会場とのディスカッション

吉田：Thank you very much Professor White. Professor Okamoto told me that Professor White came to Kyoto in order to teach us, not just to give a lecture. It's really true, I think. We will invite comments or questions from the floor.

会場：Thank you very much. You said postmodernism is a rejection of modernity. You define modernization as industrialization, capitalism, modern nation-state. And my question is, do you have an idea of what kind of political structure, or what kind of economy would suit that. I ask this question because today you talked about history. We know that history is the way, is a very important instrument for modern nation states, and you use postmodernist way to present, to represent history. So I think you must have some idea of what kind of world we should live in, though I think this kind of question is a little bit ridiculous, because you deny construction of history. Thank you.

ホワイト：Yes, very briefly, I make a distinction between the past and history. History, is historical past, there's the historian's way of studying the past, and there are many other ways of studying the past. Most artists, poets, writers, but also psychoanalysts, specialists in memory studies, anthropologists, archaeologists, have a different past from that of the historian. The historian will only recognize certain kind of events as belonging to history. Archaeologists have different kinds, other kinds of events in their account. I say another thing, there was a time before which there wasn't any history, we call it prehistory, right? There will be possibly a time somewhere in the future where there will no longer be history. Now we also say, we in the west, we say there are some people who have no history, right? Those people have a past, though. What they mean is they don't have the kind of history that we have. That's what they mean. Now this implies relativism. So what it suggests is a critical attitude toward the confusion of the past with history. Not all past belongs to history. Your (facing Mr. Nishijima) people's movement are past that historians are not interested in. So I believe that it is art, not science, that gives us a way of approaching this other past, which historians can't handle because they have specific criteria for identifying what will count as a historical event. It's a long answer and I'm sorry, but, what kind of world do I want? I want a world in which the nation-state is no longer the basic unit. I want a world in which the distribution of goods is on the basis of need rather than mere consumption, as an end in itself. We are facing a world in which capitalism in its advanced stages is producing so much garbage and waste we have no place to put it any longer. We are dumping it in Africa, garbage, waste. I recommend you a book by the American author, Don DeLillo, called Underworld. It's about the problem of what to do with waste products. Capitalism today is producing waste rather than things that can be used to improve human health and condition. Garbage, waste, nuclear waste. Where do they put it, what do you do with it? The advanced countries are dumping it in the third world. I want that to end. I'm an anarchist, I'm against the state. I think the state is the problem, the state and multinational corporations. Corporations that admit no legal regulation or control. Criminal corporations.

通訳（平賀）：このような歴史観やポストモダニストによる歴史の表現・再表現を踏まえたうえで、ホワイト先生はどのような政治的・経済的な世界を理想とされているかというご質問でした。
　ホワイト先生からの答えとしては、まず過去（past）と歴史（history）を区別して考えるべきだというご指摘がありました。歴史というのは、歴史家たちが歴史家の手法によって過去を研究したものですが、過去を研究するには他にも多くの手法があります。芸術家や詩人、作家、精神分析者、記憶研究の専門家、人類学者、考古学者などには、歴史家たちとは異なる過去への取り組み方があります。
　歴史家たちは過去の特定の出来事のみを歴史として認識する。考古学者などはまた異なる出来事のみを扱う。言い方を変えると、「先史時代」という歴史が存在しなかったとされる時期があるし、西洋から見ると「歴史を持たない民族」もいる。そのような人々も過去は持っています。ただ私たちが「歴史」というものを持っていないだけです。これは相対主義とも考えられます。西嶋さんが取り上げた生活記録運動などは、歴史家たちが関心を持たなかった過去と言えるでしょう。
　そのため、このような過去に対しては、特定の基準を持って歴史的な出来事を認識する歴史学という科学（science）より、芸術（art）の方がアプローチする可能性を持っていると考えています。
　私がどのような世界を理想とするかですか？　私は国民国家（nation-state）が基本単位でない世界、物や資源の分配が単なる消費より必要に基づいて分配される世界を望みます。現在、私たちは資本主義が行き過ぎた段階に達し、どこにも捨てる場所がないほど大量のゴミやムダを生産している世界にいます。私たちはゴミをどっさり作って、それを途上国に投げ捨てている。アメリカの著者ドン・デリーロによる『アンダーワールド』がお勧めです。私たちの廃棄物の問題について描いています。
　今日の資本主義は、人々の健康や生活を向上させる物ではなく、ゴミやムダを生産している。それには放射性廃棄物も含まれている。それらを先進国は第三世界に投げ捨てている。このような状態を終わらせたいと思います。私は無政府主義者で、国家に反対です。国家と多国籍企業が問題だと、法的な規制や管理を認めない犯罪的企業が問題だと考えています。

吉田: Thank you very much. And more questions or comments?

会場: My question has a couple of parts. First, would you say the postmodernist's interpretation of history has more influence on the general public than that of professional historians?

ホワイト：Yes.

会場：If so, if postmodernist historians present their work with the label of history, or people interpret them as history as such, wouldn't postmodernist history essentially become history, and wouldn't it be difficult to distinguish the two? Postmodern history and professional history.

ホワイト：Yes, well this is a question of naming again, you see. The question we talked about earlier. And it's a question of the authority we give to different genres, what is the Japanese word for genre?

通訳（平賀）： （genre の日本語訳は何かと聞かれて）「ジャンル」

ホワイト：Oh, “ ジャンル”. Oh, good, that's easy. I know Japanese and I didn't even know it. It's the authority we give to different genres of writings, and representation of that is the issue here. So that history, written by historians, this genre has the authority of realism. This realism, whereas a novel, that's a historical novel, people think that it is confusing history with fiction, but it's not necessarily the case. This is why I argue that the postmodernist historical novel is not to be confused with the traditional historical romance of Sir Walter Scott, and Manzoni and Alexander Dumas. The postmodernist historical novel, I don't want to call it that, because it sounds like a fictionalization. Don DeLillo's Underworld, has that been translated into Japanese? Or Pynchon's V., or Philip Roth's The Plot Against America; they keep distinction between fact and fiction, alive by being very careful about doing literary writing, that is, it's about facts; literary writing about reality, that is involved here. Not fictionalization of reality. You see the distinction? It's one thing to fictionalize the past, to turn it into what looks like a romance, and it's another thing to use literary techniques of discourse and storytelling to talk about the real world. This is what the postmodernist novel does. This means that it uses the imagination to get to the past as well as the rational faculties. Do you follow me? It's quite a distinction, but this is a problem in all cultures. Genres are hierarchitized, some have more authority than others.

ホワイト：I recommend a book on the topic, Amy J. Elias, Sublime Desire: History and Post-1960s. It's on the postmodernist historical fiction, but she should've called it. It's on novelistic treatment of history, of historical past. Anyway it's a great book, I'm very proud of her. She's one of my students. But she did a better job than I could do on this.

通訳（平賀）：ポストモダニストたちの歴史の解釈の方が、歴史家による歴史の解釈より、一般大衆への影響力が強いかどうかとの質問に対して、まずは「イエス」、強いとのお答えでした。
　それならば、ポストモダニストたちが「歴史」として描く作品、もしくは「歴史」と解釈される作品と、職業的な歴史家たちが書く歴史とが、混同してしまわないかとのご質問でした。
　ホワイト先生のお答えとしては、これも名前を付ける（naming）の問題で、いろんな書き物のジャンルごとにレッテルを貼ってしまう、あるジャンルを他のジャンルより権威付けしてしまうのが問題だと思います。
　歴史家たちが書く歴史はリアリズムの権威あるジャンルだと分類される。一方、歴史的小説は歴史とフィクションが混乱した物だと思われがちですが、必ずしもそうではない。ここで注意してもらいたいのは、ポストモダニストたちが書く歴史的な小説と、従来の歴史的なロマンスというフィクションなどとは違う物だということです。
　例えば、デリーロの『アンダーワールド』とか、フィリップ・ロスの『アメリカに抗するプロット』とか、このようなポストモダニストたちの歴史的な記述は、事実とフィクションを区別している。活き活きとした文学的な手法を使いながら現実の世界（fact, reality）を書いています。現実をフィクショナライズしているのではない。違いが分かりますか？　一方は過去をフィクショナライズしてロマンスのように作り上げ、もう一方は記述や語りなどの文学的な手法を使って現実の世界について書いています。これがポストモダニストたちの歴史的な小説が行っていることなのです。ただ問題は、ジャンルにはヒエラルキーがあり、権威を持つジャンルとそうでないジャンルがあるということが全ての文化において問題にあります。
　このトピックに関して、エイミー・J・エリアスが書いた『サブライム・デゲイア』という本をお勧めします。ポストモダニストによる歴史的フィクションを取り上げた本ですが、むしろ歴史・歴史的過去の小説的な取り扱いについての本と言った方が良いでしょう。彼女は私の生徒ですが、この件に関しては私より良い作品を残しています。

吉田：Thank you very much. So, next speaker?

会場：I'm sorry if this is a sort of boring question, but you talked about the influence of why there's been this sort of a shift between the realistic historical treatments and what being influenced by the modern world, between what you experience now and in the past.

ホワイト：Yes. The nature of experience has changed.

会場：And, this is slightly broad, but if you view the outcomes of how we treat the past, you know, if you don't learn from the mistakes of history, you repeat them. And in some degree which relies on history, some of this trend, going further into the future, in the future how we will see the past slightly more this postmodern kind of treatment. How do you think this way of seeing history will effect decision making? I mean, decision making or something in the future.

ホワイト：Well, that's a very good question because, again, you said, you're still interested in history. No, I'm saying that we, today, have to study those aspects of the past that have been ignored by professional historians because of the very method they use to determine what will count as a historical event. We might want to expand the notion of what historicity is, but that's not what I'm suggesting. Here's the past, here's the present, and here's history. This is the part of the past-present relationship that has been mapped. The historians are doing it in their way. All of this is a part of our past that is yet unmapped. It's like territory that has not been examined. We cannot use traditional historical methods to access this part of the past. We can use archaeological methods, the new archeology, archeology has undergone a revolution. Anthropological conceptions of, for example, what constitutes writing. Historians have limited themselves, professional historians, to that part of the past for which there is written documentation. The problem is, what about the past that was very real but was not recorded in written documents. Material, material remains provide us access to that. Most historians have kept archeology separate from their study of the past. They say archaeologists deal with the unwritten past, we deal with the written past. You make that distinction, you replicate the distinction between the oral and the written parts of culture. But more importantly, you eliminate those material elements of the past that come down to us that do not speak, that do not have any written or inscribed information in them. So what we do is to take artifacts that we get in archaeological digs or garbage heaps and we put them in museums. These are called archaeological museums, they are not historical museums. Now it's quite different in China, I don't know about Japan. When you go to a historical museum in Beijing or in Shanghai, it's very difficult to distinguish between the archaeological material remains and the documentary or written remains. I was very surprised, I thought I was in an art history museum when I went to, the National Museum of History in Shanghai. It is an art museum, and a historical museum and an archaeological museum all at once. This suggests to me that the Chinese have a different conception of the way we can know the past, from what western historians have taught us is the proper way of studying it. Just the fact that they display these kind of materials together suggests that Chinese culture, I don't know about Japan, that Chinese culture has a different experience of the past, and therefore a different way of what constitutes history. You follow me? From what we in the west have, and that we can learn a lot about this by seeing the way in which material elements, like this urinal of Duchamp, what these can tell us about the past, that the historians can't tell us because they're stuck with written documents as their principal sources. I'm sorry to go on so long, but this is very important, because, and this is coming back to your point now, what have we learned from the past? We learned, I think primarily, not how we're repeating, but about difference, that although people in our own past may seem to be very much as we are, and that therefore we might want to imitate them or take them as examples, that is usually a mistake. You know, in the history of warfare, they say that the generals are always fighting the last war, right? And Reinhart Koselleck, a German historian and philosopher said this. He said “People advance by profiting from defeat, not from victory”. This is one of the things that distinguishes Japan, Germany and Italy from the United States and Britain, the victors in World War Ⅱ . People who are defeated learn something from their defeat, people who were victorious repeat themselves again and think that they can use the same technique in one war that they used for victory in the other war. What history teaches you is this; that nothing repeats itself exactly, and therefore you cannot learn by studying the past for examples of how to act now. What you can do, you can study the past, to see how people in different situations acted differently, to give you some sense of the necessity of both learning from what seemed to be errors and profiting from successful responses. What we do not want, we do not study the past of colonial villages in India in order to find examples of how to adjust to modernity or something of that sort. What we find out, what we study it for is to find out how the oppressive British regime destroyed a rich culture that was perfectly sustainable prior to the transformation of India like by western imperialism and capitalism. I see you nodding your head.

会場：Still interested in what, in terms of how deeply we can learn from them and how it helps to relate them now and in the future. In what way do you think that the postmodernist's treatments of the past differ or help us more in a sense, than traditional historians?

ホワイト：Well, again I cite Don DeLillo's novel, that takes as its topic waste, garbage, rubbish, what do we do with it. Never before in the history of mankind has there been an excess of produced goods such that it is destroying the environment. The problem in the past has always been poverty and want. Now we have this excess in the western and industrialized nations that are destroying the very sources of the earth from which they derive their power and energy. We cannot go to any past society and study it to find out what to do with this waste, because the phenomenon of waste is utterly new, in amount. So what we can do though, is to talk about the way, we can learn about the way that people have ignored the growth of this process and acted like it doesn't exist, the way they deluded themselves. The same way they ignored, for example, the problems of finance capitalism, unregulated finance capitalism, under the illusion in my country, the illusion is that capitalism, unregulated, will benefit everybody. It just is not true. But the real problem is to find out the bad effects of this phenomenon. Not the right ends, not the right tributes to the free market economy and to identify it with democracy, because the free market economy destroys democracy. It destroys it, by turning it all into garbage, into waste, and producing more poverty, of a new kind, a new kind of poverty. By the way, poverty in the advanced industrial society is different than any prior time. Impoverished, poor people today have TVs, but they're still poor. They have no health care, perhaps, but they're still poor. But the fact that you could not have the wealth you enjoy without the impoverishment of Africa. Modern western capitalism has destroyed Africa, south of the Sahara. It destroyed the continent, and they continue to destroy it by dumping its waste on them. So it's not history that will teach us about this; it's the study of the past, that past ignored by history. This is why Lyotard? is right. When he says postmodernism abandons the great narratives of history, that's quite right, it doesn't mean they abandon the interest in the past, they just feel that the grand narratives of history no longer are relevant to the addressing of the problems that we're faced with. Too much.

通訳（平賀）：かいつまんでご説明したいと思います。まず、歴史に関心があると言っても、私たちは歴史家たちが歴史と定めてこなかった過去について、つまり歴史から除外されていた過去について見直さなくてはならないのです。（図表で）過去と現在と歴史というのが、ここの領域になります。つまり歴史というのは、歴史家たちが歴史家の手法によってこれが歴史だと定めた部分だけであって、そこに含まれない過去というのがたくさんあるのです。
　歴史から除外された過去にアクセスする一つの方法として、考古学的な手法も役立つでしょう。近年の考古学の発展にはすばらしいものがあります。いままで職業的歴史家は文献といいますか、残された文書だけに基づいて歴史を描いてきました。でもそれでは文献に残されていないけれど現実には存在した過去についてはどうなるのか？
　歴史家のほとんどが過去を研究する際、考古学は記述のない過去を、歴史学は記述に残された過去を研究するのだと、歴史学と考古学とを分けていました。そして記述のない過去を歴史から排除し、考古学的発掘や古代のゴミ捨て場などから発見された、語らない、記述の残っていない物を博物館に収めてしまい、それを歴史博物館ではなく、考古学博物館と呼ぶのです。
　これが中国では違います。日本ではどうかわかりませんが。北京や上海の博物館では、考古学的展示物と文献の展示物との区別がありませんでした。私は驚きました。上海市立博物館を訪れたときも、これが美術館なのか歴史博物館なのか考古学博物館なのか分からないほど、すべてが一緒に展示されているのです。これらを一緒に展示するということは、中国では西洋とは異なる過去のとらえ方、西洋とは異なる歴史学の手法がある可能性があります。
　これらの記述のない物を見直すことで、今まで歴史家が文献のみに基づいて描いてきた歴史とは異なる過去を学ぶことができるでしょう。
　それから、過去から何を学ぶかということですが、歴史を繰り返さないことを学ぶとよく言われますが、それより違いを学ぶというのが大切です。ドイツの歴史哲学者ラインハルト・コゼレックが「人間は勝利ではなく、敗北から学び成長する」と言っているように、第二次世界大戦の勝者であったアメリカ合衆国やイギリスと、敗者であった日本やドイツ、イタリアとはその後の発展が違いました。敗者はその敗北から学ぶけれど、勝者は前の戦いで使った勝つための手法をそのまま次の戦いに使えると思って繰り返すだけです。歴史が私たちに与える教訓とは、何事もそのとおりには繰り返さない、今日どう行動するべきか、そのまま使える例は過去から学ぶことはできないということです。過去から学ぶことができるのは、異なる状況に面した人たちが、どのように異なった対応をしたかということです。例えばインドの植民化された村の過去を研究するとき、その村がどのように近代化したかということを学ぶのではなく、イギリス帝国主義がそこにあった持続可能な豊かな文化をどのように破壊し、インドを西洋の帝国資本主義に組み込んでしまったかを学ぶべきなのです。

会場：私たちが過去からどれだけ学ぶことができるか、とても興味深いのですが、やはりポストモダニズム的な過去の取り扱い方が、従来の歴史家たちの扱
いとどのように違うのか、まだ詳しく教えてください。

ホワイト：またドン・デリーロの作品の話になりますが、この作品はゴミや廃棄物を主題とした。人類の歴史において、これほど環境を破壊するほどの余剰物が生産されたことは無かった。過去においては、問題は常に貧困と欠乏、不足でした。今日、西洋・工業国は、その力とエネルギーの源である地球を破壊するほど余剰物を生産しているのです。この問題の解決策を過去に求めることはできません。過去に学ぶことができるとしたら、この問題が発生しつつあることをいかに無視してきたか、また自由放任資本主義の問題を見て見ぬ振りをしてきたか、野放図な資本主義がすべての人々の利益になるという幻想がいかに誤っていたかということでしょう。自由市場経済を民主主義と結びつけてその目的を語るのではなく、その現象がどのような悪影響を及ぼしてきたかを見るべきです。自由市場経済は民主主義を破壊します。すべてをゴミに変えて、より大量の、新しい貧困を生み出している。ところで、今日の先進国における貧困は、いずれの過去における貧困とも異なります。今日の先進国における貧困層は、テレビを持っているかもしれない。それでも医療保険がなかったり、貧困に苦しんでいるのです。また、西洋諸国の豊かさはアフリカを貧困に陥れることで成り立っています。近代西洋資本主義はアフリカを大陸ごと破壊したのです。大陸一つを破壊した上で、さらにそこにゴミを投げ捨て続けています。この問題について歴史から学ぶことはできません。歴史ではなく、歴史が無視してきた過去を見直すことから学ぶことができるでしょう。

〈立命館大学大学院先端総合学術研究科 （Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier
Sciences）の名称について〉

ホワイト：Dealing with the relationship between art and the study of the past is exactly the kind of thing that Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences should be dealing with, if I may say so. In other words, I am very excited to see what this graduate school is, core ethics, core ethics, right? This is what the great novelists are concerned about. And frontier sciences, frontier sciences mean sciences dealing with what is absolutely new in the experience of the world.

通訳（平賀）：芸術（art）と過去の研究の関係を学ぶには、Core Ethics andFrontier Sciences 大学院という、ここの先端総合学術研究科がふさわしいでしょう。今回お招きいただいた大学院の名前を知り、非常に嬉しくなりました。コアエシックスというのは、まさに偉大な小説家たちが現在取り組んでいることです。それからフロンティアサイエンスというのは、世界が経験する全く初めてのことに取り組むということですから。

吉田：Thank you very much for praising the name of our graduate school. And more questions or comments?

ホワイト：Someone else?

会場：I'm not a professional historian myself, but I have done a minor work of professional historian and I'd like to ask you what is your view of the body of the work of professional historians. So far, your comments on the works of traditional professional historians are negative. Do you think it was worthwhile and you're just saying their work need some kind of amendment, or are you saying their works have been simply misguided and worthless?

ホワイト：No, I'm not saying that at all. Professional historians know what they're doing. They know how to do it and they do it very well as a group. But they're only interested in one part of the past, and modern professional historiography is linked to service to the state. Prior to modernity, there was no history taught in the universities. No history. History is taught as a subject in the university only in the early 19th century in the west. It becomes a profession, why? Because the modern nation-state needed a group of scholars to provide a genealogy for the nation. Because the nation, there's no such thing a nation. There are many different ethnic groups. A nation-state forges them together, transform people usually with different ethnicities, different ethnic groups, and different locations, provinces. No one called himself a Frenchman before the 19th century, prior to that time they would have identified themselves as Burgundians, as coming from Navarre. France and Frenchman were only called such in the university, that's where the nations were first formed. Students coming from Italy, students coming from, speaking French, or a version of French, were grouped in the same buildings or neighborhoods in the medieval universities. They were called naciones, which just meant place of birth, having the same birth. Now we all know that the nation is a construction and anyone who thinks the nation is a natural entity has not studied history, and we all know the function of professional historians has been to serve the state. The universities of Europe in which history was constituted as a scientific discipline, were sustained, supported, were state institutions. They remained that, and that's their function. That doesn't mean they don't do good work in the study of the past. But it's work done for a particular purpose. Now I would like people who study the past to say, OK, you historians, you do it your way, that's fine, you know what you're doing, you'll write for other historians, that's what they write for. Professional historians they don't write for the general public. They write for other historians and they're judged by other historians. As a matter of fact, in my country and in the west in general, anyone who writes a book on history, any professional who writes a popular book, a book that's read by many people is regarded as being a popularizer. And anyone who would present himself as a historian without a PhD and without the proper license is dismissed as an amateur. Amateur historians, OK, let's accept that. History will only be studied by those with PhDs in History and they're licensed to study it and the write in a particular – let them do it. But they're not able to address the kind of problems that can only be addressed by reflection on the past and especially that part which professional historians can't study because they limit themselves to the kinds of the events they can study. This is why, by the way, history is in decline. Doesn't mean in absolute numbers, history is, as you all know, the lowest ranking of the human and the social sciences. Why? It's because it's antiquarian, and it's in the service of special interests. This is true of Marxist, communist history, too. Marxist history, which claimed to be scientific, in the service of the proletariat, or of the proletariat state. This is why any approach to the study of the history that's motivated by political or social loyalty is suspect. But let them continue to do it. This is fine. Nations need their histories to be written, they need them for the schoolbooks, for the children. They need to convince them that they're all one race so they can keep out people of the wrong race from their community. So inevitably national history ends up being ethnocentric, and discourages people emigrating from the wrong ethnic group. The treatment of Japanese and Chinese, Japanese citizens in the United States during the Second World War is a perfect example of this. They were put in concentration camps. We're a democracy, these were American citizens. Did the historians object? No, they did not. Did the historians object in Nazi Germany when the Jews were put in the concentration camps? No, they did not. They signed a loyalty oath to Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler demanded a loyalty oath from the universities and only twelve professors did not sign, only twelve. History, like most of the social sciences, serves a master. We must learn not to serve these masters, who are only interested in augmenting their own power. You can speak truth to power by refusing to study that part of the past and the present that is celebrating only those who possess power. Now, I must sound like some kind of fanatical radical. As I said, I believe that the state, the police and the military institutions, and the educational institutions are the problem. They do more harm than good. The police are not going to protect you, they only exist to protect the rich. Black people in my country, in the city, they don't call policemen when they've been, when a crime has been committed against them, because they know the police will come and arrest the person who's been the victim of the crime. Well, my friends, I hope I haven't abused your hospitality by ranting and preaching, and I know that my style is not that of the Japanese professor, so I apologize for being the ugly and barbarian American. But to you, your generation, that must fall the task of reforming education. Of reforming education. I see, just from the title of your program, Mr. Yoshida, the title of your program, it's an attempt to get beyond the normal disciplinary divisions, I recommend you for that and hope you continue with your work. Let's go get a drink, hmm, a beer maybe, aren't you all tired? Can we? No need to interpret this, don't.

通訳（平賀）：ご質問は職業的な歴史家の歴史研究というのは役に立たないのかということだったのですが、ホワイト先生としては、「いや、そんなことはない」と。歴史家は歴史家としてきちんとした仕事を行っている。
　ただ、問題として、歴史家は過去の一部分しか取り扱わないこと。さらに、近代的な職業的歴史学（modern professional historiography）というのは、そもそも近代国家の成立を支えるために生まれたものであって、職業的な歴史家というのは国家に使える、歴史学とはその目的の学問だということを覚えておく必要があります。
　西洋の大学で歴史学が教えられ始めたのは19 世紀に入ってからです。なぜか？　近代国民国家が、国家の系統学を提供する学者たちを必要としたからです。それまで国家というものは存在しなかった。さまざまな民族グループが存在していただけです。国民国家はそのようないろんな地域からの異なる民族グループたちを合体させて国家とした。19 世紀が始まるまで、自らをフランス人と呼ぶ人はいなかった。そのような動きは大学から始まった。中世の大学では生まれた場所が同じで同じフランス語を話す人たちがまとめられ、それが「nacione」と呼ばれていたこともあります。今日、国家というものは人工的な構造物ですし、職業歴史家たちは国家に使えている。歴史学が科学的な学問として誕生したヨーロッパの大学は、国の機関として国家が支援していた。それが歴史学の機能なのです。だからといって良い研究をしていないというわけではありません。良い研究はしている。ただ、その研究は特定の目的のために行われているのです。私はこれから過去を研究する人たちに、歴史家の歴史研究を否定することはないと指摘したい。歴史家たちには、そのまま、歴史学のために論文を書いてもらえば良い。プロの歴史家というのは、一般大衆に読まれる物を書くのではない。実際、アメリカや西洋では一般向けに歴史の本を書
くプロの歴史家は「普及家（popularizer）」と見なされる傾向があります。また博士号や適切な肩書きのないまま歴史家と自称する人たちはアマチュアだと。アマチュア歴史家で良いではないですか。肩書きを持った歴史家には歴史学の研究を続けてもらいましょう。ただ問題は、歴史として取り上げられなかった過去を見直さなければ解決できない問題を、歴史学は解決できないということです。
　国家は歴史学による歴史を必要としています。学校で子どもたちに国の歴史を教えるために。国民はみな一つのグループとして、その他の人たちを疎外するために。国家の歴史というのは必然的に自民族中心になり、それ以外の民族グループが侵入してくるのを阻止するようになります。第二次世界大戦中のアメリカが日系人や中国系の人たちに行ったこと。アメリカは民主国家であり、彼らはアメリカ市民だったのに、日系人や中国系の人たちを強制収容所に押し込めたのです。そのとき、歴史家たちは反対したか？　反対しませんでした。ナチス・ドイツでユダヤ人たちが強制収容所に送られたとき、歴史家たちは反対したか？　アドルフ・ヒットラーは大学に忠誠宣誓を求め、これに署名しなかったのはたった12 人の教授だけでした。他の社会科学もそうですが、歴史学はその主人に仕えます。私たちは、自らの権力を論証しようとしている主人に従わないということを学ばなくてはならない。権力が指定した過去や現在だけを研究することを拒否することで、権力に対して真実を語ることができるのです。かなりラジカルは話だと思われるでしょうが、私は国家や警察や軍組織、そして教育機関が問題の根源だと考えています。これらは益をなすより、むしろ害をなします。警察は人々を守るためでなく、金持ちを守るために存在します。アメリカの都市部で黒人が犯罪の被害を受けたとき、彼らは警察を呼びません。警察は犯罪の被害者である自分たちを有無を言わさず捕らえるものだということを、黒人たちは知っているからです。こんな暴言と説教でせっかく招待いただいたご好意を踏みにじっているようで申し訳ありません。また日本の礼儀正しい先生方はこんな態度をとらないでしょう。ただ、あなたたちの世代は教育を改革しなくてはならない。吉田先生、このプログラムの名前からもみなさんは従来の学部の違いを超えて研究をされていることが見受けられますから、ぜひ今後もがんばってください。さあ、そろそろ終わりにして飲みに行きませんか？

岡本: もう、飲みに行きたいそうですから。ちょっと補足的に言いますと、最後のほうで繰り返されていることは、資本主義の物質的な問題に対する批判とか、コロニアリズムに対する批判とか、あるいは本質的な歴史に対して、物質的な資料というものがちゃんと付かないといけないのではないかと。そういうことをやると、そんなことは歴史学がやってきたんじゃないかという反論があると思います。
　しかし、どうしてその反論に対して、さらにそういうことをホワイトは強調しているのか。そういう現在の新しい歴史学と、ホワイトの立場はどこが違うのだろうか。それが一番大きな問題だと思います。
　そういうことを、ぜひ今日の話を機会に、みなさんで考えていただきたいと思います。

吉田：Thank you very much. One last comment or question.

ホワイト：（会場の写真を撮っている）

会場： I'd just like to give a few comments about how wonderful your lecture is and how provocative your ideas, and I should like to take on, play a role of devil's advocate on behalf of traditional historians. I take your point about postmodernism, this way of approaching history. However, I think not all the traditional historians are slaving to support the nation states these days. One good example we can think of which traditional historians and postmodernists can be cooperative and create, is one example, two years ago, when it was the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery, the Liverpool's International Slavery Museum, together with BBC broadcasting and talking about the past history of black slaves and the slave trade, and also UNICEF supported, and traditional historians contributed huge amount of works on the abolition movement and the slave trade. At the same time they created huge archive of slave trade which is not entirely historically true, and yet it is a good appeal to the public. Not all of them are historically correct, yet it gives a good sense of what the slave trade was. I think this is a good example of traditional historians and postmodernists can be cooperative.

ホワイト：Yes I agree. There's a great deal of creative work going on. In Stockholm, Sweden, if you ever go there, go to the Military History Museum, because it's a military history that's against war. It doesn't celebrate the military glory of Sweden. It shows you the horrible conditions under which war was fought throughout history. In the section of the 17th century, they show you battlefields where the wounded are bleeding to death, operating rooms where limbs were cut off, you know, without anesthesia. In fact, historical museums right now are kind of going under a revolution that is really transforming them. I went to the Historical Museum in Buenos Aires, I always go, when I can, to historical museums of a place I'm visiting, to see how they represent their past. In the Historical Museum in Buenos Aires, the history of Buenos Aires begins with the Spanish. There was no mention that there were any indigenous people at all. So I go to the Historical Museum in Australia, in Sydney, Australia. There are no aboriginal people mentioned in the history of the historical museum at all. Do you know where the aboriginal people's history is? It's in the Museum of Natural History, along with the animals. Yeah. I hope you get that. And it's still that way. Now as you know, Australia, which originated, invaded by, the colonists, all criminals to begin with. Remember, they were prison ships that were sent over to the colony. When Australia, at the end of the Second World War, Australia still had a quota that no more than ten percent of the population could be Jewish, set a quota on the immigration of Jews both before and after the Second World War. It wasn't until the early 1950s that they eliminate those quotas. We in the United States have quotas on immigrants when we are supposed to be welcoming people from all over the world. And as I say, so there is, unfortunately built in to history and into the regimes of the nation-state a distinct racism. Now I don't know about Japan, but as far as I'm concerned, racism is a horrible, horrible crime, almost a sin. The idea that the different ethnic groups are somehow rankable in a hierarchy. This, as far as I'm concerned is inhumane. It's almost as bad as the way animals are treated by the human species. I've become an animal rights activist because the amount, the idea that whole species of animals would be bred and raised to be eaten by humans seems to me to be strange idea about the way we relate to our mother earth. Think about it, the number of chickens, and cows that have been slaughtered in the last hour throughout the world, especially in the industrial countries. It's something like twelve million animals have been slaughtered in the United States alone in the last hour. Twelve million animals. Now that kind of pain and suffering is very bad for our chi, very bad for our karma. Don't you see that? We can't have that amount of pain being produced just so Americans can eat more McDonald's hamburgers. It just is not thinkable, how could we learn this. Do you know that the Nazis based the concentration camp destruction of the Jews on the American butcher? Slaughterhouses of animals, of cattle, and chickens. Industrialized slaughter, industrialized genocide, industrialized cruelty. This is what advanced capitalism, industrial capitalism has given us. Historians should tell that story, they should tell that story. But if they maintain their conception of objectivity, let them continue to do it, they know what they want to do and I believe in freedom, freedom of expression, so let them do it. But I feel that we're confronted by problems that they cannot address, because they're focused on the past. And our problems are uniquely ours, so we have to think about those aspects of the past that bear some relationship to the present. The United States is a nation based upon the destruction of the indigenous people. I wanted to point out to you that, unlike Japan, the United States is a post-colonial country. Post-colonialism should be used to study the United States instead of our taking the fiction that we are, there's a popular song in the United States, it's called “This Land is Our Land and This Land is Your Land”, they don't mean the Indians. Well, my friends, I'd hoped to bring good news. I think the good news is that there is a growing political awareness of the limitations of the particular kinds of polity that have grown out of advanced capitalism. It costs too much in suffering to allow it to go on. Look at the automobiles on your street. I was told that every Japanese family has two automobiles, is that right? Certainly in the United States, every family has two automobiles, but only one person at a time is in them unless you're taking the children to school. Well we can discuss this later. I'm optimistic about the future. I'm optimistic because there's always new people, new young people coming along and they're really speaking a different language and thinking different thoughts from the generation that was educated by traditional universities. A program such as that Mr. Yoshida represents provides hope; they're trying to rethink thinking, they're trying to rethink how we think, and I think this might yield different kinds of responsibility in our students. Because that's the problem. Core ethics, what can we mean by core ethics? It's a great concept, but seems to contrast with peripheral ethics. The core or the periphery. It's interesting to think about it, right? Oh, well, read this book, those of you who are interested. You can't learn anything useful from the study of history, you can't learn anything useful from the study of history. This is what Hegel said. Nobody learns anything from the study of history that's useful. It's still pleasant to study, you see, and it can be used by states. But I'd rather read a good poem than most history books. Who can read the large history books by the professional historian? Can you ever read them through? OK, well, thank you very much, aren't we finished now, don't (interpret), no, no.

通訳（平賀）：コメントとして、従来の歴史家たちとポストモダニストたちが協力してクリエイティブな活動をしていることをご紹介いただきました。例えばリバプールの国際奴隷博物館（International Slavery Museum）では、2007 年に奴隷貿易廃止200 年を記念した大規模なプロジェクトに、従来の歴史家も参画して大きな貢献をしたとのことです。
　ホワイト先生から、スウェーデンのストックホルムにあるMilitary HistoryMuseum に機会があったらぜひ訪ねてくださいと。これはスウェーデンの軍事的栄光を示すのではなく、戦争に反対する軍事博物館という珍しいものです。例えば17 世紀の展示コーナーには、戦場で血まみれになって死に行く兵士や、手術室で麻酔もなく足を切られる兵士たちが展示されています。
　じつは世界各地の歴史博物館では、大きな変革が起こりつつあります。
　アルゼンチンのブエノスアイレスの歴史博物館には（私は各地を訪れると可能な限りその地の歴史博物館を見に行くのですが）、ブエノスアイレスの歴史はスペイン人から始まるとされており、その前に人が住んでいたことは無視されています。オーストラリアのシドニーの歴史博物館においては、アボリジニの人たちについて何も紹介されていない。アボリジニの人たちが紹介されているのはNatural History Museum、つまり自然歴史博物館に、動物と並べてアボリジニの人たちが展示されている。わかりますか？
　私は人種差別は罪といえる、恐ろしい犯罪だと考えます。民族の違う人をヒエラルキーの上や下に位置づけるとは非人情な考えです。このことから、私は動物愛護者にもなりました。ある種の動物を人間に食べられるために生み育てるとは。現在、どれだけ多数の動物たちが世界で、とくに先進国で食肉用に殺されているか、ご存じですか？　アメリカ1 国だけで、1 時間に1,200 万匹もの鶏や豚や牛がと殺されていると言われています。ナチスがユダヤ人の強制収容所を作るにあたり、アメリカのと殺所を参考にしたそうです。産業的なと殺、産業的な集団殺戮、産業的な残酷。これが発達した資本主義、工業資本主義がもたらしたものです。歴史家が取り上げることがらではありますが、まあ、歴史家が本来の目的に留まる限りそうはしないでしょう。でも、表現の自由があるのですから、歴史家には彼らの研究を続けてもらえば良い。ただ、私たちは現在、歴史家たちが指摘できない過去から現在につながる問題に直面していると考えるのです。アメリカ合衆国は先住民を破壊して築いた国家です。アメリカはポストコロニアル研究するべきです。
　話の最後は明るい話題で締めくくりたいと思っていたのに、すみません。でも私は未来に楽観的です。この行き過ぎた資本主義の社会にも新しい考えや動きを始める人たちが生まれつつあります。この研究科のように、新しい言葉で、新しい考えを始める人たちに期待したいと思います。