WITH OR AGAINST HAYDEN WHITE? REFLECTIONS ON THEORY OF HISTORY AND SUBJECT FORMATION.

This article reflects on Hayden White's understanding of the subject and explores how best to move forward discussions in theory of history after his arguments about narrativity. To do so, I reconsider his arguments in light of more recent feminist and queer theorizations. Through a reconstruction o...

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Publicado en:History & Theory Vol. 63; no. 1; pp. 25 - 45
Autor principal: La Greca, María Inés
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Wiley-Blackwell Mar2024
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: WITH OR AGAINST HAYDEN WHITE? REFLECTIONS ON THEORY OF HISTORY AND SUBJECT FORMATION.
      aug:
        au: La Greca, María Inés
        affil: National University of Tres de Febrero, University of Buenos Aires, National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET)
      su:
        White, Hayden, 1928-2018
        History
        Subjectivity
        Narratives
        Feminism
        Queer theory
        Social movements
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        subj:
          White, Hayden, 1928-2018
          History
          Subjectivity
          Narratives
          Feminism
          Queer theory
          Social movements
      keyword:
        embodiment
        feminist movement
        Hayden White
        historicity
        Judith Butler
        narrativity
        subject formation
      ab: This article reflects on Hayden White's understanding of the subject and explores how best to move forward discussions in theory of history after his arguments about narrativity. To do so, I reconsider his arguments in light of more recent feminist and queer theorizations. Through a reconstruction of the current international new wave of feminism and LGBTQ+ activism as a rich and complex social movement that involves a narration of its own (practical) past, I will recontextualize and revaluate White's insight from the perspective of Judith Butler's theory of subject formation. The argument will unfold in four parts. First, I will recall White's ironic and existential stance on language and narrativity in the representation of reality and in relation to social beliefs. Second, I will again raise the question of the value of narrativity, as framed by White, in the context of the publication of a recent feminist manifesto. It is here that another issue will emerge as crucial: the relationship between the limits of linguistic self‐consciousness and the question of the subject. In the third part, my argument will take a partial turn "against White" and toward Butler's subject formation theory. My claim will be that there is a residue of the belief in the sovereign individual in White's insistence on self‐consciousness. However, I will also show that his suspicion regarding the psychological impulse toward narrative closure can be re‐elaborated as the challenge Butler is facing with their theory of subject formation: that of critically resisting the belief in our being coherent and self‐sufficient individuals. In the fourth part, I will present Butler's refiguration of the thesis of the subject's opacity in terms of the primary relationality that binds human beings to one another, and I will offer a new understanding of the individual, norms, agency, infancy, and ethics. Finally, I will conclude that we are bodies in history and that theory of history can find a promising line of research through this conception of the subject, a conception that reframes how we understand the intimate links between political consciousness, historicity, and embodiment. I also claim that this line of research constitutes an ethics for our historical undoing.
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    language: English
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