Homespun Radicalism
Jan. 23rd, 2013 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerIt is my duty and my pleasure as a grad student to complain about most of the books that I read for class – to bemoan the low quality of academic writing, to scourge irritating monographs on LJ, and to ruminate the grim possibility that I will spend years of my life writing a thing that no one will ever read.
But sometimes! Sometimes, gold rises above the dross. Here are a couple of books that I’ve read that are thoughtful and witty and fun.
First, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth. I must confess that I haven’t read the whole book yet – we’re reading it for class, and I’ve found that specific details fade if I don’t read the chapters in the week they’re assigned. But on the basis of what I’ve read, I’m so confident in this book’s excellence that I recommend it to anyone who has any interest in colonial America, or trade relations (and, intimately related, cultural relations) between European settlers and Native Americans, or material culture in general.
Or indeed, anyone with a taste for nonfiction and also good books. Ulrich’s book reads, in the best way possible, like a novel: she weaves her extensive research together into a rich, fascinating tapestry of colonial and early republican America, much more complicated than the linear story related by history books. This is not a vision of history as a series of unfortunate events: this is history as a place where people lived.
Second, Christopher Lasch’s The New Radicalism in America, 1889-1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type, which was published in 1965 and is therefore probably very out of date, but never mind. I’m a historian, I don’t believe in out-of-dateness.
(Actually, I think contemporary historians are perhaps rather invested in the idea of out-of-dateness. Must contemplate this fact.)
Lasch’s book is worthwhile not so much for its purported subject matter, although his take on it is interesting and well-researched and, most importantly, well-written – I probably shouldn’t view “well-written” as the sine qua non for historical writing – but because his take on intellectual radicalism challenges the idea of the scholar-as-activist, which is so popular among my cohort.
This sounds, I realize, like Lasch is arguing that the scholar-activist ideal out to be abandoned like a sinking ship, but that’s not what I mean and I don’t think that’s what he meant. He is not arguing that scholars ought to give up on politics under the mistaken impression that knowledge ought to be pursued (and can be pursued) apolitically, but that we need to think more clearly about why we find it so enticing about the ideal of the scholar-activist and what we expect to be able to accomplish through this kind of activism.
After all, writing yet another Foucaultian monograph that will be read by no one but grad students is unlikely to shake the foundations of the kyriarchy. Think bigger, young activists!
But sometimes! Sometimes, gold rises above the dross. Here are a couple of books that I’ve read that are thoughtful and witty and fun.
First, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth. I must confess that I haven’t read the whole book yet – we’re reading it for class, and I’ve found that specific details fade if I don’t read the chapters in the week they’re assigned. But on the basis of what I’ve read, I’m so confident in this book’s excellence that I recommend it to anyone who has any interest in colonial America, or trade relations (and, intimately related, cultural relations) between European settlers and Native Americans, or material culture in general.
Or indeed, anyone with a taste for nonfiction and also good books. Ulrich’s book reads, in the best way possible, like a novel: she weaves her extensive research together into a rich, fascinating tapestry of colonial and early republican America, much more complicated than the linear story related by history books. This is not a vision of history as a series of unfortunate events: this is history as a place where people lived.
Second, Christopher Lasch’s The New Radicalism in America, 1889-1963: The Intellectual as a Social Type, which was published in 1965 and is therefore probably very out of date, but never mind. I’m a historian, I don’t believe in out-of-dateness.
(Actually, I think contemporary historians are perhaps rather invested in the idea of out-of-dateness. Must contemplate this fact.)
Lasch’s book is worthwhile not so much for its purported subject matter, although his take on it is interesting and well-researched and, most importantly, well-written – I probably shouldn’t view “well-written” as the sine qua non for historical writing – but because his take on intellectual radicalism challenges the idea of the scholar-as-activist, which is so popular among my cohort.
This sounds, I realize, like Lasch is arguing that the scholar-activist ideal out to be abandoned like a sinking ship, but that’s not what I mean and I don’t think that’s what he meant. He is not arguing that scholars ought to give up on politics under the mistaken impression that knowledge ought to be pursued (and can be pursued) apolitically, but that we need to think more clearly about why we find it so enticing about the ideal of the scholar-activist and what we expect to be able to accomplish through this kind of activism.
After all, writing yet another Foucaultian monograph that will be read by no one but grad students is unlikely to shake the foundations of the kyriarchy. Think bigger, young activists!
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no subject
Date: 2013-01-23 07:17 pm (UTC)It's a pity that so many modern historians have jettisoned readability for modernity though - I am totally with you that history should be well-written. If a book is going to need the facts painfully excavated out of it, then really, what's the point.
Scholar-as-activist writing revolutionary monographs? Seriously? Awwww, bless. Ivory tower residents can be so sweet sometimes.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-23 11:58 pm (UTC)Scholar-as-activist writing revolutionary monographs? Seriously? Awwww, bless.
Yes, clearly it is impossible for scholars to ever revolutionize anything. It's not like Locke and Montesquieu and Marx were partially responsible for setting off whole series of revolutions.
Of course it's not very likely that any particular scholar is going to write a revolutionary anything. But most doctors don't come up with revolutionary medical procedures, most politicians don't pass hugely important new laws, and most writers will go out of print and be forgotten.
The number of people who be personally responsible for revolutionizing anything is astronomically small. But wanting to change things for the better is a noble goal in any profession, and making fun of people who aim to do it is silly.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-24 08:31 am (UTC)Not that I would blame Marx for the political consequences of Marxism, but the poor man did end up more or less founding a religion, and it seems odd to me for that to be something to aspire to. I'm just not sure I see 'revolution' (as opposed to evidence based change) as a noble goal unless perhaps in a very limited field. Although I suppose in the case of all those three writers, they were more or less the spark to the powder keg, and the central problem is the existence of the keg.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-24 02:23 pm (UTC)I like your powder keg metaphor.