#1 12-09-2024 16:35

AS

1991 – Definition of History

History begins here and now. The spontaneous, the immediate, the present are the beginning of history. The past is a <preface, which>, like all <prefaces>, is written <afterwards, in the future>, in reflection, <in> mediation. The present begins history, and the past grants time to this beginning.

This movement is the determining movement of history: the past is a projection of the present, the past begins in its future, the present, and not the reverse. History is a progression toward the origin. This dialectical conception of history is not new, <since Schiller and Hegel commonly taught it>. But materialist positivism has since imposed <on minds> another perspective of history and time: the beginning of history is <below> and behind; the present is the highest and most advanced point; the future is the continuation, <as if in dotted lines, of this regular, infinite and immutable staircase>. In this progression by degrees, the vectorial synthesis of the vision of time <conveyed> by the Christian and Muslim religions is <drawn>: while for the Christians the past is behind and the future ahead, for the Muslims the progression of time is vertical, the past is below and the future above. Thus, the triumphal staircase of economic positivism both satisfies these two visions in the moments without history, and disappoints them <just as much> in the moments <when> humans, suddenly, make history.

The beginning of history, the present, is therefore always the same, and always /changing/. Each new beginning of history <corrects in appearance for it transforms in reality> all known time. The <dawn> of time, the origin of time, is to be realized. <That is to say that the present will> produce this beginning at its end. In this future where the present, the beginning of history, will entirely contain the past, it will entirely contain the future. The end of history <as> end of time, is logical on condition that history begins here and now. However, history is not, as its beginning <suggests>, a succession of beginnings, each of which <annihilates> the preceding one. On the contrary, given that each particular historical beginning, <each presence> of history, <contradicts> the preceding totality, it is also <contradicted> by the totality, that generality of which history is the movement of determinations. At the same time as this division reveals the novelty, the new beginning is so <impregnated> with the past <that it seems to be its result>. /It is only when the novelty revealed by this brutal division in time transforms the whole past that the unity of the particular historical beginning and of the preceding totality is realized in their overcoming, as determination of the totality returned from its division/. But, here and now, this movement is never <accomplished> in this abstract and theoretical simplicity. <For in truth,> here and now is first the negation of an abstract movement that would be infinite. Everything in history is singular. History can even be considered, by those who /want/ to grasp it at the moment it appears, as the singularity of singularity.

<Also>, the negation of eternity is the first negation that <comes> from the present as the beginning and end of history. History is <dispute>, here and now, not <felicity>. The periods of happiness <are> blank pages <there>, if by happiness one means religious happiness, positivist happiness, economist happiness, <concord delivered from> discord. History is conflict. It is a conflict <about its own objective> and, consequently, in its intervals, about the means <to achieve it>. This is why here and now <first> becomes negation of the <main presuppositions concerning> history.

It would be possible <to deliver here and now> a definition of history. <But here is just what would be contrary to its concept, which is> the negative revelation of what is said <of> it, of what is believed <of> it, of what is alienated /of/ it. An affirmative definition would <quietly cohabit> among the others, /whatever/ its negativity, its <accuracy>, its vigor. The historical situation today imposes <to unify> the affirmation of history in the negation of its separate affirmations.
 
 
1) History is one

This requirement has as an immediate consequence a first affirmation so unusual in our time that it can only appear extremely ridiculous or excessively rigorous. It is precisely this affirmation of the unity of history against the multitude of opposed affirmations: there is only one history. <This banality is as generally affirmed as its opposite, including, of course, by the same people>. In the face of growing confusion <on> concepts, it is <essential today> to support with the most inflexible intransigence the affirmation of history as totality. History is <unique. Hey,> are there <several> humanities?

Concretely, this means that there is already falsification in speaking of the history of the 18th century, of the history of Paris, of the history of the human body, of the history of my /neighbour/, of the history of a table or the history of freedom. To tell an history is an abuse of language, a <pauperistic> deviation, <one of whose secondary meanings avows this enterprise:> to tell a lie. Of course, between an history and history, it is more a matter of <homonymy than synonymy>. And if everyone were aware of this and distinguished without hesitating between a separate history and history, which suppresses the separation and contains all the separate histories as separate, I would not have to <dwell on this>. But professional historians, who <must be called> the enemies of history, not content <to applaud each separate history, have come> to ideologize the separations in history according to their own specializations. They <call> this justification of their abdication the plurality of history. Plurality is a <shorthand to say democracy among the servants of the> democracy called Western. Plurality has become a slogan, and a moral slogan, like tolerance for instance, which contains an anathema: those who object to this or that plurality are totalitarians, supporter of some tyranny, enemy of all democracy. These intellectual Thersites are so little contradicted, <either by contempt, apathy or ignorance, that their conceptions against history> have <today almost unanimously insinuated themselves>. <But what best sustains the miserable trade of these spare parts dealers is that in every separate history, whether to lull children to sleep, to edify adolescents, to mislead their parents or to titillate old people, present history shows through, either in form of trace of a fleeting passage, or in the organization of its absence.>. <Indeed, it is> the most paradoxical determination of history that the absence of history is history. Thus, everything is history. But the enemies of history are those who <also maintain the amalgam between the lofty concept everything and its opposite, anything>. For them, anything is history. Here, between absence of history and history, there is no more difference. In reality, the absence of history is a simple determination of history, like their unity, which is their truth. But the determinations of the absence of history are not determinations of history. Now these determinations of the absence of history, raised in separation and indifference to the <rank> of determinations of history, not only by the servants of the corporation of self-named historians, but by the servants of all the other corporations, authorized by the example, <complete the masking of> the unicity of history in this <wasteland>, in this prostitution.

The best example of a practical conflict between humans that is only indirectly historical is the war of 1939-1945. This war, called a world war, is only a consequence of the historical dispute of 1917-1921, the distant repression of the defeated <party> in that <debate>, <which has taken on all the more extent for being distant>. But it is indeed in 1917-1921 that there was a <debate> on humanity, and not in 1939-1945, where there was only the <execution of the consequences, that is to say a debate inside the party that had won>. <This party has since sought to substitute its own disputes for the disputes in the world, its> particular history for the general history of humanity. <This falsification is aggravated in the example of 1939-45 by the amalgam that consists in making believe that the event which produces the strongest> impression is the most important. Since the war of 1939-1945, which <has therefore remained the most important event of the century for the overwhelming> majority of those /who are going to come out from it/, this technique <becoming generalized> has been one of the most powerful <dividers> of history in the <intelligence> of the party defeated in 1921 and <bled> in 1945.

History as totality is generally perceived as a myth. Contemporary smallness has practically abdicated before the greatness of the object, <so that>, like it confuses its beginning and its origin, <it poorly demarcates history as unity from the separate histories by making it begin... with a big h>. It is moreover a veritable alienation of logic that flattens this "universal" history into another particular history: today it is exclusively from the particular <that one abstracts the general and no longer at all from the general that one determines the particular; it is from the event that one induces history and the size of its h and not from history that one deduces the requirements and imperatives that make an event reveals /it/ or not>. Real history is a <whole whose> wealth and meaning <are not in the quantity of the determinations, but in their relation to the whole, and which by the brevity and the extraordinary of /its/ manifestations excludes almost all the individuals, and the others almost all the time>. It has a beginning and an end and a content in movement: there is or there is not history in freedom, in a table, at my neighbor's; there is or there is not history in the human body, Paris or the 18th century.

<However>, the beginning of history <posited> as totality, <which> may be or may not be each moment, is <first of all any novelty, undetermined, /for/ humanity>. But <novelty is what> opposes the existing totality, revolutionizes it. <It is now /induction/ that is necessary to determine the totality, newly>. <It is thus that from the newly conceived totality is deduced, as determination of history, the novelty which, during the operation, ceases to be so>. But nothing is more misleading than a novelty that disappears <immediately>! <Nor is there anything> more common than ignorance, <which as often forbids discovering what is new as it allows to suppose new what is not>! Nothing, finally, is more generally limited than the individual consciousness, which almost always refuses to conceive of the changed totality <when however even what founds it reveals itself inverted>! <This is all the more so that if the individual consciousness does not grasp the historical movement as novelty, it is the historical movement which grasps individuals, as old stuff without consciousness>. <For each historical moment is immediately debate between novelty and totality where those who are silent and those who arrive late are exposed to all the scorns, to all the rigors>.
 
 
2) History is an activity

As history is the debate on <novelty>, the first novelty that history reveals is the novelty of the debate. In the times of Herodotus and Tacitus, the inquiry into events <had appeared as a> necessary basis for this debate. Among those who carried out this inquiry, <who were therefore called> historians, and those who <learned> its development, were those who conducted this universal debate. Their writings, <which constituted> the memory of past events and the laws of future events, were respected as the debate itself, <preceding or concluding the> action. Unfortunately, humanity, whether <informed or not> of the inquiries of the past, has never taken <it> into account, <when> action <exceeds> the word in the decisive moments of a dispute. Generally this contempt is /attributed to/ the passions <which so> furiously <raise the debate between men>. The contradiction between <the> lived emotion and <the described> and judged emotion excluded the Ancient historians from the debate whose reflection they <rendered>. <For already> the word is no longer the predicate of the debate. <For already> the spirit reigns over the consciousness and not the consciousness over the spirit. <For already> it <becomes visibly false to say> that history begins with writing.

In his 'Lectures on the philosophy of history', Hegel concedes a bizarre compromise: history would be made both by those who narrate it and by those who do it. History being the movement of the spirit, those who consciously transmit its determinations, historians, would contribute as much to history as the conquerors and founders who in a certain way furnish its substance. What is remarkable is not so much the embarrassment of having to justify the determining role of those who narrate history, but the observation, now so far from the ancients, that history, the spiritual debate of humanity, could be conducted even by those who do not compile it. The world of Hegel is now a world of dispute, where the word, even the one which Hegel uses, is recognized as a mere tool for the debate.

Today, the primary innovation of the debate, the consequences of which are nevertheless incalculable, confirms the movement that was indicated in Hegel’s time: the debate is practical and only practical. People no longer discuss effectively in words. The ancestral custom of sanctioning a dispute with a speech, declaring a war or establishing a peace treaty has vanished. Some use words as very specific weapons to paralyze and disorient; others, the majority, unable to use words without getting bogged down in them or stumbling over them, become extraneous. Even among outlaws and the illiterate, respect for the word is less. Thus, a new expression, new expressions, they already express themselves. Of course, here the innovation is not that history is practice and only practice and that the act of recounting it , commenting on it, analyzing it is not history–but rather a practice of collection, subordinated to other things as the general staff is subordinated to the five-star general–but that already in the times of Hegel, of Tacitus, of Herodotus it constituted the same thing. Making history is the best way of recounting it.

As opposed to what the practice of history reveals, the ravings of the historians of today: for them, only historians make history. History has become a subject. And that subject is scholastic. History is a social science, which means a certain number of salaried specialists who cut out bits from the past for a certain number of students. In the current conflict of humanity, those who are described as historians don’t even have the function of a general staff in the service of one of the two sides, but rather that of a weapon more or less comparable to that of the octopus: squirting ink in order to interfere with visibility. Here are a few of the opinions of one of the most admired of this faction of insects, Fernand Braudel: “For me, history is the sum of all possible history–a collection of techniques and points of view, of yesterdays, todays and tomorrows.” Everything that anyone defines as history can be added to history; history is a work of specialists, not the activity of all humanity; any collection of viewpoints is placed on its shoulders; one is even invited to give credit to the future, a thing certainly no more risky than giving credit to Braudel: “We are against the proud one-sided words of Treitschke: ‘People make history’. No, on the contrary, History makes people and forges their destiny.” In order to respond to the first half of this rhetorical inversion for students, if it is not people who make history, who does so? And in order to respond to the second, it only displeases me that, if it is true that history makes people, in passing it has unfortunately missed Braudel. Finally, between 1930 and 1950, what has changed in the intellectual Bordello to which history has been reduced in this case? “… The exceptional work of Ernest Labrousse, the newest contribution of the last twenty years.” Damned stupid things like the Barcelona Commune and the two-fold insurrection of Warsaw, only to cite these in an ill-favored period like Labrousse. It is not surprising that those who make history, who practice it, as the general activity of human beings, don’t have care in the least to reappropriate the title, which has become so repugnant, of historian! Thus, the enemies of history, who claim to congeal it in a scientific specialty, fulfill their function, of which they are no longer aware, in the current debate: separating history as activity, and also as whatever is possible, from the consciousness of its protagonists, even potential ones.
 
 
3) History is a current activity

After having spread the initial opinion that history is not an activity and is not within reach of everyone, the professional historian puts forth another opinion about it: history is the past. Even though this idea is not particularly deep-rooted because it is vague and general, it is nonetheless most wide-spread among the poor and contributes to strongly to drowning them in resignation. In fact, the historian, with his dusty erudition or his fragmented knowledge, her wanton fixations that stupefy without attracting and recount without understanding, and his recent exhibitionism that exults his disgusting old age, inserts herself between the poor and history as a temporal decay: he himself symbolizes the past.

It is important to talk a bit more here about the historian than she deserves, because, willingly or not, he has become the intellectual authority that guarantees the loss of historical awareness. Today the historian is removed from contemporary history proportionally to his separation from the terrain of the current debate. In fact, it is understood that some historians deal with “current topics”, but then it is as if they were among subjects belonging to a past that they have cooled down. This is how they contribute to cooling down the present. These sterile associations with the present act, in accordance with a common place, as the rather rare exceptions that prove the rule: history is the past.

Working on the past, historians never try to use it to transform the present. Rather history, being exclusively the past, confirms the present. Since the primary outcome of history being exclusively the past is that it is not present, it is excluded from the present. After having informed us through their activity that history is not an activity, historians inform us through their backwardness that history is backwardness. This outcome is reinforced by an unexpressed fact: clearly every poor person, including every historian, are quite aware that there is history today, quite apart from the profession; but that is theory! In her practice, the poor person, including the historian, daily verifies the opposite and affirms it: there is no longer history. Without being able to express it, this poor person has the vague feeling of being before and beyond history at the same time, in the infinite. Having given up changing the world, they believe that the world does not change and never will change.

Thus it is quite difficult for them to identify with past protagonists of history. Depending on their parish, historians impose one or another of the models that has the effect of excusing the poor in the project-less gloom of submission. Some show them famous personages in their banality and misery so that our spectators convince themselves that the protagonists of history are poor like them, a thing that flatters them. Others show these personages as so rich as to have nothing to do. Still others proclaim that from the most distant past, abstract concepts have been making the world go round. Whatever people do, it is useless to devote oneself to doing it; or maybe perhaps the poor were already making history in their daily life and work, in their “sexuality” and their “culture” without knowing it. Therefore, it is useless to change. In each case, there is nothing stirring, nothing great, nothing beautiful; nothing to grasp, not even in hand. The past is nothing but an imperfect time in relation to the present. Consequently, it is better to exist today than in history. In the past, dealt with as it is, the modern poor, dealt with as they are, only find having an interest in separating today from history.

In '1984', Orwell vehemently criticizes the permanent rewriting of the past. This Stalinist practice is opposed with faith in the current dominant ideology, the principle of an objective history, a past for which it would be possible to some extent to fix the terms in a definitive manner. However, the past is not merely recalled, but rather discovered and consequently modified in light of the present. The conflict over humanity continually changes reasons, speech, battlefields, weapons, protagonists and perspectives, or rather methods and tools for observing as well as expressing the past, all necessarily subjective. What distinguishes this rewriting of the past from the sort criticized in '1984' is that the latter is police work. It destroys and excludes what came before it, which Orwell denounces precisely as the excess of falsehood, as an annihilation of history; whereas the rewriting of past history necessary to the side that makes history, is the constant confrontation of all the contradictions of its operations, of the past with the present, of awareness with ignorance, of the present day with its overcoming.

Whether it is a reaction to the transformation of history in the past, or the will to bring back paradise on earth, after Marx the most radical theory maintains the idea that we are still in prehistory. History would be the future, only the future. Let’s put an end to prehistory here and now. Prehistory is an invention of historians for demonstrating the qualitative difference from a time when there were no historians, altered by Marx to demonstrate the difference between realized communist society and our own. In both cases, prehistory is the period before the controversy of humanity over humanity. Since our time reveals that writing is not the indispensable condition of this controversy, there is nothing to show that there ever was a period without controversy over humanity; whereas everything leaves us to suppose that the moment of the rule of this debate will be its final silence. Which is why the imperfect and unclear controversy that is taking place here and now is really the whole of history. Transposing it into the future propagates the same conception as confining it to the past: faith in an eternal time. In the first case, there is no longer history, the present is eternal; in the second case, there is not yet history, the future is eternal and that is where humanity is realized. For my part, I am no believer. History has an end, as does humanity, and there will never be an eternity.
 
 
4) History is a game

History is the shortest moment one can imagine, right now. And history is all the measurable time of humanity. This impressive expanse, which seems infinitely great, only exists in this moment that seems infinitely small. From these two contradictory dimensions, history draws its seriousness and the inexhaustible richness of the world, an outburst of laughter in the midst of a succession of miseries.

The end of history, the realization of humanity, is the goal of history. The realization of individual life is not different from the realization of history, which is why no individual life is yet realized. Only the need for this simultaneous realization of the individual and of the genus contains the definitive satisfaction called happiness. But happiness is at most an unverified idea, an undetermined goal. Yet it is this goal to make all greatness identical to life that attracts human beings like a <magnet> that, for the moment, is <beyond> their life. Their end is the only authentic need that makes them live. It is a matter of a need that is precisely the opposite of need. In every way, the realization of history is at the same time the necessity of the individual and of humanity. It is the need that contains and establishes all others. Glory is the imprint with which history marks anyone who appropriates it for himself. In our time, the lack of esteem for glory, the very little glory, measure the immensity of the resignation of humanity toward realizing itself.

Those who have ambitions of glory, who can and will make history, know that history is a game. For the others, who are their pawns, history is a succession of catastrophes: history is the controversy for which they are the gags, the dispute for which they are the plugs, the war for which they are the corpses, the embrace for which they are the prohibition. The players that recognize this extreme game that goes beyond their life know that they must actually go beyond themselves; and this may not be enough. Far from discouraging them, this immeasurable necessity attracts them. I will not enumerate the qualities that are necessary in order to win, because everything is useful. I only want to <show that the goal> is victory: <let history be short!>

The enemies of history <say: let history be long; and even: let history stop!> This absolute game, thus, is the game for the <mastery> of the totality, which belongs to the whole humanity, but also the conflict of the divided humanity. In fact, what makes this game absolute is that it has no rules other than those established by the participants and so always completely ephemeral. The sacred is a rule of the profane game; the infinite is the labyrinth of illusion in history. The absolute is itself only a rule implied in establishing explicit rules.

Finally, history is to life what the quotidian is to survival, the measure if its time. The game is the general activity of the human being, where intelligence is the unity of heart and mind. In his need to practice the game, history, the human being encounters necessity as misery, as accident, as the alienation of his intelligence. Our epoch completes the world showing work opposed to the game, necessity opposed to life, quotidian opposed to richness. Richness is never necessary. Humanity can survive without history. The perplexities of the heart and spirit can go until the oblivion of the heart and spirit, until resignation. Love and genius, unexamined, are diminished in the proliferation of their surrogates of the same name. In the game, there are no lessons to draw out any more than there are respectable laws. Practical <wealth>, history, has only one <requirement>, limit and principle, the will of humans, <which is their taste for play, to end>.
 
 
5) Definitively

History is the game of the entire and divided humanity, here and now. It has as its goal the mastery and end of humanity and time.

(Adreba Solneman, 1991)

12-08-2023

Re : 1991 – Definition of History

this translation of the first part of On History seems to be done from an Italian translation that does not seem so bad, but this mediation from the French reveals tragic; that is why I started to point some problems

  

Re : 1991 – Definition of History

end of game for translators in the ongoing game because

A) Definition of History is just the first chapter, then comes

B) From History to Quotidian

    1) The revolt of the poor puts alienation into history

    2) Alienation triumphs into quotidianism

C) The Ongoing Game

    1) Of the theater of operations

    2) Of the battlefield
   
   

B) De l'histoire au quotidien

    1) La révolte des pauvres met l'aliénation dans l'histoire

    2) L'aliénation triomphe dans le quotidianisme
   
   
C) La partie en cours

    1) Du théâtre des opérations

    2) Du terrain de la bataille

 

(De l'histoire, 1991)