Me as Historian
I am told that my late colleague, Tim Moy, often began responses to student questions with the phrase, “We as historians…” I like this, both as strategy and rhetorical device. Strategically, it makes students feel as they are participants in the historical endeavor and not just passive recipients. Rhetorically, it evokes the democratic potential of history. With a few bucks and a website, anybody can be an historian.
Yet on the rare occasions when I interject “we as historians” during a class, it feels a bit presumptuous. Tim, of course, was anything but. But for myself, I have some trouble speaking for all historians when we are such a diverse lot. “Me as historian,” while a grammatically questionable construction, is a bit more manageable. And given that I tend towards the small scale in my historical work, at a minimum it’s internally consistent.
This somewhat rambling preamble is an entry into the question, “What kind of historian am I?” This evening I will lead the first session of a graduate seminar in Advanced Historiography and I am requiring each student to write a short essay responding to this question. I ask my undergraduates to do a similar exercise with the question “What is History?” In order for this not to devolve into intellectual voyeurism and perhaps even to approximate some sort of debate, I figured it was only fair to devote some thought to the question myself. So here goes.
My undergraduate degree was in Anthropology and my approach to history reflects that. I strive to be an ethnographer of the past. I had too many moral qualms about poking into the lives of the living to be a successful anthropologist, unless I wanted to use fieldwork as the basis for an extended meditation on myself. I did not. An added plus: accountability towards the dead, while still a real concern, is rather more attenuated than responsibility towards the living.
I am probably not much of a credit to my Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins. Hopkins was the first doctoral program in History in the United States – it embraced German models of empiricism and pedagogy. One of my advisers really did claim in Rankean fashion that the “facts spoke for themselves.” Hence there was no need for formal training in the philosophy or theory of history. All that was required was a comprehensive gathering of data, artfully arranged into a coherent narrative. I may have found that enough at one time; I no longer do.
I exaggerate a bit. There were theorists at Hopkins, proponents of the linguistic turn and subaltern studies. Gayatri Spivak came to give a talk; Hayden White taught there. Gabriel Spiegel, a path-breaking theorist in the historical field, now teaches at JHU and just assumed the presidency of the American Historical Association. But in the late 80s-early 90s, theorists were much embattled and (this may be urban legend) reputedly some literally came to blows with the empiricists in faculty meetings.
Since leaving graduate school, I have become more theoretically inclined. My work has been enriched and informed by theory. However, I can’t really claim to be a theorist either, at least, not a very good one. Some scholars have a natural aptitude for theory; others dismiss it out of hand. Some approach it because they think they should or because they are required to teach it or learn it. Of those, I suspect the majority work their butts off and get maybe half of it. That’s pretty much where I stand.
So much for what I am not. The historical approach that best fits what I do is micro-history. I enjoy studying the small to illuminate the large. In particular with respect to how the state interacts with society, how the actions of individuals, particularly those situated at the far extremities of power, are able to mediate ideas, policies, disparate cultural understandings. They are also sometimes able to subvert or transform larger political agendas, often because at the local level the state often doesn’t pay a whole lot of attention. Looking at the local often provides ample evidence that what the state discursively asserts as reality is just a load of bull. I like these contradictions. They amuse and often fascinate me … as historian.
