A Student's Guide to U.S. History by Wilfred M. McClay

Author:Wilfred M. McClay [McClay, Wilfred M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, General, Study & Teaching, Education, Teaching Methods & Materials, Arts & Humanities
ISBN: 9781497645189
Google: 99L5AwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-07-29T16:14:06+00:00

CAVEATS

HEREIN I OFFER a few useful observations about the practical aspects of historical study, presented in negative form. I choose to emphasize caveats, rather than dos and don’ts, because falsehood is easier to identify than truth; and it is easier to specify how one shouldn’t do history than to say how one should.

Caveat 1: Avoid using the term “political correctness” to describe an argument or position that seems to you contrived or ideologically motivated. First, because it is a kind of argumentum ad hominem, which fails to engage the issue at hand on rational terms, preferring instead to cast doubt on the motives of the one who offers it. This kind of argument can rebound upon those who use it, and eventually render discussion impossible. Second, because the use of such a term relies upon the lamentable assumption that all orthodoxies are ipso facto coercive and illegitimate. And that is false. It is a particularly strange development when campus conservatives, who are generally thought to look with sympathy upon orthodoxy, end up branding their opponents’ views as attempts to impose an orthodoxy. This is a lazy and uncivil way of arguing, even when it is accurate (as, alas, it usually is). The emphasis should not be on the inherent wrongness of any orthodoxy per se, but the wrong of the particular ideas that a particular orthodoxy is advocating. These days, defending the possibility of a reasoned orthodoxy may be the most radical position of all.

Caveat 2: Ignore the near-universal assumption that, when it comes to scholarship, newest is best. This is one of the many distortions wrought upon our intellectual life, both inside and outside the academy, by our obsession with fashion and “originality.” It also reflects the suffocating arrogance and self-absorption of the present, an arrogance and self-absorption that afflicts professional historians as much as anyone else. It is an especially potent trap for graduate students, who are anxiously trying to figure out where, and if, they fit in “the profession,” and who therefore tend to be overly attentive to the cues of their advisors. For an antidote, read Jaroslav Pelikan’s marvelous book The Vindication of Tradition (New Haven, Conn., 1984), the fruit of a lifetime’s reflection by a scholar’s scholar, which strikes a sensible balance between a hidebound traditionalism and a feckless chasing after what is merely new.

Caveat 3: Beware of historiographical essays, which are useful in placing a series of books in a larger context of scholarly debate, but all too often do so at the expense of providing a careful and nuanced account of the books in question. Much of the drama and back-and-forth of such essays is entirely ginned-up by the author, who typically takes one element of a historian’s argument out of context, exaggerates it, then deploys an equally out-of-context exaggeration of another historian’s book, as a counter-argument—and then, the next thing you know, there are neatly quarrelling “schools,” fighting it out over rival simplistic assertions. The resulting effect is that of a Punch

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.