Caveat lector: I undertook graduate studies with Professor Nikulin at The New School for Social Research. With previous publications covering Plato, dialogue, geometry, and imagination, Nikulin’s The Concept of History (TCOH) develops some of his specializations (comedy and memory, specifically) towards the thesis “that history has a particular structure that is exemplified in history but is itself not historical” (x). In the chapter “Memory and history,” Nikulin intervenes against Maurice Halbwachs and R.G. Collingwood, who “presuppose a notion of history that uses memory yet itself is not useful to memory” (123) whereas (per Nikulin) “the way in which history is constituted cannot be isolated from the way it is preserved” (124). Similarly, against Leopold Ranke’s assumption of the historical as-it-really-was and Paul Ricoeur’s insistence on the restorative power of “a proper and skillful hermeneutical interpretation of history” (142), Nikulin argues that “there is no single pre-established meaning in and behind an event” (ibid.) and remembrance is therefore always a reinterpretation adding mystification to a history (ibid.). With “The genealogy of history,” Nikulin notes how Foucault radicalized Nietzsche’s genealogical project from an evolutionary search for origins to a critical project revealing “chance, contingencies, deviations, and errors” (153-154). Although agreeing with Nietzsche and Foucault that “genealogy is defined by the consideration of the composition of history” (155), Nikulin intervenes, asserting in contradistinction: “genealogy has the same catalogue as history” (ibid.). Furthermore, whereas Nietzsche and Foucault “imply that [genealogical interpretation] is the task of a philosopher, I want to suggest that such an interpreter can be anyone, either an ‘insider’ or an ‘outsider’ of a genealogy” (158).

Both these interventions (regarding memory and genealogy) rely on Nikulin’s fabula/list distinction, which reformulates the Russian Formalist terms of fabula and syuzhet, whereby “fabula covers both syuzhet and the Formalist fabula” (9). Nikulin’s fabula “implies narration” (ibid.) and complements the historical list as semantics does syntax (11). “Or, fabula is similar to a plot in a literary piece, and the historical to the set of characters, where characters are quite independent of, and take precedence over, the plot” (ibid.). The Halbwachs/Collingwood intervention presents fabula within the historical as mediating personal and collective memory (124), while the genealogical intervention argues that the structural similarity between genealogy and history consists of both a sequential list and “a fabula, a genealogical narrative or ‘myth’ meant to explain and justify the inclusion” of items in the list (155).

TCOH is a valuable contribution presenting a series of paradoxes central to the historical while emphasizing its literary qualities. Nikulin’s dismissal of the pseudo-paradox of historicism is definitive (x) and the description of the paradox of teleological history is similarly authoritative (120), whereas his formulation of ontological paradox at the heart of historical memory (142) and of genealogy as both conservative and progressive (160) are productive. The prefatory statement that “I am not doing a history of history but rather attempting a philosophy of history” (viii), should give the reader pause when, soon thereafter, Nikulin announces: “In what follows, I will not attempt to present a general theory of history or another philosophy of history” (5). This seeming antinomy is resolved by differentiating Enlightenment philosophies of history (following Voltaire’s definition) (18) from non-universalizing and non-teleological philosophies (following Nikulin’s). Nikulin’s ahistorical structuration of history (contra modern historiography’s teleology and universality, contra historicism and relativism) is a concept that makes possible the pluri-vocality of histories requiring “revelatory philosophical work” (ix) whereby a “good ending can only be given to a history by us through our shared effort. History is thus not comic a priori, but should be rendered comic by us” (ibid.).

The literary proves important throughout the text. Nikulin introduces his concept of inner theater, which is “constituted by interconnected stories about related events and people that are meaningful to those who remember [and] is the stage for the realization of a particular history” (59). Nikulin compares his argument “that literary forms […] are important for understanding how history functions and is structured” (137) to Hayden White’s concept of historical emplotment implying both rhetorical and literary categories, concluding that “contrary to White’s claim, history is neither grounded in nor defined as an applied rhetoric” (137). Nikulin’s emphasizing fabula and a lack of pre-established meaning to the historical culminates in the assertion of historical corrigibility: “The narrative does, can, and should change, in accordance with new political visions and demands, but the historical should be preserved. The historical should be conservative but the narrative of history should be progressive” (173).

Beyond the above-mentioned chapters on memory and genealogy, TCOH also contains chapters presenting the classificatory yet pluri-vocal nature of historical logoi and the syllogistic character of history (“The logos of history”); the failure of autobiography and its distinction from the historical and the biographical, how the difference between the oral and the written defines the purpose of the historical, and similarly how the ancient cult of the Muses, the structure of catalogue poetry, and the ancient use of epithet shed light on the structures of the historical (“The Homer galaxy”); Nikulin furthermore underlines the importance of distinguishing between the antiquarian and the historiographic, the myth and the fable, the inner theatre of history and the dramatic anecdote, and the epic from the fictional and historical (“The epic of history”). The chapter “Early history” is fascinating for its discussion (and subsequent deconstruction) of comparisons between Greek and Roman historiography, the ancient role of virtue, glory, and fame, as well as the early co-implication of the genealogical and the geographical within the historical. “The structures of history” gets to the heart of critiques of modern concepts of history and frames the human historical project in Arendtian ontological terms as a “need for the overcoming of non-being” (13). Although TCOH will be of immediate interest to classicists, scholars concerned with memory, interpretation, and the recent philosophical revitalization of the historical will find this an invaluable contribution to ongoing debates.