Scott, Joan Wallach.  "History in Crisis?  The Others' Side
of the Story".  American Historical Review, XCIV (June
1989), 680-692.


     "History in Crisis" is a rewrite of a paper delivered

to an American Historical Association forum in 1988.  The

author, Joan Wallach Scott, slightly revised her paper for

inclusion in the AHR journal in the following year.  The

topic concerning the presenters was the relationship of

"new" historians to professional history. Scott maintains

that those who oppose the new historians are most interested

in protecting their own hegemony while overlooking the

essential role of power contests in historical discourse in

general and the AHA's own history in particular.

     Scott's interpretative article focuses not on history

proper, but rather on views about the proper role and nature

of history espoused by historians and philosophers.  Hinging

on the delightfully multi-layered quote "History is past

politics and politics present history", Scott re-reads the

comments of authoritative historians and runs them through a

postmodern and creative filter.1  Scott refers to current

scholarship on the new history to define the opposition,

both in peer publications and the public press.   Fellow

speakers at the forum were not spared, as in the case of

Gertrude Himmelfarb.  When making her own case, however,

Scott relies on important defining statements from the AHA;s

own past.  Particularly interested in the way historians

defined or described history, Scott draws from the official

letters and speeches of organizationally important

historians as  Simeon Baldwin, Goldwin Smith, John Burgess.

Scott's re-reading of their comments illustrates their

ability (or inability) to hold up over time, and by

extension throws a critical light on the conservative

position that history is objectively knowable, a monolith

"out there" waiting to be discovered.

     Scott leads with the founding motto of the AHA, quoted

above.  Her re-reading of this motto and her familiarity

with Foucault allow her to define politics as "not only the

formal operations of government " but also as a power-

brokering discourse which builds, among other things,

consensus. (680).  This new construction of the motto

reveals to Scott that language is separate from its object;

the validity and usefulness of the old motto with new

embedded meanings  provides evidence for Scott to claim that

there are other possibilities in interpretation.  If the

motto is transmutable then other forms of discourse are

mutable, including histories.

     Scott claims that rather than there being a recent rise

in usurpation by radical new historians, there have always

been skirmishes within the profession. One of the ways the

current players protect their hegemony is to polarize the

debates, to couch new challenges as crises and demonize the

opposition as in the case of Alan Kor's "barbarians (682)."

The nostalgically-remembered method and focus of the past

becomes fundamentally ahistorical, held up as "the only

`history' that existed before this `crisis' (682)."  Scott

claims this longed-for past conception of history deified

reason and science, presumably to the detriment of cultures

who do not define themselves with such a strict

(monomaniacal?) allegiance to reason.  In this view, only

from an elite, trained, objective position could proper

history be written.  The illusion of disinterestedness hid

the underlying bolstering of the elite position.

     Racist views and religious intolerance were not

uncommon among the writings of the old-style historians.  As

non-elites joined the historical ranks alarms went off about

how "lower middle class " and foreigners would produce

inferior, emotionally-laden histories (685).  Scott implies

that current defense of a singular viewpoint may be informed

by a similar xenophobia, although, ironically, the many of

the new traditionalists are from diverse backgrounds.

     Next, Scott changes focus and concentrates on the

challengers.    Such important players as Frederick Jackson

Turner, Charles Beard and Carl Becker offered their

presidential views of history that were subversive to the

prevailing hegemony.  These existence well-heard (if not

well-received) voices subverts the credibility of the

"history-as-it-has-always-been-written" position.  One

feature of the challengers' histories is a willingness to

engage a "pluralization of history (689)."  This expansion

of subject matter, Scott claims, is corrosive to the idea

that a society can (or should) be studied from the top down

by looking only at the elite.

     In this section Scott finally makes her implied sub-

argument clear: "the proliferation of Other's histories has

not so much `politicized' the discipline (a charge usually

leveled by the defenders of orthodoxy) as it has exposed the

politics by which one particular viewpoint established its

predominance (emphasis added). (690)."  Getting this point

out into the open allows Scott to engage bigger issues such

as the nature of history as an interpretive rather than

descriptive or referential act, and comfort with the

simultaneous consideration of conflicting histories.

     Scott's article contrasts sharply with Gertrude

Himmelfarb's "Some Reflections on the New History" from the

same forum.   Himmelfarb summarily dismisses Scott's

definition of politics, mentioning it "deifies all empirical

proof or disproof (669)."  A more pragmatic and less

ideological assessment might see if the concept is workable

or useful (or not) in when writing history.  Himmelfarb also

seems to have bias against theorists; she notes that

"historians, working historians, have traditionally assumed

some correspondence between interpretation and fact, between

language in reality (665)."  She goes on to fall neatly into

Scott's bulls-eye when Himmelfarb claims the essential the

distinction between new and old histories is that "the new

history stands outside the received opinion" while "the old

history stands within the received opinion 669)."

          I think Scott's position is a useful one,

particularly for those with Foucaultian leanings concerning

power-relations.  Unfortunately for her and for new history,

there is an inherent catch-22.  For defenders of the old

history to give new history a through field test would

require the those defenders to suspend their pre-judgement

and ideology.  So while new historians are willing to engage

old history (even if giving it no greater position than a

peripheral history) old historians are dogmatically content

to "choose not to demean oneself and historical discourse by

responding at all (669)."

                                                            
                                                  jason carr
_______________________________
1 "History is the study of bygone political occurrences, and
current politics are the history of the present."
"History has moved beyond historical (or its own) politics,
and skillfully redefines itself."
"History is the study of bygone political occurrences, and
current internal political discourse defines the historical
profession."

http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/