Beyond Discourse Theory

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7435504
AutoresLyndal Roper (0000-0001-8375-0939, autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Volumen19
Número2
Páginas307-319
Fecha de publicación2010-03-25
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaWomen s History Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0961-2025 • E-ISSN: 1747-583X
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09612021003634141
OpenAlexW2116183920
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11

This article argues against the model of discourse analysis which currently dominates much historical writing. Starting from an archival fragment, the seventeenth‐century interrogation of a young man who attempted suicide, it explores how discourse theory can only take us so far in understanding subjectivity. The article then explores how discourse theory has influenced work on the history of witchcraft. Finally, it argues that discourse analysis is unsatisfactory because it cannot explain historical change, and because it lacks an account of psychology. Overemphasizing words, it does not help us understand embodiedness. Finally, it wrongly privileges the eighteenth century as the moment of change. Notes [1] I would like to thank Nick Stargardt, Rebekka Habermas, Ruth Harris, Hans Medick, Erik Midelfort and Barbara Taylor for their help in writing this paper. A version of this article appeared in German as 'Jenseits des linguistic turn' in Historische Anthropologie. Kultur, Gesellschaft, Alltag, 7 (1999), pp. 452–466. [2] For a penetrating critique of the work of Foucault and of some uses of his work made by historians, see Gareth Stedman Jones (1996) The Determinist Fix: some obstacles to the further development of the linguistic approach to history in the 1990s, History Workshop Journal, 42, pp. 19–36. As Stedman Jones points out, many Foucauldian uses of 'power' in fact rest upon the same problematic assumptions as did naïve structuralist Marxist historiography. However, Stedman Jones's solution, advocating a more rigorous use of discourse analysis which eschews reference to reality beyond discourse, does not seem to me to offer an agenda for historical research that will take the subject forward; nor does it deal with the limitations inherent in the application of discourse theories. [3] See my (2004) Witch Craze. Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (London: Yale University Press). [4] See, for example, the work of Diane Purkiss (1996) The Witch in History: early modern and twentieth‐century representations (London: Routledge); or of Deborah Willis (1995) Malevolent Nurture: witch‐hunting and maternal power in early modern England (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press). [5] The case is recorded in Staatsarchiv Basel Stadt, Criminalia 4, Zauberei und abergläubische Künste, 15, Stoffel Janz, Jan. 24–Feb. 15, 1667. [6] 'Doch seye nichts vnehrlichs Zwischen Jhnen vorgegangen, Jnmassen Er dess orths ein gutes vnnd rüehiges gewüssen habe', Staatsarchiv Basel Stadt, Criminalia 4, Zauberei und abergläubische Künste, 15, Stoffel Janz, Jan. 24–Feb. 15, 1667, first interrogation. [7] He subsequently (29 January) gave an apparently similar account of the events, which included reported dialogue with the Devil; but is missing the exchange about the 'bein' (leg). [8] 'der böse feind sol ihn holen vnd hinführen, wan er lüst zu ihr habe'. [9] 'alss dass er dem fluchen vnd der trunkenheit ergeben, mit dem ehestand alss einer heiligen ordnung Gottes geschimpfet, den offentlichen Gottesdienst wenig oder doch ohne andacht vnd auffmerckhen besucht, dz liebe gebett vnderlassen'. [10] 'ob Er auss verwirrung des haupts vielleicht mehr fabulirte'. [11] See Roper, Witch Craze, pp. 69–81. [12] These ideas are developed in the work of Melanie Klein (1975) Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963 (London: The Hogarth Press); or (1975) The Psycho‐analysis of Children, tr. Alix Strachey, rev. Alix Strachey & H. A. Thorney (London: The Hogarth Press) (1st edn 1932); or (1975) Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works 1921–45 (London: The Hogarth Press; new edn, London: Virago, 1988). [13] Carlo Ginzburg (1980) The Cheese and the Worms: the cosmos of a sixteenth‐century miller, tr. John Tedeschi & Anne Tedeschi (London: Routledge); Mary Perry (1990) Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press), pp. 127–135; Judith Brown (1986) Immodest Acts: the life of a lesbian nun in Renaissance Italy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press). [14] Keith Thomas (1971) Religion and the Decline of Magic: studies in popular beliefs in sixteenth and seventeenth‐century England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson); Alan Macfarlane (1970) Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: a regional and comparative study (London: Routledge). [15] Nicolas Remy (1930) Demonolatry, trans. E. A. Ashwin & Rev. M. Summers (London: J. Rodker): Rémy describes it as a 'not unamusing story' and records how 'my own doubt of its truth was afterwards removed by he very man of whom the story is told'. [16] Michel de Montaigne (1987, 1991) On the Lame, in trans. Michael Screech, The Complete Essays (London: Penguin), p. 1166; see Natalie Zemon Davis (1983) The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 118–122. [17] Karl Figlio (1988) Oral History and the Unconscious, History Workshop Journal, 26, pp. 120–132. [18] Judith Butler (1993) Bodies that Matter: on the discursive limits of 'sex' (London: Routledge), developing the arguments of Gender Trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity (London: Routledge, 1990). [19] Butler, Bodies that Matter, pp. 68–69. [20] See Erik Midelfort (2005) Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Jospeh Gassner and the demons of eighteenth‐century Germany (New Haven and London: Yale University Press); David Lederer (2006) Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe: a Bavarian beacon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); Roper, Witch Craze