Paper presented at the International Conference on the History and Theory of Historical Studies:

Historical Studies: Disciplines and Discourses. CEU, Budapest, October 21-24, 2004.
(revised version published in: Ewa Domaska, Historie niekonwencjonalne. Refleksja o przeszlosci
w nowej humanistyce [Unconventional Histories. Reflections on the Past in the New Humanities].
Pozna: Wydawnictwo Poznaskie, 2006.)

Sincerity and the Discourse of the Past

Ewa Domanska

My interest in the issue of sincerity arose while analyzing the

relationship between academic history and the co-called unconventional
history. These topics have been recently discussed in the theme issue of
History and Theory entitled Unconventional History (2002) and in the
issue of Rethinking History devoted to the Graphic Novel (2002).1 In the
present paper, while referring to texts included in the theme issue of
History and Theory, I try to define the concepts of academic history and
unconventional history, present their characteristic features, indicate
the status and location of unconventional history in contemporary
historiography and finally discuss the notion of sincerity which I consider
to be a promising category for analyzing a certain way of thinking about
the past.

1. Academic history and unconventional history definitions

I will begin by noting that, thanks to the theme issue of History and
Theory, theorists of history might want to rethink the concept of
convention since, for Brian Fay - the editor of this volume, convention
is the key concept for thinking about the unconventional. For the term
unconventional is always construed as the negative (the contradictory) or
the opposite (the contrary) of what is conventional, i.e., based on the
principles of what is considered proper in a given social context. For
Fay conventional history means simply academic history which he
defines as the typical sort of discursive history produced by professional
academic historians.2 When following the History and Theory approach
- we posit the conceptual pair conventional-unconventional, in which
unconventional history is considered to be definable by negation
and/or by opposition to conventional history, then the term
unconventional is endowed with a negative quality a priori and

1 Unconventional History. Theme issue. History and Theory, vol. 41, December 2002;
History and the Graphic Novel. Rethinking History, vol. 6, no 3, 2002.
2 Brian Fay, Unconventional History, p. 1.
2 Ewa Domanska
unconventional history is defined as something abnormal, improper,
or deviant from what is generally accepted.
In the special volume of History and Theory we will not find a definition
of unconventional history. However, it would be difficult not to
consider it as a kind of deviation in comparison to conventional ways of
writing about the past. Using a simple negation one might say that
unconventional history is the untypical sort of non-discursive non-
history produced by unprofessional non-academic non-historians. It
sounds quite similar to what Michel Foucault called counter-history.3
For the purpose of this paper I will define unconventional history as
follows: unconventional history is a specific way of representing of the
past; it is a cross-disciplinary trend in the contemporary humanities (I
would not restrict it to historiography) practiced by representatives of
various disciplines (archaeologists, anthropologists, scholars from
cultural studies, art historians, artists, architects, writers, etc.), who
operate in the framework of the so-called new humanities (postcolonial
studies, gender studies, disabled studies, animal studies, etc.).
Unconventional history is a discourse of intervention, contestation and
protest, critical of the dominant discourse of academic history. It is a type
of cultural criticism and it aims to bring back into the story about the past
to all sorts of others that have been expelled from History.

2. Characteristic features of academic and unconventional

history

Academic history, like unconventional history, gains and retains

the status of a justified trend in the context of widely accepted rules and
procedures for doing historical research and writing. These rules
following Karl Popper we might also called conventions.4 They are
the results of certain agreements about proper practices arrived by
groups of scholars licensed to study the past historically. [These groups
agree about the principles the past should be studied, explained and
represented.] Thus, a simple listing of these rules would give us a way of
identifying unconventional historiographical principles as well.
Among the principal methodological rules of academic history we
might list: first of all, the search for truth as a principle of research,
agreement about what constitutes basic statements (basic facts), an
aspiration to something like scientific objectivity, the search for causal
explanation, and commitment to the linearity time. I might add, that the
dominant medium for the representation of the past is a written text in
the realistic style characteristic to the XIXth century realistic novel.
Whereas in the case of academic history rules or conventions refer to

3 Michel Foucault, Seminar: 28 January 1976, in his, Society Must Be Defended. Lectures at
the College de France, 1975-1976, transl. by David Macey. New York: Picador, 2003.
4 Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London and New York: Routledge [2003]
 Sincerity and the Discourse of the Past 3

what is traditionally understood as a positivist scientificity, in the case of

unconventional history, the character of these rules undergoes a deep
transformation , for example, conventions becoming values and
subjectivity becoming valorised over objectivity. [So, for example: in
academic history we have a methodological rule of scientific objectivity,
in unconventional history subjectivity becomes a value.]
Following thinking in terms of negation and opposition (conventional-
unconventional) by negating methodological rules that govern academic
history, we might achieve characteristics of unconventional history. So, it
is history that treats the principle of truth with suspicion (trying to follow
its non-classical understanding metaphorical truth, pragmatic
understanding of truth, etc.), advocates subjectivity, in narrative breaks
causal relations, experiment with various ways of representation of the
past and uses various media among others written texts stand as not
privileged one. One of the characteristics of the unconventional history is
that its practitioners tend to be theoretically oriented and often combine
high professional research ability with extensive knowledge of theory
and methodology of history. As I mentioned above, referring to Foucault,
unconventional history is a type of insurrectionist discourse that seems
to follow Lenins phrase: there is no revolution without theory. Here,
theory is a tool of criticism (a critique of various forms of dominant
power) and a weapon of (mainly) leftist intellectuals. That is perhaps
why, attacks on unconventional history are usually connected with an
attack on theory in general especially among conservatively oriented
scholars. This is because theory itself (and not any body of new facts)
represents a threat for any established discourse.5

3. The place of unconventional history in contemporary

historiography

Discussing the reasons why the editors of History and Theory decided to
focus on unconventional history, Brian Fay says that learning about
unconventional history is, at the very same time, learning about
conventional history, its strengths and limitations.6 This statement

5 See: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Introduction: Of the Writing of History. The Journal of the
Historical Society, vol. 4, no 2, Spring 2004.
6 Brian Fay, Unconventional History, p. 1. Dont unconventional history practices of

historical representation, analysis, and assessment ... provide an opportunity to see the
weakness (as well as the strenhts!) of conventional historiography? asks Fay (ibidem, p.
6). Similarly, Hugo Frey and Benjamin Noys in the editorial note to theme issue of
Rethinking History on graphic novel write: what we mean by history in the graphic novel
is how the graphic novel is a site where history itself, or representation of history, are put
into play: interrogated, challenged and even undermined. ... [T]he particular hybrid from
of the graphic novel might offer a testing place to probe the limits of history and
historiography, whether that be traditional, modernist, or postmodernist. Hugo Frey
and Benjamin Noys, Editorial: History in the Graphic Novel, Rethinking History, vol. 6,
no 3, 2002, p. 258-9.
4 Ewa Domanska
makes it clear that unconventional history is regarded here as an
other of academic history. It is a typical strategy of building identity
by means of a mediated consciousness of the I, where the I is defined
in opposition to an other. The existence of unconventional history is
essential for academic history since the former is a point of reference in
building the latters identity, which usually happens through negation:
on the one hand there is history as science, and on the other hand there is
literature. It might be argued, in the Lacanian vein, that unconventional
history stores what academic history has repressed as non-scientific
and inadequate to the academic standards of doing historical research
and presenting its results. On the other hand, this other retains the
primordial features of the I and is actually an unconscious object of
desire embodying the longing to return to history as it had been before
it became a science in the nineteenth century. Thus, the other
demonstrates academic historys desire to become something different
from what it is now. To become different, academic history is becoming
more and more tolerant toward new forms of representing the past as
well as nonstandard objects of study and approaches, but at the same
time it tenaciously holds on to the source, which seems to make possible
the distinction between scientific and nonscientific history, the latter not
based on sources.
By formulating the question posed in the title of this paper as the place
of unconventional history in contemporary historiography, I have
already answered it. The place of unconventional history is in the realm
of contemporary historiography; not on its margin, but precisely within it.
This situation demonstrates the truly extraordinary power and adaptive,
capacity of history as a specific approach to the past, which consists in
absorbing and thus neutralizing elements which potentially threaten its
existence. Indeed, academic history is a cannibalistic discipline: it
survives by eating its others. This leads to the conclusion that a
differentiation between conventional and unconventional history is in a
way artificial, since conventions are historically changeable and trends
that one might link to unconventional history today, tomorrow could
belong to academic history (this is what happened to some graphic
histories like Maus by Art Spiegelman or to movies like JFK). However,
the fact remains that unconventional history is a rebellious trend
within conventional history and as long as it emerges from within
dominant discourse it might cause its change (what is considered as
avant-garde, experimental, unconventional becomes conventionalized
which means neutralized) but will not cause its death or end. This shows,
that we observe not revolution but evolution of our approach to the past
embodied in history.
One of the processes associated with this evolution refers to what
Deleuze and Guattari called deterritorialization of minor kinds of
knowledge, which are marginalized by the dominant knowledge
because of their alleged nonscientific character and cognitive naivet,
 Sincerity and the Discourse of the Past 5

prior to being moved close to the center. And here I approach the
problem of sincerity.

4. Sincerity and unconventional history

Among the differences between conventional and unconventional

history one element deserves a special attention. My hypothesis will be as
follows: what the principle of truth is for academic history, the value of
sincerity is for unconventional history. One might say that
unconventional scholars turn away from conventional subjects, methods
of research and ways of representation in order to say about the past
something that as they claim needs to be said but cannot be expressed
in any traditional, true, or simply factually accurate account of the
past. It cannot be expressed because this traditional account still follows a
positivistic mode of scientificity. And it is precisely this turn from a
scientific, objectivist conception of truth to the non-scientific, subjective
value of sincerity that might allow us to see the problem of
unconventional history in an interesting light.
In the so-called new humanities where many of unconventional
histories find a place, sincerity understood as a value, philosophical
category or methodological rule (however not directly expressed or
theoretically conceptualized) goes with the recent interest in experience,
emotions, senses, empathy, subjectivity, and memory. The kind of closer
look at the category of sincerity which I advocate here might be
considered akin to what Hilary Putnam called a re-infantilization of
philosophy understood as a reconsideration of subjects which, for
dominant knowledges, are regarded as banal and naive [as traditional
problems of philosophy of perception]. Richard Rorty claims that such
re-infantilization is necessary from time to time for refreshing
discussions and turning their focus in a different direction. 7 (This is
precisely the idea that governs Frank Ankersmits theory of immediate
historical experience which, for traditional epistemology, is an anomaly.)
Sincerity is one of these subaltern concepts that has not been an
object of interest for historical theory. This might be explained partly by
the fact that sincerity has been superficially connected with naivet,
infantilism, spontaneity and an idea of authenticity which is so alien to
the constructivism that dominates recent theory of history. Sincerity also
is not a scientific, or objective category and has no value from the
standpoint of academic (positivistic), historical discourse. However,

7 Cf.: Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope. New York: Penguin Books, 1999, p. 34 i
221; and his, Putnam, Pragmatism and Parmenides.
http://www.contemphil.net/articles/lectures/Rorty_Beijing_4.htm
Hilary Putnam, Dewey Lectures: Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: an Inquiry into the
Powers of the Human Mind. Journal of Philosophy, vol. XCI, nr 9, 1994.
6 Ewa Domanska
sincerity understood as a philosophical category has been recently
rediscovered by the English philosopher Bernard Williams as a necessary
element of truth-telling. In this paper I would adopt his notion of
sincerity which has it that: Sincerity consists in a disposition to make
sure that ones assertion expresses what one actually believes. 8 [We
might observe here an interesting move against those deconstructionists
(like Derrida and de Man) who held that we always because of the
connotative force of linguistic signs say something more, less or other
than we consciously mean to say.]
Sincerity has been variously defined and understood in various ways in
different cultures and times. In the context of this paper, however, I think
it is worth noting that the connection of sincerity to naivet and
infantilism is a modern idea and is connected with the emergence of a
distinctively modern, individual subjectivity. Lionel Trilling, author of a
classic book Sincerity and Authenticity, claims that there are two concepts
related to personal truthfulness: authenticity and sincerity. In the pre-
modern times sincerity (being truthful in ones relationship to others)
was a dominant concept, while in modern times, a sincere person was
conceived to be simple-minded and naive. At the same time, however,
the concept of authenticity (being true to ones self) became to play
crucial role in concepts of the mature and ethically responsible person.
With the development of the concept of the autonomous individual in the
XVIth century, sincerity was connected with idea of a unique and
authentic subjectivity and being sincere referred to playing certain roles
in modern society.9
In recent times, there has arisen some confusion over the relationship
between sincerity, authenticity and truthfulness in the two philosophical
trends that have dealt with this problem (existential philosophy Jean-
Paul Sartre - on the one hand and philosophy of language John Austin,
John Searl on the other). However, I am going to concentrate here on
two specific issues concerning the problem of sincerity in the context of
historical theory: 1) the relationship between a search for truth and the
value of sincerity in historical writing, and 2) sincerity in the context of
and standpoint epistemology.

a) truth and sincerity in unconventional historical writing

Sincerity could be a useful instrument of criticism of historical writing.

Sincerity is a necessary but not sufficient condition of truth; it helps to
create truth, however truth is not necessarily identical with sincerity. It
all depends how one construes the concept that stands as the contrary to

8 Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness. An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton and Oxford:
Princeton University Press, 2002, p. 96.
9 Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1972.
 Sincerity and the Discourse of the Past 7

the concept of truth: it might be falsity or it might be the lie. The principle
of sincerity might stand as a basis for making such a differentiation. On
the basis of available sources and the facts derived from the study of
them, a historian might sincerely believe that and account written on the
basis of the facts given in these sources is true (and even if later it were
shown to be false, he/she could not be accused of lying). However, if the
historian had been insincere in her/his presentation of the facts, her/his
account could be counted as a lie. Thus, the principle of sincerity might
help us to distinguish between error and lie. In such case sincerity is
understood as a condition of truthfulness statements. Let illustrate this
problem by am examination of an essay published in the theme issue of
History and Theory on Unconventional history.
Marjorie Beckers article Talking Back to Frida: Houses of Emotional
Mestizaje is, as the author declares, a historical meditation on the
silencing of three women, Frida Kahlo, Maria Enrquez, a Mexican
woman who was sexually assaulted in 1924, and me (56), that is, the
author herself. The essay aims to lend a voice to those who have hitherto
been historically silenced (57), and does it by means of a kind of
experimental writing which combines traditional historical discourse,
oral history, literature, and fictional autobiography. I write ... in an
unconventional way (57), the author admits. Becker describes her
technique as historical empathy, whose essence is to learn the context
deeply enough to allow for an entrance, to allow an outsider to enter the
minds, the hearts, and even the sensibilities of the others (69). Becker
writes that she is so empathetic, both personally and historically, because
she has experienced a lot of friendliness from other people, which has
made her more sensitive to human experience and has taught her
compassion (59). Her aim is to encourage readers to re-experience the
empathy I feel toward my characters, and the experiences of these
characters themselves (58) and to allow [the] readers and listeners [of
Beckers text] to experience what its writer, and perhaps its subjects
experienced (58). These declarations have to do with form and style,
rather than with the methods of research which do not differ from the
usual. The author does regular archival research, discovering hitherto
unexamined sources, and conducts interviews. The latter part of the
article, however, provides an example of what the author calls
innovative historical writing. Here Becker uses fictional dialogues
among the three women as well as interior dialogue to create the world
of their experience, which is difficult to summarize.
What I find engaging about this text is precisely its authors emotional
sincerity. Being true to ones self is a condition of being true to ones
readers. Baker is very explicit about her location; the reader knows who
is she, what is her background and the attitudes that inform her writing.
The author seems fully to reveal herself in the text, assuming that
honesty with the readers demands this. She describes her experiences,
which in her opinion influence her choice of research topics, her methods
8 Ewa Domanska
of research, and her style of presenting the results of the research. Thus,
the revelation of the authors private self in the text is not an attempt to
stimulate intellectual voyeurism but is offered in the service of
history. Adopting a personal first-person perspective the text seems to
be objective precisely because of its strong subjectivity. In Bakers article
sincerity becomes a methodological tool that plays a crucial role in
establishing the location of the author. And at this point I reach the
problem of the relation between sincerity and the so-called feminist
standpoint epistemology.

b) sincerity and feminist standpoint epistemology

Feminist standpoint epistemology is probably the most interesting

proposition developed within feminist epistemology that might be
acknowledged by non-feminist scholars. According to Sandra Harding,
one of the main representatives of feminist standpoint theory, a
standpoint is an objective position in social relations as articulated
through one or another theory of discourse.10 This objective position is
the point at which considerations of the authors race, class, gender,
culture, and time intersect. Feminist standpoint theory suggests that a
womens perspective on history is subjective, bodily, emotional, and is
not dominated by what Melanie Klein called epistemophilia, an
obsessive interest in discovering the truth about the world at any price.
In the epistemological phrase: s knows that p, the most important question
for standpoint theorists is who is s? (who is the subject of knowledge?)
and how does the social position of the subject affects the production of
knowledge? There is no dislocated and disinterested view from nowhere.
In the center of their account standpoint theorists set the relationship
between knowledge and politics and try to explain the effects of politics
on the production of knowledge. They also point out an epistemic
responsibility of knowing subjects to the community, not just to the
evidences and facts. There are also three bases of feminist inquiry that are
listed in the standpoint epistemologies: contextualization, interpersonal
communication and in-the-bodiness. However, I would not restrict this
view only to women but extend it to all socially marginalized groups
which like women have been more or less excluded from History
(capital H).
As I noted above, when noting the characteristics of the new
humanities and especially unconventional history, the problem of
locating or situating the subject and her/her characterizing his/her
specific standpoint are the most crucial aspects of this approach. Sandra

10Sandra Harding, Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies.

Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998, p. 150. Cf. also: Feminist
Epistemologies, edited by Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter. New York and London:
Routledge, 1993.
 Sincerity and the Discourse of the Past 9

Harding claims that ones standpoint is not a natural place - location has
to be constructed and standpoint has to be achieved. As thus conceived,
sincerity might be a condition for achieving such a standpoint and
identifying ones location. Thus, sincerity (again) becomes a necessary
condition for identity formation and an important instrument for
breaking traditional rules of thinking about public roles. It is not society
that requires one to be sincere (in order to fulfill specific public roles), it
is, rather, that a naive, emotional sincerity that allows one to create a
space of potentiality, a standpoint that would give one a specific
perspective on ones identitys formation. In a word, it is the ability to
construct your standpoint that allows you to theorize yourself which is a
necessary condition for the re-invention of ones self. Sincerity would be
an act of resistance, a site of struggle. It would be a place of necessary
violation of the past in order to achieve a desired self in the future.
Certainly this kind of project seems to be more of a poetic than a scientific
one (as science is traditionally understood) and it could be particularly
fruitful for the creation of all kinds of hybrids identities.
It becomes clear that I am already far away from my topic of sincerity
in the context of statements and narrative and close to political issues.
But it is exactly the cultural and political implications of the idea of
sincerity - analyzed in the context of unconventional history - that are, in
my view, the most interesting.
For Jean-Jacques Rousseau sincerity was a moral project that increases
personal freedom, offers a basis for social cohesion and helps to
overcome self love. An ability to confess the most shameful acts limits
ones pride. Thus, sincerity is connected to equality since there can be no
pretense to superiority while we declare that we are all weak and guilty
of shameful acts. Sincerity forms a basis for a social cohesion since it is a
route to pity and compassion.11 Sincerity also makes forgiveness possible.
And even if we are aware of the strong criticism of Rousseaus view
offered by Nietzsche (who wrote on the tyranny of sincerity, the
fundamental dishonesty of sincerity and treated pity as form of
domination), and Sartre (for whom sincerity is a false attitude toward
ones freedom and a way of self-deception), it is tempting to rethink
Rousseaus ideas of sincerity in the context of the slave-revolt in which
unconventional history plays an important role. Rousseaus idea of the
cohesive role of sincerity rethought in the new context of post-
postmodernism - could become of special interest for development of
liberal democracy. Sincerity makes possible solidarity. Sincerity is one of
communicative virtues that could help us to establish cross-cultural

11 Cf.: Fiona Miller, The Political Virtue of Hypocrisy: A Nietzschean Critique of

Reausseuan Sincerity (with a Rousseauan Rebuttal). Paper delivered at the 2002 Annual
Meeting of the American Political Science Association.
http://apsaproceedings.cup.org/Site/abstracts/001/001019MillerFion.htm
10 Ewa Domanska
dialogue.12 However, sincerity here cannot be based on the assumption
that one knows the truth and wants to communicate it to others; rather it
would mean that one is committed to certain values important for
conversation with others.
Returning to my example of unconventional history the article by
Marjorie Becker Talking Back to Frida, it becomes clear, I hope, why I
focus on the concept of sincerity as a basic category of understanding of
unconventional history. This text embodies all I have said about sincerity:
it follows assumptions of standpoint theory and strong objectivity; it tries
to establish a cross-cultural dialogue while speaking about the experience
of marginalized groups (women, mestizaje) and compassion; the subject
of knowledge reveals herself and openly declares her assumptions. It also
becomes clear that this is a rebellious text 1) methodologically since the
author experiments with various styles of writing and uses historical
empathy as a method, and 2) politically, since it tells a story of victims,
those who are oppressed and marginalized.13
Many questions are left without answers, for example: can we talk
about sincere history in the same way we talk about true history?
Can sincere history be objective in the same way academic history
intended to be and not only reflects the authors opinion?
I would end with a remark that in my view, sincerity should become
one of the epistemic virtues and should deserve a special attention from a
field that should be transplanted from the domain of philosophy to the
domain of historical theory, I mean virtue (historical) epistemology.14
Perhaps theory of history needs some change of focus, so lets try to think
for a while about intellectual virtues and vices instead of text, narrative,
tropes and lets try to define historical knowledge in terms of the virtues.

12 Speaking about cross-cultural dialogue, it is worthy to mention that sincerity plays a

crucial role in Confucianism. For Confucius sincerity is the way to Heaven and it is one
of the five things that constitutes perfect virtue hold faithfulness and sincerity as first
principle (cf.: Confucius, Analects, Doctrine of the Mean).
13 However, even in such rebellious texts, a strong attachment to historical sources and

their professionally conducted criticism is still present, what shows that positivism in
historical research is still present.
14 I refer here to so-called virtue epistemology - recent approaches to epistemology that

give epistemic virtues a fundamental role. Cf.: Lorraine Code, Epistemic Responsibility.
Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987; Michael DePaul and Linda
Zagzebski, Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford UP,
2003; Abrol Fairweather, and Linda Zagzebski, Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic
Virtue and Responsibility. New York: Oxford UP, 2001; Jonathan Kvanvig, The Intellectual
Virtues and the Life of the Mind. Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992.
 Sincerity and the Discourse of the Past 11

Ewa Domanska
Department of History
Adam Mickiewicz University
ul. Sw. Marcin 78
61-809 Poznan, Poland
email: ewa.domanska@amu.edu.pl
http://ewadomanska.com/

CONVENTIONAL HISTORY UNCONVENTIONAL HISTORY

(ACADEMIC HISTORY)
history counter-history

Ranke Foucault

epistemology ethics, aesthetics

conventions values

explanation/understanding representation

obiectjvism subjectivism

cause-and-effect thinking break of cause-and-effect thinking;

metaphorical thinking

truth sincerity

linear time fissures, gaps, fragments

fetish of genesis critique of origins

written text written text, cartoons (graphic novels),

photographs, film (documentary, and
others), monuments, websites, art
objects

realistic style experiments with various styles

winners history victims history (discourse of rebellion,

revindication)

historia magistra vitae (Cycero) history as slaughter-bench (Hegel)

aims: justification and reinforcement of giving justice to the past; discourse of

dominant power those who have no glory; those who
were in darkness and silence, had no
12 Ewa Domanska

CONVENTIONAL HISTORY UNCONVENTIONAL HISTORY

(ACADEMIC HISTORY)
rights (women, children, disabled,
sexual and ethnic minorities, animals,
others)

synthesis, biographies of historical heros, oral history (witness literature),

political history empathic history, alternative history,
etc.
tradition/conservatism/right
revolution/left