Like the lost catacombs of Egypt only God knows where we stuck it…

Did you know that Howard Zinn has destroyed the historical profession?

No? You didn’t? Larry DeWitt would certainly like you to think so.

Before I get started on what DeWitt is arguing exactly, I think an important cavet is in order. I would be remiss if I did not note an important intellectual debt I owe Zinn and his People’s History of the United States. I read that book in my senior year of high school and it was a like the intellectual version of a smack in the face. Zinn’s work changed the way I viewed the world & history and – using hindsight – I would not have gone to down the path towards grad school without that experience. Of course, my politics and historical point-of-view have shifted in the years since that formative experience – I am first to note the numerous problems with Zinn’s book(s). Yet I would remiss if I did not mention this important experience at the beginning.

Ok. On to DeWitt.

Thankfully, for our purposes, DeWitt notes his main problems with Zinn in a very straightforward way:

In my view, the traditional intellectual values of truth and objectivity in historical scholarship are being steadily eroded by the backwash from the passing through our profession of the “postmodern moment.” I typically identify five forms of this erosion: 1) Skeptical Postmodernism; 2) Multicultural Postmodernism; 3) Political Postmodernism; 4) Subjective Postmodernism; and Textualist Postmodernism. Zinn is a practitioner of Political Postmodernism, which views a central purpose of historical scholarship as being to advance one’s political agendas. All of these forms of postmodern declension have one thing in common: they all seek to undermine the intellectual values of truth and objectivity in historical scholarship.

Post-Modernism, of course! DeWitt needs to be careful he in that he does not conflate his categories. Zinn is certainly a post-modernist in his skepticism and overt commitment to scholarship as a political act but he is not a “multi-culturalist” in the sense that most people (especially conservatives) think of it. His Marxism prevents it. Zinn’s multiculturalism is the multiculturalism of the proletariat – uniting all workers in their pan-cultural oppression. (This of course, leads to the question of who exactly are “the People” in the A People’s History?)

Anyway, DeWitt argues that Zinn’s post-modernism stands in contrast to how history has been (and should) be practiced:

Traditionally, historians have assumed an obligation to strive for a fair and balanced account of the past. In a word, we thought we had an obligation to strive for objectivity in our histories.

Zinn in contrast “seek[s] to undermine the intellectual values of truth and objectivity in historical scholarship.” To DeWitt it doesn’t matter “that earlier generations of historians may have failed to honor the ideal of objectivity” because he feels that their basic value system still retains its worth. Because without it we are left with an “intellectual sewer” of “biases”.

As he puts it:

In insisting that history ought to be pursued with the aim of recovering objective truth, I am not demanding perfection in historians any more than I am expecting to find it anywhere else in life. I am only expecting that historians strive, to the best of their abilities, to provide a fair and balanced account of history, and that they remain open-minded enough to periodically adjust their point-of-view when they notice their failings in this effort. But if one starts with the aim of pushing a political agenda, then neither fairness or balance, nor open-mindedness, nor willingness to correct one’s errors, are ever likely to be in evidence.

Dewitt’s supposed “checkmate” thought experiment is this:

[I]magine that Newt Gingrich (a former university professor of history, recall) were to give us his reader of American history from the bottom-up. No doubt, it would feature stories of historical actors whose actions somehow rebounded to the greater glory of the Republican Revolution and to such sainted figures as Ronald Reagan. Would Zinn and company find this agreeable? But if this kind of selectivity is fair game for Zinn, it is as well for Gingrich.

The thing is such a book already exists. And it is terrible (I have read it) and actually more intellectual dishonest than Zinn’s. Why is it more intellectually dishonest than Zinn’s A People History? Because the authors of A Patriot’s History are – like DeWitt – trying to be “objective” in their history and provide a “fair and balanced” approached to their subject. The authors of A Patriot’s History share DeWitt’s belief that:

Indeed, what an honest and balanced history looks like is one that includes both [history from the bottom up & "traditional" history] simultaneously, in their proper proportions. Getting things in their proper proportions means, among other things, not misrepresenting a small achievement as a large one or a large one as being of no importance.

The fundamental question is how the hell do we decide what exactly is the “proper proportions” for things to be in? Because such things are absolutely not self-evident. Human beings are not “god”, they are not unable to step outside of themselves and make “objective” – “neutral” – value judgments. Whatever value judgments a human being makes – historians included – are mortally “compromised” by their own value systems and historical time and place.

Historians are constantly – and necessarily – making choices about what to include and what to exclude in their histories. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that – it is necessary. But the question is how are those choices made? Those judgments are fundamentally political – perhaps ideological would be a better word. Even historians making such choices “objectively”  are being political. The great contribution of post-modernism to history is the understanding that objectivity is in and of itself an ideology with its own assumptions and biases. (I think there was a famous book written about this)

Because of this it is best for historians to be honest and forth right and show why they make the choices they do and not hide behind the smoke screen of objectivity. Zinn – despite his countless problems as a scholar – is at least honest about where his scholarship is coming from. The man and his books are Marxist through and through. It would be nice if other historians – like Larry DeWitt – where as honest with their ideological assumptions as Zinn. It would lead to a more honest and open debate.

Gordon fucking Wood…

Over at the Edge of the American West, Ari has a list of five books that “explain” American history (pre-1876). The list is as good as any – arbitrary but insightful. I’m familiar with all but one of the books on his list and I find his inclusion of Gordon Wood’s The Radicalism of the American Revolution to be both interesting and strangely funny. It seems that no matter how hard one might try, there is simply no way to escape that book.

As you may or may not know, I’m in grad school studying history and – honestly – you can’t escape Wood and Radicalism. Most people, even those who love the book, admit that it’s – at best – incomplete. At worst the book could be said to ignore huge swaths of people – women, African-Americans (especially) Native-Americans – of Early America and one can’t help but almost forget that slavery existed after the Revolution. So, even though the book is admittedly deeply flawed – in one way or the other – why do people keep coming back to it? Even people who deeply disagree with it’s premise and/or conclusions?

Is it because Wood’s prose is very readable – at least in Radicalism - and thus easy to assign in both undergrad and graduate level? Probably. Is it deep down that because most Americans – even those most critical of America -  want to find something radical about our revolution? Maybe. Is it because Wood’s simple and straightforward thesis – America goes from monarchy to republicanism to democracy in one easy breezy sweep of history – is so easy to “write against” and critique? Quite likely.

I find Wood to be such annoying figure in modern early American historiography – he’s insightful but frustratingly close minded. He managed to write a book – ok, a collection of edited essays – about the Founders that was not hagiography nor boring but instead provocative. Unlike Joesph Ellis, for example. But he also spent a good portion of that book – and his latest – endlessly bashing and degrading cultural history.

His central arguments in about early American history seems to be:

1. The last fifty years of early American historiography has been pretty damn good…
2. But there is too much of it!
3. And there is too much gender/race/class in modern historiography!

There is an elitist element that someone – especially someone who is not going to graduate school at Harvard, Yale, or Wood’s Brown – can’t help but detect in Wood’s sweeping denoucement of the multipicity of voices in the American historical profession. It – almost – seems that if you aren’t a graduate of one of the big name institutions – the Ivies, UVA, William and Mary, Stanford, etc. – you’re using up intellectual air that could be better spent; like by Wood’s graduate students. And his attitude towards gender, race, and class in history (especially gender) is that – man, that shit should have stopped with A Midwife’s Tale and an Unredeemed Capitive. Which is just closeminded and – again – elitist.

So, I think that Wood is at once one of the most interesting and the most frustrating early Americanists today. More often than not, my frustrations with him out weight how interesting I find him. Yet I still keep coming back to his work. Why?

Huh?

I recieved the following e-mail from the Provost of George Mason University at 1:16 AM:

To the Mason Community:

Please note that election day has been moved to November 5th. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Peter N. Stearns
Provost

Strange, eh? What the hell is going on? Did someone hijack the Mason Provost’s e-mail account?

Because I recieved this e-mail at 1:10 am:

To the Mason Community:

I hear some troubling rumors, so here are a couple of facts: 1. The election is Nov. 4, for all political parties. The notion that one party votes Nov. 5 is UNTRUE. 2. It is also UNTRUE that any student jeopardizes financial aid by voting.

Peter N. Stearns
Provost

How strange is that?

UPDATE: Just received this:

Dear Colleagues,

It has come to my attention early this morning that a message was hacked into the system fraudulently stating that election day has been moved.  I am sure everybody realizes this is a hoax, it is also a serious offense and we are looking into it.  Please be reminded that election day is today, November 4th.

Peter N. Stearns
Provost

Just what the hell is history anyway?

Ok. As some of you may (or may not?) know, I’m currently enrolled in graduate school in history (history grad school?). This involves a lot of reading (obviously), writing (duh), and thinking (uh-oh).

It is, of course, the thinking that is the real danger of my graduate school experience; especially any philosophical thinking. Trying to parse things philosophically is really quite the quagmire for me. It usually starts out okay but quickly things denigrate into a bunch of unclear contradictions before finally collapsing into a epistemologically pathetic muddle.

My basic point: philosophizing makes me look like an idiot. And like a fool (what’s the definition of insanity again?) I keep trying to do it. The worse of it is when someone actually encourages this nonsense!

So, of course (again), one of my classes encourages the sort of epistemological muddle I degrade into. The class in question is a “historical methods” (read: the philosophy of history) class and thus is forces me into thinking about such deep questions as “what is the nature of historical investigation? and how exactly does one go about it?”.

Now in just a few short days I have to get up in front of the class and articulate my position (sort of) on many of those sort of questions. That is bad enough but I have to do this in front of a bunch of people who are:

1. Smarter than me
2. Older than me
3. Quite likely to disregard my thoughts due to (1) and/or (2)

So, in desperation to not look like a complete idiot, I have been trying to find some way to marshal my thoughts. And I’ve come up with a metaphor (really a thought experiment) that gets at some of my opinions on the nature of historical knowledge and historical inquiry.

As noted above, in my need to not look like an idiot on Monday, I need to come up with some way to “test” (try out?) this metaphor/thought experiment/ramble before I unleash it on my unsuspecting classmates. But how to do this without boring my girlfriend to death?

And then it came to me – in a flash of insight – don’t I have a blog?

Isn’t that what the internets is for?

Anyway, the above was a long (over 300 words!) prologue to what exactly this post is going to be about. Below will be a “working” version of the thought experiment that has been bouncing around in my brain for a week. I welcome any and all opinions on how effective (or ineffective) the below experiment (philosophic muddle?) is and how well I manage to articulate my thoughts.

Here it goes:

He Said/She Said: A Bad Breakup as a Case Study in Historical Inquiry:
by Smith Michaels

Now lets say that two of your good friends (for clarity’s sake referred to from here out as John and Jane) had sudden – at least to you- and very bad break up after dating for a good period. Understandably, you go  to your friends and ask them: how exactly did such a sudden turn of events come about? Now here’s where the trouble starts; Jane and John both give narratives of the last weeks of their love affair that don’t add up to one another and contradict each other.

To wit, Jane claims things were going great until she discovered that John had cheated on her with someone else! John, on the other hand, claims that there was no cheating and that things had been going poorly for awhile and that Jane was distant, inattentive, and emotionally abusive. Such treatment, inevitably, led to the break up.

Now – concerned as you are to figure out exactly what happened between your two friends – how is one supposed to reconcile these two conflicting accounts and come at the truth? To put things more a bit more (*cough*) clearly, how are we to create a historical account of the break up of Jane and John?

What would be the most obvious sources for such a history? The most obvious is the accounts, or memories, of both John and Jane. But such sources are – to be blunt – “compromised” by their very nature. That is to say, such accounts are not completely reliable.

John and Jane could easily by lying to you or – to be more generous – they could be misremembering exactly what happened. Human beings – both consciously and unconsciously  – tend reshape their memories to make themselves look better. Even if some is admitting to something they often make their account – again this can be an unconscious effort – as flattering as possible to themselves. [1]

Additionally, memory is shaped by experience. Memory is not a snapshot of the past. Instead, all memories  – even very recent ones – are shaped by the events immediately following them. For example, perhaps a few days before the break up Jane made some snide comment to John, which he now takes to be a sign of the their – later  – break up. If Jane and John had not broken up would John have thought that his memory of the comment as a sign of an event that didn’t happen? Obviously not. [2]

This is not to say that history should not take memory into account. But it is part of only one of two sorts of evidence a historian should use. Historical evidence is, generally, either – as Alan Megill explains – “historical sources” or “historical traces”. “Sources” are accounts of past intentionally left behind or recounted by historical actors (i.e. journals, letters, and memories). “Traces” are unintentional remains of historical actors; the detritus of historical experience – Megill’s clearest example is that of train schedules. There is, of course, over lap between the two (is a letter unintentionally left behind a source or a trace?). [3]

Returning to our thought experiment: the “sources” for the break up of John and Jane would, of course, start with the accounts of our primary actors. But it would also include accounts of other “witnesses” – friends of John and Jane – and their accounts. (For our purposes lets call these friends James and Julie). “Traces” for their break up would be things like their class/work schedules  and credit card/bank records (these are just off the top of my head).

Ok. So let’s say that we’ve collected all of the evidence on John and Jane’s break up. Do we now just arrange the various evidence in a “he said/she said” manner and call it history?

Is the following a historical account?

“On September 10th John and Jane ended their 11 month relationship. Jane states that the break up resulted from John’s actions – namely his taking up with another sexual partner – while John denies such allegations. John claims the break up was precipitated by Jane’s poor treatment of him; including emotional abuse. James – a friend John – states that over the last few weeks he had repeatedly seen Jane belittled James in public. While Julie – a friend of Jane’s – says that she saw John emerge from a motel early one morning, shortly before the break up.”

I would argue that the above is not a historical account but just a recounting of the historical evidence related to John and Jane’s break up. History requires a critical treatment of the evidence. It requires judgment as to what evidence is most likely to be true.

It - that is history – requires judgment as to what evidence is most likely to be true. That’s an important statement and requires some unpacking. The most important word in that sentence is “likely”. It is my contention that the past is incredibly difficult to know as absolute truth – that is to say historical truth is subjective or (horror) relative. Our ability to know the “truth” about the past is curtained at every corner; not only by the historical evidence but by the historian’s own intellect, biology, and psychology.

That is not to say that the past is “unknowable” but “knowing” the past – i.e. history – requires a great deal of humility on the part of the historian. Namely it requires that historian acknowledge contingent nature of historical knowledge; contingent on the evidence, contingent on the faculties of the historian.

To go at this a different way: there are a couple of main characteristics of good history (beside what was just discussed above):

1. The historian has treated the evidence critically; that is to say not taken various pieces of evidence at face value
2. The historian has shown a “detached commitment”. That commitment can be political, personal or whatever for such commitment is what drives a historian to write history; from it comes the questions a historian seeks to answer. To return to our thought experiment, why would you care about why Jane and John broke up if you didn’t care about them? By detachment I mean a willingness to allow the evidence. Conclusions should be supported by evidence not just by one’s various commitments. One’s evidence should not be suppressed because of one’s commitments. [4]
3. The historian shows “sympathy” towards the historian actors involved; by “sympathy” I mean treating historical actors as fellow human beings (obviously existing in the past) and not as caricatures.

Now let’s apply these criteria to our thought experiment, particularly (1) and (2).

As for (1) let’s say from examining John’s bank and credit card records – from right before the break up – you uncover the following:

• A twenty dollar charge at Regal Cinema (roughly the cost for tickets for two) on a night when Jane was working
• A 200 dollar charge at a fancy French restaurant that same night
• A charge at a local Best Western late that night

Now what can we tell from this evidence and the evidence shown previously. Clearly the bank record’s provide support for Jane’s assertion that John cheated on her (who spends money on a movie, diner, and a hotel room for just themselves?). This evidence, taken along with the account of Julie, makes it likely that John cheated on Julie, unless other evidence emerges.

What I just exercised was historical judgment and a critical treatment of the sources. I weighed the various pieces of evidence in light of the evidence as a whole. If John’s bank records had not shown those purchases than their would be much less support for the claim that he cheated on Jane.

Now if I was, for example, better friends with John than Jane and discovered the above evidence and sought to cover it up or disregard it (VISA lies, honey) I would be violating the spirit of (2). My commitment to my friend is fine and is likely driving me to figuring how how he broke up with his girlfriend. But my suppression of evidence in favor of my commitment to my friend shows a lack of “detachment” and thus my conclusions would not be history.

Ok. Now what would a history of John and Jane’s break up, actually look like? It might look something like this:

On September 10th, Jane and John ended a 11 month romantic entanglement. Jane asserts that the relationship ended because of John’s lack of fidelity while John points to emotional estrangement and abuse. Evidence – from eye witness accounts to dinner and hotel expenses – points to the likelihood of John’s infidelity.

Ok. Now there are several problems with this thought experiment.

1. It is very crude
2. No one would have that much interest in their friends’ break up
3. Even if one did have that much interest in a friends’ romantic ups and downs they would never have access to bank records.

I’m sure the philosophically and historically inclined will find further problems with the thought experiment above and with the arguments presented there in. I am, of course, open to suggestion and criticism. [5]

—

Notes:

An alternative title to this post could be “In which I show that I am only as smart as the last book I read…”; the arguments above are heavily influenced by the arguments of Alan Megill in his book Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice. The talk I have to give on Monday centers around issues raised by that book. My general of impression of it is very positive (clearly). Especially useful was the chapter on objectivity (Chapter Six), provided clarity to issues I’ve been thinking about since I was 16 (pretentious?).

[1] This is drawn from, Alan Megill, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error (Chicago, 2007); p. 24, 52-5 and Chapter 1 more generally.
[2] An (better?) example of this is in Ibid, p. 49-50
[3] Megil recounts the types of historical evidence in: Ibid, p. 25-26
[4] This understanding is drawn from Ibid, p. 109-112 & Chapter Six more generally.
[5] This is likely the longest piece I have written for this version of Blurred Productions. I have listened to the Doctor Horrible soundtrack at least 12 times (on repeat) while composing it. I tried to avoid my usual spelling & grammar mistakes through frequent editing throughout. I’m sure my efforts mostly went to waste.

Congrats…

This is funny, horrifing, and touching. Congratulations to Dr. Kaufman.

Don’t play with me…

Last night I experienced a phenomena that I thought would not follow me from my undergrad career to my years (?) in graduate school.

As you may or may not know I went to Shepherd University for my undergrad and Shepherd is a very commuter heavy school. With that brings a lot of “non-traditional” (re: older) students and more than a few unusual ones to boot. 99 percent of the time these students brought a lot to the table; their life experience, perspective, and scholarly drive (i.e. they were less likely to be hung over than most of the “traditional” students, myself included) shaped class discussions in interesting ways that would not have been possible in a classroom made up of just people in their late teens and early twenties.

But on occasion one or two of those students could be the most horrid person to have in the classroom. Anyone, in any department, who went to Shepherd knows what I am talking about. The half-crazed student who mumbled, ranted, interrupted the teacher and his/her fellow students, couldn’t stay on topic, shared awkward personal details, sought to dominate the class discussions, and, generally, sucked the intellectual oxygen out of the classroom. Usually the professors were too nice to do anything about it.

Now, I thought such students were just a by-product of Shepherd’s unique demographics. But no it seems that they’re common where ever you go, since I have one in my first graduate class.

Indeed, the more things change the more they stay the same.

Why would you lie about something dumb like that?

As you all can see, posting from me has been scarce over the last few weeks. I’ve been busy packing, moving, saying good-bye to the girlfriend (whose off to do amazing things in NYC and grad school), and getting the cat settled.

I now have regular internet access again so posting should return to some sort of semblance of normalcy. Or maybe that’ll be another broken promise. There will be plenty to blog about over the next week, the Democratic convention excluded. For example, I have a thing or two to say about the 4th edition version of the Forgotten Realms (initial impression: mixed).

Anyway, I start grad school tomorrow evening and still have some more reading to do before class. So I should sleep.

Oh yeah. Did anybody else hear about this?

UPDATE: This was our 500th post. I probably should have made it a bit sexier.