History, Rhetoric and Proof (review)

300 Rhetoric & Public Affairs History, Rhetoric and Proof. By Carlo Ginzburg. Hanover & London: The University Press of New England, 1999; pp. vi + 128. $14.95. Carlo Ginzburg's History, Rhetoric and Proof is a breath of fresh air in a dispute in literary and humanistic studies that has become increasingly dated, ritualized, and unproductive. Ginzburg offers a direct challenge to the common postmodern attitude that "historical proof" is an oxymoron. For Ginzburg there is such a thing as historical knowledge and, in common with virtually all postmodern commentators and critics, Ginzburg sees this knowledge taking the form of a rhetorically constructed narrative. Ginzburg denies postmodern relativism and the commonly accepted view that the rhetorical character of narrative demonstrates that proof in historical writing is impossible. Ginzburg's indictment of post-structuralist relativism is introduced via his approving comment on Donna Harraway's objection that "Relativism is a way of being nowhere while claiming to be everywhere equally. The 'equality' of positioning is a denial of responsibility and critical inquiry." Ginzburg's critique is that Harraway "does not place [the deconstructionist] premises under discussion and thus ends up imprisoned by them" (21). The core premise that interests Ginzburg traces back to Nietzsche and the now familiar texts proclaiming the figuristic and perspective character of all knowledge. The conclusion of Ginzburg's first chapter introduces his thesis and summarizes his difference from Nietzsche: "The analysis of every specific distortion of every specific source already implies a constructive element. But construction ... is not incompatible with proof; the projection of desire, without which there could be no research, is not incompatible with the refutations inflected by the principle of reality. Knowledge (even historical knowledge) is possible" (25). Ginzburg locates the possibility of historical knowledge in Aristotle's Rhetoric. Three points in the Rhetoric aie central to Ginzburg's case for the prospect of historical knowledge: a) human history can be reconstructed on the basis of traces, clues, [semeia); b) these reconstructions imply a series of connections, both natural and necessary ( tekmeria) which can be regarded as certain up to now, until somebody proves the opposite, a human being cannot live two hundred years, or be in two different places at the same time, and so forth; c) outside that sphere of natural connections, historians deal with what is likely (eikos), sometimes with what is infinitely likely. They never deal with certainty, although in historians writings the distinction between "infinitely likely" and "certain" tends to collapse (46). The way out of the contemporary reduction of history to "rhetoric" for Ginzburg, while complex in detail, is clear in principle; via Aristotle "proofs, far from being incompatible with rhetoric, are its fundamental core" (50). Book Reviews 301 In chapter two, "Lorenzo Valla and the Donation of Constantine," Ginzburg sets forth the first of several case studies in how rhetoric proves. While conventional accounts of Valla's achievement stress his role as a practitioner of critical philology, Ginzburg points to Valla's polemical style, motive, and intent. The ridicule Valla heaped on the suspect term "satrap" in his critique of the "donation" illuminates how an historical narrative that does not even strive for objectivity establishes historical truth. Ginzburg stresses that "The existence of an intellectual tradition passing from Aristotle to Quintilian, from Quintilian to Valla fits perfectly with the reading of Aristotle's Rhetoric. Aristotle's approach, focusing on proof as the rational core of rhetoric, utterly contradicts the current self-referential image of rhetoric, based on the assumption that rhetoric and proof are basically incompatible" (62). Cicero comes out in Ginzburg's analysis as an enemy of historical writing because of his dismissive attitude toward Thucydides, but Valla, in prizing Quntilian's positive attitude toward the great historian, overcomes what Ginzburg sees as the limitations of a Ciceronian rhetoric. The Quintilian/Aristotelian legacy Ginzburg establishes for Valla provides the interpretive framework for Ginzburg's claim that Valla's close attention to the "factual, antiquarian side of history" and Valla's claim "that rhetoric is 'the mother of history,'" ground historical proof in the context of Aristotle's Rhetoric. In chapter three, "Alien Voices: The Dialogic Element in Early Modern Jesuit Historiography," Ginzburg improves on his Valla example...