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If we must distinguish between interpretation and representation, and if the historical text should be seen primarily as a representation of some part of the past, it follows that a closer analysis of the notion of (historical) representation is necessary for a sound understanding of what a historical text is and of how it relates to what it represents. This chapter focuses on the notion of (historical) representation itself. It shows that representation cannot be reduced to description. In fact, the inverse is true. Representation precedes language and hence description. It follows that when language is used representationally—as is the case in historical writing—this use cannot satisfactorily be accounted for in terms of the existing philosophy of language, which disregards the issue of the representational use of language. The consequence is that existing theories of (1) reference, (2) truth, and (3) meaning cannot automatically be assumed to be applicable to historical representation. While this may be the case, we can come to such a conclusion only after having carefully and impartially examined whether these notions can be applied to historical representation at all and, if so, what content they can be taken to have.

This chapter attempts to develop a theory of truth that does justice to all the facts about historical representation established in the previous chapters. It argues that we are justified in speaking of historical truth. Not only are a historical text's individual sentences typically true of the past but the same can be said of that text as a whole, though in that case we are dealing with a different kind of truth. A historical representation may reveal to us a truth that is inherent in the world itself (namely, as embodied in the representation's presented) and that we can become aware of only through the representation in question. The rationality of historical debate—as exemplified in the history of historical writing—makes abundantly clear that this kind of (historical) truth is anything but irrational or arbitrary. Truth as revelation must therefore be added to the inventory of instruments we rely upon for the cognitivist conquest of the world in which we live.

The terms “historical interpretation” and “historical representation” are often used interchangeably. The historical text can alternatively be described as an “interpretation” or as a “representation of the past.” Nevertheless, the two terms do not have quite the same meaning. Interpretation and representation have their own respective domains of preferred application. And this raises the question of where to locate historical writing in the space defined by the two axes of interpretation and representation. This chapter argues that we should distinguish between interpretation and representation and, more specifically, avoid looking at the historical text from the perspective of interpretation only. Representation takes priority over interpretation in the historical text: there can be interpretation only after there has first been a representation and therefore an either real or imaginary reality represented by the text.

This chapter focuses on representational meaning and on what can be said about it based on the relevant philosophical facts established with regard to representational truth and reference. It argues that if we wish to understand representation, meaning has to be our undefined primary term. Next, representational meaning must be situated at the point of intersection of representation and description since we now know how to move from representation to representationalist truth and reference and their Fregean counterparts. But this is a route that can be followed in one direction only; it is impossible to derive representational meaning from the semantic matrix proposed by Frege and still adopted, in one variant or other, in most of contemporary philosophy of language.

This chapter analyzes the notion of historical representation from the perspective of reference. It argues that in historical writing, reference is more problematic than we are inclined to think and that historical terms that appear to refer can be found not do so when we carefully analyze their semantic functions. Saying this calls to mind historical representations, which raises the question whether historical representations can be said to refer, and if so, why. In case they do not refer, we need to explain what alternative theory we should hold about the relation between representations and the world. The chapter argues that truth and reference are closely related in true description: if we know what the subject term in a sentence refers to, we can determine its truth. But nothing can be taken for granted when we move from true description to representation. This raises the question of what consequences the demise of reference in historical representation has for historical truth.

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about historical distance. This volume outlines an approach to historical representation which is an issue of mediation and distance and analyzes three distinct periods of changing historiographical practice which include circa 1500, circa 1800, and circa 1968. It suggests that an analysis of historical distance should help to sort out issues related to the periodic shifts in historiographical style and the comparisons between rival historical genres.

Chapter 2 addresses the question of global history in Senegal and suggests that we reframe its “problem-space.” If scholarship has often foregrounded the agencies of state, capital, and colony, the chapter suggests we interrogate their limits through the lens of landscape, with an eye for minor-key stories of resilience, dissidence, and complicity that slice across the plane of global events and reintroduce a sense of unpredictability in the making of Atlantic Africa. In effect, landscapes’ reluctance is not just material but also archival: landscapes do not articulate complete visions of the past. Instead, they articulate an ‘epistemology of fragments.’ As we track landscapes’ fragmentary expressions across various sources – and tack between patchy archives – we gain an appreciation of the incompleteness and messiness of Atlantic histories. In this sense, landscapes offer a promise of historical humility. While material ruins can at times make vanished pasts visible, equally often they point to the difficulties of historical understanding and raise provide few answers. In doing so, they caution us against the seductions of holistic reconstructions of history and alert us to the productivity of never quite getting the whole story.

This chapter argues that the ties between historical representation and historical experience are both strong and weak. They are strong since a collectivist or holistic sublime experience of the past lies at the root of all historical representation. Without that sublime historical experience neither historical writing nor the discipline of the writing of history could ever have come into being. But these ties are also weak in that the relationship between historical experience and historical representation will play only a very marginal role once the discipline of historical writing has come into being. The role of historical experience then remains restricted to those very rare occasions on which individual historians have an experience of the past. Most of its original aura of sublimity will then be lost, since the individual experience of the past will typically manifest itself in the more pedestrian domains of human existence—domains that for that very same reason were not yet recognized as proper subjects of historical investigation, though this may under certain circumstances add a new category of presenteds or aspects of the past to the already existing ones. The decisive point will then be whether the individual experience of the past in question proves to be communicable to other historians as well or, to put it more cogently, whether the historian who has had this experience will be able to find the language to do justice to his most personal experience of the past.

This chapter examines the sentimental mode in more popular forms of historical representation. It discusses the notion that an openly affective approach to the past is the sure mark of work written for a popular audience and suggest that one of the striking features of historical representation in the late decades of the twentieth century is the convergence of popular and academic histories on the ground of feeling. It also considers the interest of academic publishers in the so-called cross-over market of popular and academic histories.

The cultural epic genre is set in the “traditional,” precolonial past. The genre was cofounded by The Battle of Musanga, which conceives of Igbo history in the manner of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and Igodo, which is legendary and archetypal. The genre is ambivalent in its interpretation of the past, presenting it alternately as a source of cultural richness and righteous order, or as a nightmare of tyranny and dark spiritual forces requiring intervention by Christian missionaries. Epics normally center on an igwe (an Igbo king), though historically Igbo societies were seldom monarchies. The king is also an ambivalent figure, either a virtuous priest/king ensuring harmony or a tyrant. The genre was launched at the end of military rule and was originally preoccupied with political and spiritual issues, but romance became increasingly important. The genre of “royal films” with contemporary settings springs from epics about romances in royal families.

This chapter discusses the artistic transition made by Tai Jingnong from literature to calligraphy amid a mid-century crisis. A native of Anhui, Tai belonged to the May Fourth generation aspiring for cultural reform and national rejuvenation through literature. During the early years of Nationalist rule in Taiwan, he tried to find solace in figures such as Tao Qian and Ruan Jin, both witnesses to a tumultuous time in medieval China, the Wei-jin era. This chapter explains how Tai, by turning to the graphic “surface” rather than the textual depth of writing, came to a different understanding of artistic agency and historical representation. Where literature betrays its finitude, the performance of writing generates new configurations of history, nationhood, and “Chinese” identity. The chapter explores three issues: the dissemination of modern Chinese writing in visual terms, calligraphy and its geopolitical implications, and the poetics of “muted” Sinophone articulations.