Speaking of revolution I've recently picked up Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution. Anyone here read that one? If there's anyone who can make the textile industry fun, it's not Hobsbawm.
And also speaking of revolution, I found an interesting review of a set of conference articles from Amsterdam about historical objectivity. In other words, it was a conference where a bunch of historians, including Carlo Ginzberg and others I probably would like to know but don't (oh yeah, and Richard Rorty wrote the afterword), try to pick up the pieces of their profession after the early postmodernists' attack on narrative, engagement, perspective, and all those things which (whoops), it turns out humans need to make sense out of anything.
So, just to blather a little bit, it strikes me that what postmodernism has undermined in the practice of history is not its method so much as its purpose. Not so long ago history was written mainly to illustrate ethical values which were considered universal. And it did a good job until someone pointed out that some of those values were probably not universal after all. But, nevertheless, history had a clear purpose and did what it set out to do.
Reading of the enlightened hand-wringing of the famous historicists in this article makes it pretty clear to my untutored mind that history, like I suppose all of the humanities and many of the social sciences, no longer has a purpose that the discipline as a whole can actually agree on, and, facile as this might sound, it is not such a surprise that society would start to lose interest in (and withhold funding from) any profession that can't account for its own purpose.
And this reminds me of those calm, reasonable fellows over at the New Criterion who spend so much time bloviating about it all. Ah, but let's not go there. Enough for one morning before first cup of coffee.
Posted by Alan Hogue at November 9, 2004 10:13 AMI just realized I probably used the single most trite blog title in the history of the electron. Sorry about that!
Posted by: Alan Hogue at November 9, 2004 10:15 AMIf there's anyone who can make the textile industry fun, it's not Hobsbawm.
Hobswawm managed to make the 20th Century dull in The Age of Extremes, so that's hardly surprising.
Re the purpose of history: if you want to pursue this area you're probably best skipping the usual suspects like EH Carr. Maybe try RG Collingwood's The Idea of History; it's a weird, disjointed book (actually a compilation of lectures and notes-towards-a-book brought together after his death), but it's beautifully written and much more worthwhile than most of the pomo navel-gazing on the subject.
Posted by: Alan Allport at November 9, 2004 02:45 PMI see that Amazon has it recommended with Marc Bloch. Must be good. I will order it.
The navel-gazing you speak of really just makes me tired. I honestly don't know how people can devote their professional lives to it.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at November 9, 2004 03:01 PM