My original essay was published on the online History News Network on May 22, 2006
Professor Wilentz's reply to my essay also appeared on the History News Network on May 22, 2006
This is my rejoinder to Professor Wilentz's reply.
I am flattered that Professor Wilentz has bothered to reply to my criticisms of his Rolling Stone essay. He was provoked, no doubt, by what he considers grievous errors in my article. But just for the record, I want to make sure my errors are distinguished from Professor Wilentz's misreadings. Misreadings which, I am sure, are entirely my fault, due probably to my polemical prose style.
First as to my general thematic points:
There is, I concede, a fundamental difference of opinion between us about the degree to which it is appropriate for historians to intermix current political concerns with their historical scholarship. I also concede that Professor Wilentz's view is more the prevailing one and mine a fringe view. It is not Wilentz I am criticizing so much, as this prevailing attitude in the discipline. It is just that Professor Wilentz happens to offer a particularly vivid example of that prevailing philosophy in action.
My reading of the history of the discipline is that beginning roughly in the late 1960s historians began--as one aspect of a broad postmodern critique of traditional historiography--to argue that historical scholarship is inevitably political and that historians should stop kidding themselves on this score. According to this critique, the modernist scholars hid their politics underneath layers of merely apparent objective scholarship. Thus traditional historians were indicted as implicit racists, implicit sexists, implicit imperialists, and implicit conservative hegemons, among other things. One cohort of the scholars of the New History thus began an attack on the discipline to correct these perceived flaws, by using an overtly politicized philosophy of history as one of their tactical weapons. Their premise was that historical scholarship is inescapably political and so historians were given broad permission to intermix their historical analysis with their own political concerns so as to change the political culture in ways more to their liking. There is certainly much more to the postmodern critique than this, but I see this politicization of scholarship as being very much a core agenda item of the postmodernists.
I readily concede that Professor Wilentz has been a strong opponent of many forms of radical postmodernism. I regret not explicitly saying so in my original commentary. My contention is only that in this one aspect of the postmodern critique--the promiscuous intermingling of politics and scholarship--Wilentz is sleeping with the enemy.
I assert that this permissiveness as regards politics undermines objectivity in historical scholarship. Its most immediate impact is to cause consumers of our scholarship to distrust our work because they recognize in it politics with which they disagree (or even politics with which they agree). The long-run impact is to undermine the ideal of objectivity as a shaping and limiting constraint on historical scholarship. This is my principle concern and the view that lies beneath my critique of the Rolling Stone piece.
Beyond these broad philosophical points, there are a few plausible misreadings in Professor Wilentz's reply that might stand a word or two of clarification.
I regret my use of the expression "spurious scholarship effect" in describing the Rolling Stone essay, because I now see that it can be mistaken for a remark about the historical analysis in the essay. I did not intend to suggest that Wilentz's historical analysis was in any way faulty. My claim is only that this historical scholarship surrounds points that are purely political. This use of historical analysis to cushion a political agenda, is the combination that I find objectionable. In other words, I am accusing Professor Wilentz of using quite valid and learned historical scholarship as shield and lance in political cause. Used in this way, the historical analysis lends an umbra of credibility to the politics, in what I typically characterize as a "spurious scholarship effect." The spurious part is the cover the scholarship gives to the politics. Not much better, perhaps, from Professor Wilentz's perspective, but at least my accusations should be a little clearer.
My more general point here is that Wilentz's essay is crafted to a political aim, that aim being to strike a political blow against the Bush administration and its policies. I don't think he would dispute this--but if he does, I am certainly willing to engage a point-by-point analysis of the particulars. It is just that I thought we could dispense with this and move right to the philosophical issues. My thesis is that using historical scholarship in the service of such overtly political aims, cheapens that scholarship--even if that scholarship is itself otherwise impeccable.
Likewise, I did not intend to impugn Professor Wilentz's account of the history of the impeachment process. Nor do I even disagree with him--as a matter of my own political judgments--about the Republican efforts to impeach Bill Clinton. It is only that I recognize that these are my political judgments, and I admit they cannot be certified by "the judgment of history." To suggest that they can, is, in my view, a misuse of history.
Probably the most fundamental misreading here--and again, I accept that it is entirely my fault--is the idea that I am somehow engaged in disputing Professor Wilentz's views on the Clinton impeachment or the Bush presidency. Thus he feels obliged to take me to the woodshed for failing to address the substance of his historical analyses on these two central topics.
I did not engage Professor Wilentz's specific arguments on the Clinton impeachment because: a) I tend to agree with him; and b) I consider the whole idea of speaking in the authoritative voice of historical scholarship about such an obviously political issue, to be illegitimate--regardless of which side one takes in the debate. Likewise, I did not engage his detailed arguments about the Bush presidency, for the same two reasons.
It is not that I have some other politics than the liberal politics of Professor Wilentz, and that I am trying to argue my conservative interpretation against his liberal interpretation. I realize that is the usual and expected form here, and that is precisely the problem. This kind of political contention over historical scholarship is precisely what I think needs to be avoided. My position is that the idea of historians, qua historians, arguing for any politics is usually illicit--even if they happen to be arguing for politics with which I agree (as is the case here).
I am offering a much more radical critique of the history discipline. I want us to be like Caesar's wife. I think that when articles like Professor Wilentz's appear, it undermines the reputation of the discipline, and our claims to objectivity, because the article is so obviously politically-charged. What typically happens is that readers who share his politics cheer him on, and readers who have the opposite politics rail against him. Which is a strong clue that something more than objective scholarship is involved here. (Which is the same clue I was suggesting we could read in the partisan response to his Clinton impeachment testimony.)
What I think we have seen in recent years is the discipline of history degenerating into just another forum for the politically-interested, nakedly partisan, contestations that characterize too much contemporary political discourse. And with essays like this one, I think Professor Wilentz has to bear some measure of the blame for this development.
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