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Robert F. Berkhofer

Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse Paperback – September 1, 1997

by Robert F. Berkhofer Jr. (Author)

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What legitimate form can history take when faced by the severe challenges issued in recent years by literary, rhetorical, multiculturalist, and feminist theories? That is the question considered in this long-awaited and pathbreaking book. Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., addresses the essential practical concern of contemporary historians; he offers a way actually to go about reading and writing histories in light of the many contesting theories.

Berkhofer ranges through a vast archive of recent writings by a broad range of authors. He explicates the opposing paradigms and their corresponding dilemmas by presenting in dialogue form the positions of modernists and postmodernists, formalists and deconstructionists, textualists and contextualists. Poststructuralism, the New Historicism, the New Anthropology, the New Philosophy of History--these and many other approaches are illuminated in new ways in these comprehensive, interdisciplinary explorations.

From them, Berkhofer arrives at a clear vision of the forms historical discourse might take, advocates a new approach to historical criticism, and proposes new forms of historical representation that encompass multiculturalism, poetics, and reflexive (con)textualization. He elegantly blends traditional and new methodology; assesses what the "revival of the narrative" actually entails; considers the politics of disciplinary frameworks; and derives coherent new approaches to writing, teaching, reviewing, and reading histories.

Print length

400 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
Publication date

September 1, 1997
Dimensions

6.37 x 0.99 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

0674069080
ISBN-13

978-0674069084
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A welcome and useful book to all serious students of history… Exactly how should history be presented, if indeed, in the face of poststructuralist and postmodernist theories, it can be written at all? Berkhofer seeks an answer by constructing ‘a dialogue among changing intellectual influences’ and in so doing has produced a work of great importance and instruction.”―Virginia Quarterly Review

“Beyond the Great Story is an attempt to suggest how the practice and institutional discipline of history can survive the challenges of literary, rhetorical, feminist and multicultural theories. Its spirit is both enthusiastically evangelical and pioneering―appropriate adjectives for a text which itself considers several histories of American colonization… Beyond the Great Story is most interesting in drawing upon such examples―Columbus, the Holocaust, the U.S. Constitution, ‘facts’ about George Washington, Lockridge and Cronon’s histories of American colonialism―from historical practice, which continue to be written within ‘normal’ historical parameters.”―Moyra Haslett, Imprimatur

“This is an intelligent and well-researched book. Berkhofer poses many thoughtful questions and presents an excellent guide to theoretical and historiographical debates.”―Michael S. Roth, American Historical Review

“This book provides an excellent introduction to and survey of recent debates among American historians about history and theory, and its message is that historians should be more self-conscious and self-critical, in a word more reflexive in their writing and reviewing.”―W. Stafford, English Historical Review

“A thoughtful book, balanced in its judgments on the subject of postmodernism’s challenge to conventional historical practice… [It] touches down on countless issues…raising many challenges for historians. Its call to innovate and transgress established boundaries is scaffolded on a wide reading and impressive synthesizing of difficult and often oppositional literatures―the evidence of all historiographic comment.”―Bryan D. Palmer, Journal of American History

“Beyond the Great Story proposes to assist historians in catching up with the important discussions so lively in our sister disciplines about knowledge in the postmodern condition… Berkhofer’s great achievement in this volume is to translate the difficult theoretical discourses of the past two decades into questions for historians and to pose them in a manner that directly and clearly addresses their disciplinary concerns. He does this with skill, comprehensiveness, intelligence, and fairness to all sides of what is often a rancorous debate.”―Mark Poster, Reviews of Books

About the Author

Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., was Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His many publications include Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Missions and American Indian Response, 1787–1962; A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis; and The White Man’s Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press (September 1, 1997)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674069080
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674069084
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.14 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.37 x 0.99 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,629,256 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22,481 in Literary Movements & Periods
- #47,439 in Sociology (Books)
- #166,538 in Social Sciences (Books)

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Socrates

Appeals to historians and independent thinkers

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2020

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I knew the author. He was an excellent graduate advisor and brought out the best in his students. This book is typical of his work.

Helpful

On the (F)utility of Postmodern History

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2003

I apologize for the title of this review but it gets at some of my reaction to this book. Consider the following quote from the final chapter: "A new form of reflexive history would resolve the dilemma by...seeking to operate in the conceptual spaces posed by the contradictions between textualism and contextualism, between social and rhetorical construction of reality, between normal history and metahistory." (p.266)
I consider this quote important because Berkhofer is actually trying to practice what he preaches in his writing in this book. He is summarizing the results of the critical work done in history in the last thirty or so years by at least two major schools of criticism. The schools are (roughly) 1. deconstructionist (or textualist or rhetorical) and 2. oppositionist (which includes social constructionist or multicultural or feminist critiques).
The critical approaches are as rough on each other as they are on what Berkhofer calls normal history, i.e., history as practiced by professional historians. Therein lies the rub. Berkhofer is not trying to sort out the arguments for us. He points out all the possible ramifications of these critical schools he can think of in regard to a particular topic and does not really even indicate which he thinks is the most correct.
Berkhofer wants readers and historians to start thinking deeply about the way they construct histories. He wants us to examine the rhetoric employed to express arguments or to emplot narrative, to what extent history is shaped by the institutional practices or the politics of the profession, what theory of social groups or of individuals does the author use and what is the author's theory of time (cyclical, degenerative, progressive, pastiche, etc.). What is the author's epistemology, how does s/he see the structure of power within both their own culture and the one they are writing about (are they liberal, radical, republican, conservative and how does that reflect on the history they write)? As a personal aside, if you think this is not an issue with truly professional historians then you should read some in the liberal/republican/protestant debate that rages about the Revolutionary and/or Federalist periods in American history.
The above is about one third of the issues that Berkhofer feels that historians and their readers need to start thinking deeply about if we are to face up to the challenges presented by the critical schools mentioned above. Along the way, he summarizes the work of dozens of scholars and practices some of the type of reflexive criticism he is suggesting on many others. However, he very much leaves open the avenues that "reflexive history" should explore. The last thing he wants to do is impose his own hegemonic regime on the new field.
I have a mixed reaction to the book. I have learned quite a bit from it. I am going to make a conscious effort to read histories in the future in some of the ways he suggests to see how helpful or revealing it is.
However, it is also an annoying book. It is full of jargon (how many times do we have to see hi/story to get the point?), it could have used an editor that read it a little more closely and ultimately I think Berkhofer should also have let us know his own thoughts on many of the issues between the contextualists and the textualists. He has no trouble letting us know the inadequacies of liberal pragmatist historians like Thomas Haskell or James Kloppenberg. Why not do the same for Hutcheon, Rooney, Carrard, de Certeau, White, etc.? He is fond of suggesting the use of different typefaces as a means of demarcating different voices in a text. Perhaps he could do the same in his own book- one allowing for the "spaces of contradictions" in the arguments of others and another for his own thought?
One final thought- somewhere in the book, Berkhofer tells us the story of a Native American student of his who refused to read an assigned text because the author referred to the theory that the ancestors of the American Indians came across the Bering Straits thousand of years ago. This did not jibe with what he had been taught in the creation myths of his heritage. The student felt that if the author got that wrong, how could he be trusted at all? To which I say- too bad. Am I supposed to include everybody's creation myth (including the Bible) each time I write a text of evolutionary theory? We do not all have the responsibility to preserve everybody's traditions. At some point all we have to do is say what we ourselves think.
This is not a book for everybody. Most casual readers of history do not need to read it. In spite of one of the reviewers below, you will not be washed aside (by what-the vanguard of the radical deconstructionist historians?). Those of us who do like to read our histories critically, with a suspicious eye, would do well to study this book. It is a difficult and annoying read but I, for one, have not read anyone else who raises so many important issues in one volume.

12 people found this helpful

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John H. Stevens

getting to the heart of the story of history

Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2000

I must disagree with the above reviewer; despite the fact that Berkhofer uses terms such as "discourse", which is a perfectly valid term of analysis if properly discussed, this is not a boring book it all. It is NOT a history, but rather a discussion of historiography and the theoretical and discursive underpinnings of the practice of history. Berkhofer is trying to outline how histories are constructed, and how the contours and demands of the genre effect its subject matter. Berkhofer wants historians to be reflexive and to get past the urge to make their narratives part of "the great story." All too often historians link their work to metanarratives that shade their work in perhaps unintended ways. Berkhofer is calling for more awareness of how histories are put together; he is also trying to give his readers some tools to take those histories apart and see them with more critical understanding, in essence to see how the metanarratives influence the creation of histories.
For this and a number of other reasons, this is an excellent book for students of history. Yes, it does get plodding in places, but it is a worthwhile book to engage and ponder.

19 people found this helpful

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M. Andreacchio

Beyond all that is Great?

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2009

What makes a story, good? Is there any such thing as a "true story" (cf. Lucian)? What about a story about real problems--problems that underlie the discursive fashions of the day? What makes a story really great--not merely in scope, but in depths? Berkhofer's volume ignores these and akin questions. He prefers to roll back into contemporary "discourse" or groundless (!) talk, as if there were nothing more urgent and important--nay, meaningful--for scholars (including historians) to discuss than the surface of literally empty talk--a talk that, no doubt, is of Great interest to many, arguably precisely because of its emptiness--of its superficiality, its mildly sophisticated utter lack of depths.

It is legitimate to suspect that the author has never studied (read: taken seriously) any reasoned-out book written before the modern birth of "Ideology," i.e. the modern "politicization" of philosophy. No serious thought is given to the possibility that reality is not exhausted by historical (material) appearances. What ancient/classical sources would regard as key to any good history--namely a keen understanding of the permanent/central problems of political life, carrying with it a capacity to make superficial concessions to the fashion or spirit of the times--disappears in the "beyond" welcomed by our author, a "beyond" filled with means seemingly awaiting existential Nothingness as their unquestioned, tyrannical End.

ON METHODOLOGY:
The problem we are all faced with--in Berkhofer's company--is that of ends. Berkhofer seems to assume that the best critical stance rests upon a prejudice against all ends: all ends must be groundless (i.e. there is no end by nature--hence the "Cartesian" sense of certainty that means must be attended to before and independently of ends). Socratic or zEtetic inquiry (openness to truth/reality as a natural end) is ignored in favor of a considerably more fashionable dialogue open to nowhere. The ultimate "Great Story" beyond all not-so-great stories is NIHILISM. The price to be paid for loss of true greatness (think of Thucydides, for instance) is dire.

____________
One reviewer defends Berkhofer's volume by invoking "the pace of erudition," which reads as a codeword for "Progress". Red lights flash for "Grand Narrative" (or "Great Stories").

3 people found this helpful

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