@article{kellner_2021, title={AGAINST DECLARATIVITY}, ISSN={["1852-9488"]}, DOI={10.34024/prometeica.2021.22.11544}, abstractNote={Historical discourse is a period phenomenon shaped by the rhetorical and genre understanding of the moment in which it became formalized and professionalized - that is, the second half of the nineteenth century. In the figurative arts, realist painting and its rival, photography, was dominant, and the literary form this notion of consciousness took was the realist novel. Literary realism devices replaced romantic literature devices, just as those latter devices had succeeded, but never replaced the eighteenth-century devices. Historical discourse and the very notion of proper history followed realism devices, mostly the single-lens photographic perspective, one viewer’s viewpoint. From a discourse perspective, this approach took the form of declarative, statement-making. Also, it is not to say that the declarative sentence which gives this term its name was rejected as the preferred way of making assertions about the world - far from it. Although a few self-conscious stylists (Derrida, for instance) work hard to avoid it, the declarative sentence is almost inevitable. Their readers work even harder. But just as narrativity encompasses a realm that extends far beyond narratives, so that narratives can proliferate in an environment that has, in a crucial sense, rejected grand narratives, so declarative statements will exist without entailing statement-making. The declarative act became the defining mark of professional history and remained its principal mode, just as it remains the predominant mode of literature and any number of other discourses. Indeed, this essay is written in the declarative rhetorical mode. However, literary modernism, philosophy, and a host of scientific developments have left this way of representing the world behind. Moreover, the same technological and intellectual changes that caused the modernist vision have, at the same time, created a different world to be depicted, a different sort of event to be represented historically. Not only the form but also the content have changed. The ethical and practical frustrations of representing such events have led to a theoretical challenge to the declarative form of knowing and to a challenge for the genre distinctions that constitute guild history: the idea of the past produced by academically professionalized individuals. For example, the difference between history and fiction - or rather, their respective relationship to truth and reality - has blurred. In contrast, history has adopted some of the modernist literature devices and the present’s practical demands.}, number={22}, journal={PROMETEICA-REVISTA DE FILOSOFIA Y CIENCIAS}, author={Kellner, Hans}, year={2021}, pages={103–117} }
 @article{kellner_2021, title={Tolstoy's War and Peace: Philosophy of History Defamiliarized}, volume={15}, ISSN={["1872-2636"]}, DOI={10.1163/18722636-12341461}, abstractNote={
Tolstoy’s War and Peace asserts an opposition to the discourse of philosophy of history and of any theorizing of human life because of the complexity of events, the possibilities not realized, and the insignificance of our moment in time and space. Without that sort of consideration of the possibility that human events cannot be theorized, explained, correctly narrated, or anticipated, we may miss our chance to cast off the burden of philosophy of history (in the interest of life), or at least to perceive that it is a burden.}, number={3}, journal={JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY}, author={Kellner, Hans}, year={2021}, month={Nov}, pages={272–286} }
 @article{kellner_2019, title={DURABLE GOODS}, volume={57}, ISSN={["1468-2303"]}, DOI={10.1111/hith.12094}, abstractNote={ABSTRACT In his thoughtful discussion of what makes some historical texts durable, lasting through time, Jaume Aurell arrives at the conclusion that these works show a balance between antiquarianism and presentism, and that this balance gives them a certain longevity of repute. Because, however, durability is a characteristic of the work, it seems to me problematic. Survival, rather than durability, appears to be the rubric we are discussing. It is not a characteristic of the work, any more than of a historical individual who survives a critical event like the French Revolution or the Holocaust. We identify survivors only retrospectively. A myriad of contingencies—time and chance—will obtain for any text to survive. Historiographical competition is ferocious, and worthy of study. Like Tolstoy's unhappy families, each historical text that fails to survive will have its own history. Why Gibbon and not Volney? We can adduce reasons, of course, but they are looks backward; in the late eighteenth century, no predictions were certain. Both Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit have, each in his own way, suggested the characteristics of the best histories. I believe they are mistaken, if best is to be taken to mean: most likely to survive. This is a characteristic of the ongoing reception of the work. As in an ongoing conversation, the historical work may advance the discourse, or contradict it, or change the subject. Whether it will have influence after the speaker has departed is up to those who remain and are added to the group. This rhetorical survival in the conversation is what is in question here. As such, it is profoundly historical, and not “beyond time.”}, journal={HISTORY AND THEORY}, author={Kellner, Hans}, year={2019}, month={Jan}, pages={S9–S14} }
 @article{kellner_2018, title={A Dutchman Views the World - Ankersmit as a Reader}, volume={12}, ISSN={["1872-2636"]}, DOI={10.1163/18722636-12341403}, abstractNote={Throughout his extensive work, Frank Ankersmit presents a mode of reading that informs his philosophy of history. He has commented in passing that the visuality of his approach is a Dutch trait, and that historical works succeed when they serve as a “belvedere,” offering a panoramic view. His discussions of Erich Auerbach and Hayden White reveal his own reading protocols, which differ from those of the great readers Auerbach and White, however, in that Ankersmit does not read his texts “proximally,” as linguistic artefacts. Instead, he favors a “distal” stance from his texts in order to see the work as a whole, as a pictorial narratio. In this way, the reader-viewer may experience an aesthetic mood like the one Ankersmit feels, for example, when confronted by a Guardi painting. Further, in his discussion of Gibbon and Ovid, he shows that the myth of Narcissus, in which admiration of an image is replaced by a mere echo, reveals a danger of historical representation and the need for a metamorphic picture, blurring the contours. If we consider Ankersmit as a reader with a pictorial sense, whether “Dutch” or not, his position as a philosopher of experience will come into better focus.}, number={3}, journal={JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY}, author={Kellner, Hans}, year={2018}, month={Nov}, pages={371–390} }
 @misc{kellner_2017, title={The Practical Turn}, volume={11}, ISSN={["1872-2636"]}, DOI={10.1163/18722636-12341353}, abstractNote={In The Practical Past Hayden White argues that both history and fiction should be considered “literary writing,” which he defines as writing in which the form (narrative) becomes part of the content. Both history and realistic fiction wish to be faithful to their referents, but are prevented by their need to employ cultural narrative systems. The “practical past,” distinguished from the historical past by Michael Oakeshott, proves to be the arena in which we choose our pasts, define events, and experience trauma.}, number={2}, journal={JOURNAL OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY}, author={Kellner, Hans}, year={2017}, pages={221–228} }
 @article{kellner_2016, title={Narrativity and dialectics revisited}, volume={20}, ISSN={1364-2529 1470-1154}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2016.1178483}, DOI={10.1080/13642529.2016.1178483}, abstractNote={Abstract The future of historical theory would benefit from a careful revisitation of the theoretical proposals of the last 50 years, with the goal of finding neglected notions which may prove of theoretical value. Hayden White’s unique version of dialectics is such a notion. Dialectics expresses an awareness of the role of language in the systematic comprehension of reality by following a sequence of apprehensions: thus, a ‘dialectical narrativity’. An analysis of an episode in Jules Michelet’s medieval history suggests that dialectical narrativity was immanent in his presentation of historical understanding.}, number={3}, journal={Rethinking History}, publisher={Informa UK Limited}, author={Kellner, Hans}, year={2016}, month={May}, pages={319–333} }
 @article{kellner_2014, title={Is History Ever Timely?}, volume={44}, ISSN={["1930-322X"]}, DOI={10.1080/02773945.2014.911560}, abstractNote={Timely history is chronological history, adopted by Herodotus to imitate human experience and the “arrow of time.” Since explanation is presumed to follow from this choice, anachronism becomes the cardinal historical sin because it is untimely. Untimely histories abound, however, in media where images prevail, such as painting, film, and video; in these modes of delivery, chronological fragmentation, juxtaposition, and parataxis force new ways of seeing the past. Written narrative would seem to be the exception that relies on timely presentation. A close look at historical texts reveals, however, that they are just as “untimely” as other modes of representation.}, number={3}, journal={RHETORIC SOCIETY QUARTERLY}, author={Kellner, Hans}, year={2014}, pages={234–242} }
 @misc{kellner_2006, title={Ankersmit's proposal: Let's keep in touch ('Sublime Historical Experience' by F. R. Ankersmit)}, volume={36}, number={1}, journal={Clio (Kenosha, Wis.)}, author={Kellner, H.}, year={2006}, pages={85–101} }
 @misc{kellner_2006, title={The  ethics of history}, volume={35}, number={2}, journal={Clio (Kenosha, Wis.)}, author={Kellner, H.}, year={2006}, pages={260–263} }
 @article{kellner_2003, title={However imperceptibly: From the historical to the sublime}, volume={118}, ISSN={["0030-8129"]}, DOI={10.1632/003081203X47859}, abstractNote={About thirty-five years ago, my professor in a course on seventeenth-century english social history began with the following. “You may have heard,” he said, “that the reading list for this course has not changed since I took it here in 1924.” Here he paused. “But I can assure you that it has changed”—he paused again, and added, sotto voce—“however imperceptibly.” These words have long seemed emblematic for me of the pride felt by much of the historical profession in the continuity of its essential practices. I do not mean, of course, that historians have not embraced new groups of people, adopted a much wider array of ideological stances, and above all invented a researchable historicity for many things that had never before seemed to have a history. All this innovation is splendid, and the finest products of academic history constitute a rich and admirable body of work. But in the essential practices, especially the practice of reading—the basic relation of reader with language and imagination—change is, shall we say, hardly perceptible. It seems that the charge that historians are professionally taughtnotto read is almost as true now as it was two decades ago when Dominick LaCapra made it (339). But if we are to learn about the historical imagination, histories need to be read and academic historians need to be reminded from time to time that what they do is as subject to the formative pressures of discourse as any other precinct of the world of words.}, number={3}, journal={PMLA-PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA}, author={Kellner, H}, year={2003}, month={May}, pages={591–596} }
 @misc{kellner_2003, title={Western historical thinking: An intercultural debate}, volume={32}, number={4}, journal={Clio (Kenosha, Wis.)}, author={Kellner, H.}, year={2003}, pages={478–481} }