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March 02, 2005
chapter 9 summary
White, Hayden. “The Tropics of History: The Deep Structure of the New Science.”
Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore, MD: The John
Hopkins University Press, 1978.
White looks at Vico's assertions that structures that occur in natural sciences cannot be used to make sense of social and cultural phenomena. At the same time, Vico's principle posits that men only have the ability to know and understand those things that are un-natural and man-made (197). In this sense, men can never truly comprehend those things occurring in nature because these objects are of a divine order. While scientists claim to some sort of universal truth that can be proven through proofs and theorems, “they can never legitimately aspire to complete knowledge…” (198).
White illuminates Vico’s predilection for binary constructions and temporality. In his theories on language, culture, and consciousness, Vico divides the world into primitive man and modern man; Hebrew-Christian culture and pagan cultures. For Vico, these two groups are not to be compared and contrasted. Instead, the modern man is the evolution from the primitive man. Pagan cultures and civilizations, if they are on the “right” trajectory, become Hebrew-Christian cultures. Vico’s Christian bias is apparent in the ways in which he formulates his theories to privilege Christian thought and doctrine. Consequently, the Hebrew-Christian consciousness becomes apex in his articulations of how consciousness evolves.
In structures of language, Vico departs from White’s use of the tropes. White does not place the four tropes—metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony—in an order. Instead, White uses them as tools to understand the relationship between literature and historical writing. For Vico, there seems to be a forward movement—a progression from metaphorical language (metonymy and synecdoche) to deceitful language (irony). In other words, metaphor becomes a category that includes metonymy and synecdoche because they are more representational. Primitive man was unable to reach irony in his language practices because his main concern was to move from the concrete to the abstract. White’s example of man naming “thunder” and associating the sound with “sensory topics” demonstrates how primitive man attempted to make the unfamiliar familiar. Vico considers this naming process as an indication of the beginning of organized human knowledge, a cornerstone to human culture (204). The ability to use language ironically belonged to modern man because he possesses the capability of being deceitful. Essentially, irony arrives at a later stage of consciousness. Modern man’s awareness that all language is metaphorical in the sense that it is only ever a representation of the world and can never truly “be” the world allows him to manipulate language.
Posted by emnorris at March 2, 2005 12:20 PM