31 august 2022
Table of Contents
Disclaimer: I am definitely not an historian. Discount heavily.
I wanted to think through James Sweet's Is History History. I found out about the controversy not from reading Perspectives religiously, but from a thread on r/AskHistorians. I read a few of the tweet threads and the linked articles. I'm not engaging with each piece, but each did influence my thoughts at least a bit. This is relatively stream of consciousness. I've thought it over a bit and tried to edit it, but it isn't a fully finished work by any means. I apologise if I did not clearly note an influence, either from the above or from elsewhere. Feel free to tell me and I'll either edit or post a correction.
Sympathetic Note
I think the scene surrounding Elmina Castle is surprisingly poignant, but is marred by a lack of engagement with any of the individuals.
McKinney thinks there is a subtle implication that the black multigenerational family is in some ignorant. I felt the same implication. On a second read, I do not see it clearly in the text, and instead see the focus on the black family as agents of American imperialism. Regardless, there's nothing to show he talked with them or tried to understand their perspective.
How Ghana should deal with its history of slavery is interesting, but I don't know enough about the modern politics of Ghana to comment.
Whether or how American imperialism influencing depictions of slavery in Africa, privileging an African American perspective on slavery over a wider black diaspora is quite fascinating to me. But, I can't help but wonder if this relates to presentism or to capitalism. Is it that historians in Ghana are too caught up with race, or that African American families have more dollars to spend and so historical sites cater to them? That might be bad, but I'd think the solution is economic rather cultural.
I think there's a tension between (1) and (3). I'm still left confused on the focus on the dog-eared 1619 book though. Is it to signal how American authors have effectively deluded their audience, by inspiring them to treat a site of diasporic history as African American history. Or are they right in drawing some connection there with the harm coming from the owners of the site shaping it to African American tastes? Or both?
Regardless of what exactly that scene is trying to convey, not talking to the black family seems odd because it seems to go against his position of trying to understand 'the values and mores of people in their own time'. I assume that talking to people or reading their writings is the first-line method for understanding them. That he misses the opportunity to do this by not engaging with these people seems odd.1 People's motives can be complex, so not talking to them denies us information about those motives.
For example:
- Maybe they have a stronger connection to the Afro-Caribbean than might be apparent. Family lore has it that my great-grandfather came from the Jamaica to Panama and his children to the US, but I do not think anyone in my family views themselves as Afro-Caribbean. Perhaps they wanted to try to connect with their Afro-Caribbean roots.
- Ghana has a right to abode for black folks. Perhaps that was a not inconsequential reason for this venture.
- Perhaps the book was a comfort book or was thought to be in some way appropriate without implying anything deeper. Analogous to how many people (claimed to) read The Decameron during covid. Or how I instead read Evans' Death in Hamburg because Evans is my comfort read lol.
A More Critical Note
The parallel between a certain conservative jurisprudence and the 1619 project seems underdeveloped. I think what Sweet is going for is that both take from history, what they need and no more. But do they do it in the same way? Even in his account it doesn't seem so. The language he uses for the 1619 project seems one of interpretative debate. Would it be different if it noted the hemispherical nature of slavery? Probably, because the focus would be different. But that doesn't seem to imply the project is wrong.
Analogy: If I write a book about evolution and draw most of my examples from vertebrates, my story will be different than if I drew my examples from vertebrates and invertebrates in proportion to their sizes. But it is not clear that the former story would be wrong.
By contrast, in the description of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, Sweet seems to imply that the decision is factually incorrect. Alito is wrong that there is an unbroken tradition of abortion prohibition, because there is a tradition of not punishing pre-quickening abortions. More analogous is Dahomey film, but that presents its own problems.
In Hunt's account of presentism, she gives two different types:
- Presentism as misinterpretation: where we interpret the past according to the standards of the present.
- Presentism as interpretative focus: where we focus on issues or topics that are important in the present.
But, well these are distinct phenomena. You can have one and not the other. And you can oppose one and not the other. Or think there are degrees in which either is useful independent of the other. Our present interests might shift what sources we are interested in reading, thus revealing more. To think of race as example, it might be the case that there have historically been different conceptualisations of race.
That is:
- self-identification
- terminology
- and ontology
may vary over time.
If we are studying race, ascribing our current understanding to past actors might lead us astray. If one time conceives of blackness following the one-drop and another time does not, then applying the concept from time to other is wrong. But our own interest in race provides us reason to look at how race has changed over time. And might lead us to construct taxonomies of racial conceptualisations.
Reading the piece, I can't help but think that Sweet has accidentally made an argument against the study of history. If we live in a world ruled by capital, nations, race, gender, and sexuality, and if sociology, political science, or ethnic studies degrees are better able to deal with those topics in a manner that people find relevant, then maybe history just isn't a useful field of study.
I feel that this is another place where Sweet's vagueness gets in the way. He says presentism doesn't lead to good politics, and as far as I can tell the explanation he gives is that the current 1619 movement has lead to a conservative counterattack. But its not clear to me that the status quo antebellum was particularly better. And I don't think that Sweet believes that only good politics justifies a thing.2 He calls the 1619 project powerful and effective journalism. Perhaps that's not equivalent to 'good journalism', but that sounds like praise. If we have a choice between praiseworthy (perhaps good?) journalism or good history, which should we choose? Do political results break the tie? Something else? To put it pointedly: If other academic disciplines can give people what they want, and if history cannot, then perhaps we shouldn't want history.
I find myself slightly more annoyed at the apology than at the original.
If Sweet wanted to have a discussion, then why is it a provocation? and why is it framed so aggressively? I want my conversations, particularly between peers, to be respectful. But if someone starts off with the intention to provoke, it doesn't seem like they are respecting me. I'll note that a provocation can be fine if everyone is aware of the game, but if not, then it can certainly derail the conversation by leading at least to misunderstand – since when we frame our arguments provocatively, we might not make clear the actual limits of the argument – and at worst pain. Reverse the concerns depending on whether you think harm to people is worse than harm to discourse.
Similarly, if we are having a discussion about how to do history, it might be useful to start from the perspective that there are multiple types of history being done and these at least feel reasonable. Nowhere in the piece does he give a reason for why people would find this method attractive intellectually, rather than emotionally (e.g. solidarity) or politically (e.g. a usable black past). I like to paint myself in the aesthetic of new social history although I don't go as far as saying that the only thing that historians should study is large-scale social formations. I care about people's thoughts a bit too much. But, I recognise that the new cultural historians were actually trying to solve a problem.3 And it seems that any attempt at critiquing cultural history should acknowledge those real issues. Mutatis mutandis for presentism in history.
Who and why
He doesn't really mention any examples of historians being presentist.
- Hannah-Jones is a journalist.
- Alito and Thomas are jurists.
- The Dahomey movie is, I assume, made by film makers.
And, at least for the first, he seems to accept it as having some positive qualities. I wonder too if this was supposed to be professional courtesy; Sweet, the president of the AHA, didn't want to use his position to name and shame younger scholars. But, if so, it seems to have backfired, because it came off as casting vague aspersions over entire fields of study, with a particular impact on black scholars.
The closest we get to historians behaving badly is a shift in focus to 20th century history. But his account of causation seems odd to me. On his account, the issue is presentism, or perhaps social pressure leading to presentism, but it seems like there might be a number of causes.
Perhaps time marches on and so historical interests shift. The end of WWII is almost 80 years ago as far ago from the present as Wilhelmine Germany was from the 60s. Aside: And writing that, I realise it is a paraphrase from Blackbourn's 'Honey, I shrunk German History'.4 He gives quite a bit of data and showing a shift at least in the field of German history to the 20th century. And he offers up the temporal argument as well. He also notes career prospects. The job market asks for historians with 20th century experience, some grants support only 20th century as well. But, he offers a somewhat interesting rejoinder. The issue isn't just temporal or economic, but instead has to do with a focus on the contingent and conjunctural. That is, people assume that events in the distant past (200 years ago) do not have much impact on the present or on later periods.
This seems to me to be the inverse of the problem outlined by Sweet. The issue isn't that people only care about things in the present, it's that they think the past is so different – has its own values and mores – from the present (or the 20th century, modernity, whatever) that they do not study it.
Coda
I write this from a place of disillusionment. I studied history and I am a member of the AHA. I've even been to a few annual meetings. Although I am no historian! But, I've been drifting over to the human behavioural ecology crowd. It is difficult to put into words why, but the slogan form would be 'I want change over time, but I want to know why things change, not just that they do.' History seems to have an antiquarian mood. Where we collect interesting little facts of the past, store them away, perhaps admire their beauty or their oddness. Things change, but why (and sometimes how) they change isn't clear.
It's not clear if something is the result of
- influence
- short-term factors
- long-term factors
- parallel development
- convergent development
That's not to say historians don't do great work! I recently read Mary Nolan's book for AHA Reads and I loved it. I loved both her explanation for why Dusseldorf workers were so radical and for why the revolution failed. And there were so many fascinating details.
E.g. Her discussion of how the rank-and-file membership of the SPD wanted more Marxist theory is both inspiring and hilarious.
But I couldn't help but wonder, how much does this generalise? would it be the same in other countries? did similar processes happen in other regions?
And that reminded me of the 'AHR Conversation Explaining Historical Change; or, The Lost History of Causes', which while a fascinating read can't help but be a bit depressing. It seems to portray a field that isn't sure if causes are important, what causes are (to be fair, that's an issue fraught with metaphysics), or to what extent causative arguments currently take place in history. Which then reminded me of the debates about the New Historians of Capitalism, where at least some were accused of failing to take into account research by economic historians.
I remember disliking The History Manifesto5 and so I don't want to appear as if I am supporting that position, but I do wish the descriptive work that historians do, much of which is useful and valuable, were better integrated so that explanations could be compared, data could be used as input for future research, and methodologies and theories could more easily move across fields. E.g. I received no training in oral history.
Beyond those academic disappointments, I just find history not as useful for certain goals. Sometimes, it helps me understand the world, but other times I can't help but wonder if Darwinian anthropology, or historical sociology, or economics, might not prove better. And, as a socialist, I can't help but think that there are enough history talkers, and really we need more linear algebra people to distribute goods. Although I learned that mostly from Red Plenty6
Finally, on a brighter note, my slight interest in actually talking to people as if they were rational agents rather than objects whose mysteries must be uncovered comes from a realisation reading Kelly and Lee. Kelly7 has a fascinating quote about how in egalitarian societies every person is 'headman over himself' and cites Lee (and Bird and Bliege Bird). I don't have the latter or the original Lee, but in Lee's new text8, I found that the phrase is a statement by /Twi!gum to Lee. Optimisation models are certainly necessary to understanding certain decisions and people's introspection about their motives or others are only weak evidence and I'm no supporter of ethno- or sage philosophy, but I must admit that it is so useful to just talk to people and listen to what they have to say.
Footnotes
1 This isn't to argue that we have an obligation to educate white people. Or even that it would be polite to quiz them. Merely that if we want to understand people's values, talking to them is a good way to do it, and his failure to do that seems odd.
2 Perhaps he does? I have not asked him.
3 (I'd frame that problem as
- issues relating to textual interpretation,
- concerns about the stability of categories,
- desires to take advantage of new source bases,
- limitations of data regarding certain populations.
Each of the above are intellectual concerns. There might have been other too. Cynically, perhaps many rationally decided they were good at learning languages, but bad at learning maths, so favoured those methods that played to their strengths.)
4 Warning: The PDF cuts off some lines.
5 Although now perhaps I should reread it to see if my opinion has changed
6 And the Crooked Timber Red Plenty Seminar. Please check out Cosma Shalizi's essay in expanded form.
7 The Lifeways of Hunter-gatherers
8 The Dobe Ju​/'hoansi, 124.