Atdtda29: A specifically Western prejudice, 827

[Paul Nightingale]

[827.1-2] Silence, however welcome, would have betrayed the unspoken Law of
the Café, which was that jabbering, regardless of topic, never pause.


And so to ...


[827.39-40] Danilo, having arranged to meet Cyprian at a café just below the
Castle, found a pale and sybaritic youth.


And then ...


[828.5-7] "I know it is difficult for an Englishman, but try for a moment to
imagine that, except in the most limited and trivial ways, history does not
take place north of the forty-fifth parallel.


At the outset, "jabbering" is judgemental, indicative of Cyprian's
alienation. His pov is rapidly replaced by Danilo's take on Cyprian himself,
which will itself be echoed in Cyprian's take on Max Klautsch on 831. The
alternative history that Danilo offers reminds us that Smith's Pynchon and
History takes as its starting point White's writing on history, in
particular Metahistory, which tracks the retreat from realism in
history-writing. Consider, from the Introduction:


... it is possible to view historical consciousness as a specifically
Western prejudice by which the presumed superiority of modern industrial
society can be retroactively substantiated.


Subsequently ...


Historiographical disputes on the level of "interpretation" are in reality
disputes over the "true" nature of the historian's enterprise. History
remains in the state of conceptual anarchy in which the natural sciences
existed during the sixteenth century, when there were as many different
conceptions of "the scientific enterprise" as there were metaphysical
positions. In the sixteenth century, the different conceptions of what
"science" ought to be ultimately reflected different conceptions of
"reality" and the different epistemologies generated by them. So, too,
disputes over what "history" ought to be reflect similarly varied
conceptions of what a proper historical explanation ought to consist of and
different conceptions, therefore, of the historian's task.


From: Hayden White, Metahistory, John Hopkins, 1973, 2, 13.


In AtD one might note the frequency with which the historical account, as
here, is rendered as discourse, ie spoken by a character within the
narrative.