing? It might be desirable in the sense
that history has become more universal or rather more scientific. However,
there is a problem at the same time. It is the same problem that occurred when
local histories were put together and transformed into a nationalized history. It
is the problem of the individuals, the particulars and the others being expelled
to the outside of the unified history which purports to be general and scientific.
Without fearing that my true intention will be misunderstood, I would like to
take up Auschwitz as an example to illustrate the problem of unified world
history. Of course the genocide in Auschwitz is a historical fact, however
Holocaust deniers may insist on the contrary. It does not seem particularly
strange to argue that we recognize this fact as a special event in history in
order to remember the tragic event caused by totalitarian chauvinism in the
20th century. It is also argued that this event should be kept in mind as a
trauma that is beyond the limits of representation not only by the persons
involved but also by people all over the world. However, certain aspects of this
way of thinking need to be reconsidered. First, what should the whole consist of
when an individual case is taken up to symbolize it? Is it: genocides which have
commonly occurred in the history of mankind?; slaughters inextricable from
war?; ethnic cleansing?; totalitarianism?; or rather modernity itself?; Which of
these things does Auschwitz symbolizes? If it is genocides, we would be able to
add multitudinous events other than Auschwitz. If it is slaughters accompanying
war, how about the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? If it
is ethnic cleansing, how about the near extermination of Aborigines, native
Americans and innumerable unknown genocides of Africans?
If we think like this, we are lead to a second question, which is why only the
events referred to the Holocaust are taken up in particular as trauma. Why do
we not remind ourselves of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as
trauma? How about the rape of Nanjing, blitzkriegs on numerous cities during
and after the Second World War, the extermination of various ethnic groups,
and other atrocities? Such events appear not to necessitate our remembrance
of them as trauma, dont they? Then what is the difference between the events
related to the Holocaust and these other events? Is it the scale of the
slaughters? Or, are there any other reasons? Is it that the victims of other
events are unhistorical others unlike those of the Holocaust who should be
remembered as an ideal type? I think this cannot be so.
To write again and hoping that my intention will not to be misunderstood, I

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believe that the Holocaust is not an exceptional event in world history. If we look
into the sublime past more attentively, we will notice that innumerable similar
events must have happened throughout history. The factors that have made the
Holocaust represent an unforgettable human experience are the position, the
value and the ideology of the post-war world, which we consider to be universal.
Value, position, and ideology decide which facts are selected as constituting
history. Even if it seems to be constituted by the colligation of typical events,
the world history we have now is still founded on the value, position and
ideology peculiar to modernity.
Probably, what I need to address is the problem of history itself rather than
national history or world history. However, by considering in this way various
forms of history, local, national and world like this, we notice that history does
not necessary always become better by being revised. It appears certain that
revision should make history newer and sometimes better. However, before
accepting newly revised history, we should pay more attention to the problem
of the transformation of the subject of recognition that causes the revision. We
should not accept this transformation one-sidedly as affirmative. Such
transformation is not universal and neutral, but comes from the relationship of
power and knowledge in a changed society. The nation has been empowered
during modernization as the unitary world has been empowered during
globalization. So has been national and world history.

The Real Past Missing behind History

When we think in this way, we notice that there is a big problem in the unified
history that we share. Nevertheless, we usually accept such history. It is
because it claims not only to be universal and neutral, but also scientific and
objective in the sense that it relies on facts. This facticity is the main backbone
of the historiography of modernity, often called historical science. It plays the
role of distinguishing revised history, which purports to be more universal and
more objective, from history constructed through particular, sometimes
subjective imagination. However, is it always true that revised history is better?
Is it always right for us to adopt a revised history by disposing of the preceding
one?
To consider this, I would like to take up the meaning of the history that is not
revised as my final point. For this I will quote the argument of Minoru Hokari to
whom Ann Curthoys and John Docker dedicated their book Is History Fiction?

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which analyzes a wide range of topics, from Herodotus to postmodernism,
concerning the meaning of fiction in historiography.
Hokari, born in Japan and trained under Greg Dening and Dipesh Chakrabarty,
regrettably died young in 2004. In his last and probably only book, Radical Oral
History; The Practice of History of the Aborigines, the native inhabitants of
Australia, he developed a quite interesting way of thinking about history that he
had learned by encountering the practice of history among Aborigines. He
writes: What I asked myself constantly was who were the historians here. In
other words, I thought that if we, historians, consider the informants as a
historian, instead of considering only ourselves as historians, we will be able to
uncover another history, which the Aborigines are practicing. What happens to
history if we assume that they are historians as well as we? This is my starting
point.
Hokari argues that once we begin to think in this manner we will recognize the
problem that we, the historians on the modern side, cannot hear the voice of
the land that the Aborigines can hear and through which they learn their
history. In addition, we may hesitate before dismissing as unreal and fictitious
however much they might believe it Aborigines history that holds that J.F.
Kennedy has visited their village. Hokari rejects such repudiation of Aboriginal
history, regarding it as the one-sided defense of constructed modernist history
and raises the following doubt: Is it only a history that is useful in helping a trial
required in the days of globalization when Euro-centrism is repeatedly criticized,
the impoverishment and limits of Modernism are declared, multiculturalism is
stressed, "fundamentalism" is visible as a phenomenon of the present age, and
ethnic cultures are spilling over the borders. My insistence on history
independent of facticity has nothing to do with anything goes. Such criticism
of Aborigines history is a complete misunderstanding of the practice of history
that the Aborigines perform. It is true that its rules are different from ours. Their
history may be said to be a different approach to the past or a different kind of
the philosophy of history. They do not make history based on whatever as they
happen like. They are historians in the sense that they tell the past events and
experiences to learn something from them by representing them in the present
in terms of ethical, political, spiritual and theoretical analysis. Even if such
practice is different from our modern scholarly historiography, which makes
much of positivism and facticity, it is too much to say that it is a kind of
anything goes.

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 I am not sure to say whether this argument is persuasive or not. However, I
think this is instructive to us in that it points out one possible direction we
pursue in the future. It is to re-present the real past expelled from proper history
that is constructed and protected by modernity. In this way we will be able to
discover the real past that has been missing behind history.

Towards Everyone Being a Historian

To conclude, after reading this paper, some would argue that I emphasize too
much the relativity of history. My reason is simple. It is because the past itself is
characterized by relativity. Or rather it is better to say that the pasts were
relative. So were histories. The objects and subjects of histories were variegated
before being unified through the process of revising. Everyone and every group
had its own history. Although histories have been revised and transformed into a
more homogenous account through a process of unification, especially under
modernization and globalization, the unified history is not the only one we have
to own. It is because such history is quite different from what multiple pasts
really were, independent of facts in the past.
For example, the inhabitants of the Japanese Islands at present are different
from those in the past. The subject of Japanese history, that is the people called
Japanese, is different from the object of history, the people of the past, who
lived in the Japanese islands before nation-state building, without being
conscious of belonging to the same nation. The subject of history, here and
now, decides what history is constructed. Such history, however scientific and
universal it might pretend to be, is different from what took place before and
over there.
Of course, I do not intend only to indicate the difference between the past and
history that has been already accepted by numerous historians. It is neither my
intention to negate the inevitability of the proceeding of modernization and
globalization. I admit that revised values, sometimes desirable and acceptable
for us because of their rationality and universality, are coming from so-called
progress. However, we should not accept such revisions without critical
reflection, especially in history, because revised history is different from what
the past really was. If we consider the objective of history as the representation
or the presentation of the real past, what we should do first is not only to revise
history further as proper history, but also to end the history that is now and to
give a chance to everyone to do history. In this way we will be able to represent

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the pasts as they really were.

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