However, historical materialism does not provide an adequate account of how social-relations are historically produced and reproduced. It shows only a limited set of power-relations; it illuminates only one ‘nightmare’. Post-structuralist notions of ‘language’ have challenged the realist Marxian categories of ‘class’. Language is neither transparent nor objective, but constitutive of social relations. The relationship between ‘signified’ and ‘signifier’ is arbitrary and constructed within a ‘self-referential’ and ‘unstable’ system. Meaning is generated through a discursive configuration of ‘sign’, ‘signified’ and ‘signifier’. Discourse, in this sense, is how social reality and processes are ‘organised’ and imbued with ‘meaning’. Foucault argued that during the eighteenth century new epistemic systems or discourses emerged producing ‘modern’ notions of ‘self’. Disciplines and institutions arising from demography, medicine and pedagogy formed ‘technologies of sex’ to discipline, shape and regulate bodies in the interest of a ‘power’. In this respect, power can be understood as discursive, history is not a ‘dream’ but a shifting, chaotic nightmare in which relationships of power make a mockery out of history as a dream.
Post-structuralism has provided a powerful critique of relationships of domination and has de-stabilised categories of ‘gender’, ‘race’ and ‘class’. For instance, Scott’s twin definition of ‘gender (as) a constitute element of social relationships’ and a ‘primary way of signifying relationships of power’ suggests ways in which social relations are constituted by discourse of ‘cultural knowledge’. The post-structural focus on language allows the ‘nightmares’ of formerly marginalised social groups to be understood. How power operates discursively to define and exclude social groups belies simplistic notions that ‘awaking from the nightmare’ is unproblematic. A number of studies drawing on post-structuralism have shown how such supposedly ‘objectivity’ disciplines as ‘science’ are discursively constructed around gendered categories. Similarly, post-structuralism has been useful in comparative studies of nationalism and state-formation showing the construction of ‘gender’ and the marginalisation of ‘women’. A number of more specific studies, both European and non-European, have pointed to how categories of ‘gender’ and ‘race’ are deployed to mobilize or sanction nationalist movements. In this respect, movements and disciplines that have often been understood as progressive or humanitarian are constructed on relations of power; concealing ‘nightmares’ under the mask of ‘objectivity’ or ‘progress’. Post-structuralism shows the enormity of the ‘nightmare’ but in acting as a social-critique interrupts the ‘nightmare’. Historical relations of power and conflict or the ‘nightmares of history’ can, thus, be made explicit.
Post-structural can be criticized for failing to provide any basis upon which to ‘wake’ up from the ‘nightmare’. Fraser, for instance, argues that Foucault notion of ‘discourse’ gives no basis from which to understand how power-relations are constructed to subordinate certain groups while privileging others. Post-structuralism tends towards a discursive reductionism. In particular, the historical agent is marginalised or rejected as a pre-discursive ontological category. Historical ‘nightmares’ or relations of power are more usefully understood as negotiated or struggled with by historical actors; it is this struggle that creates and contests power-relations. Bakhtin offers an insightful way of theorising ‘agency’ in relation to ‘discourse’: ‘the word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only when the speaker populates it with his (or her) own intention, his (or her) own accent, when he (or she) appropriates the word, adapting it to his (or her) own semantic and expressive intention’. Bakhtin notion of ‘dialogically’, in particular, how language is appropriate and used by ‘actors’ in specific contexts is adopted by a number of historians and political commentators. For instance, Anna Clark, in an analysis of nineteenth century labour-relations, conceives ‘power’ as in a constant flux owing to the ‘agency’ or ‘dialogue’ of historical actors with ‘discourse’. Scholars, such as Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, have noted how ‘language’ has to be contextualized within social locations and is relative to the power of its speakers. Theoretical models such as Archer’s ‘morphogenetic cycle’ or ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, frequently associated with N. Fairclough, provide avenues in which ‘agency’, ‘structure’ and ‘discourse’ can be theorised. Recent research by Anna Kane on ‘experience’ of Irish peasants during the ‘Land War’ seems to draw on these paradigms, noting how construction of ‘meaning’ by reflexive agents leads to particular forms of ‘social action’. Thus, the ‘nightmare’ of history has to be understood as occurring through inter-relationships between ‘structure’, ‘discourse’ and ‘agency’; it is through the ‘agency’ of ‘historical actors’ that the potential to make the bed more comfortable lies.
Thus, history can be understood as a ‘dream’, as conflict free, as harmonious, as inevitably drifting towards some political or economic ‘end-point’, such as ‘communism’ or ‘liberal democracy’. However, this is to ignore the nature and dynamic of history. History is defined by ‘conflict’, by the construction of relationships of power and domination: this is the ‘nightmare’ of history. Historical paradigms that allow for the theorisation of conflict without teleology, reductionism or determinism have been drawn on. It seems that relationships of power are usefully understood as relationships between the ‘structural’, ‘discursive’ and ‘agency’ of actors. Any ‘end-point’ in history is rejected, in this sense, ‘awaking’ from history is not possible. The ‘nightmare’ of history shows that historical agents through struggle can adopt, entrench or resist relations of power. It is through the ‘agency’ of actors in mediating ‘discursive’ and ‘structural’ relations that the ‘nightmare’ of history continues. In this respect, pessimists might suggest that ‘history’ is more of a ‘coma’ than a ‘nightmare’; but people in ‘comas’ are passive; history is about struggle.
Power is a vague concept and has been variously related to the ‘state’, ‘productive forces’, ‘relations of production’ and ‘discourse’. It will be argued that ‘power’ has to be understood as an inter-relationship between ‘structure’ (relations of production) and ‘discourse’ mediated through the agency of historical actors. This approach is an approach advocated by political commentators associated with ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’. See R. Wodak and Michael Meyer, Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2001); J. Joseph and J.M. Roberts (eds) Realism, Discourse and Deconstruction (Routledge, London, 2004); Norman, Fairclough, Analysing Discourse; L. Chouliaraki and N. Fairclough, Discourse in Late Modernity
In particular, see Bonnie G. Smith,. The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1998; B. Hooks, (Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, ‘African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 17 (1992), no. 2 p 251-274; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, ‘Beyond the Sound of Silence: Afro-American Women in History’ Gender and History 1 (1989) p, 50-67; Reddock, Rhoda. " Women and Slavery in the Caribbean: A Feminist Perspective", Latin American Perspectives, vol. 12, no.1 (1985), pp. 63-80; Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton and Barbara Bailey eds, Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective (London, etc., J. Currey, etc., 1995)
Comte is perhaps the most renowned positivist in his Course of Positive Philosophy a three stage mode of human evolution or history is adumbrated; theological-military; metaphysical-legalistic and the scientific-industrial
G.A.Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford, 1978)
Both Elster and Giddens have argued that ‘functionalism’ is redundant in the analysis of ‘social-science’. However, even if ‘functionalism’ is given legitimacy, ‘productive-force’ determinism does not convincingly show how the productive relations determine the relations of production. A. Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (London, 1981) pp. 17, 215. J. Elster, Ulysses and the Sirens (Cambridge, 1962) pp. 19-84
Fukuyama has been heavily and rightfully criticised from a number of angles. Alex Callincos, in particular, has attacked Fukuyama’s model from within a Marxist perspective. Anthony Giddens has argued that Fukuyama model is not underpinned by a convincing theorisation of ‘modernity’. More generally Fukuyama does not define ‘liberalism’ or ‘democracy’, both vague concepts, and their relationship to one another. Alex Callinicos, The Revenge of History: Marxism and East European Revolutions (Cambrdige: Polity Press, 1991): Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).
R. Mousnier, Peasant uprisings in seventeenth-century France, Russia and China, (London, Allen and Unwin, 1971); G. Fourquin Lord ship and Feudalism in the Middle Ages (1976)
E. DeWindt, Land and People in Holywell-cum-Needingworth. (Toronto, 1973), p. 242-250. see also S. Olson, A Chronicle of All That Happens: Voices from the Village Court in Medieval England (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1996) For a general critique of the Toronto school see Zvi Razi, The Toronto School’s Reconstitution of Medieval Peasant Society: A Critical View, Past and Present, No. 85 (Nov., 199) 141-15. For a specific critique of DeWindt argument on ‘pledging’ and how these represents asymmetrical and conflictual relations of power see Martin Pimsler, “Solidarity in the Medieval Village? Personal Pledging at Elton, Huntingdonshire’ Journal of British Studies, XVII (1977), 1-11. Richard M. Smith, “Kin and Neighbors in a Thirteenth Century Suffolk Community” Journal of Family History, IV (1979), 219-246; Richard M. Smith “Modernisation and the Corporate Medieval Village Community: Some Sceptical Reflections” in Alan R.H. Baker and D. Gregory (eds), Explorations in Historical Geography: Interpretive Essays (Cambridge, 1984), 140-245
The use of ‘mode of production’ should be distinguished from ‘economic determinism’. Mode of production analysis shows a concern to identify particular forms of deploying social labour and organization around ‘productive forces’. In this sense, politics and ideology are not reflections of an economic ‘base’ but are specific and embedded within a set of ‘strategic relationships’ which organise productive relations. The concept, in this sense, is one variant of an eclectic Marxian system of thought. A good introduction and a spirited critique of ‘economic’ determinism can be found in S.H.Rigby, Marxism and history (Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1998). More empirically: E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawn and George Rude, E. R. Wolf, have found the class-analysis of historical materialism useful. E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common (London : Merlin Press, 1991); E. Hobsbawn, Bandits (Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1969); G. Rude, The Crowd in the French Revolution, (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1959); E. R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (University of California Press, London, first published 1982) . For more ‘structuralist’ interpretations see L. Althusser and E. Balibar, Reading Capital (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970) and M. Godelier ‘Dead Sections and Living Ideas in Marx’s Thinking on Primitive Society’ in M. Godelier, (ed) Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology’ (Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, No. 18. Cambridge University Press, 1977) p. 99-124 . A more recent interpretation of Marxist theory can be found in B. Jessop, State theory : putting the Capitalist state in its place (Cambridge, U.K. : Polity Press, 1990)
Brenner thesis is used to illustrate a point and is not uncritically accepted. It is also acknowledged that this is part of contentious dispute labelled the ‘Brenner Debate’. A few difficulties with Brenners scholarship relates to its failure to confront recent developments, such as the recognition that industrialisation was a slow and regional affair, rather than a nation-wide phenomenon. Robert Brenner, , Past and Present, No. 70. (Feb., 1976), pp. 30-75. T.H. Aston and C.H.E. Philpin The Brenner Debate: Agrarin Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, (Cambridge: Embridge University Press, 1985); B.J.P. van Bavel, Land Lease and Agriculture: the Transition of the Rural Economy in the Dutch River Area from the fourteenth to the sixteenth Century, Past and Present, No. 172 (2001)p. 3-43;
Jessop, provides a good illustration of the flexibility of ‘materialism’. Structures do not determine outcomes; agents are not simply ‘bearers’ of structures. Rather, the relationship is dialectical: structures constrain and facilitate agents whose actions constitute and reconstitute the structures. B. Jessop, The future of the capitalist state, (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2002)
Formal subsumption involves the extraction of absolute surplus value, real subsumption the extraction of relative surplus-value. In this respect, capital can achieve control over production without directly expropriating the forces or means of production. One implication of this is to modify Marxist theories of differentiation that emphasis the two-tier polarization of capitalist rural relations. M Redclift & D. Goodman, From peasant to proletarian: capitalist development and agrarian transitions (Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1981). For an alternative and convincing state-centred explanation of agrarian change see G. Hart, A. Turton, B. White, Agrarian Transformations, Local Processes and the State in Southeast Asia (University of California Press, Oxford, 1989)
Foucault describes power as a ‘multiplicity of force relations’, as ‘both intentional and non-subjective’ and as a ‘moving substrate’. In short, power is understood as diffused through social-relationships cementing inter-personal relationship of power. Foucault, The history of sexuality (London : Penguin, 1987) p. 1:92, p. 1:94, p. 1: 93
J.W. Scott, Gender and the politics of history, (New York : Columbia University Press, 1999) p, 42
Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, Mass, 1989); Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Madison, Wisc., 1989); T. Laquear, Making Sex (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); Regina Morantz-Sanchez, ‘Feminist Theory and Historical Practice: Rereading Elizabeth Blackwell’ in History and Theory, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1992) pp. 51-69; Andrea Nye, Words of Power: A Feminist reading in the History of Logic (London, 1990); Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (eds) Feminist Epistemologies (New York, 1993); Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York, 1989)
I. Blom, K. Hagemann & C. Hall, (ed) Gendered nations: nationalisms and gender order in the long nineteenth century (Oxford, Berg, 2000); N. (London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Sage Publications, 1997); A. McClintock, A. Mufti, and E. Shohat, (ed) Dangerous liaisons : gender, nation, and postcolonial perspectives (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c1997); C. Hall, Defining the Victorian nation : class, race, gender and the British Reform Act of 1867 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000); Nation, empire, colony : historicizing gender and race (Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1998); Nira Yuval-Davis and Pnina Werbner, Women, citizenship and difference (London : Zed, 1999)
Enloe, in particular, notes how ‘gender’ is used to mobilize for military activity. C. Enloe, Bananas, beaches and bases: making feminist sense of international politics (London, Pandora, 1989): C. Enloe Maneuvers : the international politics of militarizing women’s lives (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2000);
Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis, 1989) 17-34. See also Lynn Hunt, ‘Foucault’s Subject in the History of Sexuality’ in D. Stanton (ed)., Discourses of sexuality: from Aristotle to AIDS (Ann Arbor, Michigan U.P., 1992) pp. 78-93.
M.Bakhtin, ( translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist.) The dialogic imagination : four essays (Austin : University of Texas Press, 1981) 293-4
A. Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the making of the English Working Class, (London, Rivers Oram Press, 1995). Sonya Rose et al., ‘Dialogue; women’s history/gender history: is Feminist history losing its critical edge? Journal of Women’s history,5/1 (1993) p. 108.
Smith Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (Oxford, 1985) p. 43-44;
Critical Discourse Analysis is an eclectic movement but has the general goal of investigating critically social inequality as it is expressed, signalled, constituted, legitimized and so on by language use. Good introductions are R. Wodak and Michael Meyer, Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2001); J. Joseph and J.M. Roberts (eds) Realism, Discourse and Deconstruction (Routledge, London, 2004); Norman, Fairclough, Analysing Discourse; L. Chouliaraki and N. Fairclough, Discourse in Late Modernity
A. Kane, Reconstructing Culture in Historical Explanation: Narratives as Cultural Structure and Practice, History and Theory, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Oct., 2000) 311-330