GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB.  "Some reflections on the New History." AHR
Forum, AHR, pp 661-70.


Gertrude Himmelfarb's article is one in a collection of papers
assembled for an AHR Forum concerning the so-called New History. 
Himmelfarb approaches this subject from an antagonistic
viewpoint.  Her preference for the Old History is evidence of a
larger viewpoint, a preference for old-style orderly and linearly
arranged systems.  
     Himmelfarb immediately brings to task the chaos and
shapelessness inherent in the New Histories.  In fact, the
shapelessness of the New History makes it confusing to Himmelfarb
to discern what is and is not New History ("'...One is tempted to
speak of the new history (661)'").  The lines become blurred, and
definitions are hard to set.  This is a point that Himmelfarb
misses the full meaning of, that the New History is defined by
its lack of definitions, named by its polynomial nature.   The
almost chaotic condition of the contradiction among New
Historians is the natural state of this non-school of thought. 
     While one school of neo-marxists is rewriting the old
     Marxist history in the light of a "humanistic Marx,
     another school is revising the revisionists by
     reaffirming a rigorously deterministic and
     materialistic Marx (661).
 
     This self-contradictory aspect of the New History troubles
Himmelfarb; she cannot be comfortable outside a rigid system with
rules recognized by all the participants.  She recoils from
"'splintering', 'fragmenting,' and 'disarray'" as noted by Carl
Degler (663).  Einsteinian physics have come to bear on the
writing of history in the same way it did art some seventy years
ago.  Himmelfarb looks at the new, cubist history and sees
nothing reassuring or even familiar.  The new history often looks
at itself, and 'reality' from many viewpoints (hence the apparent
infighting that Himmelfarb notices).  It is multivalent and
defies any One Right Answer.  
     Himmelfarb laments the specialization in the New History,
not realizing that this compartmentalization is part of post-
modern life.  "A Latin-American historian complains about the
insufficient attention paid to the role of the state in
establishing the economic and social hegemony of the ruling class
(663)."  And so the historian should.  In the Information Age
each can be the Lord of his Domain, tucked away in an isolated
node of network.
     Each of these nodes projects onto the historical screen its
perceptions for the viewer(s).  The difference between this and
the Old History is that the New Historian admits his subjectivity
and channels it for his art.  The Old Historian goes on
pretending that they can know Historical Truth, that they can
fully understand documents, that this particular King is not
undressed.  This self-delusion is shattered by the new generation
who admits the decoding, the creation of history.  Himmelfarb is
greatly offended.  "These have become the new 'possibles' of
history:  the possibilities suggested by the historian's
imagination and sensibility rather than by the contemporary
experience( 666)."  Nowhere is it admitted that the old
historians have no stranglehold on Truth, either.  
     In denying the zen-like acknowledgement of chaos and discord
that New Historians embrace, the Old-schoolers invert the very
nature of their own experience.  In the closing paragraphs of her
argument, Himmelfarb refers to the Bentham-Colerige distillation
wherein one asks Is It True, and the other What Does It Mean? 
Himmelfarb, counterintuitively, portrays the New Historians as
the opinionated denouncer and the Old Historians as the pensive
wonderer.  She, once again, misses the new idea New Historians
would think it All might be equally true, if not equally likely. 
The Old monarch is quite undressed.
http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/