From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers <[e-mail]>
List Editor: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers <[e-mail]>
Editor's Subject: Postmodernism: Schmitz
Author's Subject: Postmodernism: Schmitz
Date Written: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 08:34:05 -0500
Date Posted: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 08:34:05 -0500

Submitted by: Thomas Schmitz <[e-mail]>

According to recent contributions to the debate, I think I have problems.
Sorry for waiting so long to respond; however, it took me some time to
get Hayden White on the phone (currently teaching not in Santa Cruz but
in Berkeley), to rummage about in the labyrinth of the Bavarian State
Library in search for recent literature on the one hand, and old,
dust-covered - and as one librarian said: by now worthless - outdated
editions of German encyclopedias on the other.

To start with, I disagree with all those who think it to be a clear "fact"
that Hayden White and Pierre Bourdieu are postmodernists: personally
agreeing with Jeremy Telman, and also with Dominick LaCapra, I would not
say so that Hayden White is a postmodernist, albeit I have learnt a lot
from reading his books. According to Peter Novick's prize-winning history
of American historiography, "That Noble Dream" (p. 604), Hayden White is
primarily a logocentrist and a structuralist and so quite the opposite of
being a multiculturalist and a post-structuralist, i.e. of being a
postmodernist. In his "Tropics of Discourse", White distances himself from
Foucault in a whole essay, and the last chapter is devoted to criticize
Derrida and other "absurdist literature critics" (re-transl. from German).

Still, I wanted to get it "straight", and so I phoned Hayden White, an
"authority" on Hayden White, and his answer was: "No, I wouldn't say so
[...]. I'm merely modernist, but I'm open to it [pomo]". Also Bourdieu has
been labelled a "postmodernist" several times; I like his arguments very
much and even apply them from time to time, but again, "personally", I
would rather not call him in this way, because in his recent book "The
Field of Cultural Production" (1993), pp. 254-255 and references, he takes
up arms against "the philosophy labelled post-modern" as well as against
Foucault, Derrida, and Heidegger - another structuralist. There are more
of them, e.g. Max Weber, Carl Becker, and Theodor Lessing ("Geschichte als
Sinngebung des Sinnlosen"), whose arguments were neatly employed in Peter
Fritzsche's postmodern contributions, and especially so in the
introduction and first part of his first e-mail, as if he had taken a leaf
out of their writings. To reflect upon one's own position and to trace how
historians have ordered and interpreted historical facts (!), is as such
not a postmodern undertaking, and I would rather credit other people with
this, should one still believe in authorial intent.

Accordingly, it should have been no surprise that David Schoenbaum,
William Schrader, and Jonathan Sperber suddenly showed some sympathy with
"postmodernism" - but distanced themselves again from Peter Fritzsche's
points (2) to (4), where, so I would say, he did employ some "moderate"
postmodern ideas.

But then, who am I (Thomas Schmitz) to have the final authority to decide
on what is being regarded as "postmodernism" - and what not? Since post-
modernism is, as was so well said by Susan and Heikki, rather an eclecti-
cist approach that leaves the historian free to decide for her-/himself,

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which various methodologies he might use for her-/himself when confronted
with certain kinds of source material, Fritzsche after all can be a post-
modern historian, since he (just as myself) makes use of both modern and
postmodern approaches. Being a postmodernist (?), I do not think that
anybody, not even Hayden White himself, has the final authority to define
his position as "not postmodern", because all meanings are in a state of
flux, and White might still be lumped together with the postmoderns, as
was actually done so in the Postmodern-Reader ed. by Conrad/Kessel, (which
was mentioned by myself in a former e-mail, and people might have read
it). And this might not be so wrong, since White has broken much new
ground, on which the epistemological insights of the postmoderns have
built on, or have transferred it onto another plane - and it also may be
strange musing for postmodernists to set an exact limit.

After all, I would even reserve the right for others to maintain that I am
not at all such a bad postmodernist, but rather someone with exaggerated
claims for the sake of being provocative - albeit, with the same right (or
rather "right"), I would disagree (explanation follows further down). For
my part, I would, for instance, also claim that it is not a "fact" that
the late Thomas Nipperdey (an outspoken historicist), had been an
historicist after all, and do have my good (subjective) reasons for that.
And did not Karl Marx say he was not a Marxist? (Sorry for putting myself
into this illustrious circle). What good luck for some that I do not
believe neither in straight facts, nor in authoritative statements!

Still, there is a paradox with the grain of Peter Fritzsche's marble
facts which might help me to explain to you my so-called "exaggerated"
position: let us take, for example, a fact (or, as I would say, a "fact")
- I am not yet saying which one. This particular fact is very popular and
cherished by responsible scholars; numerous reputed journals write on it,
respected (professional!) professors (of history) have sent out (with
the help of renowned publishing houses) a long list of monographs on that
fact, and it is also positively mentioned in the major national
encyclopedias. My contestants might now well call it a fact. Now,
the fact/"fact" I have in mind is the German mark, das Deutsche Wesen
(not the Bundesbank's D-Mark, of course!):

"Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen!" was a popular claim in 19th
and early 20th-century Germany. I went to the library and got a computer
print-out of all books on that fact, in so far as the (rather
incompletely computerized) Bavarian libraries have them. It is also
mentioned in the German encyclopedias of those days; even the 7th
edition of "Meyers Lexikon", vol. 3, published in 1925 under the
auspices of the relatively liberal and democratic mid-term Weimar system,
mentions it on page 680: "das Wesen des Deutschtums" ... "Unter der
geistigen Fuehrung Jakob Grimms begann man das Wesen des deutschen
Volkstums in seinen konkreten [!, T.S.] Erscheinungen zu erforschen."
Just as an example. Now, I think, the Germans really took that to be an
objective, absolute fact, if ever a fact there was. If we "H-Germans", so
to say, had lived in Germany in those days, we also - I don't think the
"raw material" of H-Germans is much different from that of Imperial
Germans - would have been exposed to that kind of long-standing
sociobiological-racial discourse, and would consequently also
have believed in the objective absoluteness or grain of the fact, that
there is a German Wesen. (Apart from a few exaggerating extravagant
internationalists: outside professional boundaries in Imperial Germany).

Well, times have changed, and nobody, not even present historians of the

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far right, seem to use this phrase any more; the computer-bibliography
somehow comes to an abrupt stop in 1944/45 as publication dates, and
also the latest journals-bibliographies do not say a word about the
German Wesen. Historians and other responsible people have come to find
out that the fact of the Deutsches Wesen is not a fact after all. I
don't have a problem with all this, since I do not believe in facts, but
rather in subjectively-bound "facts". As for me, the former "fact" was
"deconstructed", completely negated, and put into another folder called
"non-fact, historical" or "German ideology". So far, so good. But then
comes Peter Fritzsche and says: "Facts are the grain of material";
"we can't work against the facts", as little as one can resist the
property of wood, or marble"; "marble doesn't bend; wood doesn't chip".
According to Peter Fritzsche, I would be allowed to teach my students
merely to work the Deutsches Wesen "in many various ways" (!), and to
deny them to do what most postmodernists (and especially so those of the
"radical" sort) like to do: to (fully) DECONSTRUCT the whole damned
thing.

Sure, you can say that there was no fact after all, that from the
beginning all those 19th and early 20th-century scholars, publishers,
encyclopedias, and the German people in general had been wrong to assume
that their much-cherished "Deutsches Wesen" is an objectively given, i.e.
culturally and socially independent ("running around") fact - well, then
you agree with me, because I say so also, and not only about 19th-century
German, 18th-century English, and 21st-century Chinese facts, but also
about our own late 20th-century facts (or rather "facts"). Then you might
add, however, that at least the very event that the Imperial Germans etc.
believed quite wrongly in the German Wesen is a historical fact; so said
Carl L. Becker, whom I have stolen the argument from. But then you still
have done what I tend to do with "facts" I don't like, be it witches, be
it racial characteristics: negate them and remove them from my "fact"
-folder to another one labelled "non-facts, wrong, completely; once
believed to be real "facts" in another cultural society". And nobody can
really guarantee to you and me that this 'wrong "fact"' or "historical
fact" (here I differ from Becker) might not again be taken out of its
current folder and be put into yet another one, or even back into the
former one again, and consequently become a real "fact" again, so that
future generations might say: "No, it is not a 'historical fact', that the
Imperial Germans once believed in the (wrong) "fact" that there was a
German Wesen - there really is one, and so it was not a 'historical fact',
but rather is a real fact after all" (end of quote). And then our
(historical) fact, that the Imperial Germans believed in a myth, will it-
self have been deconstructed as a wrong historical fact (or "fact")- (God
beware! - But are you there?). I assure you that I shall always keep the
"German Wesen" in the 'wrong "facts" and myths'-folder, but I am not the
master of the eternal central records office of national "fact"-folders,
the more so, since, said Keynes, I (we) will be dead in the long run.

And you also might say that there still IS a "German Wesen" hanging around
(e.g. arrogance, albeit J.W. Fulbright said the same about US foreign
policy), that a racial, sociobiological concept has simply been converted
into what present-day scholars call "national identity" or history of
mentality. But then you will have a serious argument with Harold James and
all disciples of Max Weber, who (the latter) laid the foundation for
mentality studies, as well as (if I have interpreted your own position as
of point (1) not too freely) with yourself, Peter. Anyway, neither
identities, nor group mentalities are for exports, such as the "German
Wesen" obviously was designed to be.

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Last weekend I was sitting in the beautiful English Gardens in Munich;
fall had come already, and the air was rather misty; however, I could
very well discern the sun rising to its zenith and then start with
its decline. (I am getting lyrical now!). Then my (subjective) memory
recalled the "old times", i.e. when I was still a young boy: in those
days, the very fact that the sun rises in the morning and sinks down
again in the evening had been the most fundamental and down-to-earth
fact (!) I was aware of. At primary school I was taught that it was all
completely wrong with my fundamental "fact", that, in fact, and of
course and quite naturally, the fact is that it is the earth that
circulates around the sun and also very factually - what I had
missed realizing completely - tends to rotate around itself. Well, I
buried my former (?) foolishness in the form of a dead fact as a
historical "fact", and even started to pick up the habitual glance of the
initiate, who looks down on the wrong "facts" of younger kids and tribal
cultures, and even smiles about his former "historical facts", because
he knows the right facts. At high school, however, I learnt that I had
not been so wrong after all with my historical "facts", that indeed
also the sun circulates around the common centre of gravity, albeit far
less so than the earth does. Well, getting a little bit weary of that
fact-business, I dug up my first "fundamental fact" a bit, and
compromised it with the second fundamental "fact", as I now began
to label facts with quotation marks. At the university, I ran into one of
those astrophysics guys, who told me that of course and after all, since
no scientist has yet discovered - nor is ever likely to discern - the
pivotal objective spot in space, from where all stellar movements
(including those of planets, countries, populations, and also those of
historians) can be judged accordingly, one could anyway not really say
anything factually about cosmic movements. That made me bury all re-
maining facts I had, and to retain only "facts" at hand.

Colleagues, allow me, please, to have my doubts about facts, and also
allow other cultures - past, present, and future - to have their say
in questioning our facts, such as we (not exactly, I think, being the
centre of the universe) might do with their "facts".

Thomas Schmitz

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