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Perspectives, Connections & Objects: What's Happening in History Now?

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Perspectives, Connections & Objects: What's Happening in History Now? Book_Winter2009:Book Winter 2007.qxd 12/15/2008 9:53 AM Page 71 Caroline W. Bynum Perspectives, connections & objects: what’s happening in history now? Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/138/1/71/1829611/daed.2009.138.1.71.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 In 1997, Princeton University Press And it was clear from his essay that he published a volume, What’s Happened to was more afraid of the end of literature the Humanities?, which rang with alarm.1 than of the demise of those who, as he Even contributors such as Francis Oak- put it, “mistrust or despise” it.2 ley, Carla Hesse, and Lynn Hunt, who Returning ten years later–and from tried to warn against despair by explain- the perspective of a historian–to the ing how the current situation had come scenarios feared or envisioned in 1997, about, provided only a fragile defense what strikes me is how wrong they against fundamental and deeply threat- were, but for reasons quite different ening change, while others such as Denis from those given in the spate of re- Donoghue and Gertrude Himmelfarb cent publications alleging some sort wrote in palpable fear of the future. As of new “turn” (narrative, social, his- Frank Kermode, author of an earlier, torical, material, eclectic, or perfor- brilliant study of our need for literary mative, to name a few) “beyond” the endings, phrased it in his essay for the earlier turn (linguistic, cultural, post- volume, “If we wanted to be truly apoc- structural, postmodern, and so forth) alyptic we should even consider the possibility that nothing of much pres- ent concern either to ‘humanists’ or 1 Alvin Kernan, ed., What’s Happened to the to their opponents will long survive.” Humanities? (Princeton: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 1997). For helpful discussion of the issues raised in my article and for bibli- Caroline W. Bynum, a Fellow of the American ographical suggestions, I am grateful to Pa- Academy since 1993, is professor of Western Eu- tricia Crone, Nicola di Cosmo, Jeffrey Ham- burger, Jonathan Israel, Peter Jelavich, Joel ropean Medieval History in the School of Histor- Kaye, Barbara Kowalzig, Glenn Peers, Joan ical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. Scott, Heinrich von Staden, and Stephen D. Her most recent book, “Wonderful Blood: Theol- White. ogy and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Ger- many and Beyond” (2007), received the Ameri- 2 Frank Kermode, “Changing Epochs,” in What’s Happened to the Humanities? ed. Ker- can Academy of Religion’s 2007 Award for Excel- nan, 162–178, especially 177. On literary end- lence in Historical Studies. ings, see Kermode, Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction: With a New Epilogue © 2009 by Caroline W. Bynum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Dædalus Winter 2009 71 Book_Winter2009:Book Winter 2007.qxd 12/15/2008 9:53 AM Page 72 Caroline W. that supposedly caused all the trouble some narcissism, even solipsism, in Bynum in the ½rst place. For as Keith Thomas scholarly writing.5 But little of this on the humanities remarked in an astute and upbeat as- seems to me to have been postmodern sessment in 2006, historical scholar- or poststructuralist per se. As a contribu- ship has become broader, more nu- tor to The Three Penny Review said recent- anced and more creative over the past ly, there have always been bad books,6 decade.3 It has done so exactly because just as there have always been envious, the insights of the linguistic turn have defensive, and silly scholarly responses been absorbed and utilized; and this to other scholars. And if, as Lynn Hunt has happened because those insights pointed out in 1997, the growth of new coincide in great part with what histo- subjects such as feminism, gender, post- rians have always known. colonialism, and cultural studies was a Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/138/1/71/1829611/daed.2009.138.1.71.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 I do not dismiss or ridicule the fears response to changing demographics, it is of the mid-1990s. What Alvin Kernan unreasonable not to expect an increase calls “reading to ½nd the villain” did in the sheer number of bad books in threaten both sensitive literary criti- such burgeoning ½elds, since nothing cism and thoughtful historical account.4 suggests that brilliance is characteristic Moreover, we can all remember state- of a larger percentage of today’s under- ments (better now left unattributed) graduates, graduate students, or profes- about the footnote as instrument of sors than it was earlier.7 Moreover, as patriarchal domination, or the vio- publishers are increasingly willing to lence of the meta-narrative, that con- review and publish manuscripts in only fused scholarly prose with the physi- those areas they think will sell, and de- cal abuse of persons and communities partment chairpersons and senior pro- (although if my memory serves, such fessors put greater and greater pressure opinions were more characteristic of on young scholars to produce what Jon- the 1970s than the 1990s). There were athan Beck has cynically called work times in the past three decades when that counts, is countable, and is count- I, too, felt that literary criticism tend- ed, it will require courage (as indeed it ed to barricade, behind the barbed has always done) to tackle genuinely wire of jargon, the poetry and ½ction to which I had always turned when I wanted to imagine something differ- ent from myself or to explore, in some 5 As Merry Wiesner-Hanks puts it, quoting a colleague: “We used to do Dante’s life and resonant yet also quiet place, the com- works, then with New Criticism we did ‘the plexity of my human hopes and fears. work,’ then with New Historicism we did Attention to the stance and perspec- Dante’s works in their historical location, tive of the historian, critic, or anthro- then with post-structuralism we did Dante pologist did lead to a sometimes tire- and me, and now we just do me”; “Women, Gender, and Church History,” Church Histo- ry 71 (2002): 600–620, especially 600. 6 Dan Frank, “Symposium on Editing,” The 3 Keith Thomas, “History Revisited,” The Times Three Penny Review 29 (1) (Spring 2008): 16. Literary Supplement, October 11, 2006. 7 Lynn Hunt, “Democratization and Decline? 4 Alvin Kernan, “Change in the Humanities The Consequences of Demographic Change in and Higher Education,” in What’s Happened to the Humanities,” in What’s Happened to the Hu- the Humanities? ed. Kernan, 9. manities? ed. Kernan, 17–31. 72 Dædalus Winter 2009 Book_Winter2009:Book Winter 2007.qxd 12/15/2008 9:53 AM Page 73 new topics.8 Such professional pres- Social historians and sociologists have Perspectives, connections sures seem to me to constitute the real tended to emphasize the rejection of, & objects: threat we face, and some aspects of a or evolution beyond, Marxist history; what’s postmodern (in particular, deconstruc- intellectual historians have tended to happening in history tive) stance toward scholarship may lay more emphasis on literary and psy- now? provide a partial defense against them. choanalytic criticism. But with remark- I shall return to professional pressures able unanimity, they all begin the ac- at the end of this essay. First, a consid- count with Saussure and the develop- eration of where the writing of history ment of semiotics, circa 1916, and un- is today. derstand the great shift of the late 1960s to early 1980s as away from social hist- The past three decades have seen a ory (in both its Marxist and cliometric, Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/138/1/71/1829611/daed.2009.138.1.71.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 number of discussions of the applica- or quantitative, forms–the latter tout- tion of what is known generically as ed in the 1960s as the wave of the future) “theory” to historical scholarship. and toward cultural history, influenced With minor differences, they have told both by French intellectuals, above all the same story up to the late 1990s.9 Foucault and Derrida, and American an- thropologists, especially Clifford Geertz. This cultural or linguistic, poststruc- 8 Jonathan Beck, “After New Literary Histo- turalist or postmodern turn is usually ry and Theory? Notes on the mla Hit Parade understood to hold that language does and the Currencies of Academic Exchange,” not reflect the world but precedes it and New Literary Theory 26 (1995): 695–709, quot- makes it intelligible by constructing it: ed in Margery Sabin, “Evolution and Revolu- in other words, there is no objective uni- tion: Change in the Literary Humanities, 1968– 1995,” in What’s Happened to the Humanities? verse independent of language and no ed. Kernan, 85. transparent relationship between social organization and individual self-under- 9 Among many accounts I might cite, see John standing. Such awareness entails, for E. Toews, “Intellectual History after the Lin- historians, the realization that the cat- guistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience,” The American egories and periods they use are exposi- Historical Review 92 (4) (1987): 879–907; Victo- tory devices that need constant reformu- ria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, eds., Beyond the lation exactly because they are always Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of So- based in political and social assumptions ciety and Culture (Berkeley: University of Cali- that may, because inherited, be very hard fornia Press, 1999); Elizabeth A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn to detect. The past does not come in eco- (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, nomic, social, or military chunks, nor 2004); Joan W.
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