"Presence" and Myth

Author(s): F. R. Ankersmit
Source: History and Theory , Oct., 2006, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Oct., 2006), pp. 328-336
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University

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History and Theory 45 (October 2006), 328-336 ? Wesleyan University 2006 ISSN: 0018-2656

FORUM:
ON PRESENCE

3.

"PRESENCE" AND MYTH

F. R. ANKERSMIT

ABSTRACT

There are no dictionary meanings or authoritative discussions of "presence" that

significance of this word in a way that ought to be accepted by anybody using it.
are in the welcome possession of great freedom to maneuver when using the t
fact, the only feasible requirement for its use is that it should maximally contribut
understanding of the humanities. When trying to satisfy this requirement I shall
"presence" to representation. Then I focus on a variant of representation in which t
is allowed to travel to the present as a kind of "stowaway" (Runia), so that the past
ally "present" in historical representation. I appeal to Runia's notion of so-called "p
processes" for an analysis of this variant of historical representation.

I. INTRODUCTION

Representation literally means "making something present again." Let me be

with a comment on the word "again." Making something present "again" sugg
the absence of what is made present by representation. Similarly, one can o
show something again if it is not on display right now. So if we add this to o
definition, "representation" then means "to make present again something tha
absent right now." It follows from this that the notions of "representation" an
"presence" are closely and indissolubly linked: the notion of "presence" is pa
of the meaning of the word "representation." All of this is in agreement with
we actually use the word "representation." For think of such paradigmatic uses
representation as pictorial representation or political representation. The port
of a person P makes P somehow present again, even though P himself or hers
may be on some other continent or may even have been dead for centuries;
the case of political representation, the people's representatives represent in o
parliaments or legislatures the people in its absence.
What was said just now about representation is even more dramatically tr
of a third paradigmatic us of "representation," historical representation. We h
historical writing in order to compensate for the absence of the past. So wher
in the cases of pictorial and political representation the represented has a logi
priority to its representation, in the case of historical representation the reverse
the case, namely, that the represented-that is, the past-depends for its (ont
logical status on its representation. No representation, no past. Of course, th
always is a past in the sense of certain events temporally preceding the pres

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 "PRESENCE" AND MYTH 329

and the future; but not always is this indubitab

these earlier events are categorically different fr
and, hence, are of a past in the real sense of th
evaporate into an eternal present-which is the
need for written or oral representations of the
is more of a cultural construction than is the sit
represented in our parliaments.
Now, much of contemporary philosophy of hist
notion of historical representation and on how a h
to represent part of the past. As was to be expect
taken the form of an epistemological analysis of
to the past. Philosophy of history was thus unders
philosophy of science in which one focused on
truth of scientific theories. However, in this sho
notion of historical representation can be interpre
Epistemological discussions of (historical) re
how a text may make the past present again in
or replacement for this absent past. This is why
Hans Georg Gadamer, Arthur Danto, and I have
substitution theory of representation in order to
may also ask whether the past can actually be car
representation, in much the same way that one ma
country into one's own. Under such circums
"present" in the present in the most literal sense o
then not merely a textual substitute for the abse
into the present as a kind of "stowaway," in Eel
How this can occur is the topic of this essay. In o
way of representing the past, of making it prese
argument that has recently been proposed by Ru
in October 2004 in this journal and that will und
history of historical theory (though I hasten to a
may well differ from Runia's use of it). Having
showing that my argument about "presence" m
notion of myth, and, more specifically, that my
contemporary professionalized historical writing

II. RUNIA ON "PARALLEL PROCESSES"

In the essay referred to a moment ago Runia introduces the notion of s

parallel processes. As Runia points out, this notion

ultimately derives from Freud, who theorized that what is not adequately remembe
be repeated in the therapeutic situation through unconscious enactment. In a groundbr
article, Harold Searles, elaborating on Freud's idea, stated that enactments are

1. Eelco Runia, "Spots of Time," History and Theory 45 (October 2006), 315.

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 330 F. R. ANKERSMIT

prerogatives of patients, but occur within the s

therapist and supervisor) as well.2

The idea is that the problems that send

only be "re-enacted" by the patients' in
may also come to shape the interaction
supervisors. The picture one gets is that
be passed on from one person to another
Only if scrutiny takes place (preferably,
can the chain be broken. In his essay Ru
of history, and as the very term "re-en
done so he compares parallel processes t
argues that parallel processes differ "in
enactments: they do not refer to in vit
interactions; second, they are not the int
unintended ripple of subconscious proce
As an example of how this may actually
Mitzman's claim that Michelet had "re-en
of the French Revolution:

In order to narrate the fall from grace of Danton, Michelet orchestrated his own falling from
grace. According to Mitzman, Michelet subconsciously brought himself to a position in
which he could be fired from the College de France, dismissed as the head of the Archives,
and sent into exile to Nantes-where he subsequently wrote the famous Danton pages of
the Histoire de la Revolution Frangaise.4

In this way the historian, Michelet, reproduced in his own life the structure of the
historical event he was studying.
The Michelet example certainly is quite suggestive, but we will need a more
substantial analysis in order to grant credibility to parallel processes in the practice
of history. This is precisely what Runia provides in his discussion of the tragedy
of the Srebrenica massacres (where 7,500 Muslims were slaughtered by the
Serbs under the nose of a Dutch UN batallion), and of the way Dutch politicians
reacted to their involvement in the greatest mass-murder in Europe since the Nazi
regime. The issue here is what happens when a nation that believes as a matter
of course in its moral supremacy (and could afford to do so thanks to its political
insignificance) suddenly has to recognize that it has heaped on itself all the dirt a
nation may gather upon its immersion in grand politics.
Surprisingly, although perhaps not so surprisingly, simply nothing happened
right at the beginning. The responsible politicians behaved as if the Srebrenica
drama had taken place in a wholly different galaxy without any ties to their
own cozy little world; they behaved as persons regressing to the innocence of
childhood in reaction to the irruption of an overwhelming reality. Mechanisms
of repression and dissociation worked at top speed. It was arguably also a

2. Eelco Runia, "'Forget about It': 'Parallel Processing' in the Srebrenica Report," History and
Theory 43 (October 2004), 299.
3. Ibid., 298-299.
4. Ibid., 309.

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 "PRESENCE" AND MYTH 331

mechanism of dissociation that made them take the drama out of an unbearable

present, to relegate it to history by trying to transform it into something of the

past demanding a historical rather than a political analysis. So instead of an
unsparing and relentless political investigation immediately after the drama, the
whole thing was handed over to the historians of the Netherlands Institute for War
Documentation (NIOD). Historians were now asked to do what politicians could
not and would not handle themselves.

But, as Runia observes, this would not be the end of it. For to a truly amazing
extent the historians of the NIOD copied the behavior of the politicians and
of the military authorities at Srebrenica. This is why the report written by the
NIOD historians may count as a striking example in historical writing of parallel
processing. I refer the reader to Runia's essay for an enumeration of all the
parallels that can be discerned in this case, restricting myself to the following.
The main aim of Dutchbat in Srebrenica was "to deter by presence"-yes, you
read me correctly: by "presence." The idea was that the sheer presence of a mere
two hundred lightly armed Dutch soldiers would be enough to keep the Muslims
in and the Serbs out. This proved to be the military miscalculation of the decade.
Now, as Runia most perceptively argues, "deterrence by presence" was also
the subconscious aim of the NIOD Report. For on the one hand this Report,
comprising with its enclosures more than 7,000 densely printed pages, registered
almost anything that could be registered with regard to the tragedy, but on the
other hand presented this vast ocean of data in such a way that it was virtually
impossible for the reader to make sense of it. The report consisted, essentially, of
a series of individual studies of individual aspects of the tragedy, and though in a
final chapter some conclusions were offered, this chapter had the character of being
just one more essay rather than of being a judicious synopsis of the results of these
7,000 pages of historical research. So here again the NIOD Report scrupulously
copied real life. For by its size and structure it transformed "Srebrenica" into a
topic unfit for public debate; it effectively barred any further discussion. So, this
time, at least, "deterrence by presence" was successful.5

III. REPRESENTATION AND "PRESENCE"

I remind the reader that I started this essay by discussing (historical) represent
So we might well ask ourselves what lessons about presence and representa
we may learn from Runia's analysis of the NIOD Report. Most salientl
cannot fail to observe that Runia's parallel processes are the very ne plus ult
representation. For if representation is always a "making present again," the
copying of past occurrences involved in parallel processing seems to provi
that representation might ever hope for! "Normally," in the case of painting
historical representation, a representation and the "real thing" represented
are by no means identical. But here we really get "the real thing" twice: the

5. Though the weapons of historical theory proved to be equal to the challenge. Think, fi
Runia's essay discussed here; then see "Het drama Srebrenica: Geschiedtheoretische Beschouw
over het NIOD-rapport," ed. E R. Ankersmit et al., special issue of Tijdschrift van Geschiede
(2003), 185-328.

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332 E R. ANKERSMIT

researchers' behavior really was the same

best that representation could ever give
As we may infer from the foregoin
conceptions of representation. On the on
of representation - associated with paint
Aristotle's notion of mimesis-where rep
categorically different. On the other ha
which Runia has made us aware where the
enactment of a previous action, or perh
human artifact. This is the kind of rep
for here the past is presented again, liter
But there is a complication here. Fo
reproduced in their Report that which th
this in their Report. So the two notion
entangled with each other. This raises t
between these two kinds of representati
strike us that the former kind relates
historical text, and so on-whereas the
actions: the NIOD repeated, in various w
when getting itself entangled in the Bo
This is a suggestion that can fruitfull
the reader of Meyer Schapiro's well-kno
argument was that the magic of pictur
we are entering an alternative reality
function of the picture frame is firmly
the painting from the three-dimension
picture frame co-determines how we in
hence, what the painting's meaning is.
But all this is different with the seco
we typically miss the picture frame w
much emphasized by Schapiro. That is to
there is a continuum between the repr
representation and its represented are par
was so strikingly the case with the NI
believed themselves to be the independ
had taken place in 1995 in Srebrenica,
repression and dissociation that had so
their political principals and whose act
what we see here truly is the very oppo
of firmly demarcating the domains of
both domains now flowed over into
become united into one after an earthqu
removed the soil hitherto separating the

6. Meyer Schapiro, "On Some Problems in the Se

Signs, Semiotica 1 (1969), 225. Derrida parasitiz
doing) in Jacques Derrida, La vdrit6 en peinture (

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 "PRESENCE" AND MYTH 333

A significant fact about this unity of the repr

that those involved in it are blind to it: the NI
unaware of their parallel processing and of how
to copy in their historical writing, to a truly am
of their principals. To put it provocatively, the
everything that could be historicized about the
umbilical cord that tied them to their principal
to be learned from the NIOD Report is that ther
a limit to what we succeed in historicizing, and
historicizing is what we are compelled to repeat
adage, whoever is not capable of learning the le
repeat it and to go on doing so until one is final

IV. "PRESENCE" AND MYTH

At this final stage of my analysis I want to relate presence to myth. Myt

brings us up to the limits of what can be historicized: for myth inform
history, the ever-changing historical reality in which we are living now
out of what did not change, of what was still part of nature, in the dram
of that term, and out of what did not have a history. Myth brings us bac
beginning of historical time, to that sublime moment when history ca
being. Myth is our link to nature, that is, to what transcends history and ti
differently, myth demarcates history from nature; it can, in this sense, be c
to Schapiro's picture frames separating the domain of represented reality
domain of representation. The mere fact that we can so easily translate S
claim to the issue of how myth and history are related already suggests t
must be far more omnipresent than we think in what we know as profes
historical writing-however unmythical it may seem at first sight. Accor
Schapiro the picture frame is a part of the painting that, even though it
mimetic, nonetheless contributes to the painting's meaning. In this
picture frame is both part and not part of the painting. We are ordinarily
the semantic role played by the picture frame; similarly, we tend to forg
the mythical framework enclosing historical representation. But in both
framework really is there.
Precisely this makes Runia's argument about the parallel processes in th
Report of so much interest. For Runia's story about the NIOD Report is
speak, an empirical confirmation of my claim about the presence of the
framework in history. In Runia's story, the picture frame that ordinarily se
the past and its representation gives way to a unification between the pa
and its representation; precisely this may, paradoxically, make us awar
existence of this framework. Paradoxically, for it is the absence of this fr
in the NIOD Report that makes us recognize that it is normally present.
normally we forget about the framework of myth because it is there--a
it is no less effective and no less successful in making us forget about it
picture frame. For it really needed the genius of Schapiro to make us reco
semantic contribution of the picture frame to the painting's meaning.

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 334 E R. ANKERSMIT

In the NIOD Report the framework

its representation fell away, and my
representation. Myth now no longer
no longer was merely a framework ar
into the representation itself It did
repeat the behavior of the responsibl
was inspired by a myth of what the D
like: decent, nice, cooperative, and w
whatever theological or racial denom
appalling indifference of Dutchbat to
quite different story. So--a myth it s
But this is, probably, too brutal a
Report have, I think, been no less ope
government and Dutchbat involved
else. These historians were not offer
Dutchbat in this major catastrophe.
the terrible mistakes made by the Du
authorities: after all, the cabinet presid
a week after the publication of the N
avoiding by this overhasty reaction a
No, what the NIOD researchers w
Srebrenica-they knew about this bet
know. The issue is, rather, that their
demonstrated that there was a limit
what the Report ultimately and unin
myth of the Dutch as a sensible, dec
nation. That was the action performe
from their principals in a "paralle
everything that could be historicized
except this myth.
In his Geburt der Tragodie Nietzsche
this relationship between myth and t

What else could modem culture's insatiabl

gether of other cultures and its all-consum
myth, the loss of a mythical home, of a
whether this feverish and so uncanny fid
greedy snapping and searching-for-foo
give anything to such a culture that cann
succeeds in transforming even the most
and Criticism"?

Or, as I have expressed it myself elsewhere, when the urge to historicize is high-
est, when we truly wish to get to the bottom of things by historicization, when

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 "PRESENCE" AND MYTH 335

Benjamin's storms from paradise7 have achieved

really get to the eye of the hurricane of historic
pre- or transhistorical myth.8
This, then, also demonstrates why myth is to
at the beginning, of all historical writing (it is p
about that!). Myth manifests itself when historiciz
its, and these limits dimly and surreptitiously b
myth then begins to leak into representation, a
and history emerges in which representation turn
again the parallel process, as expounded by Runi
just saw, the most sustained effort at historical
ans of the NIOD to sublimate objectivity into an
investigated. Indeed, in a certain sense this truly
here the past is impersonated in the way that an
or Louis XIV, hoping to do so in a way that ma
XIV and himself as indiscernible as Warhol's Brillo Box is from a real Brillo Box.

In the NIOD and similar cases the representation of action was effectively trans-
formed into the action of representation.
But precisely this transformation makes us aware of the blind spot of the NIOD
Report: its authors started to behave in the same way as their principals but with-
out being aware of it, and of what made them copy their principals. We had best
characterize this blind spot as the report's myth: for we have to do with myth
when the past determines our actions while, at the same time, we cannot objectify
what makes us do so. The blind spot is the myth lying at the origin of the subcon-
scious beliefs and convictions of a civilization, a nation, or an institution. It is the
"cold heart," as I once called it, of a civilization, nation, or institution.9
Finally, in all of this myth is closely related to presence (the term "myth" is
taken here not in the traditional sense of that word, but understood rather as what
a civilization, nation, or institution never succeeds in properly objectifying when
thinking about itself and its past). Because of this, myth incarnates the parallel
processes of civilizations, nations, and so forth, and is the place where actions
represented will continuously repeat themselves in the action of representation.
"Presence" is an appropriate term for referring to this stubborn persistence of the
past in which it remains a presence in the present. In this way myth can also give
meaning to "presence," that is to say, suggest where we may expect to find pres-
ence in a civilization's cultural repertoire.

7. "There is a painting by Klee entitled Angelus Novus. It depicts an angel looking as if it wanted
to move away from something on which its gaze is firmly fixed. Its eyes are distended, its mouth is
wide open, and it wings are spread out. This is what the Angel of History must look like. It has turned
its face to the past. Where we may see a chain of events, it perceives just one huge catastrophe, inces-
santly heaping ruins upon ruins and which are thrown down before its feet. It seems to wish to remain
on the spot, to awaken there the dead and to restore what was torn apart. But a storm is blowing from
paradise which has caught the Angel's wings and is so strong that it can no longer close these together.
This storm continuously pushes the Angel towards the future, to which the Angel has turned its back,
and while the pile of ruins in front of it grows into the skies." See W. Benjamin, Geschichtsphiloso-
phische Thesen, IX).
8. See my Sublime Historical Experience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 365, 368.
9. Ibid., 367, 368.

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 336 E R. ANKERSMIT

Note that when speaking about the me

meaning of the notion; I do not wish t
concrete historical or cultural phenom
ting hold of this meaning is just as im
ow; its meaning always successfully ev
wholly agree with H. U. Gumbrecht wh
meaning cannot convey."" Nevertheles
irresistible--and this is why we can eas
that it may remain with us indefinitely
may give to "presence."

V. CONCLUSION

"Presence" is a new word in theoretical reflection on the humanities. It does not

have a meaning that we can all be required to accept, if we wish to be admitted to

the arena of theoretical debate. Nobody can dictate to us what meaning we should
give to the term. It is a typically "democratic" term in the sense that anybody
may do with it what he or she likes. Decisive is only whether one's use of the
term is useful and fruitful, and whether it may offer new prospects in philosophy
and in reflection about the humanities. Looking at it from this perspective, I am
convinced that this really is the kind of notion we now need more than anything
else. For the lingualism of the philosophy of language, of hermeneutics, of decon-
structivism, of tropology, of semiotics, and so on has become by now an obstacle
to, rather than a promoter of, useful and fruitful insights. The mantras of this now
so oppressive and suffocating lingualism have become a serious threat to the in-
tellectual health of our discipline. The notion of "presence" may help us to enter
a new phase in theoretical reflection about the humanities and to address a set of
wholly new and fascinating questions.
This essay has been an attempt to substantiate this claim and to show that the
notion of "presence" may add to our understanding of all the intricacies of how
we represent the past, and more specifically, of how basic myth really is to how
we conceptualize the past. Myth should not be relegated to some primitive and
ancient phase in our interaction with the past: it is also to be found at the vanishing
point of all contemporary professionalized historical writing- a characterization,
I should not hesitate to add, that is meant as a compliment rather than as a criti-
cism of it.

Groningen University

10. Obviously, I am referring here to H. U. Gumbrecht, Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).

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