Total history vs general history

From Geography

Revision as of 14:00, 1 October 2012

Foucault defines total history as follows:

     ‘The project of total history is one that seeks to reconstitute the overall form of a civilization, 
      the principle –material or spiritual- of society, the significance common to all the phenomena of a period, 
      the law that accounts for their cohesion – what is called metaphorically the ‘face’ of a period.’
 									 (Foucault in Philo 2000, p. 210)

In other words, total history generalizes phenomena of a period. It constitutes a certain cohesion, relation, between events that is representative for a specific period in time. As Olivier Kramsch outlined in his lecture, total history has a continuity focus, in which events follow upon each other and history is represented as a series of important events. Basically history is represented in a linear way, as a straight line. Events and developments follow each naturally as if it was a plan. In this view of history there is no room for chaos or surprise, since events and developments follow one another in a natural, logical manner.(Kramsch, lecture 17.09.2010). Foucault fights the concept of total history as instead of looking at the ‘big men’ and ‘big events’, he looks at moments in history where meaning was contested and possibly changed. He traces back the emergence of historical events as he feels that there is a need to understand why, where and under which circumstances historical events emerged. This approach to history is termed ‘general history’. This view is uneasy with temporal and spatial notions of continuity and does not focus on a single world-view ith a single core. Instead, it illuminates history by mapping it in terms of great events, disasters and breaks that had a profound influence on society and led to other events following in the future. These events can be large, such as the 1953 flood of Zeeland which led to the construction of the Delta Works. They can also be small and lead to a change of meaning in society combined with other small events. In this sense, general history can be related to the concept of Genealogy in the sense that the historian must trace back roots of development as is the case in genealogy. The principle of general history is outlined as:

       ‘a geographical way of looking at the world in which one sees only ‘spaces of dispersion’, 
	spaces where things proliferate in a jumbled-up manner on the same ‘level’ as one another’ 
										(Philo 2000, p.207).

Foucault argues that we should put events in a plane landscape, with no order, only the distance between them having a meaning. Events being nearby or further away, being on the right or left of one another. Foucault rejects hierarchical relations. In line with general history of Foucault is what Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982) term ‘local, changing rules’ (in Philo 2000, p. 219). Foucault argues that total history overlooks details and differences at particular places and times. (Philo 2000, p.210). Foucault’s critique to total history can thus be said to emerge from a post-modern belief that nothing is fundamental (Philo 2000, p.211).

References:

Philo, C. (2000). Foucault’s geography. In: Crang, M. & Thrift, N. (eds.) Thinking space. Routledge, London, pp.205-238.

Published by Anouk Soomers and Sabrina Willems

Edited by Bert Hegger on October 1st 2012