Instituto de Filosofia Alejandro Korn

The second half of the twentieth century has been witness to a blooming a narrativist philosophy of history (NPH) consists of having reinforced the worth of an autonomous historical knowledge vis à vis standard conceptions of science which made history appear as underdeveloped. Although NPH does not dismiss the importance of documentary evidence, it did not produce an integrative account of both dimensions (the work of writing and the work with evidence), being slave of a number of epistemological dualism. On one hand, NPH seems to remain in the representationalist paradigm in the case of evidence, while, on the other hand, it only admits pragmatic evaluation in the case of narrative discourse. In this paper, of the past offer NPH good reasons to assess the role that literary theory can play in reconstructing historical controversies, without neglecting the importance of empirical research. For instance, Dewey holds that historical writing is a case of of this, the meaning of judgments referred to the past (that is, historical narrations) " have a future reference and function, " and thus understanding their meaning involves displaying the consequences that follow from such judgments. Mead, for his part, has argued that by appealing to the independent reality of the past as ground for our beliefs about it, rather than contributing to the rational resolution of our historical problems, we stray towards the search of something which is by the development of a narrativist, pragmatistically-informed philosophy of history. My considerations will be illustrated through the analysis of a controversial case The man who shot Liberty Valance, by the equally memorable John Ford. " The writing of History is an instance of judgment as a resolution through inquiry of a problematic situation. " John Dewey I. Narrativism and New Philosophy of History The second half of the twentieth century has been witness to a blooming of As opposed to previous debates within critical philosophy of history, focused on the adequate relationship between history and the natural sciences model, 2 new philosophers of history detected that historicizing the past in narrative terms does not form of knowledge. The works of Arthur Danto (1985), Louis Mink (1987), Hayden com] 2. I am talking about the explanation vs comprehension debate that took place mostly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In 1973 Hayden White proposed a theory of historical work through a classification, which not only showed different ways to research and write history, but also explained why these dif- ferences are irreducible, and therefore pluralism is inevitable and controversial. The contro- versial pluralism that Metahistory bequeathed was not well received. It was interpreted, and still is in some sectors, as a celebration of ‘anything goes’ and an ‘attack’ on academic history. In this article I focus on two alternative and critical readings of White’s work, which I call ‘ex- periential foundationalism’ and ‘metahistorical conceptualism’. While criticizing aspects of these two reading strategies, I propose to reconsider these critical interventions by suggest- ing a reading of Whitean tropology in combination with figural realism and in the context of a ‘conversational pluralism’ oriented towards the emplotment and reconstruction of past controversies. I conclude by suggesting that to appreciate tropology in terms of a heuristic discipline helps us bring to light irreconcilable differences, but also enables us to refigure in a democratic and dialogic way ‘challenges’ to history arising from public representations of the ‘practical past’.

The article deal with the treatment the right to identity has had in the past two years in Argentina. Our philosophical goal goes to show how fundacionist and essentialist conceptions of identity based on the divine nature, in science or in the own individual's epistemic privilege fail to guarantee equal treatment for every in relation to this right. We examine the Equal Marriage Law, based on the modi- fication of the Civil Code, the Law called dna, based on the modifi- cation of the Code of Criminal Procedure for the extraction of dan for victims, and finally, the Gender Identity Law seeks to ensure the recognition of the dignity and, the uniqueness of the project of trans people's lives, allowing them to change the name and gender on her identity card and access to surgical and / or hormonal.

R esumen En el 2008 se cumplen 25 años de la aparición de Metahistoria: la imaginación his� his� tórica en el siglo XIX, punto de inflexión para la filosofía de la historia en tanto se aviene a su giro lingüístico. 2008 también es el 80 aniversario del propio Hayden White, ocasión que ha convocado a los filósofos de la historia y a diversos historiado-res a revisitar su obra y reconsiderar los desafíos que nos legó. Fundamentalmente, su insistencia en volver una y otra vez a diversas expresiones y manifestaciones de la teorización literaria para iluminar la naturaleza del discurso histórico. El presente escrito evalúa críticamente las consecuencias que la información literaria implica para el status cognitivo de la representación histórica. Abstract The year 2008 is the 25 th of the publication of Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth�Century Europe, a milestone for the philosophy of history, since it comprehends its linguistic turn. 2008 is also the 80 th birthday of Hayden White, an occasion for philosophers of history and historians from several areas to revisit his work and reconsider the challenges that it has delegated to us. A fundamental challenge is the necessity of going back, again and again, to literary theory to elucidate the nature of historical discourse. This article makes a critical evaluation on the consequences that literary information has for the cog-nitive status of historical representation. El arte puede ser semejante a la vida, pero la vida no se asemeja al arte, aun cuando lo intente. Los tipos de plots que endosan series de eventos con significado existen sólo en el arte y no en la vida.

Resumen: Arthur Danto formula una definición filosófica de la esencia de la obra de arte en tér-minos de tener un tema (ser representacional) y un modo de presentación (para las meras repre-sentaciones exhibir su manera de presentarse no es esencial). Mi tesis será que la segunda condición tendrá consecuencias para la diferen-cia entre narrativa histórica y narrativa literaria involucrando que: 1) la diferencia no reside en la corrección fáctica, tanto historia como literatura pueden referir con verdad. 2) la diferencia tam-poco residirá en el uso de recursos retóricos para provocar actitudes en el auditorio. La filosofía del arte de Danto permite astutamente distinguir a la literatura de la representación histórica pues solo para la primera los recursos son mencionados y no sólo usados. Lamentablemente la distinción esencial entre literatura e historia alcanzada no será la deseada por la práctica historiográfica; será de relevancia exclusiva para la filosofía del arte y no para la filosofía de la historia. Abstract: Arthur Danto formulates a philosophical definition of the essence of the art work in terms of to have a subject (theme) and a mode of presentation. My thesis is that the second condition will offer a smart strategy in favor of the difference between historical narrative and literary narrative. This criterion avoids considering 1) to appeal to factual correction, given that both can truly refer to reality, 2) the use of rhetorical and poetics resources in order to provoke certain reactions in the audience is something that both kind of narrative always do. The difference is that literature but not history not only uses but mentions those resources. The article will show that this essential distinction between history and literature will not be the distinction by historians. Even more, this distinction will be only relevant for philosophy of arts and not for philosophy of history.

Resumen El lugar otorgado a la historia por Danto, como constitutiva de nosotros y nues-tro mundo y como disciplina que nos permite aspirar a alcanzar representaciones adecuadas del pasado, alcanza su cenit en su filosofía del arte. En Después del fin del arte Danto diagnostica un final de la historia de la búsqueda de una definición filosófica del arte y un advenimiento del pluralismo. Es aquí donde se produce una polémica combinación de historicismo y esencialismo. Mi estrategia consistirá, por un lado, en rescatar su aguda filosofía del lenguaje histórico con el objeto de mos-trar que la compatibilidad es inevitable. Por otro lado, dejaré al descubierto los pre-supuestos (también polémicos) con los que una posición historicista, la que Danto logró explicitar, se debe comprometer. Palabras claves: Danto, oraciones narrativas, obra de arte, historicismo, esen-cialismo. Abstract " Taking History Seriously. Danto, Historical Esentialism and Indiscernible Things. " The place that Arthur Danto gives to history, as constitutive to as and our world, as well as a discipline able to produce knowledge of the past, reach its cenit with his philosophy of art. In " the End of Art " , Danto announces an end of the history of the search of the philosophical definition of art and the beginning of the era of pluralism. It is in this account where essencialism and historicism are combined in a way that estimules a heat debate that continues today. In this paper, I give a

La recepción crítica de la tropología de Hayden White ha contribuido a difun- dir la vulgata de que se trata de una preceptiva o metodología orientada a influir en el quehacer de los historia- dores profesionales. Contrariamente a lo que pretenden muchos de sus críticos, White no ha realizado ni la igualación de realidad y ficción, ni la caída en un relativismo tout court, sino por el contrario, la democratización de dispositivos de producción y crítica. Mi propósito es sumarme a la crítica interna que han venido desarrollando de una manera menos mordaz pero no por eso menos sofisticada y persistente la Nueva Filosofía de la Historia con dos importantes objetivos: primero, establecer un diálogo con la versión pragmatista del giro lingüístico, la cual permitirá desestimar la lectura determinista, idealista y escéptica del giro lingüístico en general y de White en especial y, segundo, invitar a una lectura que nos habilite a ponderar el verdadero alcance de sus reflexiones metahistóricas.

Pragmatist Contributions to a New Philosophy of History. This work is written from the perspective of a New Philosophy of History  (NFH) and as such it is interested in promoting what has come to be known as “linguistic self-awareness” for those of us who are interested in the consequences of our linguistic adoptions – be it from the perspective of history, of memory’s studies or of philosophy of history. During the last forty years NFH has received criticism on diverse fronts on account of its alleged attack on history. This, in turn, is said to be due to its adoption of linguistic idealism and determinism, which would lead to skepticism regarding historical knowledge. Therefore, it is from the perspective of philosophy of history that I encourage a dialogue with the contributions made by a pragmatist approach to language and knowledge, specifically those born from the reflections on social and historical studies, as is the case with George Mead´s Social Behaviorism, and the Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge lead by Barry Barnes, David Bloor and, more recently, Martin Kusch, who have not found a conflict between their sociolinguistic approximation to epistemology and their positive appraisal of history as science. Mead´s work has been widely recognized in the sociological research field, and Argentina has been a pioneer at it. Nevertheless, the consequences of his work for philosophy of history remain unexplored to our day, and are worthy not only of a full article, but also of recognizing Mead as a crucial reference in our century´s debates on historical knowledge. On the other hand, the Strong Programme, by pursuing and developing Kuhn´s Wittgenstenian roots, has been immensely prolific in its sociological and historical studies of science, but has encountered resistance in the field of philosophy of natural sciences. Just like the New Philosophy of History, it has been accused of favoring an attack on science: yet another form of obscurantism. In this paper, I shall try to show that this dialogue between pragmatism and NPH is not an attack on science, but on a certain form of philosophy engaged in a form of dualism between mind-world or language-reality, individual-society, an engagement which, in a pragmatist spirit, makes no difference in practice. This dialogue is an invitation to reflect on scientific practice with the same resources with which scientific practice carries its task in creative knowledge.

Resumen: La sensación de la imposibilidad de alcanzar la versión definitiva del pasado resulta en la urgencia a tematizar los discursos que se arrogan su repre-sentación. En respuesta a las guerras de los discursos, la filosofía de la historia en el siglo XX examina centralmente el lenguaje en el que se expresa nuestra relación con el pasado. En este espíritu, abordaré de un modo polémico y a propósito de las Malvinas, las contribuciones de dos grandes teóricos del lenguaje histórico, Frank Ankersmit y Hayden White, con el objeto de ofrecer un marco pragmático para orientarse crítica y creativamente en las disputas de representación acerca de la experiencia de guerra. Abstract: The idea of the impossibility of getting the final version of the past, leads us to the need of carrying out a research on those kinds of discourses that try to represent it with the truth. In answer to war discourses, the Twentieth Century's Philosophy of History analyzes the language through which we express our relation with the past very carefully. In this spirit, I will approach two great contributions to the nature of historical language —from two important philosophers of history, Frank

abSTracT my aim in this article is to provide a critical-productive appreciation of witness testimony that avoids the false and crooked dichotomies that pervade contemporary philosophy of history and historical theory. My specific, pragmatist approach combines the recent accounts of Hayden White about " witness literature " with the " generative-performative " consideration of testimony by martin Kusch. The purpose is to appreciate, in a non-foun-dationalist way, the epistemic and moral role of testimony in the constitution of the representation of the recent past. To achieve this I examine the assumed epistemic and political privilege of the testimonies of survivors of state terrorism from the recent past, and I draw on insights of three of the most relevant survivor witnesses: Primo Levi, Victor Klemperer, and pilar calveiro. The essay tries to avoid both an epistemic and a moral posture based on something like " the privileged victim's perspective, " and instead approaches the specific analysis of production and circulation of witness discourse in terms of its contribution to the constitution of the past. That is, it recommends that one look at witness testimony not as an attempt to return to the past but as an action in the present. The result in so doing is to follow some recent results discussed in the new epistemology of witness testimony, which insist that: first, trust in testimony is an irreducible function of the acceptance of knowledge (this means that testimonies should not be treated as secondary sources of knowledge or as parasitical on experience and reason); and second, the production-circulation of testimonies does not function only in the context of justification but is also legitimately constitu-tive of knowledge.

Resumen En " La evidencia de la experiencia " Joan Scott lanzó un desafío a las concepciones que sustentan las políticas de la identidad, de tal profundidad y agudeza, que llega inclu-so a cuestionar la razonabilidad de sus reclamos y la eficacia de tal política. Las reac-ciones no tardaron en llegar, generando múltiples intentos de responder al desafío. Se destacan entre ellos el programa Realista pospositivista de Satya Mohanty, cuyo obje-tivo primordial será ofrecer una consideración alternativa de la noción de experiencia subjetiva —antiesencialista (de allí pospositivista) pero se opondrá a la disolución deconstructiva del posmodernismo (de allí realista). En el presente trabajo, analizaré cómo una u otra consideración puede responder más eficazmente a reclamos de legi-timidad de identidades marginalizadas. Abstract In " The Evidence of Experience " Joan Scott challenged the philosophical accounts that support identity politics based on the fact that this tradition puts the razonability of the claims and the efficiency of this policies at risk. Multiples responses have been given to this argument, but the most profound and sharpest critiques were introduced by the Realist Post-positivist Programme. This theory, developed by Satya Mohanty and et al, tries to give an alternative consideration of the notion of " subjective experience " —antiessencialist (this is the reason for his antipositivism) but the opposite to the pos-modernist deconstructive dissolution of this term (this is the reason for his realism). In this paper I analyze both positions and I will try to give a consideration on my own in order to offer a better and more efficient response to identity-claims.

Hayden White ofrece una manera original de entender la histori- zación de los sucesos del pasado. La noción de Auerbach de “realismo figu- ral” permite entender la producción de representaciones históricas realistas en términos de la presentación de una figura de la realidad. Sus reflexiones esclarecen por qué no puede alcanzarse la versión definitiva del pasado: la historia es figurada siempre por agentes en su presente e inevitablemente será reescrita una y otra vez. En clave pragmatista evocamos que la práctica científica se rige en numerosas ocasiones valorando propuestas teóricas al- ternativas, no tanto por su conformidad con la evidencia (algo no decidible), sino atendiendo a cuál de ellas estimula una mayor investigación. Este tipo de evaluación, denominado “evaluación heurística”, resulta una forma ade- cuada de comprender el carácter controversial y no definitivo de la práctica de reescritura historiográfica.

In this article, my aim is to investigate the contributions that literary theory, as a theory of each and every type of general discursive construction, can o er to shed light on the nature of historiographical controversies, not only in relation to the di culty of consensual resolution but to the undesirability of agreeing on a single account of the past.  is diagnosis, we can assert, is general and shared; nobody argues, in social sciences and humanities, in favor of the search for a uni ed theory, or a single account.  e question is how to account for the plurality and diversity of interpretations in con ict, and the consequences of this plurality for research itself.