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Is history still possible in light of postmodernity?

Rose De Lara

“I'm no prophet. My job is making windows where there were once walls.” -Michel Foucault

In order to explore the effect of postmodernity on historiography, in light of this comment

from Foucault, we could perhaps see the idea of ‘history’, in the traditional or modern sense

as having become a wall. The window that he makes for us, in this context, is through the

practice of Foucauldian concept of ‘genealogy’ revealing, in his terms, what could be

described as a more heterotopic rather than utopic landscape, one of the multiplicitous past;

revealing a view to what may have happened historically, beyond simply what has been

presented to us.

Exploring the answer to this question is, of course, contingent upon what we take the terms

‘history’ and ‘postmodernity’ to mean. In this context I am going to be engaging with

postmodernity in light of what has been called the ‘linguistic turn’ in historiography; namely

deconstructionism and the work of Foucault. Fundamentally this opposes a Hegelian practice

of ‘philosophic history’. Noting just some of its important aspects to involve that of being

wary of absolutes, and what we take to be ‘truth’; as well as being critical of institutions,

structures and subsequent systems of power; and questioning what may appear to be ‘fixed’

meanings and ideas of ‘normality’. We are invited to recognise, and be aware of, and to

consequently consider the deconstruction of what we find to be ‘legible’ and

‘understandable’; of what seem to have become overarching truths, and metanarratives; how

we learn, how knowledge is ‘constructed’, and therefore how our concept of history is

created. We might look at this as adopting a ‘meta-perspective’.

The way in which history and the past is presented to us (and has been reified in our cultural

institutions,) is very much in the form of a chronological narrative of events, considered as a

whole and coherent unity. Therefore the way in which we identify historical or past events

has been in relation to part of a general linear and totalising schema of development, based on

the notion of progress. Such a narrative teleology postulates time in relation to progress;

political, economic, intellectual, and technological. This version of ‘history’ posits


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selectiveness, as there are invariably things that are included and simultaneously excluded,

which inevitably is reductive, appropriative and hierarchical. Rejection of such temporality is

significant because such breaks with standard historical narratives offer us new insight into

the factors and “forces that have shaped and defined the culture and politics of the present.”1

It then stands that accordingly “the whole modernist History/history ensemble now appears

as a self-referential, problematical expression of interests, an ideological – interpretative

discourse without any non-historicized access to the past as such.”2

I will look to read this alongside the example of the institution and exhibitionary practice, as

an instance of how we conceptualize the history of culture in relation to time, and how this is

reflected, and has permeated, our cultural activity. Cultural institutions, such as the historical

art museum, generally very much subscribe to and postulate our pre-conceived ideas of

‘history’ and reaffirm them. They can be seen as sites of a cultural deposition of, as Keith

Jenkins has termed it, a ‘Bourgeois version’ of history.3 i.e. an objective study of history for

its own sake and a way of regarding the past that has become ‘almost natural’ and ‘normal’.

So to further inscribe these ideas I would like to align a study of the Foucauldian

deconstruction of the concept of ‘history’ through his version of ‘genealogy’, with its

potential reflection in the activity and practices of the institution. Without wishing to over-

simplify the complexities of the resulting discourse, I will employ two brief museological

examples to illustrate this shift in historical perspective, and to explore whether a notion of

history is therefore still possible in light of postmodernity.

In his 1971 essay Nietszche, Genealogy, History Foucault expands on Friedrich Nietzsche’s

thoughts concerning history, genealogy and origins, and develops them further. He first lays

out what the search for the “origin” or Ursprung postulates, and why this is problematic. He

furtively challenges this pursuit of the origin:

“...because it is an attempt to capture the exact essence of things, their purest possibilities,

and their carefully protected identities; because this search assumes the existence of

immobile forms that precede the external world of accident and succession. This search is

1 Kaposy, Timothy and Imre Szeman, ed. "Introduction to Part 5." In Cultural Theory: An Anthology. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. 2011) 339 2 Jenkins, K. (Ed.). (1997). “Introduction” in The Postmodern History Reader. (London: Routledge) 6 3 Ibid, 5


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directed to “that which was already there,”, the “very same” of an image of a primordial

truth fully adequate to its nature, and necessitates the removal of every mask to ultimately

disclose an original identity.”4

Instead, for Foucault “What is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable

identity of their origin; it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity.”5 Therefore in this

spirit of dissension the past is marked by ruptures as well as by continuity. He rejects the

origin as ‘lofty’ and because of its problematic implication that ‘things’ are most ‘precious’

or essential at the moment of origin. The origin becomes the distanced site of truth, reifying a

field of knowledge that is thus ‘knowable’. It is as if the human body and subjectivity is apart

from and separate from history, and therefore that we are outside, trying to gain access to

something. Thus knowledge and power become interwoven, and “...the power associated

with that knowledge: the power to order objects and persons into a world to be known and to

lay it out before a vision capable of encompassing it as a totality.”6 Such an interpretation of

events confers a transcendental teleology. In turn, history becomes: “interpreted as the

unfolding and affirmation of essential human characteristics”7. This implies the teleological

unfolding towards ‘truth’, rendering ‘history’ as a totality. Consequently this allows

mankind’s imaginary “dominance over all of time”8 and an ambition towards a “specular

dominance over a totality”9 inevitably also inducing hierarchy. This is further problematic as

it then acts as a cultural context that unites meanings. The present state of knowledge and

epistemology orders and unites ‘history’. This linearity of history legitimizes this ideological

control, which was generally agreed to be very problematic in postmodern theory.

An example of such legitimization of ideological control and of the way we receive

knowledge and history from a suprahistorical perspective is found in the ways institutions

present history; because the dominant, over-arching methods of display works and objects

very much upholds this. Foucault warns us of taking knowledge as it is given to you e.g. from

a supra-historical perspective. Instead, the practice of genealogy “demands relentless

4 Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” In The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. (London: Penguin Books, 1991) 78 5 Ibid, 79 6 Bennett, Tony. "The Exhibitionary Complex." In The Birth of the Museum: History, theory, politics, by Tony Bennett, 59-88. (London: Routledge, 1995) 86 7 McNay, Lois. Foucault: A Critical Introduction. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994) 89 8 Bennett, Tony, The Exhibitionary Complex, 65 9 Ibid, 66


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erudition”10. This notion of multiplicity recurs throughout the essay. Genealogy “operates on

a field of entangled and confused parchments, on documents that have been scratched over

and recopied many times.”11 It is the rejection of a singular episteme, which results in a shift

in perspective and therefore the way we see and understand history.

This proposed relentless erudition means that, “History has no immanent teleology but is

based on a constant struggle or warfare between different power blocs which attempt to

impose their own system of domination...”12 History is instead ‘transgressive’. In a historical

event, there is inevitably more than one perspective, but only one of these (the more

powerfully dominant) ultimately emerges in our historical ‘story’. However, rather than

privileging one historical perspective, one version, or one story (which is therefore

dominant), Foucault explores the idea that there are others to be equated with those that we

take to be as fact; and therefore that ‘history’ is not something secure, and static, or

something of certainty; but is hinged on a diversity of contingencies and discontinuities.

Instead of adopting distance, which allows one to perhaps project values, or look for a

version of history that one wants to find - leading to idealizations of the past - we need to

adopt proximity in our approach, and to decentre and destabilise our historical narratives.

What is more, what has become the traditional Cartesian duality of body and mind, and

modernist ocular-centrism is also decentred and destabilised. This therefore subverts the idea

that there is a singular, ideal perspective from which to observe Art. We become inside rather

than outside of history. We can bear this in mind in our exploration of the embodied

encounter of ‘history’ in relation to the institution. Consequently, in light of Foucault’s

deconstruction of history and development of genealogy, our predominant notion of ‘history’

as an idea, discipline, and field, is revealed as a construct. Postmodernity then perhaps comes

not about being more evolved, but a shift in perspective, in how we see and understand.

In its discursive formations and epistemological framework the art museum and/or gallery is

of course a linked site for ‘history’ as a discipline. The art-historical canon is founded around

the version of history that we have critiqued above. We can see how the ‘modern’ art

museum provides a context for the “permanent display of power/knowledge” and can act as a

10 Foucault. Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, 77 11 Ibid, 76 12 McNay, Foucault: A Critical Introduction, 89


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‘handmaiden’ to the “Philosophy of truth and identity”,13 and to the rhetoric of ‘progress’. It

has arguably largely become a space representative of “the outcome and culmination of the

universal story of civilization’s development.”14 - Which not only posits a universal language

of representation, but also means that history and its universal story, as we have seen before,

becomes something to gain access to. This integrated construction of historic totality, creates

the impression of a historically authentic milieu by suggesting an essential and organic

connection between artefacts displayed in rooms classified by period.15 The predominant

ways in which museum collections are displayed are in an ‘orderly’ fashion, in a secure and

sanitized space, classified and organised in a pedagogical manner, which reifies this didactic

configuration of history and knowledge. It is not possible here for me to fully explore the

complex and rich discourse of the relationship between history and institutions. However I

would like to take two examples to refer to, of major recent art exhibitions, in an attempt to

elucidate the different paradigms of ‘history’ that they confer to - one that may be argued as

more limited, and one that’s more expanded.

The 2014-15 exhibition ‘Conflict, Time, Photography’ at the Tate Modern, London, was a

major exploration of the documentation of conflict over the last century. Despite the

powerful and compelling content, and the intensity and potency of the photographs, and

whilst it arguably did expand a discourse surrounding the relations, effects and ramifications

of such conflictual events, it seems the exhibition can be considered still in terms of being

underpinned by a conventional, and therefore limited, ‘modern’ notion of history. As a result

of this, to draw on what has already been stated this temporal version of history inevitably

therefore is selective, inclusive, and exclusive.

Many remarked upon how innovative the curation and concept of the exhibition was: “In an

innovative move, the works are ordered according to how long after the event they were

created from moments, days and weeks to decades later.”16 Is this format innovative? Or is it,

in fact, not very different to the linear programmes and versions of history and the

13 Bouchard, Donald F. "Introduction." In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, by Michel Foucault, 15-25( New York: Cornell University Press, 1977) 23 14 Meijers, D. J. (1996). The Museums and the 'Ahistorical' Exhibition: the latest gimmick by the arbiters of taste, or an important cultural pheonomenon? In R. Greenberg, B. W. Ferguson, & S. Nairne (Eds.), Thinking about Exhibitions (pp. 7-20). London: Routledge, 77 15 Ibid, 76 16 Tate Modern. “Conflict, Time, Photography | Tate” tate.org.uk. November 2014. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/conflict-time-photography (accessed April 29, 2015)


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chronological narratives that are deeply embedded and imbricated in our cultural institutions,

pertaining to that which we have outlined above? [Fig. 1-5] The works are still extracted

from and ordered in reference to our linear and enculturated system of time, which may be

described as symptomatic of modernity. The fact that the exhibition failed to address, at all,

the on-going Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, seems to clearly

emphasise the alarming limitations of this kind of exhibition. History, in this exhibition,

continues to be constructed as somewhat of a wall. Instead we need to recognise what may

be: “beneath the great continuities of thought, beneath the solid, homogenous manifestations

of a single mind or of a collective mentality, beneath the stubborn development of a science

striving to exist and to reach completion a the very outset...”17

In contrast, the 2015 exhibition Rights of Nature, at the Nottingham Contemporary, uses

history as a way of diagnosing the present.18 It is discursively formed around, and highlights,

the variety of complex relations and contestations surrounding the notion of ‘Nature’.

Foucault remarked that the practice of genealogy “demands relentless erudition”. Resonating

with this – this exhibition did not draw on or present a history that was posited as static.

Instead, a genealogical approach was taken to consider the recent past of the ecological crisis

and its various manifestations, in many different forms, from different perspectives, on

different levels and through different accounts. It doesn’t present the crisis in a linear causal

way and it doesn’t present it as a totality. Instead what emerges is that which has arisen from

many complex relations and contingencies. Through this it renders an excellent illustration of

the idea that: “History should be used not to make ourselves comfortable but to disturb the

taken for granted.”19 There are no idealizations or assumptions about the condition of our

present world in this exhibition. Instead, there is a proximity in approach, with (often

marginalised) artists and collectives looking at detailed examples – resulting in dissension

and disparity. Rather than present us with a ‘museumization’ of history, it encouraged the

visitor to develop a critical eye, and many different analytic perspectives. The exhibition

actively encouraged knowledge production, with available texts, books, detailed accounts of

events, images, maps, geographical information and so on, from many different sources. In

17 Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. (London: Routledge, 1989) 4 18 Kendall, Gavin and Gary Wickham. Using Foucault’s Methods. (London: Sage, 1999) 4 19 Ibid


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this way it diversified the emerging knowledge production, and verily acknowledged that this

is just not one simple story.

We are not presented with a single story, seeking to “represent the passage of time as a

logical flow of causally connected events, each of which has a discrete significance and

forms part of an overall pattern or meaning to history...”20 This is shown not to be possible in

the complex relations of this issue and the exhibition instead presents an insight into an

“intersection of material culture and its larger constellations of meaning.”21 Such lateral (as

opposed to linear) thinking is revealed in the layout and configuration of works in this

exhibition. These multiple interpretations and endeavours, help in realising that historical

research is everyone’s responsibility, and embrace critical interrogation for all.

“Where history depicts the continuity of times and the inevitable progress of the will to truth,

where it finds a constant support in metaphysical illusion, genealogy points to the inequality

of forces as the source of values or the work of ressentiment in the production of the

objective world.” 22 In light of Foucault’s deconstruction of the term and epistemology

surrounding history, it is destabilised and decentred. We can see from this brief discussion

that history is of course inevitably possible, but not in a modern, linear, narrative, teleological

sense. We can also see the way in which the destabilisation and decentring of conventional

historical narratives proposes a more discursive history; and less risk of becoming integrated

into ideological control and power formations. Certainly a ‘truly’ ‘comprehensive’ view of

our world, in all its complexities, pluralities and fragmentation, is impossible. Instead we can

look to our cultural institutions and the exhibition of art and culture being philosophically

critical and multiplicitous. There would therefore be no single ‘correct’ perspective from

which to view art. Postmodern theory, such as Foucault’s, warns us of accepting the story of

history as it is, and its implication of a realist notion of representation. Instead we all must

embrace and critically interrogate histories. In conclusion history in terms of multiplicitous

20 McNay, Foucault: A Critical Introduction, 88 21 Schlereth, Thomas J. "Collecting Ideas and Artifacts: Common Problems of History Museums and History Texts." In Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts, edited by Bettina Messias Carbonell, 335-347. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005) 22 Bouchard, Donald. “Introduction” In Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ed. Donald F. Bouchard. Trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977) 22


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genealogical practice of the past is possible. History in terms of a singular, over-arching

narrative, is not.


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[Figure 1] Visitor floor-plan for Conflict, Time, Photography at the Tate Modern, 2014-15


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[Figure 2] Installation shot of the Conflict, Time, Photography at the Tate Modern



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[Figure 6] Installation shot of Rights of Nature, at the Nottingham Contemporary



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[Figure 9] Still from film shown at Rights of Nature, at the Nottingham Contemporary


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Bibliography Bennett, Tony. "The Exhibitionary Complex." In The Birth of the Museum: History, theory, politics, by Tony Bennett, 59-88. London: Routledge, 1995. Bouchard, Donald F. "Introduction." In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, by Michel Foucault, 15-25. New York: Cornell University Press, 1977. Breisach, Ernst. On the Future of History: The Postmodernist challenge and its aftermath . London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. Crimp, Douglas. On the Museum's Ruins. London: The MIT Press, 1993. Danto, Arthur C. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the pale of history. Chichester : Princeton University Press, 1997. Foucault, Michel. Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Edited by Donald F. Bouchard. Translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. New York: Cornell University Press, 1977. Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” In The Foucault Reader. Edited by Paul Rabinow, 76-100. London: Penguin Books, 1991. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge, 1989 Harpham, Geoffrey Galt. "Foucault and the New Historicism ." American Literary History, Summer 1991: 360-375. Hussain, Kosha. “Conflict, Time, and Photography at the Tate Modern: Exhibition Review.” 2014. http://www.thetriad.org.uk/2015/01/16/conflict-time-and-photography-at-the-tate-modern-london/ (accessed April 26, 2015) Iggers, Georg G. Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge. Middletown, Conneticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1997. Jenkins, Keith. "Introduction ." In The Postmodern History Reader, 1-35. London: Routledge, 1997. Jenkins, Keith, ed. The Postmodern History Reader. London: Routledge, 1997. Kaposy, Timothy and Imre Szeman, ed. "Introduction to Part 5." In Cultural Theory: An Anthology. 337- 340. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. 2011. Kendall, Gavin and Gary Wickham. Using Foucault’s Methods. London: Sage, 1999.


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Krauss, Rosalind E. "Postmodernism's Museum Without Walls." In Thinking about Exhibitions , edited by Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson and Sandy Nairne, 341-348. London: Routledge, 1996. LEAP. leapknecht.de. March 16, 2013. http://www.leapknecht.de/ (accessed August 14, 2014). McNay, Lois. Foucault: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. Meijers, Debora J. "The Museums and the 'Ahistorical' Exhibition: the latest gimmick by the arbiters of taste, or an important cultural pheonomenon?" In Thinking about Exhibitions, edited by Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson and Sandy Nairne, 7-20. London: Routledge, 1996. Poster, Mark. "Foucault, the Present and History." Cultural Critique, Winter 1987-1988: 105-121. Prado, C. G. Starting with Foucault: An Introduction to Genealogy . Second Edition. Oxford: Westview Press, 2000. Schlereth, Thomas J. "Collecting Ideas and Artifacts: Common Problems of History Museums and History Texts." In Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts, edited by Bettina Messias Carbonell, 335-347. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Sembou, Evangelia. ""Foucault's Genealogy" | Evangelia Sembou - Academia.edu." Academia.edu. June 16, 2011. https://www.academia.edu/679231/_Foucaults_Genealogy_ (accessed August 14, 2014). Soja, Edward W. Postmodern Geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. London: Verso, 1989. Tate Modern. “Conflict, Time, Photography | Tate” tate.org.uk. November 2014. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/conflict-time-photography (accessed April 29, 2015) The Courtauld Institute of Art. Writing Art History Absracts, The Courtauld Institute of Art. http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/projects/writingarthistory/writingarthist-abstract.shtml (accessed August 14, 2014).


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List of Illustrations: [Figure 1] Own photograph of visitor leaflet, February 2015. [Figure 2] http://lomokev.com/blog/conflict-time-photography-at-the-tate-modern-london/ (accessed April 30, 2015) [Figure 3] http://www.photohistories.com/Photo-Histories/67/the-trace-of-a-trace (accessed April 30, 2015) [Figure 4] http://www.theupcoming.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Conflict-Time-Photography-at-Tate-Modern-by-Rosie-Yang-17.jpg (accessed April 30, 2015) [Figure 5] http://www.choppedliver.info/files/gimgs/18_ctpfeb2015007-web.jpg (accessed April 30, 2015) [Figure 6] http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/rights-nature (accessed April 30, 2015) [Figure 7] http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/art/rights-nature (accessed April 30, 2015) [Figure 8] http://wormaesthetics.tumblr.com/post/112403545977/tj-demos-on-the-exhibition-rights-of-nature-and (accessed April 30, 2015) [Figure 9] http://www.nottinghampost.com/Nottingham-Contemporary-gets-heated-climate/story-25848218-detail/story.html (accessed April 30, 2015)

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Is history still possible in light of postmodernity? Rose ...ephemeralmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/rose-post.pdf · simplify the complexities of the resulting discourse, I will