MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES

GRAND NARRATIVES/MODEST PROPOSALS

Haunting History: Grand Digital Schemes in a Modest Analog Box

April 30 @ 6 P.M. | Daniel Family Commons, Usdan University Center

In this talk I argue for a deconstructive approach to the practice and writing of history at a moment when available forms for writing and publishing history are undergoing radical transformation. To do so, it explores the persistence of ontological realism as the dominant mode of thought for conventional historians and the ways this mode is reinforced by current analog publishing practices. This despite the grand digital schemes of both historians and publishers. These digital schemes are restricted by what I call the “analog ceiling” which functions because it allows one to argue that even though the past may not really correlate to the narrative reconstructions of ontological realism, this form is nevertheless the best analogy to make the past intelligible, understandable, and comprehensible. The dominance of ontological realism in the historical profession is no longer justifiable based on our current understanding of the past or the modes available to digital scholarship but is nevertheless supported by our current scholarly publishing practices. To counter this model, I advocate for a hauntological approach to history that follows the work of Jacques Derrida and embraces a past that is at once present and absent, available and restricted, rather than a fixed and static snapshot of a moment in time. This polysemic understanding of the past as multiple and conflict is what makes the deconstructive approach to the past particularly well suited to new digital forms of historical writing and presentation.