Comprehensive Exam for Scott Timcke (August 23, 2010)

Western Historiography and the 'Linguistic Turn'
Instructions:

Select TWO questions from the list of questions below and write essays for each question that are a minimum of 6 pages long and a maximum of 10 pages. The total length of the exam should be somewhere between 12-20 pages.

1. "At the heart of the postmodern critique of contemporary historiography is the suggestion that history can never aspire to be anything more than literature."
 (Drunken comment made by an historian friend of mine--who shall remain nameless-- at a conference 15 or so years ago).

Write an essay that discusses this statement, either accepting it, rejecting it, or developing some sort of negotiated middle ground. 

2. The phrase "linguistic turn" is often used to talk about the influence of philosophies and theories of language of various types on postwar historiography. However, in many ways the phrase is so general that it disguises more than it illuminates. For example, there is a significant difference between the Annales School's attempt in the early 1970s to integrate insights from linguistic structuralism into historical analysis and a post-structuralist historiography that draws heavily from Derridean deconstruction. Similarly, there are complicated lineages to the "linguistic turn" that variously range from late nineteenth and early twentieth century hermeneutics and phenomenology to postwar philosophies of language. 

Write an essay that discusses 2 different lineages of the "linguistic turn" in contemporary historical writing, comparing and contrasting them where necessary and using examples from your reading list.

3. It is sometimes said the greatest weakness of constructivism is the inability to provide an analysis of the origins of its own narrative. Write an essay that develops this critique, drawing on works listed in your bibliography. How would a committed constructivist respond?

4. Write an essay that summarizes Bruno Latour's "break" from his early social constructivism as noted in his 2004 essay in Critical Inquiry. In your essay use Latour's work to develop a broader critique of the limitations of postmodern approaches to theory and history that draws on other works listed in your bibliography. 
What were the factors that led Latour to modify his position? How is his 2004 position different from arguments in his previous work? What do you see as the strengths of his current position? What are the weaknesses? 

5.  Postmodern critics of the discipline of history typically integrate several different types of criticism, including, for example, a critique of logocentrism; a critique of empiricism; and a critique of the ideas of periodization and totality. 

Write an essay on the postmodern critique of modern historiography that discusses two of these lines of critique. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of each.

6. Marx was impressed with Hegel's critique of Kant, but felt that Hegel needed to be 'put back on his feet.'  He was also drawn to the skepticism of Locke's critique of metaphysics, but in his analysis of Destutt de Tracy he rejected a materialism that reduced everything to sensation. Marx believed that Hegel's historicism needed to be grounded in the reality of sensation and materially-lived experience, but lived experience needed to be grasped as a dynamic social and historical process.  Historical materialism is therefore necessarily different from a vulgar sensation-based materialist empiricism  because, for Marx, experience is always mediated by shifting cultural frameworks of interpretation. Yet, Marx insists that the method of historical materialism will allow us to grasp the real.

Drawing on the work cited in your bibliography, write an essay that outlines the constructivist critique of historical materialism including a discussion of the strengths and the weaknesses of this critique.  How have contemporary Marxists responded to this challenge?