§ Introduction

Like the ghost, this book is an interruption, a provocation, an unset¬

tling of the orderly boundaries and lines by which we conventionally
think about the relation between past and present and thus the way we
“do” history. In it I conjure the specter of deconstruction to advocate for a
reevaluation of these boundaries and our strategies for thinking and writ¬
ing about the past. Deconstruction is a spirit that has haunted and fright¬
ened the historical profession, as we will see in Chapter r, but, practically
speaking, very few historians have attempted a serious engagement with
Derrida or deconstruction for the practice of history. To my mind there
are two main reasons for this: one that is inherent to current dominant
historical practices and another that is announced explicitly as the reason
deconstruction is inappropriate for the practice and writing of history.
The first reason is that most conventional historians are what I refer to
as “ontological realists.” I define ontological realism as a commitment to
history as an endeavor concerned with events assigned to a specific loca¬
tion in space and time that are in principle .observable and as such are
regarded as fixed and immutable. Here the historian accepts that there
is a possibility for epistemological uncertainty about our understanding
of a past event, but this is mitigated by the ontological certainty that the
event happened in a certain way at a certain time. Central to this position
is a commitment to empirical data that serve as something of a false floor
to hold it. In the end, getting the past “right” is a question of historical
method. We will explore the workings and repercussions of ontological
realism in Chapter 3, but for the moment I want to point to a stronger
and weaker variant of this position. The stronger variant adheres to the
1
 ..
2 Introduction Introduction

position that there is a past and we can have full access to it. To my mind, from the point of view of the end, thus smuggling both a teleology and
this is a position that no, or very few, working historians currently hold. rigidity into the account. Conventional historians give the past event the ;
Instead, it is the weaker variant that I wish to target, wherein the past is ontological reality of a fixed and permanent object silently replacing the !
said to have an ontological reality that we can only approach from limited spectral status with a fleshly one, but the ontological properties of the past |
perspective and incompletely from our position in the present and thus event are constructed by the historian in the present. !
with epistemological uncertainty about that which is ontologically cer¬ Here I want to make clear that I am not advocating for an understand¬
tain. This latter, weaker variant, I argue, is the position that most conven¬ ing of history or the past as constructed whole cloth by the historian in the
tional historians hold, but I also want to suggest that the stronger version present. In this regard I am sympathetic to traditional disciplinary histori¬
is always at work unannounced in the weaker one. cal methods and to recent work by philosophers of history such as Frank
The error of ontological realism is that it fails to recognize the limita¬ i Ankersmit, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Eelco Runia, and other proponents of
tions of our own historical horizons, the extent to which our personal
perspective is determined and directed by our past. The current episte¬
—
the “presence” paradigm especially regarding the latter’s investigation into
the forceful way that the past presses on the present and touches us even if
mological understanding of the past is taken to be the ontological reality we cannot touch it. But I am also deeply critical of the presence model, as
of the past. It is this indifference to the epistemological understanding will become apparent in Chapter 2. Ironically, given that the thinkers of
that allows one to take our historically contingent mode of understanding presence provide a forceful critique of conventional historical scholarship,
as indicative of a method that is universally valid for all time. And it is their emphasis on the material presence of the past in the here and now is
here that we can see the ways that the current attempted rapprochement strangely similar to that of the ontological realist approach insofar as both
between our historical methods and our historical condition is predicated are predicated on a logic of presence. To be sure, the ontological approach
on a misunderstanding of our current practices as contained within a per¬ of these philosophers of history is a focus on our historical mode of being
manently enduring present that fosters a similarly misconceived represen¬ in the present, while the epistemological approach of those historians who
tation of a permanently enduring past. emphasize the importance of method is a focus on ascertaining the reality
But what holds the ontological certainty of the past event given the of the past; each emphasizes what is present and not what is absent. Runia,
possibility of epistemological uncertainty in recounting that event? Most Gumbrecht, and Ankersmit do so by arguing for the presence of the past in
conventional historians either avoid or defer this question, working the present. Conventional historians do so by arguing for the enduring and
purely on the assumption that method is sufficient to bring the past into recoverable presence of the past as past.
the present. But the past itself has no ontological properties, or if it does, In what follows, I embrace Hayden Whites emphasis on language and
/* it has a latent ontology; thus, the past event cannot be made present. Any the place of constructivism in the historical endeavor to critique such ap¬
|reappearance is the untimely visitation of a ghost. This leads to a more proaches, but I also cultivate aspects of the presence model as well. In this
troubling question about the category of ontology itself and specifically way the deconstructive approach to the past for which I advocate is nei¬
the ontology or hauntology of the past. Hauntology is a Derridean term ther a “realism” nor a “constructivism.” Instead, it operates with elements
that relies on the sonic affinity between ontology and hauntology that the of the latter without giving up the claims of the former to insistently en¬
concept of hauntology haunts by replacing (when spoken, ontologie and gage with the real. I do not mean this in the sense offered by proponents
hontologie are indistinguishable in French). History, too, is a replacing of of speculative materialism, the “real” of the natural sciences, or the “real”
this sort where the past event or figure is silently determined by the tell¬ of sense data. Instead, I look to Derrida to engage with and make explicit
ing that replaces it. But the telling in the present is haunted by the ghost the perturbations that the past returned convokes. This opening onto the
of the past, which is neither present nor absent, neither here nor gone. relation of presence and absence through a hauntological approach to his¬
This disjunction or disruption at the core of “history” exposes the ways tory accounts for the entangled and unstable relation of presence and
that origins and grounds are always posited co determine the beginning absence without privileging one over rhe other.
 Introduction Introduction 5

This leads me to the second reason for the conventional historians dis¬ But it is important to distinguish Derrida’s interest in the problem and
dain or fear of deconstruction. Rather than confront the radical insta¬ understanding of history from the concerns of practicing historians. For
bility that deconstruction exposes, historians have typically dismissed it the most part, Derridas interest in history was focused on the history of
as counterproductive to, or incompatible with, the historical endeavor. philosophy or the ways we operate as beings for whom our past, history,
For the historians Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob decon¬ or traditions are part of our makeup. In the 1963-64 “Histoire et verite”
struction denies “our ability to represent reality in any objectively true lectures he follows Hegel, using the term Geschichte to designate our his¬
fashion”; thus, “in the final analysis there can be no postmodern history.”1 torical condition as opposed to Historic, which designates the science of
Other historians such as Richard Evans, Jerrold Seigel, Georg Iggers, and history.8 In his course “Heidegger: The Question of Being and History”
Keith Windschuttle concur.2 Joshua Kates argues that the Justification for of the following year he phrases the distinction following the language of
such a dismissal is a reading of Derrida and his project, exemplified by Being and Time, “since there would be no historical science without the
the 2001 Norton Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, which takes historicity of Dasein (no Historie without Geschichte), the hermeneutics
deconstructions “focus to be language, and sees it as arriving at what is that gives us to read or think the historicity of Dasein is the condition of
essentially a new, more radical form of skepticism.”3 On this reading, the possibility of hermeneutics as the method of historical science.”9 Here
(problem with “deconstruction” for the conventional historian is the over- Derrida is clear to assert that the concerns of historians are of a deriva¬
fl emphasis on language and the gap between words and the things they tive nature and predicated on our historical mode of being in the world.
[' reference. If the signifier can never really reach the signified, so this logic Derrida’s own concern is with the “history of being,” and he states, again
goes, then there can be no meaning, and we descend into relativism. Fol¬ working through Heidegger, “it is pointless to go to the historian qua his¬
lowing this reading, Jane Caplan concludes that “while deconstructive torian and ask him what historicity [Geschichtlichkei^ is. The historian is
method may be borrowed by the historian for the interpretation of single the scholar who is already dealing with a delimited scientific field that is,
texts, deconstruction as an epistemology is virtually incompatible with
precisely, called historical reality . . . , and the historian has an object he
the historian’s enterprise.”4 deals with and that he calls the historical object. But as to the origin and
But this is not the only reading of Derridas project and works. Kates and the condition of possibility of this field of objectivity, the historian qua
scholars such as Geoffrey Bennington, Peter Fenves, Rodolph Gasche, Dana historian, in his historical practice, can tell us nothing.”10 For Derrida it is
Hollander, Michael Naas, and Edward Baring have each contested this un¬ pointless to turn to the historian to ask about the question of history be¬
derstanding of Derrida and the project of deconstruction, pointing to Der¬ cause while the historian understands the field in which she or he works,
rida’s sustained interest and engagement with the problem of “history” since she or he has not thought deeply about the grounds on which that field is
his earliest work.5 This can be seen in Derrida’s published work such as constituted. Derrida indicts the ways that "history and the epistemology
his introduction to L'origine de la geometric, by Edmund Husserl, of 1962; of history deal with the objective thematic face of science but they do not
“Violence et metaphysique: Essai sur la pensee d’Emmanuel Levinas,” from think to go definitively searching for the pre-scientific origin of science.”11
1964; “De la grammatologie” (I and II), from 1965 and 1966; and “Cogito Thus, Derrida looks toward Heidegger to investigate the moment prior
et histoire de la folie,” from 1967.6 It can also be seen in his seminars,
first at to the constitution of history as a field of scientific objectivity, and here
the Sorbonne in 1963-64, when, as an assistant, he taught the course “His¬ one can see how the target of Derrida’s investigation expands beyond the
toire et vdrite” (History and Truth) using his own syllabus and then as
an realm of history as practiced by historians to the larger question of the
instructor at the Ecole normale superieure in 1964-65, where he taught the prescientific origin of science. The point I want to emphasize is that while
course “Heidegger: La question de 1’etre et 1’histoire” as part of the aggrega¬ I think there is much to glean from Derridas critique of historians and
tion curriculum.7 The latter was recently published first in French in historical practice, it is not the focus of his engagement, nor does he offer
and then in English in 2016, leading Derrida scholars to revisit 2013
his early direct guidance about how his project might apply to the practice of his¬
focus on history in relation to his later work.
tory. This will be my task.
 6 Introduction Introduction 7

Philosophers of history of the nineteenth-century variety do not fare leads to an understanding of history as a closed system insofar as the on¬
much better in Derridas early analysis because to his mind “the level of tological realist presumes that (he pasuis ontologically singular, clear, and
Weltgeschichte and the philosophy of history is that of the greatest naivete recoverable so long as one has the-tight epistemological tools and_merh- .
since they both rely or at least claim to rely on a historical truth deliv¬ qds at ones disposal. This understanding of the past as singularly true
ered by science. They are both certain that something like historical truth restricts the'poSsrbiTities of what we might understand the past to be or to
is possible, that an opening that gives us access to the historical past is have been. Instead, Derrida looks to reoccupy “the word ‘history’ in order
possible, whatever the critical work one then proceeds to carry out on to reinscribe its force and in order to produce another concept or concep¬
documents, signs, monuments, archives, and so on. The critical work pre¬
tual chain of ‘history’: in effect a ‘monumental stratified, contradictory’
supposes the very thing it is trying to protect: namely, the possibility of history; a history that also implies a new logic of repetition and the^uacz^.
historical truth.”12 These are the philosophical or theoretical coordinates for it is difficult to see how there couldJaeJiistory without it.”15 I will
that are employed by conventional historians to justify the ontological
explore how such a contradictory history can be applied in Chapter 5,
realist position, and we will confront these in Chapter ^. But earlier, Der¬ but, in brief, Derrida is asking us to rethink “history” in order to account
rida identified a tension in the coordinates by which we conventionally
for the ways that Historic (the historical sciences) presuppose Geschichte
designate the “truth” of “history” insofar as that if history is defined as the (our ways of talcing up the past) and the resultant entanglement of past, .
realm of change, and truth as the realm of the eternally same (as in Plato),
present, and future. When history is written, it is made repeatable, but 1
then truth could not originate in history. Truth would have to preexist
the repetition itself can become a part of another conceptual chain pulled I
the world.13 The formulation is phrased as a philosophical exercise, and
out of the initial context. Geoffrey Bennington, argues that for Derrida
Derrida seeks to apply it to case studies such as mathematics, where some¬
“‘ideas’ always escape any given context, and in a way that breaks or bursts
thing like geometry can be said to be “true” in the eternal sense, but also
any semantic or hermeneutic horizon,” and that this should “unsettle our
to have a historical origin even if the truth of geometry can be said
to pre¬ very understanding of what a library, an archive, archival research, or in¬
exist it. But when this logic is cast back on more conventional subjects of
,, history, it is also one that draws attention to the internal tellectual history might be.”16 Bennington provides the evocative example
contradiction at of an escaped tiger that needs to be put back in its cage before “mayhem
work in ontological realism, where the instability of history as the realm
of change is replaced by a sense of fixity as historical truth: the ensues” as akin to the historians “stern or panic-stricken injunction to
past event ‘put it back in its context’ without having the means to ask the question
as it “realfyJiappened. ” The danger of such a position is
that it ascribes of how it got out” or what it was doing in a cage in the first place?17 It
ideal ontological properties to the past that are silently assigned from the
is the moment prior to the “putting in context” or “putting in the cage”
position of the present and then determined to be the criteria by which
to adjudicate the fidelity of the historical account that interests Derrida; therefore, rather than beginning with an orginary
to the past event. This moment constructed in the present and based on the material assumption
is why Derrida says that the critical work presupposes
the very thing it is of a past “as it really happened,” he looks to a logic ofyrhe^ ghostly
trying to protect.
Thus, Derrida advocates for a radical critique of history that takes But this interest and engagement in what one might call arche-hrstory is
issue a concern with a moment prior to what Derrida refers to as the science
with the suppositions of philosophers of history and historians alike and
questions the very possibility of objective history and a stable of history.18
past. Pe¬ As I have noted, this concern led Derrida to a sustained engagement
ter Fenves argues that “nothing is perhaps more
daring in Derrida’s early with the history of philosophy and thinkers such as Hegel, Husserl, Hei¬
writings than this reluctance to affirm that history is possible and that the
— —
philosophy of history true to the tradition of transcendental argumen¬
tation inaugurated by Kant need only ask about the
conditions of its
possibility.”14 For Derrida this limited question is insufficient because it
degger, Foucault, and Levinas but rarely to one with practicing historians
or specifically on the topic of history in that sense. For the most part
historians serve the purpose of foil as in Aporias, where Phillipe Aries,
author of Western Attitudes Towards Death, is put forward to demon-
 8 Introduction Introduction 9

strate the axiomatic nature of the historical endeavor.19 Derrida is con¬ Derrida sees Yerushalmi’s rhetorical move, the apostrophe to Freud, as
cerned with the ways that Aries, as a historian working on the topic of a “gesture incompatible in principle with the norms of classical scientific
death, “knows, thinks he knows, or grants to himself the unquestioned scholarship, in particular with those of history or of philology which had
knowledge of what death is, of what being-dead means; consequently, presided over the same book up to this point.”26 Derrida later elaborates:
he grants to himself all the criteriology that will allow him to identify,
recognize, or delimit the objects of his inquiry or the thematic field of
his anthropological-historical knowledge. The question of the meaning
—
of death and the word ‘death’ . . . and of knowing if death ‘is’ and what — —
Up to this point, in any case up to the fictive monologue, Yerushalmi had
measured his discourse for the bulk of what, in theory, was shown and dem¬
onstrated on the classical norms of knowledge, of scholarship, and of epis¬
—
death ‘is’ all remain radically absent as questions.”1^ We can see the criti¬
cal engagement with what Derrida sees as the limitations of conventional
temology which dominate in every scientific community; here, the objectivity
of the historian, of the archivist, of the sociologist, of the philologist, the
reference to stable themes and concepts, the relative exteriority in relation to
history but also how the questions he asks, and seeks to answer, lead him
the object, particularly in relation to an archive determined as already given,
away from an engagement with history in that sense.
in the past or in any case only incomplete, determinable and thus terminable
One notable exception is Derrida’s Archive Fever.21 This book takes Sig¬ in a future itself determinable as future present, domination of the constative
mund Freud, the legacies of Judaism and psychoanalysis, and the status of over the performative, etc.27
the archive as its central focus, but what interests me here is the way this
book is also a sustained engagement with the historian Yosef Yerushalmi There are several issues to be taken up here and that I will address over the
and his own book, Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable.22 course of this book. First, the place where conventional or scientific his¬
It is worth noting that Derridas most substantive interaction with disci¬
plinary historians revolves around those historians’ explicit references to —
tory breaks-down is the place of the ghost of haunting and of hauntol-
ogy. Second, the openness and incompleteness of the archive leaves open
the dead, as we saw with Phillipe Aries. In the case of Yerushalmi, what to the future the determination of the past as “history.” Every archive is
draws Derrida’s attention is the historian’s encounter with the ghost of necessarily incomplete, and any addition to it in the future changes the
Freud, for this is the place in Yerushalmi’s work where the norms, proce¬
past. Third, and in response to the second, conventional historians tend
dures, and boundaries of traditional historical practices break down. In to operate as if the archive wwjlready complete or in the realm of a
this portion of the book, Yerushalmi the historian breaks with scholarly future completeness to come that sanctions the archive’s authority even as
convention to engage in an exchange with Freud by means of a letter ad¬ they acknowledge its incompleteness in the present. “Yes, we know there
dressed to the dead father of psychoanalysis, “in truth Freuds ghost.”23 is more to come that may change our understanding of the past; never¬
Derrida notes that these thirty-odd pages” are to be classed as fiction, theless, we operate as if it is complete and thus can scientifically verify
which would already be a break with the language that has dominated what we know of the past in the present.”
up to this point in the book, that is, the discourse of scholarship, the Past events are brought “back” to the present through the work of the
discourse of a historian, of a philologist, of an expert on the history of historian, but other aspects of the past haunt us, our archives, and the
Judaism, of a biblical scholar, as they say, claiming to speak in all objectiv¬ very history to which we cling. These are the ghosts of things forgotten,
ity. But the fictional quality of this intervention has another originality: buried, or erased from the record being rigorously researched by tradi¬
the apostrophe is addressed to a dead person, to the historian's object tional historians and that so often support dominant ideologies. But, to
become spectral subject, the virtual addressee or interlocutor of a sort of modify a question Derrida asks, how does one prove in general .anjtbsence,
open letter. -5 It is this blurring of the lines between “fact” and “fiction,” pf archive, if not relying on classical norms (presence/absence of literal
between the living and the dead, between past and present, between pres¬ and explicit reference to this or to that, to a this or a that which one sup¬
ence and absence that interests Derrida and that I will take up in the
poses to be identical to themselves, and simply absent, actually absent, if
chapters that follow. they are not simply present, actually present, how can one not, and why
 Introduction Introduction 11

not, take into account the radically absent archives of a past unaccounted and disciplines at work here. In his book Yerushalmi reveals the limits
for but nevertheless there)?28 How can we account for the missing por¬ of conventional history and the ontological realist understanding of the
tions of the past without simply assuming them to be the missing part of past. These are limits before which “ordinary historians” have always been
a larger whole whose properties and scope we have already determined? intimidated but that a deconstructive approach to the past can cross and
' On my account, the haunting or the ghost allows for the presence of this transgress to locate fractures, disturb remains, and promote alternative
absence without predetermining the “what” of what the ghost or haunt¬ arrangements.
ing is, without supposing it to be something known and determinable In Chapter 1, “Haunting History,” I provide an intellectual history of
but simply absent. This is what I will refer to as the past that is (present the reception of deconstruction in the American historical profession by
and absent). I develop this concept in Chapter 5, but here I want to note means of a ghost story. I see deconstruction as akin to the ghost because
that I place a bar across the “is,” both striking it out and indicating an while it has been repeatedly targeted in attacks against the dangers of
obstruction that restricts access. postmodernism, poststructuralism, or the “linguistic turn,” very few his¬
In Yerushalmi’s work the insertion of the ghost of Freud comes after torians actively use deconstruction as a historical methodology; in this
the historical work has been done and the record has been shown. The regard the target has always been a phantom. But it is also akin to the
case is closed and Yerushalmi has provided all the historical evidence to ghost because of the ways that deconstruction itself haunts disciplinary
reach some conclusion regarding Freud and his relationship to his Jew¬ history, exposing the axiomatic assumptions of conventional historians
ish identity. Even so, Yerushalmi conjures the ghost to seek answers to and revealing the complex nature of our relationship with the past. In
the questions that continue to haunt him and disturb the historical ac¬ Chapter 2, “Presence in Absentia," I deploy the Ghost of Christmas Pres¬
count previously presented. The excess or surplus of the past that had ent from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol to explore the recent trend
been restricted or excised from the historical account returns in Yerush¬ in philosophy of history known as “presence.” Here I work through texts
almi’s book in ways that suspend “all the axiomatic assurances, norms, by Eelco Runia, Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, and Frank Ankersmit to show
and rules which had served him until now in organizing the scientific the limitations of this model and its affinities to conventional ontological
work, notably historiographic criticism, and in particular its relationship realist history. In Chapter 3, “Chladenius, Droysen, and Dilthey: Back
to the known and unknown archive.”29 All archives are haunted this way to Where We’ve Never Been,” I look to the German historicist tradition
because their structure is spectral, “spectral a priori, neither present nor and the figures of Johann Martin Chladenius (1710-59), Johann Gustav
absent ‘in the flesh,’ neither visible nor invisible, a trace always referring Droysen (1808-84), and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) to determine its re¬
to another whose eyes can never be met, no more than those of Hamlets lation to “ontological realism” and to expose the limitations of that model
father, thanks to the possibility of a visor.”30 The visor can be read as the in our current intellectual milieu. But I also suggest that a closer look at
bar that blocks and restricts access to the past event: to the past that is. these three thinkers sheds light on the utility of deconstruction for the
Try as the historian might, even the ontological realist acknowledges that project of history as well as the possibility of a hauntological historical ap¬
one cannot lock eyes with the past. proach to the past that is guided by, though not beholden to, Derrida. In
Thus when confronted with this haunting, Yerushalmi the historian Chapter 4, “The Analog Ceiling,” I build on the previous three chapters
dares to cross a limit before which ordinary historians’ have always been to argue that the dominance of ontological realism in the historical pro¬
intimidated.”31 Yerushalmi is uncomfortable with this transgression that fession is no longer justifiable based on our current understanding of the
at first glance appears to come at the joint between truth and fiction,
past but is supported by our current scholarly publishing practices, what
but as Derrida tells us, “The last chapter, the most Active, is certainly I refer to as the “analog ceiling.” The ceiling metaphor functions because
not the least true. 532 1 will explore the relations between “truth” and “fic¬ it allows one to argue that even though the past may not really correlate
tion, between evidence” and “imagination” throughout this book, but to the narrative reconstructions of ontological realism, this form is nev¬
for the moment I want to focus on the transgression of borders, limits, ertheless the best analogy to make the past intelligible, understandable,
 12 Introduction

and comprehensible. To counter this model, I look to current innovations

in digital scholarship and the ways that a deconstructive approach to the
§i Haunting History
past enables us to innovate and reimagine how history can be done. In
this regard my book is a gamble that academic research and publishing
as we know it are changing and will continue to change in ways that will
alter how we think about the past, how we write about the past, and as a
result the discipline of history. In my final chapter, “The Past That is,” I
conclude by offering my deconstructive approach to the past as a theory
of and practice for history. Using Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy
Holloiv, I explicate how a hauntological approach to history that embraces
the past that is (present and absent) rather than a fixed and static snapshot
of a moment in time is able to account for the enigma of a past that is
rboth here and gone. The past, like the ghost, does not properly belong to
the present, but neither does it remain entirely in the past; it begins by We begin with a ghost story or rather a Geist story. It is both a Geist-
(coming back.
geschichte (intellectual history) and a Geistergeschichte (ghost story) of the
In his discussion ofYerushalmi and the ghost of Freud, Derrida is care- specter of deconstruction that has been haunting historians since it first
ful to articulate that “Freud did everything possible not to neglect the
began appearing and disappearing in the late 1960s. Like most ghost sto¬
experience of haunting, speciality, phantoms, ghosts. He tried to account ries, this one involves a phenomenon that is hard to explain and has en¬
for them. Courageously, in as scientific, critical, and positive a fashion gendered varying responses. A small cadre of historians have welcomed
as possible. But by doing that, he also tried to conjure them.”33 I would this spirit as a benevolent guide to reveal aspects of the past and the future
argue that this is also an apt description of the historian’s attempt to ac¬ hitherto undetected. A larger and more vocal group takes this spirit to
count for the past in as scientific, critical, and positive fashion as pos¬
be a malevolent Poltergeist hell-bent on causing mischief and ultimately
sible. But just as Freud and Yerushalmi ended up conjuring ghosts they destroying the historical profession. Yet others see deconstruction as a
ultimately could not control, so, too, does the historian. What is more, I conjuring trick performed with smoke and mirrors by disingenuous char¬
would suggest that this scientific conjuring is an attempt to restrict and
latans. But the vast majority of historians view deconstruction as they
limit the unruly past, and in this sense it is another attempt to put the
do most ghost stories, with bemused skepticism and guilty fascination.
“tiger back in the cage.” In this book I want to let the ghosts out.
Most have read or heard about it secondhand in the works of the histo¬
rians aforementioned or perhaps in works by other historians who have
cited them, and as with most ghost stories, this has led to exaggerations,
inaccuracies, conflations, recastings, and revisions. The ghost is at times
a monster or a demon. Furthermore, deconstruction is but one spirit
among many that have haunted the historical profession since the early
1980s under the general terms of postmodernism, poststructuralism, or the
linguistic turn. “Archaeology,” “genealogy,” “emplotment,” and “decon¬
struction” are often lumped together, as are figures as diverse as Jacques
Derrida, Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Clifford Geertz, Rich¬
ard Rorty, and Hayden White.

13
 Notes

i :i

Introduction
1. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About His¬
tory (New York: Norton, 1994), 208, 237.
2. Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social
Theorists Are Murdering Our Past (New York: Free Press, 1996); Richard J. Evans’s
In Defense of History (New York: Norton, 1997); Georg Iggers, Historiography in
the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1997); Jerrold Seigel, “Problema-
tizing the Self,” in Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Soci¬
ety and Culture, ed. Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999), 281-314.
3. Joshua Kates, Essential History: Jacques Derrida and the Development of De¬
construction (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005), xv.
4. Jane Caplan, “Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and Deconstruction:
Notes for Historians,” Central European History 22, no. 3/4 (1989): 260—78, 270.
5. Geoffrey Bennington, “Derridas Archive,” Theory, Culture dr Society 31, no.
7/8 (2014): in-19; Edward Baring, “Ne me raconte plus d’histoires: Derrida and
the Problem of the History of Philosophy,” History and Theory 53 (May 2014):
175-93; Peter Fenves, “Derrida and History: Some Questions Derrida Pursues in
His Early Writings,” in Jacques Derrida and the Humanities: A Critical Reader,
ed. Tom Cohen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 271-95; Dana
Hollander, Exemplarity and Chosenness: Rosenzweig and Derrida on the Nation of
Philosophy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008); Michael Naas, “Violence
and Historicity: Derrida’s Early Readings of Heidegger,” Research in Phenomenal-,
0^45, no. 2 (2015): 191-213. is
6. Jacques Derrida, introduction to Eorigine de la geomitrie, by Edmund
U2 Notes Notes U3

Husserl, trans. Jacques Derrida (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1962); reference to this or to that, to a this or a that which one supposes to be identical
“Violence et m^taphysique: Essai sur la pensile d’Emmanuel Levinas,” Revue to themselves, and simply absent, actually absent, if they are not simply present,
de mitaphysique et de morale, nos. 3-4 (1964): 425-73; “De la grammatologie,” actually present, how can one not, and why not, take into account unconscious,
Critique 21, no. 223 (1965): 1016-42; “De la grammatologie (II),” Critique 22, and more generally virtual archives)?”
no. 224 (1966): 23-53; "Cogito et histoire de la folie,” in Lecriture et la difference 29. Derrida, Archive Fever, 52.
(Paris: Seuil, 1967): 51-97. 30. Ibid., 84.
7. Jacques Derrida, “Histoire et vdrit6,” Irvine Special Collections and Ar¬ 31. Ibid., 60.
chives, Jacques Derrida papers (MS-C001) (hereafter JDP); Jacques Derrida, 32. Ibid., 59.
Heidegger: The Question of Being and History, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chi¬ 33. Ibid., 85.
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).
8. Derrida, “Histoire et v6rit6,” JDP, Box 8, Folder 10, sheets 3-4. For a full Chapter 1
analysis of these lectures see Baring, “Ne me raconte plus d’histoires.” I want to An earlier version of this chapter was published in History and Theory 46, no. 4
thank Ed Baring for sharing with me his transcription of the lecture notes. (2007): 113-43.
9. Derrida, Heidegger, 80. 1. Michael Roth, “Ebb Tide,” review of Sublime Historical Experience, by
10. Ibid., 94.
Frank Ankersmit, History and Theory 46, no. 1 (2007): 66-73; Nancy Partner,
11. Ibid.
“Narrative Persistence,” in Re-figuring Hayden White, ed. Frank Ankersmit, Ewa
12. Ibid., 95.
Domahska, and Hans Kellner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 81—
13. Derrida, “Histoire et verity,” JDP, Box 8, Folder 9, sheet 22.
Fenves, “Derrida and History,” 296. 104.
14. 2. Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore:
15. Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass, 2nd ed. (New York: Contin¬
uum, 2002), 57; originally published as Positions (Paris: Minuit, 1972). Page cita¬ Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 281. White’s admonition was first pub¬
lished as “The Absurdist Moment in Contemporary Literary Theory," Contem¬
tions refer to the English translation.
porary Literature 7, no. 3 (1976): 378-403.
16. Bennington, “Derridas Archive,” 111-12.
3. White, Tropics of Discourse, 282.
17. Ibid., 112.
18. See Baring, “Ne me raconte plus d’histoires,” 191. 4. Ibid., 52.
5. Ibid.
19. Jacques Derrida, Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford Uni¬ 6. Ibid.
versity Press, 1993); Philippe Ariis, Western Attitudes Towards Death: From the
Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). 7. Lloyd S. Kramer asks this same question in relation to White and LaCapra
in his “Literature, Criticism, and Historical Imagination: The Literary Challenge
20. Derrida, Aporias, 25.
of Hayden White and Dominick LaCapra,” in The New Cultural History, ed.
21. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenow-
Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 97—130, ill.
itz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); originally published as Mal
8. Dominick LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Lan¬
d’archive (Paris: Galilee, 1995). Page citations refer to the English translation.
guage (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 78. LaCapra’s essay was first
22. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses: Judaism Terminable and Intermi¬
nable (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991).
published as “A Poetics of Historiography: Hayden White’s Tropics of Discourse,”
Modern Language Notes 93, no. 5 (1978): 1037-43 . LaCapra goes so far as to say
23. Derrida, Archive Fever, 38. that “the things Derrida discusses are inside White,” and his assessment turned
24. Ibid., 39. out be prescient as White would come to suffer this same criticism over the issue
25. Ibid., 39-40. of emplotment most notably on multiple tellings of the Holocaust at the now
26. Ibid., 41.
famous conference organized by Saul Friedlander published as Probing the Limits
27. Ibid., 51.
28. Ibid., 64. The original reads: “how does one prove in general an absence of
of Representation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). See also, the
archive, if not relying on classical norms (presence/absence of literal and explicit more recent volume that revisits the issues at play in the conference: Claudio ;