HIST 5339 November 4, 1998 Davis, Natalie Zemon. "On the Lame" 1 Natalie Zemon Davis' "On the Lame" is a rebuttal to Robert Finlay's "The refashioning of Martin Guerre." Although Finlay and Davis use the event described by Arrest Memorable as a battlefield, the actual battle being fought is over the relationship of events to historians and therefore to the stories historians tell about the events. In a real sense the argument is about whether history can or should be absolute or if there is room for a prolongation of intellectual tension and discourse. 2 The odd nature of the subject matter (a rebuttal to a criticism of a book about accounts of an event) makes a clean taxonomy of sources unlikely or impossible. For example, The Return of Martin Guerre is a primary source for Finlay's criticism, a secondary source for Davis' rebuttal while at the same time it is at best a secondary or tertiary source when read as a history about the sixteenth century event. Still, Davis' wide-ranging use of sources is worthy of mention. The bulk of Davis' annotations point to Finlay's criticism, and also to the documents Coras and LeSuer made contemporarily. In the process of her counterattack, Davis uses some of Finlay's own previous work (Politics in Renaissance Venice, et cetera) and mentions the essais Montaigne which lent its name to Davis' rebuttal. The complex, interconnected nature of Davis' source materials and their relationship to the event reinforce her underlying argument: that intertext can be read and interpreted as surely as Finlay's more traditional texts. 3 Davis begins her response by pointing out Finlay may have missed the point entirely with his insistence on a strict, conservative reading of The Return of Martin Guerre: her "whole book ... is an exploration of truth and doubt", and a charge to the community of historians to reconsider the nature of reconstruction and invention (572). Martin Guerre, in this sense, is a springboard for the conscious reader to explore his (and his societies) assumptions about the nature of identity. Davis' rebuttal consists of a string of illustrations about Finlay's objections: Finlay objects to a method or conclusion and then Davis demonstrates that Finlay is either deliberately or undeliberately misunderstanding Davis' arguments, or is being hypocritical (by not allowing Davis to use methods or conclusions he has used in his own writings). Davis does not chalk, this up to a personal vendetta or historical unprofessionalism, but rather to a difference in "mental habits, cognitive skills, and moral tone (574)". Finlay's brand of historical fundamentalism leads him into several corners from which Davis is glad to lead him. The first instance occurs very early in the rebuttal when Davis turns around Finlay's charge that Davis did not read the primary (?) sources closely enough. Davis offers that the it is Finlay who is lacking in reading his primary sources (Davis;' Martin Guerre). This criticism of Finlay's lack of attention to resources resonates with Davis' argument that source utilization is not a simple matter as it might seem. Davis' next parry, constructed along the same lines, is to show that Finlay insists on literal reading of textual sources when criticizing her work, but that he uses "socio-cultural exchange" as valid historical currency in his own work on Politics. \\ Davis spends a good deal of time explicating her methodology to help illuminate the infrastructure of her arguments. She refers to her method for constructing a historical matrix, and her choice for a "detective story"-like structure for the work., and admits it makes a traditional scholarly treatment unlikely. Still, she hopes that her readers (except for those who require "an argument that begins `there are four reasons'") will be able to follow along and develop their own questions while reading (575). Davis also takes time to stop and counter Finlay's misunderstanding of several different ideas from Martin Guerre: "double game" "self-fashioning", and "touch of the man upon the woman". While showing that Finlay misunderstood these usages she also shows he may have misread the entire text. Davis took Darnton's narrative to the edge in her Return of Martin Guerre, a dense and "multivalent" work. She then laid out her methodology, intent and arguments in "On the Lame." In this brilliant dissection of a hostile criticism, Davis allows Finlay to save face while revealing that he may have deliberately misstated her positions, and may not have even read her annotations. Of particular interest were the way both authors deferred to each other's academic abilities in a kindly light when those abilities were not aimed focused on the work at hand. This could have been academic logrolling or damage control, or was it perhaps a peek behind the curtains that impishly revealed academic publishing is self-fashioning of the highest order? jason carr 4 _______________________________ 1State the author's purpose historical issue or controversy attitude 2Sources interpretative, with some archival primary and secondary sources 3Contents of the selection 4Compare and contrast http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/