History is a great place to make trouble. Although it has long been a bastion of the
dead white man (or perhaps because it as been), history as a discipline has been the site of tremendous revision in the last 50 years or so. The process seems to have begun with exactly the kind of critical work Judith Butler describes; asking new questions, and asking them in new ways. Social historians uncover the past from the working class perspective; women's historians recovery the lost histories of women; gender historians have asked how we can use gender as a "useful category of historical analysis" (to quote Joan Scott, gender history diva and one of my personal heroes). Historians have developed a number of other historical methodologies that ask how race, subject position, sexuality, and other categories can be used to broaden our knowledge
of the past. An important part of this process has been the innovative use of materials that traditional history would not consider to be legitimate source material. The goal of these new historical interventions has not been merely to supplement the hegemonic historical narrative, but to show the ways in which that narrative is insufficient and inaccurate, to permanently alter our understanding of the past.
Perhaps because this week's readings addressed interdisciplinarity (especially Butler's piece on critique and dissent), it stuck me that my own personal approach to troublemaking in my field involves bringing other disciplines into my historical work. I've found theories on race, gender, and sexuality to be essential to my work; not only do theories on the subaltern, for example, help me understand British imperialism, but they also help me ask better questions of all my sources. Literary criticism and the myriad lit classes I took as an undergrad have been especially important to me since I am interested in discourse; learning to do a close reading of a text has turned out to be one of the most crucial skills I use, and it was a skill that I largely learned outside of history classes.
I think that all of us in this class would agree that asking new questions and bringing new perspectives to history is a good thing (although the broader historical community is still far from convinced on this point, unfortunately). But there is a place where I am still a bit hesitant to make trouble in my discipline. I really like to think about metaphor, to make bold, controversial statements, to provoke questions and generally rile things up; but is there a point at which troubling history becomes dishonest? Do I have a responsibility to the historical subjects I study to present their history in ways they would agree with, or even in ways that they would understand?
To give a concrete example, I was in a class last semester with a professor who was very much of the Old School (I should note that the umn history department in general is a pretty progressive department with strong roots in social and gender history). When one of the kids in the class suggested that white settlers had "dehumanized" American Indians, the professor told us that it was unfair to use a term that people in the past wouldn't understand to describe their behavior/viewpoints. To do so, he said, was to "bang the past on the head."
Leaving aside for a moment whether or not mid-19th century Americans would have understood the idea of dehumanization (my personalview is that a country that could legislate that African Americans counted as 3/5 of a person would certainly understand the concept), is it really unfair to bring modern theory/terminology to bear on the past? I reacted very strongly to this idea. A woman in 1865 would not have recognized the term "marital rape," for example, but I really believe that she would have understood the inherent wrongness of such a violation, even if she didn't have the language to express it. And while a historical subject might not have understood his sexual behaviors to be "queer", is it irresponsible for me to ask how his behaviors fit into a broader queer cultural, or to place his experiences on a continuum describing the development of a queer identity?
Because my troubling relies on relatively new ways of thinking (about gender, race, etc.), I'm going to run into this problem again and again. As long as I don't intentionally falsify my sources, are there any ethical limits on what I can do with the past?
Perhaps because this week's readings addressed interdisciplinarity (especially Butler's piece on critique and dissent), it stuck me that my own personal approach to troublemaking in my field involves bringing other disciplines into my historical work. I've found theories on race, gender, and sexuality to be essential to my work; not only do theories on the subaltern, for example, help me understand British imperialism, but they also help me ask better questions of all my sources. Literary criticism and the myriad lit classes I took as an undergrad have been especially important to me since I am interested in discourse; learning to do a close reading of a text has turned out to be one of the most crucial skills I use, and it was a skill that I largely learned outside of history classes.
I think that all of us in this class would agree that asking new questions and bringing new perspectives to history is a good thing (although the broader historical community is still far from convinced on this point, unfortunately). But there is a place where I am still a bit hesitant to make trouble in my discipline. I really like to think about metaphor, to make bold, controversial statements, to provoke questions and generally rile things up; but is there a point at which troubling history becomes dishonest? Do I have a responsibility to the historical subjects I study to present their history in ways they would agree with, or even in ways that they would understand?
To give a concrete example, I was in a class last semester with a professor who was very much of the Old School (I should note that the umn history department in general is a pretty progressive department with strong roots in social and gender history). When one of the kids in the class suggested that white settlers had "dehumanized" American Indians, the professor told us that it was unfair to use a term that people in the past wouldn't understand to describe their behavior/viewpoints. To do so, he said, was to "bang the past on the head."
Leaving aside for a moment whether or not mid-19th century Americans would have understood the idea of dehumanization (my personalview is that a country that could legislate that African Americans counted as 3/5 of a person would certainly understand the concept), is it really unfair to bring modern theory/terminology to bear on the past? I reacted very strongly to this idea. A woman in 1865 would not have recognized the term "marital rape," for example, but I really believe that she would have understood the inherent wrongness of such a violation, even if she didn't have the language to express it. And while a historical subject might not have understood his sexual behaviors to be "queer", is it irresponsible for me to ask how his behaviors fit into a broader queer cultural, or to place his experiences on a continuum describing the development of a queer identity?
Because my troubling relies on relatively new ways of thinking (about gender, race, etc.), I'm going to run into this problem again and again. As long as I don't intentionally falsify my sources, are there any ethical limits on what I can do with the past?
i think this is a great discussion. i am still reading for class this week, but in terms of your direct question. no. i don't think there is anything wrong with using new ways of thinking to understand/interrupt history. and i disagree with your professor.
i think its valid and important to note that people from the past, would not identify with a given term or identity. but like you said, understand all to well the experience and concept. to me, as long as you make note of this and like you said, don't falsify your sources, all is well.
i guess my though is this: what is history/theory if its not coming to new conclusions about the happenings of the past?
This question makes me want to think about history and humans in a different way; it makes me wonder about the sanctity (for lack of a better word) of "facts," "history," "theory," and all these things we sometimes take for granted as academics. In general I believe that troubling is a positive thing, and that we can use modern theoretical concepts - for example, about race, gender, class, sexuality, etc - to understand the past. But in another respect, I worry about going into this process blindly.
I don't even want to think about troubling for the sake of troubling (ala blog comment trolls), because that seems more like an irritation than anything else. But what about un-reflexive troubling? There are certainly limits to how self-reflective we can be, but I also think it's important to be aware of the questions we're asking, why we're asking them - and, going back to the "sanctity" issue, whether by asking these questions (or by using terms/concepts that may be anachronistic) we're not drowning important parts of someone's subjective experience.
Here's what I think I'm trying to get at: in anthropology, field researchers are taught to try and understand how their research subjects conceptualize the world. Same goes with people designing surveys - they have to be exceedingly careful to phrase their questions in ways that will speak to the respondents without putting any ideas in their head. Both of these are examples of a concern for preserving subjective experience, so that there is a "pure" (as pure as any of that can be) foundation for building theory. I wonder if the same can't be said for troubling: can we trouble our various disciplines while still preserving their foundations?
Unless the goal is to dissolve the premises of academia... in which case, what would we have left?
I think you bring up an excellent issue, and I agree with you that it IS productive to rethink history, and use historical interventions to alter our understanding of the past. In the example you give pertaining to the word "queer," I further agree with your statement that, even though a subject might not have understand their sexual behaviors as "queer," we can nonetheless ask how these behaviors inform/trouble our understanding of culture, history, etc. However, I am less certain that we can apply the term "queer" to one's identity retroactively (i.e. was Shakespeare queer or gay?). I feel more comfortable talking about someone's practices as queer than I do talking about someone as queer prior to the formulation of such an identity. I feel this way is because, prior to the last decades of the 19th century, sexuality was not an identitarian category. One's sexual practices did not define who one was and, therefore, there was no homosexual/ heterosexual divide. Thus, I think it would probably be inaccurate to say that someone prior to the 1880s or 1890s can be described as having had a "queer" identity-- even though they likely did engage in queer practices. Without the existence of the hetero/homo divide, I don't think the feelings of dis-identification, or the instances of identity-based discrimination, could have existed in the same way. Thus, I don't think a queer identity could exist. In other words, I think we can apply modern words/language to describe situations and practices that certainly did exist in previous historical periods. However, I do not think we can apply modern concepts to historical situations or identities.
I was basically going to say everything Jessie said about queer identity vs. queer practices, so yeah to being on the same page, Jessie!
But I wanted to bring up something else that is related to this and also struck me when Butler discusses Foucault's use of the "What is the Enlightenment?" title. In my Rhetorical Criticism class this past week we read a piece that critiqued what is normally understood to be Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech. Turns out a white abolitionist woman actually wrote this speech, literally putting words in the mouth of Sojourner Truth. We talked about the idea of "the death of the author" and if that becomes okay when a text begins to have a performative life of its own, when, in this case, a speech written by a white woman becomes a tool of empowerment for black women who read it as written by a black woman. This was difficult for me to negotiate in terms of "right" and "wrong," but less difficult for me to see in terms of it being "productive" vs "unproductive"? I'm still grappling, but I think it's related to troubling history.
Good questions, I'm really excited for this weeks discussions! : )
“Do I have a responsibility to the historical subjects I study to present their history in ways they would agree with, or even in ways that they would understand?”
I am not sure that this is even possible. As Butler states in readings for today, language shapes the way that we see the world, so even the words we use make us see things differently. Given how language and location shape us, I am unsure that, even if we wanted to, we could present the past in the language of the past, since we are not there, and even the ways in which we see the world, as shaped through our current language (among other factors), are completely different.
For me, although I am not a historian, the ethical question might boil down to acknowledging my own social location and being upfront about the criteria upon which I am basing my statements. I do find some historians' use of the past unethical when they do not admit their own biases and instead present their findings as Truth.
This played out in a very interesting way for me as an undergrad, when I took 20th century European history in the United States and then took a very similar class in Denmark: how history was presented was quite different, even when the same “facts”/events were under discussion. My professor, who knew that most of his students were from the United States, dealt with this upfront by saying that his family was from the part of Denmark that used to be Germany and so had fought on the German side of World War II and that this gave him a different perspective. History was presented from different standpoints, but I was enriched by having these multiple perspectives and understandings.
But, it can be vastly problematic to try to impose our philosophical, social, moral, etc. conventions/ideas/categories upon the past. For instance, I once researched the Oneida Community in upstate New York. At the time, the Oneida Community was considered radical in its commitment to gender equity. And indeed, many practices—women wearing pants, non-monogamy—were far outside the norms of the day. But in other ways, it was quite patriarchal: the founder, John Humphrey Noyes, essentially largely determined the sexual partners of community members. In looking at the gender and sexual practices, what I came to (if I remember from so long ago) was that it was impossible to make a determination from such a distance of whether this community was “successful” in equalizing gender relations, as we can only write from our own social locations.
Yet I think the process of exploring history that is typically hidden, such as this community, is vitally important, even if it is impossible to write about the gender/sexual practices and ideologies of the past, for instance, without using our own language and frameworks. Furthermore, I think it is vitally important—especially as troublemakers—that we learn from both their mistakes and their successes. Communities/histories/experiments like the Oneida Community have helped to raise new ideas and questions. We are where we are because people in the past were where they were and either stuck with it or tried to change it, which may have opened new possibilities for future generations. And it says something that these histories are usually left out of the history books, as these are precisely the stories that trouble what it means to be in the world and what ways of living are “valid.”
Finally, although I don't think it is fair to “grade” people on our own report cards, I actually hope that the ways I talk and think about things will be dismissed in the future as “old school”/missing the point, because that will mean that we (broadly defined) have made progress. I would hate to be judged on criteria which are not in the language we currently have or our understandings of the world, but if I were, it could potentially be good: wouldn't it be great if many of the concepts/ideas that we are currently troubling no longer need to be troubled?