Comments on Progressive Historians: History For Our Future: On Richard Hofstadter and the Politics of “Consens...

how come you're claiming exemption from American h...

2008-04-30T22:36:00.000-05:00

how come you're claiming exemption from American history and then cloaking yourself in this very serious version of pragmatism?

Isn't that what everyone does?

(Seriously, though, I doubt that I have anything substantial to say on the subject of pragmatism that you haven't heard a couple dozen times before. Historiographically, Bloch's Historians Craft is my bible, John Dower is my idol, and "theory" makes me itch.)

For Mark: yeah, radicalism is the sign of American...

2008-04-30T20:22:00.000-05:00

For Mark: yeah, radicalism is the sign of American intellectual life. We--that is, us lefties--now control the commanding heights of the higher education, where the repudiation of the past is business as usual, but back in the day, when nobody knew what the received tradition was (they were just making it up), everybody was, er, making it up, getting all radical, trying to escape the past.

Americans, esp. the intellectuals, have always been good at showing us how we can evade the past. Nothing new there. It all depends on how you define radicalism. For me, the Populists don't matter except as the trace of bourgeois individualism.

For ahistoricality: we have to talk about pragmatism. Soon. Shoot, I've written two books that go from there, the "there" in view, in question, being pragmatism.

You gotta get less cryptic in your references, and then I'll get all happy in my responses. And how come you're claiming exemption from American history and then cloaking yourself in this very serious version of pragmatism?

For Jeremy: Just thanks, man, if you're the cheese you don't have to be the line editor. Just thanks.

Well, pbbbbbt!My students say the same thing about...

2008-04-30T04:09:00.000-05:00

Well, pbbbbbt!

My students say the same thing about my pop quizzes.....

if I were Brown I'd be a mite peeved

I actually think that the buried review is quite devastating. If I were Brown, I'd have rather it were left out entirely.

Well, pbbbbbt! That's because you actually READ t...

2008-04-30T03:46:00.000-05:00

Well, pbbbbbt! That's because you actually READ the essay, while I criticized it WITHOUT reading it.

My apologies to Jim for the mis-skimming.

I've seen NYRB and LRB reviews, sure; I don't cons...

2008-04-30T03:05:00.000-05:00

I've seen NYRB and LRB reviews, sure; I don't consider them academic venues. boundary2 is published by Duke and gives the impression of being an academic publication. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it -- it was perfectly interesting -- but it doesn't really fill the same needs as an academic review. contra Jeremy, though, I spotted your takedown of Brown's thesis, tucked in the middle of your piece, and figured that you just decided against saying more. You left the impression that the book was pretty much worthless and your time was better spent elsewhere.

"We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood." -- William James

I'm not being particularly original in my invocation of "pragmatic intellectual honesty," though I'm perhaps a bit more open than most about the limits of my knowledge with my students. It's hard to reserve judgement and even harder to change your mind but I think my committment to do so when appropriate is both socially and politically radical. It's a bit utitlitarian but doesn't preclude certain fundamental principles (c.f. J.S. Mill, On Liberty)

If, on the other hand, you're asking about "a vision in which irreducible complexity and unrepentent pragmatism were consistent with American optimism, ideologism and preference for simplicity," then I'm going to have to put you off. I honestly don't know how to reconcile these things, but it seems to me that the acceptance of complexity which resists simple change and the acceptance of pragmatism (instead of practicality; not the same thing) are the necessary attitudes for accepting this defeat (for I do believe the Bush mission in Iraq has been defeated) and I honestly have no way to reconcile those attitudes with those of the American public which twice voted for Bush in sufficient numbers to have him assume the presidency.

A well considered, scholarly piece. I have a quest...

2008-04-29T22:47:00.000-05:00

A well considered, scholarly piece. I have a question about one of the premises:

"On the one hand, the mainstream of American thought, then as now, was nowhere near conservative; if anything, it was alarmingly radical, even after the anarchist debacle of 1886, because, then as now, it subsisted on brute inversions of every received tradition"

Hmmm. I spent a fair amount of time, back in the day, on studying the Populist movement, both primary sources and historiography. Certainly, they were a vigorous and at times, quite radical, movement that drew on deep agrarian roots and presented an alternative political economy to laissez-faire.

But radicalism per se was a cultural or political majority in this era ? I'm skeptical. If so, why were Left-wing intellectuals so alienated in America if radicalism represented a consensus view ?

Also, I have to say, in Ahistoricality's defense -...

2008-04-29T21:47:00.000-05:00

Also, I have to say, in Ahistoricality's defense -- if you'd mentioned your opinion on Brown in the text, you wouldn't be open to the charge. I've only skimmed the piece so far, but it does seem to have almost nothing to do with Brown's book. Not that there's anything wrong with that, or that it makes your arguments any less valid, but if I were Brown I'd be a mite peeved.

Jim, I have NO idea why it's showing your e-mail a...

2008-04-29T21:43:00.000-05:00

Jim, I have NO idea why it's showing your e-mail address up there. I've never seen that happen before. Do you want me to delete the comments and repost without the personal info?

And besides, Hofstadter is really important in the...

2008-04-29T21:06:00.000-05:00

And besides, Hofstadter is really important in the very long run, and Brown's book is not.

We need to get over the intellectual petrification that enfranchises a biography as narrowly conceived as this one. That reanimation will let us see that he speaks across almost every line of discipline and field, so that just Americanists--just us--aren't his only audience.

And may I say, in almost apology, that it took me many years to understand what the man was up to.

Sure you have. NYRB or LRB always features review...

2008-04-29T20:36:00.000-05:00

Sure you have. NYRB or LRB always features reviews in which the reviewer is the featured player, in accordance with the idea that reception (consumption) is at least as important as conception (production).

I'd love to hear more about the pragmatist realism you're citing here.

(OK, I finished it. Americanists will have a lot m...

2008-04-29T19:22:00.000-05:00

(OK, I finished it. Americanists will have a lot more to say about than I.)

I'm not sure I've ever seen, in an academic publication, such a long review which spent so little time engaging with the book under consideration.

He also knew that the ideological aftermath would shape the remainder of the century. ... " But the experience may be turned to some use if we can define more articulately than we have ever done the realistic limits of our national aspirations.”
...
There are plenty of historians, political scientists, and journalists who can tell us why we will lose the current war, but very few who can tell us how—that is, how the humility induced by military defeat or stalemate might be consistent with the promise of American life.

This is a fascinating and disturbing challenge in its own right. It would require articulating a vision in which irreducible complexity and unrepentent pragmatism were consistent with American optimism, ideologism and preference for simplicity.

(I'm not going to attempt one big comment, but mak...

2008-04-29T18:46:00.000-05:00

(I'm not going to attempt one big comment, but make comments as I find things to say)

the form and the content of the past matter only to those with political commitments in the present, and so to the future.

Almost right. I would take out the word "political": not all of our committments to the present and future can be constrained in that narrow realm. My committment to pragmatic intellectual honesty is not a political one, as I see it, though it has profound political implications.