Experience, symbol and communication: a transversal model for the study of historical thought

Abstract

The article proposes the definition of a heuristic model designed for the transversal analysis of historical thought. We consider historical thought as a set of cognitive practices and public discourses that give meaning to the relationships of human societies with historical times. The premise is that, in order to understand the complexity of the intellectual processes of signification of the historical worlds, it is necessary to combine in a single analytical field the issues concerning the experience, the representation, the conceptualization and the argumentation of history, as well as those concerning its communication and social uses. To that end, we will conceptualize five dimensions of historical thought (experiential, representational, theoretic-argumentative, conceptual and performative), revising the historiographical theories that have been elaborated about each of them, defining their specificities and their mutual relations and, finally, designing a set of questions in order to analyze them in a common framework.

Full text

HISTÓRIA DA
HISTORIOGRAFIA
1 24
ABSTRACT
RESUMEN
PALABRAS CLAVE
KEYWORDS
Ouro Preto / MG - Brasil
Hist. Historiogr. v. 12, n. 29, jan-abr, ano 2019, p. 124-152 - DOI 10.15848/hh.v12i29.1335
Experience, symbol and communication: a
transversal model for the study of historical thought
Experiencia, símbolo y comunicación: un modelo transversal
para el estudio del pensamiento histórico
The article proposes the denition of a heuristic model
designed for the transversal analysis of historical
thought. We consider historical thought as a set of
cognitive practices and public discourses that give
meaning to the relationships of human societies
with historical times. The premise is that, in order to
understand the complexity of the intellectual processes
of signication of the historical worlds, it is necessary
to combine in a single analytical eld the issues
concerning the experience, the representation, the
conceptualization and the argumentation of history, as
well as those concerning its communication and social
uses. To that end, we will conceptualize ve dimensions
of historical thought (experiential, representational,
theoretic-argumentative, conceptual and performative),
revising the historiographical theories that have
been elaborated about each of them, dening their
specicities and their mutual relations and, nally,
designing a set of questions in order to analyze them in
a common framework.
Historicity; Experience; Representation.
En este artículo se propone la denición de un modelo
heurístico para el análisis transversal del pensamiento
histórico, entendido éste como un conjunto de prácticas
cognitivas y discursos públicos que dotan de sentido
a las relaciones de las sociedades humanas con los
tiempos históricos. Se parte de la premisa de que, para
entender en su complejidad los procesos intelectuales
de signicación de los mundos históricos, es necesario
combinar en un solo campo de análisis los problemas
concernientes a la experiencia, la representación, la
conceptualización y la argumentación de la historia, así
como aquellas cuestiones referentes a su comunicación
y sus usos sociales. A tal n, se conceptualizarán cinco
dimensiones analizables del pensamiento histórico
(experiencial, representacional, teórico-argumentativa,
conceptual y performativa), revisando las teorías
historiográcas elaboradas sobre cada una de ellas,
deniendo sus relaciones mutuas y sus especicidades
y, nalmente, diseñando una batería de preguntas para
analizarlas en conjunto.
Historicidad; Experiencia; Representación.
Rodrigo Escribano Roca
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6405-7191

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Rodrigo Escribano Roca
Hist. Historiogr. v. 12, n. 29, jan-abr, ano 2019, p. 124-152 - DOI 10.15848/hh.v12i29.1335
HISTÓRIA DA
HISTORIOGRAFIA
To think and to enunciate history could be understood as
a circus show or an alchemic exercise: a complex game of
equilibriums and mixtures that needs to combine disparate
intellectual elements. According to Jörn Rüsen, history,
considered as an act of thought and enunciation, brings into
dialogue the past and the present, the empirical fact and ction,
narrative and theory (RÜSEN 2005, p. 4). Our theoretical
proposal is based on the premise that, in order to analyze the
complexity of the intellectual processes of signication of the
“historical worlds”, it is possible and necessary to combine
certain questions, methodological strategies and analytical
categories of the main schools and tendencies that, during
the last decades, have maintained serious disputes over the
epistemological status and social function of historiography, that
is, the theories of narrativism, constructivism, experientialism,
conceptual history and performativity (ANKERSMIT 2011;
ESCRIBANO ROCA 2017; ZERMEÑO PADILLA 2015; SCHOLTZ
2011; FORASTIERI DA SILVA 2015).1 Even though these
tendencies share some important concerns about the
intellectual relations of human collectives with the past, each
has focused on their own particular agendas and paradigms,
tending to stress their own differences in relation to the others
and, hence, deepening the fragmentariness and the polarization
of the eld (DAY 2008, p. 417–419; PAUL 2015, p. 450–458;
PETERS 2016, p. 235–236).2 The contribution proposed here
intends to suggest a creative response to the demands for
the “unity” of the theory of history which has insistently been
expressed during the last years. The main goal is to dene an
analytical model that aspires to design a theoretical articulation
of the tendencies cited. Ultimately, the aim is to dene a set
of synthetical questions which should permit the practical
application of the theories suggested to the study of the diverse
voices, actors and spaces that intervene in the cultural systems
of signication of the historical pasts.
In order to accomplish these objectives, the point of
departure is the denition of “historical thought” as a complex
set of cognitive operations that agglutinate experiential,
1 - The cited con-
tributions are good
revisions about the
tendencies we have
mentioned.
2 - These articles are
good examples of
good diagnosis about
the fragmentation of
the eld.

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Experience, symbol and communication: a transversal model for the study of historical thought
Hist. Historiogr. v. 12, n. 29, jan-abr, ano 2019, p. 124-152 - DOI 10.15848/hh.v12i29.1335
symbolical (representational, theoretical, conceptual) and
performative dimensions. According to this denition, historical
thought would present itself as a form of dialectical and
transversal reason, which would need a dynamic combination
of empirical, conceptual, theoretical and representational
strategies to make historical worlds intelligible. It could be
considered as an intellectual system which combines different
modes of cognition and expression as a necessary condition
for human communities to establish a meaningful relationship
with the historicity of the world they inhabit. The historical
thought and its discourse would consist, therefore, of the
dialogical experience of the traces and “presences” of the past
(experiential dimension); the mental generation of concepts,
arguments, theories and narratives concerning a pregured
historical issue (conceptual, theoretical and representation
dimensions); and their framing in discursive networks that
would allow their communication and reception (performative
dimension). In this paper we will realize an integrative proposal
of analysis for this set of dimensions, aiming to demonstrate
their complementarity and their dialectical relationship. Each
of these spheres of thought will be conceptualized, departing
from a theoretical revision and from the identication of a set
of variables and questions which should allow establishing a
common analytical framework for all the dimensions.
To perform the immersion in the experiential realm, without
incurring in a renewed positivism, requires the preliminary
vindication of a premise that has been well defended by certain
representatives of the linguistic turn: the great majority of
events that took place in the past have disappeared, they are no
longer accessible to experience or observation (MUNSLOW 2007,
p. 3–4). However, during the last decades, some theoreticians,
such as David Lowenthal (2016, p. 383–386), Paul Ricoeur
(2003a, p. 201–205) or Mark Day (2008, p. 417–427), have
convincingly identied the existence of numerous traces,
Eloquent “presences”: the experiential dimension

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relics and material connections that tend to blur the radical
division between past and present. According to these authors,
these traces of the past sustain a meaningful relation with the
worlds of the past, transcending, in part, the limitations that
are imposed by language. In this context, “experientialist”
philosophies defended by Frank Ankersmit (2012, p. 157–174)
or Ethan Kleinberg (2013a, p. 8–25) have vindicated the
need to understand the ways in which the past is ontologically
superposed with the present. In this context, the concept of
“presence”, dened by Eelco Runia (2014, p. 60–83), as an
object, subject or process that is directly accessible to experience
and alludes to entities, beings and occurrences of the past has
been fundamental.
These “presences” could be accessed through a set of
material and intellectual relations that are susceptible to
be subsumed under the category of “historical experience”
(ANKERSMIT 2012, p. 209–214). Nevertheless, this category
has been subjected to very distinct conceptualizations. Firstly,
it would be possible to understand historical experience as a
kind of direct, not mediated, “impression” or “sensation” of
an object of the past. This form of sensorial relation with the
things, structures and beings of the historical world would take
place in an unthought immediacy. It would, therefore, produce
simple cognitive units that would be a condition of possibility
to think historically (CARR 2014, p. 8–16; VARELLA 2012).
These historical sensations could be both passive or proactive,
mundane or sublime, but they would always allow a linguistic,
material, aesthetic or emotional relation with the past (PAUL
2016, p. 73). This intuitive and immediate historical experience
could be complemented by the cumulative historical experience,
emerged as the result of systematic empirical observation and
of the recollection and preservation of historical sensations
(CARR 2014, p. 32–33) . This modality is related to the neo-
kantian positions of Reinhardt Koselleck (2004, p. 106–112),
Jörn Leonhard (2013, p. 377–383) or Norbert Elias (1992, p. 36).
These authors consider experience as the foundational process
of historical knowledge, as it would connect the pure sensibility

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Experience, symbol and communication: a transversal model for the study of historical thought
Hist. Historiogr. v. 12, n. 29, jan-abr, ano 2019, p. 124-152 - DOI 10.15848/hh.v12i29.1335
of time and space with the mental exercises of synthesis and
abstraction. The model that we are proposing takes into account
all these typologies, conceptualizing “historical experience” as
the set of relations with the presences, traces and structures
that refer to the past or future temporalities of the vital
spheres of a subject. Accordingly, the experiential dimension
refers to the experiences of historicity that participate in the
conguration of historical thought.
Under these premises it would be possible to classify three
types of “presence” of the past. In the rst place, we could nd
all kinds of structures of repetition, not understood as eternal
cycles, but as recurrent events and practices that presume
continuities in the long term (KOSELLECK 2010, p. 54). We
could designate two types of “structures of repetition”: natural
and social ones. The rst typology refers to the ecological,
geological and genetic structures that frame human actions
(KOSELLECK 2010, p. 55–57). The second typology makes
reference to a complex set of social institutions, legal and
ethical codes and recurrent cultural, economic and political
practices (KOSELLECK 2010, p. 57–63). In the second place,
after the structures of repetition, we could identify the artifacts
and material traces: buildings, monuments and objects of daily
use that, in some occasions, maintain their cultural attributes
and functions while, in others, have been resignied. The third
type alludes to the written and symbolic testimonies that leave
linguistic notice of some befallen event (MANCILLA MUÑOZ
2013, p. 177; PETERS 2016, p. 243).
As a consequence, it is possible to conceive the historical
thinker as a subject that is inhabiting an “extended present”
backwards and forwards, in which the past would not denitely
pass and in which the future would be constantly anticipated
(LORENZ, 2010, p. 84; NAVAJAS ZUBELDÍA, 2013, p. 36–39).
Hence, the experiences of the present are assumed to include
certain “duration” of time. The temporal framework of an event
changes depending on the temporality in which it is inscribed:
from the forty years of duration of the Spanish democracy to

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the thousand years of agriculture. The majority of things that
happen in the present take place in uid, multiple and complex
temporalities: in a “now” that is crossed by yesterdays and
tomorrows. According to this theorizations about temporality,
historical experience can put us in contact with two main types
of “past”. On the one hand, a fragmented and strange past that
shows itself in its alterity, as a relic or a dead trace. On the
other hand, the past as a living entity, that is standing in the
present and is sustaining it (LOWENTHAL 2016, p. 585–586;
PAUL 2016, p. 58–63).
It seems clear that the inclusion of the experiential dimension
in our model allows taking a position that escapes from the
Manichaean debate between objectivism and subjectivism. The
notion of an insurmountable separation between the past and
the present has been insistently defended by certain narrativists
and constructivists, who are skeptic about the possibility
of “experiencing the past” or even of reaching meaningful
knowledge of it (JENKINS 2003, p. 33–46; PIHLAINEN 2013a,
p. 518). However, along with the theories of “presence”, there
has been a range of epistemological studies that have refuted
the conviction of linguistic relativism. They have re-afrmed the
possibility of establishing a meaningful intellectual relationship
with the traces of the past, departing from a comprehensive
exercise of contextualization, comparison, dating and inference
(e.g. MITROVIĆ 2015).
For their part, the experientialist authors have contended
that the presences can function as “temporal portals” through
which the past can be accessed by its traces, which would be
full of meaning and available for their interpretation (RUNIA
2014, p. 82–83). In this sense, it is possible to add these
arguments to the ideas that, from Gadamer (1977, p. 329–332)
to Ankersmit or Koselleck, have considered “dialogue” as the
heart of historical hermeneutics. These thinkers have claimed
that historical interpreters are able to establish a meaningful
dialectic with the authors and actors that are deceased.
Following this supposition, historical interpretation appears as a

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Experience, symbol and communication: a transversal model for the study of historical thought
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dialectical, emotional and comprehensive relationship between
the interpreter and the interpreted. This relationship would
constitute an act of knowledge in which both subjects would
belong to each other reciprocally, dialoguing and “fusing” their
horizons. While the horizon of the thinker (congured by the
prejudices, the tradition and the authority) would anticipate the
meaning, the horizon opened by the testimonies and traces of
the past would operate a necessary transformation in the rst.
This is not to say, as we have already noticed, that the meaning
of the presences can be addressed and explained in its totality.
On the contrary, the historian raises a set of questions which
are always burdened with intentions and political or ethical
concerns. By doing this, the historical thinker always modies
the original and forgotten meaning of the traces and presences
that allow him to experience the past linguistically, materially
and visually (BEVIR 2015, p. 17–18; DAY 2008, p. 419; PAUL
2016, p. 64). These traces, in turn, alter the preconceptions
of the interpreter about the historical universe he is thinking
about, putting limits to his representational potential and
altering his comprehension of the world and his modes of action
(KOSELLECK 2004, p. 128; PAUL 2016, p. 62).
Therefore, we would talk about the “historical truth” as a
dynamic “verisimilitude” which is dependent on the dialogic
relationship between the presences (here as evidences) and the
system of symbolical and cultural references of the interpreter
(BEVIR 2015, p. 17–18; KUUKKANEN 2015, p. 96–108).
Under this thesis, historical experience would be dialectically
superposed with the symbolic dimensions of historical thought:
the concepts, gurations and argumentative structures that
are constructed by the mind of the interpreter would prevent
knowledge to limit itself to sensorial receptions and would
allow it to structure the experiences that have been received,
transforming them into fully signied historical narratives.
In this framework, a co-determination between experience,
reection and discourse takes place: the experienced past is
situated in a circle with the represented, conceptualized and
communicated past. In the model we propose, therefore,

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the experiential scope is understood as an immediate sense
of the historicity of the world that is constantly mediated by
the symbolical dimensions. The narrative, theoretical and
conceptual aspects of historical thought articulate the network
of relationships between the experiential realm and the social
and individual world. Hereafter we will identify three symbolical
levels that would function as sub-systems implied in the mental
operations that dene the unitary system of historical thought,
along with experience and communication.
In the rst place, we will dene the representational dimension
that comprehends the set of gurative and narrative operations
that are oriented to the construction of a historical representation,
or an intentional image of past realities. This is what narratology
has named as a “ction” (GÓMEZ REDONDO 1994, p. 126–128).
It is important to take into account that some theoreticians, such
as Paul Ricoeur (2003a, p. 198–204;313), David Carr (2008,
p. 19–30, 2014, p. 193–223), Julián Zícari (2015, p. 34–38)
or the last Hayden (WHITE 2014, p. x–xi), have reminded
that the ctional or narrative aspects of historiography could
be understood as imaginative devices that are able to generate
knowledge about human realities.3 In this sense, Ivan Jablonka has
claimed that history could be considered as an intermediate genre
between literature and social knowledge (JABLONKA 2016). Under
these premises, the representational dimension would consist
in a sub-system of signication that contributes decisively
to form coherent and meaningful ideas about the historical
worlds, presenting them as universes of facts with narrative form.
In discursive terms, this dimension is the level of form
in which the author employs narrative and tropological
techniques in order to give formal coherence to the historical
statements. It is also the realm of exposition and proposition
of contents: it gives presence to the data that are compiled in
the experiential dimension, placing them as ordered events.
3 - Obviously there
are profound diffe-
rences between the
diverse theorizations
the authors of this
tendency have per-
formed concerning
the epistemological
capacity of narration
(ANKERSMIT 2011)
Necessary Fictions: the representational dimension.

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This narrative dimension of historical thought is composed by
a set of identiable elements: the “story” (as the exposition
and factual correlation of characters, temporal frameworks and
spaces), the gurative or tropological resources and, nally,
the stylistic elements (voice, focalization or verbal time). This
conjunction implies an enormous diversity of ways of articulating
meaningfully the narrative representation, even though it must
satisfy certain rules and standard of scale and consistency in
order to generate an intelligible ctional world.
The narrative construction of the past begins with the
process of “selection” (DE CERTEAU 2010, p. 18–19; GADDIS
2004, p. 42–45). On the basis of a eld of experiences, issues
or objects that pregure the topic of the story, the historical
thinker (here as a narrator) selects meaningful events among
the unmanageable amount of data that are transmitted by the
sources (LOWENTHAL 2016, p. 337). This selection is performed
in evaluative terms: the interpreter evaluates the past, granting
importance to some facts and including them in the narrative
while condemning others to the dust of forgetfulness and
silence (DAY 2008, p. 418). Then, the narrator subjects the
facts that were selected to a series of processes of description,
characterization and classication. These historical facts are
then subsumed in typologies that situate them in the eld
of a concrete topic or problem (the “Discovery of America”,
the “Enlightenment”, and the “Revolution”). In this moment
these facts are narratively connected with a new set of facts,
becoming an intelligible succession of historical events and
acquiring a meaning that they would not have had in isolation.
Therefore, by following the structural theories of narrative
stories (BARTHES 1974, p. 9–44; WHITE 1992, p. 17–25) we
could suggest that the meaning in the representational realm
is given by the narrative connections that the historical thinker
weaves between the facts selected. The interpreter gives them
coherency, organizing them in chronological events that are
chained in expositive structures with discernible beginnings,
transitions and ends (LOWENTHAL 2016, p. 353). Following this

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Rodrigo Escribano Roca
Hist. Historiogr. v. 12, n. 29, jan-abr, ano 2019, p. 124-152 - DOI 10.15848/hh.v12i29.1335
reasoning, the “story” should be understood as a meaningful
way of locating historical events in a representational
framework. This representational framework would put into
interaction the characters, time and space selected by the
interpreter from the data, giving them a unitary meaning. Thus,
the historical narrator would dene a set of epochs, moments,
rhythms, scenarios, objects and subjects, characterizing them,
modeling their scales and their modes of action and articulating
meaningful dichotomies between the “before” and the “now”,
the “here” and the “there”, the “self” and the “Other”. The
historical narration would be a coherent synthesis that mediates
between the experiential time and the symbolic time; between
the perceived and the imagined spaces; between the referenced
historical characters and the conceptualized ones. Finally,
narration would also allow the mediation between experience
and expectation, modeling the existential dialectics between
identity and change and between collective and individual time
(ERKKILÄ 2015; RÜSEN 2005, p. 11).
At this point, it is necessary to indicate the relationship
of difference and complementarity between narration, as
a “diegesis” that “tells” the world, and representation, as a
“mimesis” that imitates, substitutes and “shows” the world
through tropological resources as metaphors, personications
or allegories (GENETTE 1983, p. 30). Tropes serve to organizes
knowledge through the presentation of complex ideas under
familiar and accessible forms for the understanding and sensibility
of the receptor (GONZÁLEZ DE REQUENA 2016, p. 289–290).
They are a mode of cognition and creation that its dened
by a game of substitutions, which allows accessing a thing
(the represented) through other things (the representations)
(ANKERSMIT 2001, p. 41–49; RICOEUR 2003b, p. 42, 274-282).
There is no doubt that the historical thinker uses the metaphors
and their derivates as a very important means of comprehension
and transmission of historical meanings: most of the historical
narrators need to play with an abundance of allegorical evocations
of lights and shadows, with metaphors of life and death, of youth
and decadence, of maternity and liation.

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This narrative and representational dimension is observable,
either in bigger or smaller scale, in all the intellectual exercises
of historical reconstruction: even positivist or structuralist
historians, who tend to refuse narration as a scientic form
of accessing the past, need to design a spatial-temporal
framework to select certain characters and situate their actions
in an organized structure. However, it is true that, as Renata
Geraissati Castro Almeida (2017), Jörn Rüsen (2005, p. 68–72)
or Carlo Ginzburg (2014, p. 11–12) afrm, while the literary
writer has total creative freedom, the historical narrator owes
the receptor a compromise with verisimilitude, which forces
him to base his representational construction in the presences,
traces and sources that are imposed by the past.
The representational dimension is also situated in a dialectical
relation with the theoretic-argumentative dimension. As Jouni-
Matti Kuukkanen (2015, p. 101) or Mark Bevir (2015, p. 21)
have recently indicated, the interest of the historian does not
simply reside in the production of a narrative representation,
but also in the rational elaboration of a set of ideas organized in
theories through synthetical arguments, which must be based
in demonstrable evidences and experiences (BELL 2016, p. 93;
PAUL 2016, p. 145–148). Thus, the theoretic-argumentative
dimension would consist of a set of logical operations based
on the construction of rational arguments (sums of premises,
evidences and conclusions) that deal with a problem or issue
related with certain aspect of historical times. The historical
argumentation would be, therefore, a systematic process of
synthesis that aims at a theoretical formulation.
The historical argumentation would, then, consist of a
discursive response to a specic set of questions by using
evidences that have previously being organized narratively as
premises. The historical argument would be the sum of the
premises in the form of narrative and of the conclusion drawn
Logical questions: the theoretic-argumentative
dimension.

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from it. All this would be possible thanks to the “historical
hypothesis”, that is to say, the deductions and inferences
performed in order to initiate the reective and investigative
process. Obviously, the condition of possibility for this process
is the existence of a delimited topic or issue and access to
a signicant amount of historical experiences (PAUL 2016,
p. 149–151). The historical discourse usually resorts to
different types of argumentation that have been dened by the
studies of critical thinking and are, essentially: causal arguments
(mechanistic reasoning), conditional arguments, generalizing
arguments (based on organicist reasoning) and comparative
arguments (HERRERO 2016; WHITE 1973, p. 11–21).
Considering all this information, it is possible to deduce
that the discourse of history is not necessarily holistic: despite
its representational nature, it is possible to decompose it
and to read it synthetically, recognizing its central theories
and ideas (KUUKKANEN 2015, p. 131–147). An important
part of professional historiography exposes its theories
and arguments explicitly, in the form of introductions and
conclusions or, directly, in the form of an essay (KUUKKANEN
2015, p. 62–70). Additionally, no matter how narrative, literary
or inductive a history is, no matter how it resists displaying
its ideas synthetically, there will always be central arguments
that will be deduced from the narrative account. There will
always be central ideas that will guide the selection of facts,
characters and chronotopes. Historical thinking always implies
an argumentation about the past that consists in analyzing,
evaluating, comparing, prioritizing and debating. Kuukkaanen
or Paul do not deal with the superposition between the
argumentative and ctional realms.4 However, it is possible
to propose that the evidences that sustain the historical
arguments and theories are not presented directly from the
chaos of experience: in order to argue about something, it
is necessary to organize the evidences (that is, the data, the
presences) in narrative chains of events. In historical thinking
there is not such a thing as an exercise of argumentation without
representation and experience, neither the articulation of a
4 - Hayden White in fact
did it, but he presented
the modes of argumen-
tation as subordinated
to the tropology and
the narrative.

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Experience, symbol and communication: a transversal model for the study of historical thought
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historical experience or of a historical representation without
a structure of questions, hypothetical ideas and synthetical
arguments (are they explicit or implicit). Thus, we reiterate
the idea of historical thought as a dialogical process of multiple
exchanges between dimensions and scopes, giving birth to
transversal kind of knowledge and discourse.
As the last dimension of the symbolical devices, the
conceptual realm provides the syntactic and semantic
frameworks that give the historical thinker the chance of
connecting dialectically experiences, arguments and stories.
Concepts are the semantic nodes that allow to articulate
reections and discourses about history: they are at once
enablers, constrainers, stabilizer and transformers of a eld
of historical ideas (KOSELLECK 2012, p. 7–21). Concepts
are thereby polysemic and plurivocal indexes which include
logical, imaginative, experiential and emotional referents.
Partially following the theorizations of Elias Palti, it is possible
to conclude that concepts do not have a xed or intrinsic meaning,
but they are simply “indexes of problems”: syntactic items that
allow to articulate debates departing from shared codes (PALTI
2014, p. 387–404; WOLOSKY 2014, p. 90–91). In this aspect, they
are characterized by their synchronic use and their performativity,
appearing as inherently dialectic, unstable and contestable. For
this reason, instead of following the semantic track of an only
concept, it is convenient to make an onomastic analysis of certain
historical vocabularies or languages, that is to say, of conceptual
elds that conform semantic networks, constructing meanings
through their mutual associations (BÖDEKER 2013, p. 3–30;
WOLOSKY 2014, p. 89–90). Additionally, it is recommendable to
attend to the considerations of Koselleck and the new history of
ideas, which state that concepts, in spite of their instability and
contingence, are able to accumulate certain groups of meanings
that attach to language, establishing frameworks of thought of
Dictionaries of time: the conceptual dimension

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long duration (ARMITAGE 2012, p. 493–496; KOSELLECK 2004,
p. 155–192). Because of this, concepts can conduct historical-
philological analysis in the long term: in the contemplation of
their birth, their multiple uses and their transformations, it is
possible to trace the ruptures and permanencies in the systems
of historical thought.
To think historically implies, consequentially, to reason and
imagine drawing from conceptuality. Concretely, as Kuukkanen
(2015, p. 97–115) and Ankersmit (1983, p. 90–97) have
indicated, historical thought stresses the “coligatory” dimension
of concepts. Terms such as “colonialism”, “state”, “revolution”
or “neolithic” would serve as synthesizers apt to refer, in one
single word, to the plurality of meanings that are implied in a
set of historical events. Furthermore, concepts are essential to
model temporality: depending on their enunciation, they allude
to different scales, rhythms and durations that determine the
historical meaning of a discourse. As a consequence, they participate
in the construction of the synchronizations and temporal frameworks
that we have mentioned in the previous realms (JORDHEIM 2014,
p. 498–518; STEINMETZ 2017, p. 63–68). As we have seen,
concepts appear in the narrative dimension acting a narrative
substances, characters and categories of time and space.
In the theoretic-argumentative dimension, concepts act as
categories that articulate the premises and the conclusions.
Lastly, in the experiential dimension, they appear as the
means to access the empirical world linguistically. Historical
concepts are the seams that allow the union of the different
materials that compose the representational, argumentative
and experiential dimensions.
All the previous dimensions lead us to last realm:
communicative or performative dimension. This eld makes
reference to the pragmatic aspect of discourse and thought,
this is to say: to the set of rhetorical and communicative
Histories in action: the performative dimension

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Hist. Historiogr. v. 12, n. 29, jan-abr, ano 2019, p. 124-152 - DOI 10.15848/hh.v12i29.1335
movements that are present in the precedent dimensions;
to the set of contexts (political, social, cultural, institutional)
that surround the acts of creation and enunciation of historical
discourse; and, lastly, to the political and ideological intention
that lies behind such acts. The performative dimension involves
diverse emitters and receptors in a game of communication and
power (CARR 2014, p. 223–231; LOWENTHAL 2016, p. 338;
SÁNCHEZ MECA 2012, p. 544–545). This dimension is that in
which the historical thought transcends the individual level,
conguring itself as a cultural practice of social dialogue. This
set of social dialogues would congure a “historical culture”,
understood as the set of voices, spaces and actors that are
implicated in the socialization of historical meanings in the
public sphere. In the context of this historical culture, social
actors would organize their collective experiences of temporality
and historicity (CARR 2014, p. 43; SEIXAS 2017, p. 77). Thus,
the performative dimension allows the study of the relations
of unequal communication that are established between the
social actors that actively produce interpretations about the
past. This also allows the study of the interactions between
different spheres of enunciation (the academy, the church, the
state, social movements, etc) and between different voices
or discursive modes (textual, iconographic, oral, audiovisual,
recreational, etc) (GREVER; ADRIAANSEN 2017, p. 79–81;
PIHLAINEN 2013b, p. 12).
In any case, it is patent that the historical thinker constructs
his discourse with a communicational intention: he does not try
to make the past intelligible simply for himself, but for a specic
group or for a set of social collectives. Therefore, historical
discourses can be analyzed as illocutive speech acts: rhetorical
movements that intend to “do something”, inuencing in a
specic context and provoking transformations in it (POCOCK
2009, p. 52–85; SKINNER 2007, p. 127–156). The historical
thought would produce illocutive acts of assertive type (a
proposition is presented as depiction of the state of things of
the world), directive (the emitter expects the receptor to act
in a specic manner) and expressive (the emitter wants to

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express his feelings and postures regarding a specic issue)
(ESCANDELL VIDAL 2014, p. 117–138). The performative
dimension is present in all the dimensions previously dened:
the conceptual, ctional and argumentative constructions are
also conceived as elements for participating in a public debate.
All of them are constituted as rhetorical actions that aim to
inuence the “historical debate”, considered as an emotional
and rational struggle of different social actors for establishing
the meanings of historical past and historical future (GONZÁLEZ
MANSO 2011, p. 33–35; PERNAU; RAJAMANI 2016, p. 46–50;
PETERS 2016, p. 242).
In this sense, the historical thinker has a clear rhetorical
agency: he wants to add didactic representations to the
mind of his interlocutor (informative intention); to modify
the representations that already exist (persuasive intention);
to make the receptor change his ways of acting (directive
intention); or to impose his representations to alternative ones,
appealing to his own epistemological superiority (normative
intention) (ESCANDELL 2014, p. 100-101; FROEYMAN 2016,
p. 231–232). Historical discourse would be endowed with
perlocutionary power, that is, the capacity to transform the
perceptions and experiences of the receptors, that would
assume or reply the historical representation they receive
(POCOCK 2009, p. 67–70). This analytical framework allows
the connection of the events of social life with the history
of historical representations, arguments, experiences and
concepts (PALONEN 2017, p. 95–101).
These issues form part of what some authors have called
the “politics of History”, as the set of disputes and consensuses
about the historical past that takes place in a certain society
or group. It is assumed that human communities dene their
identities, rights, legitimacies, projects and structures of
governance in reference to the meaning of time and History
(GREEN 2016, p. 37–56). In this context, we could distinguish
various political, moral and existential functions of historical
thought: identifying, justifying, preservative, critic and

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guidance. In the rst place, the “identication” function would
consist in the activity of generating feelings and ideas of belonging,
which would connect the individual with the groups or institutions
in which he is immersed, permitting him to transcend his own
particularity and facilitating his adscription to different ethical
and political communities (GADAMER 1977, p. 297; CARR 2014,
p. 47–55). The next one would be the function of “justication”,
which would endow with legitimacy certain existing institutions
and practices, normalizing them and portraying them as authentic
and stable (POCOCK 2009, p. 187). The preservative function
could be added to these, consisting in the conservation and active
recovery of historical experiences and practices, which would
allow a transgenerational transference of knowledge and customs
(COLLINGWOOD 1919, p. 226; DAY 2008, p. 419–420). The
function of justication has its counterpart in the critical function:
an exercise of contraposition to the hegemonic historical ideas
and myths that allows dening protests and proposing alternative
projects (reactionaries or progressives) (SOUTHGATE 2005,
p. 31–46; WINTER 2010, p. 18–19).
These functions would be crossed by the function of
orientation that would be dedicated to the generation of collective
modes of conduct oriented towards the future and understood
as intersubjective projects that aspire to establish a control over
social expectations. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary
a co-determination between the experienced and the projected,
between the historical conscience of the past and anticipations
of possible futures (LEAL RIQUELME 2011, p. 131–140; RÜSEN
2005, p. 22–23). Therefore, historical thought would be fully
implicated in the social conicts for the control and planication
of the future, having an enormous inuence in the debates that
dene the horizon of expectation, mostly in modern societies
(ALMEIDA 2014, p. 51–69; FRIESE 2010, p. 405–417; KOSELLECK
2003, p. 73–96). Thus, historical thought is generated within
cultural dialogues that associate the experience in the present
with the interpretations of the past and with the expectations of
the future, linked to political and ethical issues that preside the
present (HARTOG 2015, p. 15–20; MUDROVCIC 2016).

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This article has consisted of a dialogue between theories that,
so far, have maintained a contrived divorce, over-dimensioning
each of the partial aspects of an intellectual object which is
inherently transversal. There has been a tendency to occlude
the complex nature of historical thought, whose practices are at
the same time factual and symbolical, theoretical and narrative,
linguistic and experiential, objective and subjective. In the
multidimensional framework that we have proposed, neither
there would be a precedence of language to experience, nor vice
versa. Neither the prevalence of metaphors to concepts nor of
stories to rational argumentations. All the framing of historical
thought would consist of a circle of cognitive practices that
maintain a dialectic relation between them and that potentiate
mutually the nal meaning of the whole. The proposal of
analysis by “dimensions” has not intended to give a denitive
denition of historical knowledge. On the contrary, we have
simply suggested a set of questions that, combined, allow a
more complete comprehension of the intellectual processes of
construction and communication of histories. These questions
could be synthesize in ve realms, each of them with its own
analytical ramications: what experiences of historicity operate
in the broaching of a historical reection?; which are the ctional
or representational devices that the historical thinker employs?;
which forms of argumentation are being used and which theories
are being enunciated?; Which concepts are being chosen and
how are they being signied?; what is the relation between
the discourse of the interpreter and the context of emitters,
receptors and intentions that is surrounding the historian?. This
questionnaire allows the exploration of the very diverse and rich
intellectual processes of cultural signication of the historical
world, departing from the unity of interests of the theory of
history and from a systematic application of the analytical
strategies of some of the tendencies that participate in it. It
seems the only way of advancing in the knowledge of the diverse
and rich processes of cultural signication of historical time and
in the intellectual relations with the historicity of the world.
Conclusion

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Hist. Historiogr. v. 12, n. 29, jan-abr, ano 2019, p. 124-152 - DOI 10.15848/hh.v12i29.1335
RECEIVED IN: 19/FEB./2018 | APPROVED IN: 22/AUG./2018
This article forms part of the project: “Histories of
the Old Empire. The Early Modern American World in the
Historical Thought of Spain and Great Britain”, funded
by the Ministry of Education and Culture of Spain with
the: Scholarship for university staff training (FPU):
FPU14/04695.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND INFORMATION
Rodrigo Escribano Roca
rodrigo.escribano@edu.uah.es
Teacher assistant and PhD student at the University Research Insti-
tute of Latin American Studies (IELAT) and PhD student the School
of Humanities and Communication Arts of Western Sydney Univer-
sity (WSU)
University of Alcalá