In February this year, HHS published a special issue on ‘the future of the history of the human sciences, edited by Chris Renwick. That issue (and the event it drew from) brought together scholars from a wide range of backgrounds and institutional positions, to reflect on the constitution of ‘the history of the human sciences’ as a field – and also to think through its possible or likely futures. Representing, perhaps, different ‘generational’ approaches to these concerns were Roger Smith (now working independently in the Russian Federation, and a Reader Emeritus in History of Science at Lancaster University), who wrote on resistance to the neurosciences, and Alexandra Bacopoulos-Viau (a Vising Fellow at Weill Cornell Psychiatry, and associate member of the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill) who wrote on the discovery of the unconscious. Here, Alexandra puts some questions to Roger on the past and present of the history of the human sciences as a field.

Alexandra Bacopoulos-Viau (ABV): Roger, how has the history of the human science – as a field – changed since you were a graduate student?

Roger Smith (RS): There was no field of history of the human sciences when I was a graduate student (1967-70). Very little activity in the history of science concerned the non-physical sciences; and the separate social science and psychological disciplines wrote narrow histories for internal consumption. The phrase ‘the human sciences’ was uncommon (though in France, sciences humaines and les sciences de l’homme were well-established terms, each with its own connotation in intellectual life). The change, to which I contributed, was the constitution of some semblance of a ‘field’ of history of the human sciences in the second half of the 1980s, and the piecemeal spread thereafter of reference to the term. Then and now, the identity of the field, its novelty and its trajectory are issues open to debate. It was precisely the value of an umbrella term under which to debate questions roused across existing disciplinary borders that encouraged the use of the term, practices to go with it, and the founding of the eponymous journal in the first place. The way the field has developed has varied considerably in response to local institutional pressures and purposes.

Reference to the existence of the field is now much more common, though hardly general. I am not aware, however, that the identity of the field has substantially changed (however much specific content may be local). In addressing this, though, and in relation to your other questions too, readers will want to bear in mind that I have worked outside a UK institutional setting for over twenty years. I hope other answers will qualify what I say. I note, almost randomly, a few points. Many people feel that the neuro-disciplines demand new recognition, accommodation or critique, and the history of the human sciences has responded to that. Attention to Michel Foucault’s work has been remarkably sustained, relating both to his writings and to the critical lever given by pursuing ‘the history of the present’, leading to analysis of ‘regimes of truth’ in the social and psychological sciences. There has been a spate of good work on post-World War 2 human sciences, mediating between historical knowledge and current concerns. Explicit political critique is less common and there are more signs of conformity to professional standards – though it cannot be said that history of the human sciences has any standards peculiar to itself as a field. The standard of basic contextual reference in historical writing now seems well established. I would much like to know if other people think there have indeed been, or are about to be, changes.

ABV: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the field today?

RS: Intellectually, the challenges are as they were: to provide leadership in situating ‘the human’, or the knowledge-constituting process, at the centre of the sciences. This continuously and necessarily demands open-ended debate about the ontology of these processes and engagement with notions of ‘the human’. The issues are so complex and have been discussed with such intense abstraction in so many specialised ways, that there is huge scope for collective projects and forums rendering the issues more concrete in specific historical settings. I think it is up to the history of the human science to show the work it does is central to the rhetoric (in the deep, constructive, collective sense) of taking the issues further. Work in the field provides models of ‘the golden mean’ between high theory and historical empiricism. The history of the human sciences needs to do more to bring in the intellectual riches of fields such as comparative ethnology and linguistics. I also increasingly value studies which are well written and manifestly wish to communicate (which has nothing to so with ‘dumbing down’).

I also think it’s a challenge for scholars who work in the field to restate what they think are the relations between ‘the human sciences’ and ‘the history of the human sciences’. I often do not know in what sense contributors think (if they do so think) that they work in a field under the title of ‘history’. I would welcome more studies with a long time perspective on ‘the human’. Some think that there is a contemporary ‘transformation’ of the human, and of course to describe such a transformation requires some reference to a ‘before’ as well as to an ‘after’. Certainly, disciplined history of the human sciences ought in this context to be a major resource.

And institutionally, the challenges are the challenges facing the humanities in general, and it is hardly news to say that these are large and disturbing. the history of the human sciences ought to be at the forefront of the rational demonstration that the pursuit of knowledge cannot be built on measures of production taken from the business world. But of course the argument is with political processes which reject the value or pertinence of rationally formulated knowledge.  

ABV: What do you make of the promises / limits of interdisciplinarity?

RS: Interdisciplinarity (however understood) has been around for decades, if not a century or more. The history of the human sciences was constituted as an interdisciplinary field; the history of this field should therefore provide a kind of empirical commentary on the promises and limits of interdisciplinarity itself. The field houses an excellent body of practice and exemplary range of discussions to offer to those seeking to move out of narrowly disciplinary-focused studies. I think the constitution of a domain shaped by long-term assumptions about the relevance of a great range of disciplines and topics (from art history to studies of utopias) to shared problems, has a lot going for it. Publishers don’t seem to share this view, unfortunately, and work according to preconceived market slots (which of course include the slots that goes with famous names). By and large, there is no need to keep talking about interdisciplinarity while the option of doing the history of the human sciences is on the table.

ABV: What excites you most about the future?

RS: I guess this is a question about the field – the future ‘in general’, given the strident failures of political processes, is, shall we say, hard to get excited about. (Utopian ideas may be another matter.) I get excited about particular projects, rather than about ‘a field’, especially one as nebulous as the history of the human sciences. So you will have to excuse me if I call to mind my current project, a book on The Sense of Movement: An Intellectual History (in press). It would be exciting if I could, by this means, reassert the value of intellectual history, link history of science and the history of the human sciences, write the history of a sense and explain what is ‘moving’ about feeling movement (it requires wide-ranging answers). It’s exciting that there is a lot of good work being done, for example, on the history of the emotions, on the culture of the senses, on the constitution of categories like ‘depression’, and on recognition of the data of comparative ethnography about representations of ‘the human’. A lot of people, happily, see that the umbrella category, ‘the history of the human sciences’, has the intellectual and social potential to hold in constructive relation particular studies of the large issues at stake.

Alexandra Bacopoulos-Viau is a Vising Fellow at Weill Cornell Psychiatry, and associate member of the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. With Aude Fauvel, she is the editor of “Tales from the Asylum. Patient Narratives and the (De)construction of Psychiatry,” a special issue of Medical History.

Roger Smith is an an independent scholar in the Russian Federation and a Reader Emeritus in the History of Science at Lancaster University. Among many contributions, he is the author of Being Human: Historical Knowledge and the Creation of Human Nature.