Modern History Sourcebook:
The Nature of History: A Debate between Marc Trachtenberg and James M. Banner, Jr., 1998
The Nature of HistoryWhat follows is a debate published by H-SHEAR, an internet discussion list on the
early American republic, and permitted for non-commercial reproduction by prior agreement
with the authors and copyright holders. The first is the text of an article published in the Wall Street Journal on
July 17, 1998, entitled "The Past Under Siege," by Marc Trachtenberg, professor
of history at the University of Pennsylvania and an organizer of the new Historical
Society. Following the article is a response by James M. Banner, Jr., an independent
historian in Washington, D.C. The exchange may be reproduced electronically for nonprofit purposes, if proper
attribution is given to the authors, the Wall Street Journal, H-SHEAR, and H-Net. The
debate is also being sent to H-Net lists for distribution to a wider audience.
Marc Trachtenberg: THE PAST UNDER SIEGE: A HISTORIAN PONDERS THE STATE OF HIS
PROFESSION--AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT, Wall Street Journal, July 17, 1998 Thirty years ago, when I first became a historian, I thought I knew what historical
work should be. I had this notion that the goal was to get at the truth. It seemed obvious
that to do that you had to put your political beliefs aside and frame questions in such a
way that the answers turned on what the evidence showed. As everyone knows, this whole concept of historical work has been under attack in
recent years. We have seen the rise of a new brand of history, defined not so much by the
kind of subject matter it seeks to "privilege" above all, by a preoccupation
with issues of gender--but by something more basic. Increasingly, the old ideal of historical objectivity is dismissed out of hand. The
very notion of "historical truth" is now often considered hopelessly naive.
Instead, the tendency is for people to insist that all interpretation is to be understood
in essentially political terms. If objectivity is a myth, how can our understanding of the
past be anything but an artifact of our political beliefs? Indeed, if all interpretation
is political anyway, then why not give free rein to one's own political views? Why not use
whatever power one happens to have to "privilege" one's own brand of history? And in fact a particular brand of history is currently being "privileged."
Just look at what goes on at the annual meetings of the main professional organizations,
or what gets published in their journals. "A Dual-Gendered Perspective on Eighteenth
Century Advice and Behavior"; "Constructing Menstruation";
"Rationalizing the Body"; "The Ambiguities of Embodiment in Early
America" these are the sorts of topics one sees all the time nowadays. Or look at the kinds of courses that now, increasingly, are being taught in major
academic departments. One leading university lists a course called "Introduction to
Feminist Studies" as part of its history curriculum. Note the title: not women s
history, not the history of gender relations, indeed, not history at all, but
"feminist studies." You don't have to be an expert in Foucault to deconstruct
that. Another course listed as part of the history curriculum there was called
"Bodyworks." The goal of this course, according to the syllabus, was to examine
the thesis that "dramatic new ways of imaging, controlling, intervening, remaking,
possibly even choosing bodies have participated in a complete reshaping of the notion of
the body in the cultural imaginary and a transformation of our experience of actual human
bodies." "Using theories of postmodernism," this class would address the
questions: "are there postmodern bodies? And how have they been constructed?" It
would explore the thesis that "postmodern bodies are cyborg bodies and that we are
all cyborgs." One sees this sort of thing more and more, and it is not to be dismissed as simply a
passing fad. The problem is that the "privileging" of certain types of history
necessarily implies the marginalization of everything else. Those who do trendy work find
it relatively easy to get jobs and eventually to get tenure. But younger scholars who
still believe in the traditional concept of what historical work should be find it much
harder to get to first base in their academic careers. Many drop out of graduate school
when they see which way the wind is blowing. And many talented undergraduates see what is
going on and decide not to go to graduate school in the first place. The result is that the profession as a whole is gradually being transformed. Last year,
for example, I came across a reference to the "virtual disappearance" of
diplomatic history, my own field, from the curriculum of "major departments."
Can it be that people really think that courses in "feminist studies" are more
important, and more worthy of being taught in history departments, than courses concerned
with the problem of war and peace? It s hard to believe, but increasingly that seems to be
the case. This is a serious problem, not just for the academic community, but for the country as
a whole, because the way the past is understood and, even more than that, the quality of
historical culture--is a matter of profound importance to society at large. So what s the solution? If there is an answer, it has to come from within the
profession, and in fact something important has been going on. Two months ago, a new
organization for professional historians, The Historical Society, officially came into
being. The scholars who joined this new body--there were over 200 charter members--were no
monolithic bloc. Some of them resented the politicization of the major professional
organizations (a charge which the leaders of these organizations do not even bother to
deny). Some especially disliked what they saw as the parochial and exclusionary attitude
of the newly dominant groups, reflected most notably in what went on at annual meetings of
the established organizations. Some simply found the status quo boring and wanted above
all to put some intellectual excitement back into their professional lives. But these people all had one thing in common: a deep dissatisfaction with the status
quo, a discontent strong enough to lead them to break with the established organizations
and to say through their action that something new was needed. Who are the scholars who have joined the new Historical Society? Just tired old
conservative white male professors, who had been left behind by the transformation of the
profession and who wanted nothing more than to turn back the clock to the good ole days
when they were in the saddle? As it turns out, the new Society includes some of the most distinguished scholars in
the profession. Its membership covers the whole political spectrum. Its president, Eugene
Genovese, one of the nation's most eminent historians, is an ex-Marxist and still
certainly a man of the left. It includes black scholars who, given the rawness of the
black historical experience, bridle at the idea that there is no such thing as historical
reality and that everything is just a construct. It includes women who resent being told
that they should be doing "feminist history." And it includes many of our best
younger scholars who feel, with some justification, that they are not getting a fair shake
from the system. Will the new organization transform the profession? A few months ago, I thought the
establishment of this new group would be little more than a symbolic gesture. I was
astonished by the response, and now I am more optimistic. The real battles, of course, will be fought in the universities, and an organization
like this can scarcely change things overnight. But the new Society can show through its
example what historical work should be and what a professional historical organization
should be. If it succeeds at that, it might well have a major impact on the future of
historical culture in America.
[Mr. Trachtenberg, one of the organizers of the new Historical Society, is a professor
of history at the University of Pennsylvania.]
Response by James M. Banner, Jr.23 July 1998 Professor Marc Trachtenberg Department of History University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228 Dear Professor Trachtenberg: I write in response to your article, "The Past Under Siege," in the Wall
Street Journal of July 17th. While the new historical association, on whose creation you and Gene Genovese are
embarked, is likely to gain a toehold among other associations, it seems to me that the
project fails on grounds of ideology, strategy, evidence, consistency, and, not least of
all, nomenclature. Other than that, as one might say, it has a strong future. Let's start with its claimed name: The Historical Society. To those of us who continue
to support, despite their evident weaknesses and frequent foolishness, the senior
organizations of Clio's discipline, especially the American Historical Association and the
Organization of American Historians-just as we retain a certain loyalty to the United
States, despite the nation's many defects, and don't flee to Canada-the arrogant
presumptuousness of the new organization's name, "The Historical Society,"
strikes a sour chord. The historical society of what? one is forced to ask. Of aggrieved
victims? Of Atlanta or Philadelphia? Of Massachusetts (surely never that!)? Or of the
world? Are the AHA and OAH not historical societies? The one reaction the organization is
unlikely to survive is ridicule. It may be too late. In addition, those who have read what for another organization would be termed its
"prospectus" are forced, in this day of exquisite sensitivity to words, to take
note of the name of the society's own prospectus: its "Manifesto." Those who
claim to seek the resurrection of political, institutional, and diplomatic history ought
to exhibit less of a political tin ear than that. There have been manifestos elsewhere,
but something tells me that the term is rather foreign to the American experience. But let us turn to evidence. In a wry commentary some years ago on certain kinds of
increasingly popular argumentation, Francis Oakley coined the term "disheveled
anecdotalism." One would like to think that you and your colleagues would avoid that
method. So far you haven't. To be sure, the space you're allotted on an op-ed page
prevents you from making your case fully. And surely you're right to cite some of the more
egregious examples of academic folly, such as history courses in "bodyworks,"
meeting sessions on "constructing menstruation," and the use of neologisms like
"privileging" (but shouldn't we also add "hegemonic"?), against which
all of us can justly rage (and many of us laugh). (Although I must say that the sheer
foolishness of some historians reminds me frequently, and gives me heart, that historians
are normal human beings and not, as some would think, people out of the ordinary.) But to
suggest that such courses and such terms are universal, that they've taken over all
departments, and that young scholars who don't pursue fashionable studies are kept from
professorships seems to me simply wrong on its face. Until you provide us with strong
studies (not anecdotal ones) in your favor, your enterprise doesn't deserve the support or
respect of historians who, even from undergraduates, normally require better evidence than
you offer. Let me, however, provide my own slice of evidence (disheveled anecdotes, too!)-and
evidence to the contrary. Just this past weekend, I attended the annual meeting of the
Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. A firm opponent of "fragment
" institutions, I have never been a SHEAR member, although I have long been a student
of the early nation. Yet no one can overlook the strength and success of this little
institution in its 22 years-its journal, its meetings, the seriousness of its member , the
scholarship that it encourages. Had you been at its recent meeting, you could not have
subsequently written as you did, at least ingenuously, in the Journal. Virtually the
entire meeting program was devoted to traditional issues or new ones defined in ways that
would have made your heart sing. No neologisms here, no caucuses, no divisions of men and
women (men attended sessions on women, and vice versa), no ideological battles, no
"manifestos." Instead, graduate students mixed easily with senior or scholars
and newly minted academics-most of the latter of whom, although political and
institutional historians or, like you, students of foreign affairs, had recently found
line positions at colleges and research universities throughout the country. What was so encouraging to someone like myself, who has, like you, a short fuse for
inanity, was that no foolishness was to be heard or seen. I have rarely attended a meeting
from which I gained as much. Everyone had put political beliefs aside and framed ed
questions, in your words, "in such a way that the answers turned on what the evidence
showed." If you are to claim that politics, "exclusionary attitudes,"
"feminist studies," and such have taken over the discipline, you will have to
explain away such evidence to the contrary. The status quo "boring" so that
people were rushing off to found a new society? On the contrary. Venerable disciplinary
questions were being treated in a manner of engagement, liveliness, and wit that was
anything but boring. And women were not being pushed aside for not doing "feminist
history," nor, inasmuch as a majority of the papers were given by graduate students
or young assistant professors, was there evidence of aspiring professionals "not
getting a fair shake from the system." Next, let's take the strategy of the soi-disant Historical Society. You and I can
fairly differ about whether a "come outer" approach works or can work in a
situation such as the one you claim the discipline faces. But, again, the facts, I fear,
are not on your side-or at least I interpret them differently than you do. You imply-and I
wager that, like I, in the solitude of your office you more loudly complain-that we risk
becoming a discipline of self-professed victims and that we pursue victim studies . Much
of what has been produced in the name of Clio in the last quarter century can surely be
called that. But here again, to make a robust case for your course of action, you have to
convince me of two things. The first is that, whether in the name o of victims or not, the
last quarter century has not given us (with serious costs to be sure) the greatest
advances in understanding of other people at other times in other places that the
discipline has ever before experienced. You and I may not always like the tone, the
approach, and the ideology that undergirds and advances this understanding. But if you can
find another era in which we've learned so much about workers, colonial peoples, women,
racial and ethnic minorities, and misfits-to say nothing o of elites, white men,
majorities, "normal" people, and politics and institutions (my particular
interest) and foreign relations (yours)-I should like you to cite it to me and make your
case to all the world. You are free not to like what we've learned; you are free to pursue
other kinds of scholarship than those which are fashionable. (In fact, yours is the kind
of scholarship I pursue, sometimes, I fear, at the risk of seeming an anachronism; but I
do so out of love for the subject, and nothing will deter me from that.) But you must do
better than to dismiss the results of this scholarship as mere victim, ideological, or
self-referential history. The second thing of which you have to convince me is that you and your colleagues are
not themselves engaging in what you and I apparently both detest: whining. Yes, you've
been momentarily pushed aside by new currents of thought. By unspoken consensus, the
majority of historians have decided that, at least for now, we know enough of traditional
subjects and must learn more-and learn to think about that "more" better-about
subjects previously ignored. But rather than staying within the AHA and the OAH and
fighting for your subjects, for space on their annual meeting programs, for posts on their
governing boards, and, most important, for the epicentral significance of issues of
politics, ideas, power, and wars, you've decided to take the easy way out. Perhaps you've admitted defeat (although I hope not). But surely you can be accused, as
you accuse others, of complaining rather than battling, of yourselves trying to change the
rules of the game rather than using the ones that exist, and, worst, of moving off onto
your own isolated terrain with the possible result that others can more easily ignore your
just claims to seriousness and attention. In that soil lie the seeds of your own
irrelevance. You will welcome everyone to membership, you say in your article. But why
would those whom you attack join? Why would Bill Buckley join the Democratic Party or Tom
Hayden attend a Republican convention? You risk hiving yourself off into another discrete
segment of historians, publishing yet another journal in which scholars talk to one
another but not to anyone else, meeting warmly each year with comrades in negative
reference to the others with whom you disagree, hyperventilating about the delicts of most
historians, and gaining the exquisite satisfaction of being in the right. That is not
enough. Finally, I have to remind you of the thin theoretical base of the claims that are
implicit in your approach. Out of the turmoils-evidentiary, ideological, social, cultural,
and theoretical-of the past decades has arisen a body of thought about objectivity,
language, evidence, argument, presentation, and even the very existence of independent
historical knowledge. I refer of course to the work of such historians as Haydn White,
James Kloppenberg, Tom Haskell, David Hollinger, Bob Berkhofer, and most recently David
Harlan-to name only a few and only those in the Anglo-American tradition. Underlying much
of the disintegration of purpose, comity, and institution in academic life is a vital
debate, not yet resolved (and possibly never to be) about the nature of reality,
perception, and fact. The notion of "historical truth" is not universally
considered, as you write, to be "hopelessly naive" or "dismissed out of
hand." Far from it. Some of the best minds in the discipline wrestle with the very
nature of historical truth in every word they write. One who thinks deeply and seriously
about historical truth must accept the possibility that, whether you or I like it or not,
it will never be possible on philosophic grounds to accept older notions of truth,
historical or otherwise. This may indeed mark a revolution in human affairs, and so it is
not likely that the actions and words of a few historians can avail against the powerful
thrusts of epistemology, French theory, deconstruction, postmodernism, and the he like.
They have permanently altered our world-they are indeed, as you say, "more
basic"-and no historical society will hold back their forces. I should also point out in closing, if somewhat parenthetically, that your analysis of
the state of what you call "the profession" pertains principally to the academic
profession. An entire body of new practices, little noticed by too many academic
historians though of great consequence to their students, has come into being, and it goes
under the name of public history. An increasing number (now close to 40%) of aspiring
historians-whether by necessity or choice is still unclear-are entering this other
profession within history's discipline. Your fears about the fate of graduate students,
which, as I argue above, I believe are misplaced on other grounds, may also be misplaced
on this one. To be sure, many are being disappointed in their search for academic posts.
But many are carrying Clio's light beyond the classroom, and a historical society that
ignores these historians, as well as the methodological and historiographical issues they
raise, ignores them at its peril. In this letter, I have tried to be as fair and serious as your efforts deserve. So I
close with the hope that you will try to provide the evidence I seek and engage some of
the issues that I raise here. They are, I'm confident you will agree, important issues,
and issues on which more heat has been vented than light shone in recent years. They cry
out for evidence, for analytical rigor, and for theoretical sophistication. If the new
organization, despite my objections, could achieve what has been so lacking in recent
decades of charges and countercharges-namely, evidence-based, non-ideological studies of
the recent history of the discipline of history-that would be a genuine contribution to us
all. To do so, however, will require quite different approaches than the ones that you and
your colleagues (my colleagues, too) have so far adopted. That such a wide range of people, many of whom I know and admire, have seen fit to join
your new organization gives me pause about not joining myself. But I cannot wish well to
yet another fragment society, one built so far upon such a shallow foundation of evidence,
upon such a tone of grievance, upon the name that it claims, and upon the strategy it
pursues. The society may flourish, and I wish well for the work of its members. But it
will not have my support. For how can we all pull together if we all pull apart? With best regards, Sincerely, /s/ James M. Banner, Jr.
Source:Posted on H-Net discussion lists, fall 1998.
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© Paul Halsall, October 1998
halsall@murray.fordham.edu
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