Mike's Afterward, or self-indulgent musings

Upon reading the collection of essays in The Antislavery Debate I was reminded that professional, peer-reviewed and mature scholars can be just as proud and pig-headed as any pedantic poster on an web forum or comment page. The passages in which one historian would explain what the other was actually saying, often in direct contradiction of explicit statements made by the historian whose argument was being characterized struck me as just about the most hubristic behavior one could engage in. I realize it is hard to admit when one is wrong, and I believe that I engage in behavior that is not too far away from this sort of glorified pissing contest in class on a fairly regular basis, but I doubt the interests of historical understanding, thoughtful scholarship, or professional respectability and collegiality are served by it.

Nevertheless, a hotly contested argument, even when not approached with the humility and open minds that might have helped the tone and direction of the works in The Antislavery Debate, still forces us to check our assumptions and reinvigorate some things we have begun to take for granted. The debate between Haskell, Davis and Ashworth certainly did this in at least a limited sense and I believe that our discussion in class benefited quite a bit from the spaces for thought their argument opened up.

I feel that much like last week our discussion was again deeply concerned with what the most responsible and appropriate way to engage in the work of the historian is. Haskell, Davis and Ashworth presented us with different styles of historical writing and I think with an example of a rather knotty issue faced by writers of history. Susan's comments about Haskell's failure to engage deeply or in a sustained manner with a historical source base and how she felt that made his theoretical/ideological stance both less convincing and to some degree inadmissible to the realm of serious historical scholarship were thought-provoking. I am an ardent believer that all historians are engaging in theoretical/ideological projects, and that the very process of analysis is always already an exercise in the application of theory/ideology. In my current knee-jerk hostility toward claims of objectively and the idea of non-ideology history I think I was beginning to forget that theory in history, just like in everything else, must stand the test of practice. If the act of crafting a historical narrative is always an act of theoretical/ideological projection, this was reminder that good history is, to me, a self-aware and honest product of a sort of praxis; sources read through a thoughtfully selected theoretical lens, and a theoretical lens constantly responding too and being altered by this encounter with the debris of the past.

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