American Academy of Arts & Sciences, The MIT Press Daedalus

Perspectives, Connections & Objects, What's Happening in History Now?
Author(s): Caroline W. Bynum

Source: Daedalus, Vol. 138, No. 1, Reflecting on the Humanities (Winter, 2009), pp. 71-86
Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences
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Caroline W. Bynum
Perspectives, connections & objects:

what's happening in history now?
In 1997, Princeton University Press And it was clear from his essay that he
published a volume, What's Happened to was more afraid of the end of literature
the Humanities ?, which rang with alarm.1 than of the demise of those who, as he
Even contributors such as Francis Oak- put it, "mistrust or despise" it.2
ley, Carla Hesse, and Lynn Hunt, who Returning ten years later - and from
tried to warn against despair by explain-the perspective of a historian - to the
ing how the current situation had come scenarios feared or envisioned in 1997,
about, provided only a fragile defense what strikes me is how wrong they
against fundamental and deeply threat- were, but for reasons quite different
ening change, while others such as Denisfrom those given in the spate of re-
Donoghue and Gertrude Himmelfarb cent publications alleging some sort
wrote in palpable fear of the future. As of new "turn" (narrative, social, his-
Frank Kermode, author of an earlier, torical, material, eclectic, or perfor-
brilliant study of our need for literary mative, to name a few) "beyond" the
endings, phrased it in his essay for the earlier turn (linguistic, cultural, post-
volume, "If we wanted to be truly apoc- structural, postmodern, and so forth)
alyptic we should even consider the
possibility that nothing of much pres-
ent concern either to 'humanists' or
1 Alvin Kernan, ed., What's Happened to the
to their opponents will long survive." Humanities ? (Princeton : Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1997). For helpful discussion of
the issues raised in my article and for bibli-
Caroline W. Bynum, a Fellow of the American ographical suggestions, I am grateful to Pa-
tricia Crone, Nicola di Cosmo, Jeffrey Ham-
Academy since 1993, is professor of Western Eu-
burger, Jonathan Israel, Peter Jelavich, Joel
ropean Medieval History in the School of Histor- Kaye, Barbara Kowalzig, Glenn Peers, Joan
ical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. Scott, Heinrich von Staden, and Stephen D.
Her most recent book, "Wonderful Blood: Theol- White.
ogy and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Ger-
2 Frank Kermode, "Changing Epochs," in
many and Beyond" (2007), received the Ameri-
What s Happened to the Humanities ? ed. Ker-
can Academy of Religion's 2007 Award for Excel-
nan, 162 - 178, especially 177. On literary end-
lence in Historical Studies.
ings, see Kermode, Sense of an Ending: Studies
in the Theory of Fiction : With a New Epilogue
© 2009 by Caroline W. Bynum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Dcedalus Winter 2009 71
Caroline W. that supposedly caused all the trouble some narcissism, even solipsism, in
By num
on the in the first place. For as Keith Thomas scholarly writing.5 But little of this
humanities remarked in an astute and upbeat as- seems to me to have been postmodern
sessment in 2006, historical scholar- or poststructuralist per se. As a contribu-
ship has become broader, more nu- tor to The Three Penny Review said recent-
anced and more creative over the past ly, there have always been bad books,6
decade.3 It has done so exactly because just as there have always been envious,
the insights of the linguistic turn have defensive, and silly scholarly responses
been absorbed and utilized; and this to other scholars. And if, as Lynn Hunt
has happened because those insights pointed out in 1997, the growth of new
coincide in great part with what histo- subjects such as feminism, gender, post-
rians have always known. colonialism, and cultural studies was a
I do not dismiss or ridicule the fears response to changing demographics, it is
of the mid-1990s. What Alvin Kernan unreasonable not to expect an increase
calls "reading to find the villain" did in the sheer number of bad books in
threaten both sensitive literary criti- such burgeoning fields, since nothing
cism and thoughtful historical account.4 suggests that brilliance is characteristic
Moreover, we can all remember state- of a larger percentage of today's under-
ments (better now left unattributed) graduates, graduate students, or profes-
about the footnote as instrument of sors than it was earlier.7 Moreover, as
patriarchal domination, or the vio- publishers are increasingly willing to
lence of the meta-narrative, that con- review and publish manuscripts in only
fused scholarly prose with the physi- those areas they think will sell, and de-
cal abuse of persons and communities partment chairpersons and senior pro-
(although if my memory serves, such fessors put greater and greater pressure
opinions were more characteristic of on young scholars to produce what Jon-
the 1970s than the 1990s). There were athan Beck has cynically called work
times in the past three decades when that counts, is countable, and is count-
I, too, felt that literary criticism tended, it will require courage (as indeed it
ed to barricade, behind the barbed has always done) to tackle genuinely
wire of jargon, the poetry and fiction
to which I had always turned when I
wanted to imagine something differ-
5 As Merry Wiesner-Hanks puts it, quoting
ent from myself or to explore, in some
a colleague : "We used to do Dante's life and
resonant yet also quiet place, the com- works, then with New Criticism we did 'the
plexity of my human hopes and fears. work, ' then with New Historicism we did
Attention to the stance and perspec- Dante's works in their historical location,
tive of the historian, critic, or anthro- then with post-structuralism we did Dante
and me, and now we just do me" ; "Women,
pologist did lead to a sometimes tire-
Gender, and Church History," Church Histo-
ry 71 (2002) : 600 - 620, especially 600.
6 Dan Frank, "Symposium on Editing," The

3 Keith Thomas, "History Revisited," The Times Three Penny Review 29 (1) (Spring 2008) : 16.
Literary Supplement, October 11, 2006.
7 Lynn Hunt, "Democratization and Decline?
4 Alvin Kernan, "Change in the Humanities The Consequences of Demographic Change in
and Higher Education," in What's Happened to the Humanities," in What's Happened to the Hu-
the Humanities? ed. Kernan, 9. manities ? ed. Kernan, 17-31.
72 Dœdalus Winter 2009
new topics.8 Such professional pres- Social historians and sociologists have Perspectives,
connections
sures seem to me to constitute the real tended to emphasize the rejection of, & objects :
threat we face, and some aspects of a or evolution beyond, Marxist history; what s
postmodern (in particular, deconstruc- intellectual historians have tended to happening

in history
tive) stance toward scholarship may lay more emphasis on literary and psy- now?
provide a partial defense against them. choanalytic criticism. But with remark-
I shall return to professional pressures able unanimity, they all begin the ac-
at the end of this essay. First, a consid- count with Saussure and the develop-
eration of where the writing of history ment of semiotics, circa 1916, and un-
is today. derstand the great shift of the late 1960s
to early 1980s as away from social hist-
lhe past three decades have seen a ory (in both its Marxist and cliometric,
number of discussions of the applica- or quantitative, forms - the latter tout-
tion of what is known generically as ed in the 1960s as the wave of the future)
"theory" to historical scholarship. and toward cultural history, influenced
With minor differences, they have told both by French intellectuals, above all
the same story up to the late 1990s.9 Foucault and Derrida, and American an-
thropologists, especially Clifford Geertz.
This cultural or linguistic, poststruc-
8 Jonathan Beck, "After New Literary Histo- turalist or postmodern turn is usually
ry and Theory? Notes on the M LA Hit Parade understood to hold that language does
and the Currencies of Academic Exchange," not reflect the world but precedes it and
New Literary Theory 26 (1995) : 695 - 709, quot- makes it intelligible by constructing it :
ed in Margery Sabin, "Evolution and Revolu-
in other words, there is no objective uni-
tion : Change in the Literary Humanities, 1968 -
1995," in What's Happened to the Humanities ? verse independent of language and no
ed. Kernan, 85. transparent relationship between social
organization and individual self-under-
9 Among many accounts I might cite, see Johnstanding. Such awareness entails, for
E. Toews, "Intellectual History after the Lin- historians, the realization that the cat-
guistic Turn : The Autonomy of Meaning and
the Irreducibility of Experience," The Americanegories and periods they use are exposi-
tory devices that need constant reformu-
Historical Review 92 (4) (1987) : 879 - 907 ; Victo-
ria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, eds., Beyond the lation exactly because they are always
Cultural Turn : New Directions in the Study of So-based in political and social assumptions
ciety and Culture (Berkeley : University of Cali-
that may, because inherited, be very hard
fornia Press, 1999) ; Elizabeth A. Clark, History,
Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn
to detect. The past does not come in eco-
(Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, nomic, social, or military chunks, nor
2004) ; Joan W. Scott, "Against Eclecticism," in centuries; wars and renaissances, like
in "Derrida's Gift," special issue, Differences "resistance" and "corruption," are creat-
16 (3) (Fall 2005) : 114 - 137 ; Joan W. Scott, "His-
ed by historians, although aggression,
tory-writing as critique," in Manifestos for His-
power, and creativity (which are not,
tory, ed. Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan, and Alun
Munslow (New York : Routledge, 2007), 19 - 38 ;
Peter Jelavich, "Cultural History," in Transna-
tionale Geschichte: Themen, Tendenzen und Theo- Routledge, 2005) ; Lisa M. Bitel, "Period Trou-
rien, ed. Gunilla Budde, Sebastian Conrad, and ble : The Impossibility of Teaching Feminist
Oliver Janz (Göttingen : Vandenhoeck & Ru- Medieval History, " in Paradigms and Methods
precht, 2006), 227 - 237 ; Gabrielle M. Spiegel, in Early Medieval Studies, ed. Celia Chazelle
ed., Practicing History : New Directions in Histori-and Felice Lifshitz (New York : Palgrave Mac-
cal Writing after the Linguistic Turn (New York : millan, 2007), 203 - 220.
Dœdalus Winter 2009 73
Caroline W. however, encountered unmediated) are historical, although at least one survey-
Bynum not. Such awareness also entails the un-
on the or of the contemporary scene treats the
humanities derstanding that the past is not transpar-linguistic turn itself, not the retreat from
ent to us ; all evidence (whether manu- it, as a sort of historical turn.12
script or inscription, fossilized pollen or Probably the most common descrip-
the light from a distant star) is mediated,tion of the retreat characterizes it as a
perceived and analyzed from the point return to social history; but a number
of view of a particular actor, instrument, hedge their bets by seeing it as a kind
or interpreter. Hence the "something" a of eclecticism of method, a "bricolage,"
postmodern historian encounters in re- or what Gabrielle Spiegel, in a recent
search - whether termed facts, data, ex- volume devoted to the turn from the
perience, or meaning - is fragmentary, turn, calls "practice theory" (about
heterogeneous, discontinuous, partial, which designation she is noticeably un-
and always interpreted and interpret- enthusiastic).1^ It thus seems clear that,
able. for all the unease the theorists of theo-
Where these accounts of the so-called ry articulate concerning certain under-
linguistic turn have departed from each standings of where history was a de-
other is in their descriptions of what cade ago, there is in fact no new theory
comes "beyond" it. Describing recent of theory that has swept the field - or
fears that the linguistic turn, somewhat even commanded much attention from
illogically, both makes "culture" deter- professional historians. And this leads
ministic (the world becomes a set of me to a second point.
symbols that determines individuals) The amount of theorizing about theo-
and yet deprives historians of an "ob- ry - that is, descriptions of the linguis-
jective" past (there is "no there there" tic turn and what lies beyond it - is actu-
beyond the symbols), they depict and ally quite limited. A good deal of it has
seemingly applaud a turn to something been done by a small group of essayists,
else. But what? Some think they see a many of whom are not practicing histo-
turn to narrative, even mega-narrative; rians. In the volume Beyond the Cultural
others see rather a retreat to microhis- Turn (1999), edited by a historian and
tory. Some cling to unmediated "expe- a sociologist, almost half of the essays
rience" ; others predict a "revitalized were written by sociologists, political
and transformed . . . objectivity."10 For scientists, or those with joint appoint-
some, what we have now is a material ments in several of the social sciences.
turn - recourse to "the primacy of the
object." For others, the new turn is psy-
chological.11 For yet others, the turn is digms and Paranoia : How Modern Is the
French Revolution?" review essay, The
American Historical Review 108 (1) (2003):
119 - 147, especially 127 - 129.
10 Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Marga-
ret Jacobs, Telling the Truth about History 12 Ronald Grigor Suny, "Back and Beyond :
(New York : Norton, 1994), 2,37. Reversing the Cultural Turn?" in "Review
Essays : Beyond the Cultural Turn," The
11 See Patrick Joyce, ed., The Social in Ques- American Historical Review 107 (5) (2002) :
tion : New Bearings in History and the Social Sci- 1476 - 1499, especially 1482.
ences (New York: Routledge, 2002), 14, as well
as note 27 below. For what some might call a 13 Gabrielle M. Spiegel, "Introduction,"
psychological turn, see Rebecca Spang, "Para- in Practicing History , ed. Spiegel, 22-26.
When the American Historical Review de- A survey of recent work in the AHR Perspectives,
connections
voted a Forum essay in 2002 to a review and elsewhere14 suggests to me that & objects :
of the volume, it commissioned pieces much of the most subtle and energetic what's
from, respectively, an anthropologist, a recent historical writing has absorbed happening

in history
political scientist, and a literary critic. what is thought-provoking and innova- now?
Practicing History: New Directions in Histor- tive about the linguistic turn. To be sure,
ical Writing after the Linguistic Turn (2005), there is a certain amount of what one
edited by Gabrielle Spiegel, is composed might call labeling rather than leverag-
of essays by four sociologists, four his- ing. We have all read too many pieces in
torians, two anthropologists, and a pro- the last twenty years in which Geertz is
fessor of English. (Several of the au- cited to convince us there is culture, or
thors, admirably, wear more than one Foucault mentioned as if his point were
hat.) There is nothing particularly wor- that everything reduces to power. The
risome about those who are not profes- anxious decorating of footnotes with la-
sional historians theorizing history, of bels is, however, nothing new; Max We-
course. As postmodernism would have ber, for example, used to be - and some-
it, a kaleidoscope of views can only help.times still is - cited at any mention of
But one notes in reading these essays bureaucracy or charisma. Moreover,
that they often generalize about what some recent articles may, to some tastes,
historians are doing, without giving go on at unnecessary length about theo-
any examples of historical writing. It ries, especially about theories not uti-
is hard to avoid the conclusion that arti-lized. Nonetheless, when one reads Priya
cles about the turning and re-turning in Satia on how the British understanding
which historians are said currently to be of the area they knew as "Arabia" influ-
engaged may not be the best place to go enced military policy in Iraq just after
to see what's happening in history. World War I ; Sarah Knott on the differ-
ently gendered ideals of "sensibility"
1 have thus decided to turn for evidence found on two sides of the Atlantic dur-
to the last ten years of the American His- ing the Revolutionary War; Gadi Algazi
torical Review (AHR), not only its articles, on rituals between medieval lords and
review articles, and Forum discussions, peasants that articulated mutual but
but also, to the extent possible, a sam- asymmetrical obligations, always fil-
ple of the books reviewed. One might tered through remembering; or An-
of course argue that the AHR, especially drew Zimmerman on how an identity
under the leadership of Michael Gross- constructed for peasants in German
berg, its editor from 1995 - 2005, was not Togo on the model of American self-
typical of the historical profession in the help became a trap, and not only be-
United States, since the journal strove to
foster work the Association thought of
as broad-ranging, comparative, and in- 14 To The American Historical Review I add a
terdisciplinary, and also endeavored to survey of recent issues of History and Theory
broaden its base of contributors in terms and, of course, my reading, a large part of it
of gender, ethnicity, field studied, and written by Europeans, in my own field of Eu-
ropean history. I am also influenced by my re-
type of institution represented. If one
view over the past five years of an average of
is trying to discern what the new direc- three hundred applications a year for member-
tions in scholarship are, this is not, how- ships in the School of Historical Studies at the
ever, a disadvantage. Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Caroline W.
cause of disregard of ecological condi- tication and subtlety, and its authors
Bynum
on the tions, one is in the presence of theorized tell us quite explicitly how it does this.
humanities historical analysis in which lives, in their Such work seems to me both more
suffering and their fullness, are glimpsed grounded in the evidence it explores
through the always-fragmentary and in- and more nuanced in its understanding
terpretable texts and objects that medi- of genre, symbol, and idea than some
ate them to us.15 When one reads Brooke of the sterile opposing of text to experi-
Holmes on the ways in which ancient ence that characterized the early 1990s.
Greek discussions of the symptoms of In my own area of medieval religious
illness take us into a place where a new history, for example, the previous two
understanding was being formulated of decades saw futile and sometimes acri-
what it means to be in, and to be, a body, monious debate by German scholars
one encounters historical writing that about whether women "really" saw vi-
delivers what, in my judgment, history sions or scribes simply "made up" vi-
should always strive to do : tell us some- sionary accounts because the genre ex-
thing of the difference between the past pected them ; in contrast, recent work,
and the present while remaining aware such as that of Dyan Elliott, Nancy Caci-
that the present descends from the past ola, and Barbara Newman, understands,
and that their differences cannot have without needing to belabor the point,
been so great as to render all our lan- that scholars have no direct access to
guage useless.16 the experience of visionaries, but that
In this writing, theory is not merely the presence of expectations of their be-
present; it enables insights of sophis- havior on the part of those, male and fe-
male, who wrote about them is evidence
15 Priya Satia, "The Defense of Inhumanity : about their lives and not merely an op-
Air Control and the British Idea of Arabia," portunity for us to read and interpret.17
The American Historical Review 111 (1) (2006) : There are, to be sure, both new em-
16 - 51 ; Sarah Knott, "Sensibility and the Amer- phases and new buzz words, and these
ican War for Independence," The American
can be understood in part as a response
Historical Review 109 (1) (2004) : 19 - 40 ; Gadi
Algazi, "Lords Ask, Peasants Answer: Making
to, even a departure from, some of the
Traditions in Late Medieval Village Assem- scholarship inspired by the linguistic
blies," in Between History and Histories : The turn. Explorations, and assertions, of
Making of Silence and Commemoration, ed. Ger- agency - a buzz word very popular in
ald Sider and Gavin Smith (Toronto : Univer-
article titles over the past two decades
sity of Toronto Press, 1997), 199 - 229 ; and
Andrew Zimmerman, "A German Alabama - are reactions to a fear that analysis
in Africa : The Tuskegee Expedition to Ger- of the constituents of culture eclipses
man Togo and the Transnational Origins of
West African Cotton Growers," The American
Historical Review 110 (5) (2005) : 1362 - 1398. 17 Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits : Divine
and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages
16 Brooke Holmes, "Medical Analogy and (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2003) ;
Ethical Subjectivity in Plato," in When Worlds Dyan Elliott, Proving Women : Female Spiri-
Elide, ed. J. P. Euben and Karen Bassi (Lan- tuality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later
ham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield, forthcom- Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
ing), and "Medical Knowledge and Technol- sity Press, 2004) ; Barbara Newman, "What
ogy," in A Cultural History of the Human Body, Did It Mean to Say 'I Saw' ? The Clash be-
Volume 1 : Ancient Greece to Early Christianity, tween Theory and Practice in Medieval
ed. Daniel H. Garrison (Oxford: Berg Pub- Visionary Culture," Speculum 80 (1) (2005):
lishers, forthcoming). 1-43.
individual action and responsibility.18 iel Lord Smail, in a recent AHR article, Perspectives,
connections
A recent tendency to talk of transitions for example, proposed taking the sto-
& objects :
rather than epistemes or paradigm shifts ry of human origins back to the emer- what s
reflects a determination to pay more at- gence of homo sapiens in Africa rather happening
in history
tention to how cultures move from one than to the emergence of writing in now?
set of dominant symbols to another - in Mesopotamia, his argument being that
other words, to what is always for a his- the latter narrative instantiates a Judeo-
torian the fundamental challenge : ex- Christian perspective on world histo-
plaining change. Moreover, recent his- ry.20 David Christian and Fred Spier
torical writing is clearly going in some tout even bigger history. Even if it does
directions that seem to be reactions to, not place the roots of history in astro-
even implicit rejections of, a cultural or nomical events, such interpretation
linguistic turn. I now consider some of sees the evolution and extinction of
them - without, however, suggesting species, the drift of continents, climate

that any is truly "beyond" the cultural. change, volcanic eruptions, and disease
as more important for understanding
1 here are two very different ways in the course of human development than
which historical work of the last decade short-term events such as wars, treaties,
may be seen as a retreat from the tex- or elections ; as such it not only provides
tual : the renewed interest in material a provocative counter to traditional po-
culture and physical objects, on the one litical narratives, but also ascribes gen-
hand, and, on the other, a new enthusi- uinely new causes for events historians
asm for what one might call deep struc- thought they had long understood.21
tures, represented both by an upsurge of
so-called "big" or "deep" history and by
a renewed recourse to sociobiological dam University Press, 1996) ; David Chris-
and cognitive explanations for human tian, Maps of Time : An Introduction to Big His-
behavior. To take the latter first, there tory (Berkeley : University of California Press,
2004) ; Daniel Lord Smail, On Deep History
has recently been a flurry of interest in
and the Brain (Berkeley: University of Cali-
what one might call "really big" or "real- fornia Press, 2008). See also "The Return of
ly long" history, some of which attempts Science : Evolutionary Ideas and History,"
to trump mere "world history" by going special issue, History and Theory 38 (1999),
and Gale Stokes, "The Fate of Human Soci-
all the way back to the big bang.19 Dan-
eties : A Review of Recent Macrohis tories,"
The American Historical Review 106 (2) (2001) :
18 See Spiegel, "Introduction," in Practicing 508-525.
History, ed. Spiegel, 11-18. One should also
note that some now see agency as the impor- 20 Dan Smail, "In the Grip of Sacred His-
tation of constraining nineteenth-century lib- tory," The American Historical Review 110 (5)
eral categories ; Cornelia Hughes Dayton, (2005): 1337-1361.
"Rethinking Agency, Recovering Voices,"
The American Historical Review 109 (3) (2004): 21 For example, Michael McCormick, "Rats,
827 - 843. Rebecca J. Scott, "Small-Scale Dy- Communications and Plague : Toward an An-
namics of Large-Scale Processes," in "AHR cient and Medieval Ecological History, " Jour-
Forum: Crossing Slavery's Boundaries," The nal of Interdisciplinary History 34 (1) (2003) :
American Historical Review 105 (2) (2000) : 1-25, and Michael McCormick, Paul Edward
473, dubs the concept "a little shop-worn." Dutton, and Paul Mayewski, "Volcanoes and
the Climate Forcing of Carolingian Europe,
19 Fred Spier, The Structure of Big History from A.D. 750 - 950," Speculum 82 (4) (2007) : 865 -
the Big Bang until Today (Amsterdam : Amster- 895.
Caroline W.
Although such arguments need not arguing that there is something bodily
Bynum as well as verbal in more than one cul-
on the - and sometimes do not - draw on deep-
humanities ly embedded psychological, evolution- ture to which the word anger, for exam-
ary, cognitive, or sociobiological struc- ple, applies.24
tures, they tend to, in part because their Searching for deep structures and large
accounts frequently rely on repeated patterns seems located at the opposite
historical patterns or have recourse to pole from the postmodern sense of his-
claims about perduring "human nature." tory-writing as fragmentary, fragile, and,
One sees this in a book such as Robert so to speak, under perpetual construc-
McElvaine's Eve s Seed or even the recent tion. Nonetheless, in the hands of most
work of Jared Diamond.22 Art historians professional historians, even cognitive
have been particularly interested in such science and parallels from the older field
explanations, whether in the more psy- of ethology (animal behavior) tend to
chologically reductive work of John Oni- be used analogously rather than reduc-
ans, which applies neurobiology to art- tively. When Rachel Fulton, for exam-
making and viewing, or in the more an- ple, understands premodern prayer prac-
thropological work of Hans Belting and tice through theories of psychological
David Freedberg, which is attempting to response and employs parallels between
tease out non-reductive ways of under- present-day sports and medieval meta-
standing cross-cultural human respons- phors of spiritual combat, she does not
es to the "power of images."23 Scholars reduce the rituals and experiences we
at work in the relatively new field of the find described in texts to physiological
history of the emotions - although they patterns in the brain, just as she does not
tend to reject theories of universal psy- argue that we have any access to the de-
chobiological processes which emotion- votee's inner feelings. Cognitive struc-
words reflect - are nonetheless drawn tures lie deep below and hence are ac-
to cognitive science and brain studies, cessed only through behaviors that dif-
fer culturally; analogies are exactly that:
analogies not equations.25 Even "deep
22 Robert S. McElvaine, Eve s Seed: Biology,
the Sexes, and the Course of History (New York :
history" at its best involves understand-
McGraw-Hill, 2001) ; Jared M. Diamond, Guns, ing that physical or physiological struc-
Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies tures are always mediated through our
(New York: Norton, 2005). For an argument ways of knowing them, and hence
against the invasion of literary studies by cog-
through culture.
nitive and neuroscience, see Raymond Talk's,
A far more pervasive trend - the in-
"License my roving hands : Does neuroscience
really have anything to teach us about the plea- terest in objects - might also be under-
sure of reading John Donne?" Commentary,
The Times Literary Supplement, April 11, 2008.
24 See the sophisticated effort to deal with
23 John Onians, Neuroarthistory : From Aristot- these issues in William I. Miller, Humiliation
le and Pliny to Boxandoli and Zeki (New Haven : and Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort
Yale University Press, 2007) ; Hans Belting, Bild-and Violence (Ithaca : Cornell University Press,
Anthropologie : Entwürfe für eine Bildwissenschaft 1993), 12 - 13, and also in Barbara Rosenwein,
(Munich : W. Fink, 2001) ; David Freedberg andEmotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages
Vittorio Gallese, "Motion, Emotion and Empa- (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
thy in Esthetic Experience," Trends in Cognitive
Science 11 (5) (2007) : 197 - 203. For reservations,25 Rachel Fulton, "Praying with Anselm at
see Robert Suckale's review of Belting in JournalAdmont: A Meditation on Practice," Specu-
für Kunstgeschichte 11 (4) (2007) : 351-360. lum 81 (3) (2006) : 700 - 733-
stood as a flight from postmodern tex- their own "agency," so to speak; an ironPerspectives,
connections
tuality. Material culture, understood as or a typewriter, for example, shapes the
& objects :
archaeology, has of course been a major roles and experiences of the woman who what's
element in historical scholarship for al- uses it even as her needs and desires happening
in history
most two centuries, especially for ar- (and the needs and desires of others now?
eas of history such as the classics, the thrust upon her) shape its creation and
ancient Near East, early China, or use.27 Indeed both authors tend to op-
meso-America, for all of which textual pose the material to the cultural. Starn
evidence is scanty or lacking. Since the writes, "It is quite possible to imagine
1970s, however, it has not only become some future version of this Brief Guide
more important in fields such as the suggesting that museum studies had
European Middle Ages, for which it turned - or returned - from the primacy
was formerly less used, but has also of discourse to the priority of object."28
expanded significantly beyond the ex- Nonetheless, it is hard not to notice that
cavation and dating of human-made the extended example of material cul-
objects to the use of new techniques ture Auslander gives - a discussion of the
and the posing of more wide-ranging reconstitution of domestic interiors by
cultural questions.26 Dendrochronol- Jewish survivors after the Holocaust - is
ogy, for example, is now used to date based on inventories, that is, on texts.
architecture and devotional objects Moreover, as both historians recog-
as well as settlement locations; zooar- nize, objects are hardly objective. Nei-
chaeological evidence sheds new light ther the statue revered as living by a
on diet (animal and human) and hence fourteenth-century peasant, nor the
on the movement of peoples; analysis table polished by a nineteenth-centu-
of glacial ice to determine mineralogi- ry housewife, exists before the viewer
cal emissions at far distant sites reveals as raw material from the past. Not on-
new facts about mining techniques and ly do we tend to understand that they
hence radically new conclusions about are significant and why they are sig-
the technological sophistication of cul- nificant from texts, but, whether or not
tures whose texts talk little about tech- they are textually framed, they are not
nology. the same stuff they were centuries be-
Material culture has also come to in-
clude museum studies, as it does in Ran-
27 Randolph Starn, "A Historian's Brief Guide
dolph Starn's AHR review essay of 2005, to New Museum Studies," The American Histori-
or areas such as the history of fashion orcal Review 110 (1) (2005) : 68 - 96 ; Leora Auslan-
domestic interiors, often previously under, "Beyond Words," The American Historical
derstood as social history. See, for exam-Review 110 (4) (2005) : 1015 - 1045. On the agen-
ple, Leora Auslander's 2005 article, "Be- cy of objects, see Daniel Miller, "Materiality:
An Introduction," in Materiality, ed. Daniel
yond Words." To both Auslander and
Miller (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005),
Starn, objects are understood as having 1 - 50 ; Alfred Gell, Art and Agency : An Anthropo-
logical Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) ;
Lorraine Daston, ed., Things That Talk: Object
26 For examples of innovative work in ar- Lessons from Art and Science (New York : Zone
chaeology, see the many works of Colin Ren- Books, 2004) ; and the many works of Bruno
Latour.
frew, as well as Stanley H. Ambrose and M.
Anne Katzenberg, eds., Biogeochemical Ap-
proaches to Paleodietary Analysis (New York : 28 Starn, "A Historian's Brief Guide to New
Academic Kluwer/Plenum Press, 2000). Museum Studies," 84.
Caroline W.
fore : paint is painted over; varnish de- at all for premodern history.^0 Such new
Bynum
on the teriorates and changes color; objects emphases are an obvious and welcome
humanities (like documents) are forged, reused, consequence of the turns of the 1980s
and misused.29 Despite Auslander' s and 1990s ; there is no need for me to un-
title "Beyond Words" or Starn's claim derline them here. What I mean by con-
to return to the priority of objects, these nections and transitions are two trends
essays show not so much a move beyond that are somewhat less apparent, if only
culture, discourse, or textuality as what because a little more recent.
one might call a move beyond binaries Once again, I take the second (the
- to a sense of both text and object as al- stress on transitions) first. Recent his-
ways interpreted and interpretable be- torical work can be seen, in some ways,
cause they are always imbedded in cul- as a retreat from poststructuralist em-
ture. The study of "the material" is not, phasis on paradigm shifts or epistemes
it turns out, beyond the cultural turn. - that is, on periods understood to have
characteristic cultural configurations,
If we look at what today's historians an escape or even transition from which
are actually doing, we find that in addi- may be hard to discern or explain. One
tion to what is sometimes claimed to result of such supposed retreat is an atti-
be a retreat from the textual, there is an- tude we might tag, only slightly in jest,
other major and multifaceted move that "nothing declines." Current scholarship
may at first glance seem "beyond" the tends not only to be drawn to classic pe-
postmodern. This is the move to stress riods of collapse and deterioration - the
connections and transitions rather than end (once the "fall") of the Roman em-
borders, boundaries, and breaks. pire now understood as late antiquity or
One might, perhaps, put under the "the birth of Europe," for example - but
rubric of "connections and inclusions also to find within such periods both a
rather than boundaries" the tendency creativity of their own and the origins of
of today's scholarship to treat what are new cultural configurations. Byzantine
known as "identity groups" not as ra- culture of the middle period, the Otto-
cially or genetically given but as con- man empire in the seventeenth and eigh-
stituted by complex cultural circum- teenth centuries, meso-America just be-
stances. The focus is apparent not only fore the coming of the Spaniards, late
in the titles of recent publications, but Qing dynasty China, the European Dark
also in the many courses on, for exam- Ages (a designation once understood to
ple, gender studies, gay and lesbian refer to the seventh to ninth centuries,
studies, ethnic studies, and postcolo-
nial studies offered in university curric-
ula. To mention only a single example : 30 Florin Curta, "Some Remarks on Ethnicity
in Medieval Archaeology," Early Medieval Europe
recently there has been much sophis-
15 (2) (2007) : 159 - 185. Similar questions are,
ticated work on ethnogenesis - work of course, asked about race and sexual orien-
which, at least sometimes, asks wheth- tation : see Barbara J. Fields, "Of Rogues and
er ethnicity is an appropriate category Geldings," in "AHR Forum: Amalgamation
and the Historical Distinctiveness of the Unit-
ed States," The American Historical Review 108
(5) (2003) : 1397 - 1405 ; and Ruth Mazo Karras,
29 For astute comments, see Tim Ingold, "Ma-"Active/Passive, Acts/Passions : Greek and Ro-
terials against Materiality," Archaeological Dia- man Sexualities," review essay, The American
logues 14 (1) (2007) : 1-16. Historical Review 105 (4) (2000) : 1250 - 1265.
then shifted to the tenth and eleventh Driven by many impulses and circum- Perspectives,
connections
centuries, now run off the stage entire- stances, such a new interpretative focus
& objects :
ly) : such periods are often analyzed to clearly owes something to discontent what s
find creativity percolating under a sur- with what is perceived to be a postmod- happening
in history
face appearance of stagnation.31 More- ern sense of the fragmentary and discon-now?
over, the existence of radical and abrupt tinuous, as well as what is perceived to
shifts in values, cultural forms, social ar- be a poststructuralist understanding of
rangements, and political power tends to discourse as a set of cultural symbols
be suspect to today's historians; "revolu- and practices so powerful that change
tions" are denied across a wide swatch within them is difficult to conceptualize
of history. Not only political revolutions, or account for. At a deeper level, howev-
such as the French and American, or re-er, analyses that stress transition rather
ligious upheavals, such as "the Reforma-than rupture draw on many postmodern
tion^) of the sixteenth century," but techniques for tracing the genealogy
also cultural breakthroughs, such as the of concepts, institutions, attitudes, as-
scientific revolution, or social and mili- sumptions, and actions. For example,
tary reconfigurations, such as the feudalwhat it means for a text to be "new" or
revolution, are vigorously questioned by a ritual to be "traditional" has become
a large body of current historical analy- a far more complex question now that
sis.32 Several recent articles on topics genre, audience, the circumstances of
ranging from plague in fourteenth-cen- composition or transcription, and the
tury Europe to the breakup of the Sovietcomplexities of reception (including
Union assert in their titles the end of long-term reception) are understood
paradigms.33 to be intrinsic to discourse.34 Rather
than a retreat from the poststructural,
the current tendency to stress transi-
31 For one example, see Joanna Waley-Cohen, tion, continuation, cultural borrowing,
"The New Qing History," Radical History Reviewand the construction of identities and
88 (Winter 2004) : 193 - 206.
paradigms by the historians who em-
32 See, for example, Spang, "Paradigms and ploy them is at least as much an extrap-
Paranoia" ; Thomas N. Bisson, "The Feudal olation from the theoretical moves of
Revolution," Past and Present 142 (1994) : 6 - the 1980s and 1990s as an effort to over-
42, with responses by Dominique Barthélé- come the limitations of those moves.
my, Stephen D. White, Timothy Reuter,
and Chris Wickham in Past and Present 152
(1996) : 196 - 223, and 155 (i997) : 177 - 225 ;
Margaret J. Osier, ed., Rethinking the Scientific can Historical Review 107 (3) (2002) : 703 - 738 ;
Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Mark von Hagen, "Empires, Borderlands and
Press, 2000), and Stephen Gaukroger, Emer- Diasporas : Eurasia as Anti-Paradigm for the
gence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shap- Post-Soviet Era," The American Historical Re-
ing of Modernity, 1210-1685 (Oxford: Claren- view 109 (2) (2004) : 445 - 468.
don Press, 2006). A related example is Charles
S. Maier, "Consigning the Twentieth Centu- 34 See, for example, Daniel Hobbins, "The
ry to History : Alternative Narratives for the Schoolman as Public Intellectual : Jean Ger-
Modern Era, " The American Historical Review son and the Late Medieval Tract," The Amer-
105 (3) (2000) : 807 - 831, which rejects the ican Historical Review 108 (5) (2003) : 1308 -
twentieth century as a natural unit. 1337 ; Philippe Bue, The Dangers of Ritual: Be-
tween Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific
33 For example, Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., "The Theory (Princeton : Princeton University
Black Death : End of a Paradigm," The Ameri- Press, 2001).
Dœdalus Winter 2009 8l
Caroline W.
When one surveys recent AHR articles, of History. "36 ßut ^he trend cuts deeper.
Bynum For even land masses are, in current re-
on the the books on new acquisitions shelves
humanities in scholarly libraries, and the job adver- search, treated as sites of connectivity
tisements in The American Historical and mutual influence. Rather than the
Association's Perspectives, the most strik- older world history or global history, un-
ing contemporary emphasis is on what I derstood as a comparison of given units
am calling connections, described in 2006 (whether regions, nation-states, or em-
by C. A. Bayly, Sven Beckert, Isabel Hof- pires), the new emphasis on connectivi-
meyr, and others as "movement, flow, ty, which one recent symposium percep-
circulation" and as long ago as 1999 in tively labeled entanglement, seeks places
the Journal of American History as "trans- below the surface of borders and bound-
national" currents.35 The most graphic aries where economic and cultural con-
illustration of this might appear to be nections and mutual influences flour-
the recent trend toward study of bodies ish. Welcomed by some as an end to the
of water as connecting, rather than land area-studies mentality,37 such work em-
masses as sites of boundaries and divi- phasizes diasporas, mobility, diversity,
sion (geographical as well as political) : cultural borrowing, and the porousness
the Mediterranean history, North Atlan- of borders, and as such, clearly owes
tic history, Pacific Rim history, Indian something to an actual opening up of
Ocean history, and South China Sea his- boundaries since the fall of the Berlin
tory, for example, surveyed in a recent Wall and the opening of China (how-
issue of the AHR under the title "Oceans ever partial) to the West.
Although any new emphasis tends,
alas, to bring with it its own buzz words,
35 C. A. Bayly, Sven Beckert, Matthew Con-
the stress on connectivity at its best (as
nelly, Isabel Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, and Pa- in Mark von Hagen's 2004 article on
tricia Seed, "AHR Conversation: On Trans- Eurasia as "anti-paradigm") is an effort
national History," The American Historical Re- to break down tenacious older dichoto-
view 111 (5) (2006) : 1441 - 1464. The move
has been from histories devoted to explain-
ing Western exceptionalism (for example, 36 In this regard, Peregrine Horden and Nich-
David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Na- olas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea : A Study of Med-
tions : Why Some are so Rich and Some so Poor iterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
[New York: Norton, 1998] ; Alfred W. Cros- - a critique of Fernand Braudel, The Mediterra-
by, The Measure of Reality : Quantification and nean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of
Western Society, 1250 - 1600 [Cambridge : Cam- Philip II, 2 vols., trans. S. Reynolds (London:
bridge University Press, 1997]) to a compar- Collins, 1972 - 1973) that owes much to it -
ative world history approach (R. Bin Wong, has been powerfully influential. So much is
China Transformed: Historical Change and the this the case that there is now a project at
Limits of European Experience [Ithaca : Cornell the University of Munich on "the East Asian
University Press, 1997] ; Kenneth Pomeranz, 'Mediterranean,'" sponsored by the Volkswa-
The Great Divergence : Europe, China and the gen Foundation and directed by Dr. Angela
Making of the Modern World Economy [Prince- Scottenhammer.
ton: Princeton University Press, 2000]) to so-
called transnational history, which stresses 37 See Gregory Mann, "Locating Colonial His-
what I call here (following Horden and Pur- tories : Between France and West Africa," The
cell) connectivity. See also "AHR Forum : American Historical Review 110 (2) (2005) : 409 -
Oceans of History," The American Historical 434, and xv for the editor's comment on that
Review 111 (3) (2006) : 717 - 780 and two spe- essay. And see "AHR Forum : Entangled Em-
cial issues of The Journal of American History pires in the Atlantic World," The American
on transnational history, 86 (2-3) (1999). Historical Review 112 (3) (2007) : 710 - 799.
mies, such as Occident (in this case Rus- not of the substance of historical and Perspectives,
connections
sia) versus Orient. As Matthew Connelly humanistic study, but rather of profes-
& objects :
comments, " [Binaries are on the run," sional practice and formation, a crisis what's
a trend all the more surprising (yet per- that goes to the heart of what we value happening
as scholars at least as much as did the in history
haps, for academic culture, predictable) now?
given the stark dichotomies in the polit- "culture wars" of the 1990s. It affects
ical and polemical world since 9/11. 38 all practicing historians, but especial-
For all its broad sweep, its rejection of ly the young, and tends to be expressed
abrupt shifts, and its stress on economic in language similar to the cries of anxi-
and geographical factors - which might ety, even fear, that characterized the es-
seem anti- or non-postmodern - the says in the 1997 volume What's Happened
new "entangled" history is inconceiv- to the Humanities ? Indeed, there is no ex-
able without a postmodern understand- aggeration involved in applying terms
ing that all units (whether geographical such as alarm and despair to the attitudes
or cultural), like all exchanges (whether of PhD recipients currently emerging
of values, social structures, objects, or onto the job market and to the approach
DNA), are mediated by categories consti- of their mentors and professors. Stories
tuted by the historians who study them, abound of graduate students who fail
as well as by the people who create them to find jobs because their topics are not
in their ever-changing variety. Thus, "trendy," of books that fail to find pub-
in the new emphases I have chronicled lishers because of "the decline of the
here - on connectivity, transitions, ma- monograph," of assistant professors
terial culture, objects, even in the best who fail to gain tenure because they do
of the work that employs and queries not complete that ominously titled "sec-
"deep structures" - there seems to be ond project." Mentors respond with ex-
a recognition that, pace the theorists hortations to the young to produce ever
of "turns," for the historian there can more rapidly, while purveying alarmist
be no "beyond" culture.39 tales of decreasing venues for publica-
tion and proliferating barriers to career
llence, as I said at the beginning of advancement. The apocalyptic has grav-
this essay, the apocalyptic tone of the itated, it seems, from the scholarly to
mid-1990s seems to have been mis- the professional sphere.
placed. The writing of history is stron- Although statistics are notoriously
ger and far more sophisticated than in useless in quelling fear, it is worth not-
1995 and, as I have tried to show, this ing that statistics do not bear out such
owes more to the absorption than to apocalyptic descriptions. As recent re-
the rejecting of the so-called linguistic ports on publishing conclude, the mono-
or cultural turn. Yet those of us who graph is still the key to humanities pub-
teach in American universities know lishing; there has even been a modest
that there is a crisis today. It is a crisis increase in history publishing in the
past few years, with a minimal increase
38 Matthew Connelly, in "AHR Conversation: in price.40 New journals are constantly
On Transnational History," 1452. appearing, and e-publishing provides
39 As Richard Handler argues in "Cultural The-

ory in History Today," in "Review Essays : Be- 40 Humanities Indicators Prototype, http ://
yond the Cultural Turn," The American Histori- www.humanitiesindicators.org/content
cal Review 107 (5) (2002) : 1513 - 1520. /hrcoIVD.aspx#topIVi2: Part IV. Indicator IV-
Caroline W.
many new outlets. Despite a disturbing lence, even scholarly integrity, many
Bynum
on the increase in the number of people in ad- candidates for tenure publish every
humanities junct or part-time positions who would chapter of their first monograph as a
prefer full-time employment, and an journal article, scramble to orchestrate
alarming tendency for women to suffer an edited volume, to which all their
salary discrimination at later points in friends contribute, in order to have a
their careers and at elite institutions, the "second book" fast, and choose new
market for entering professionals looks research topics of a reach and appar-
good. About seven hundred PhD recip- ently contemporary relevance that
ients gain jobs in history departments they are not fully equipped to pursue.
every year; most candidates in tenure- Moreover, the pressures creep, insidi-
track positions acquire tenure ; and the ously and steadily, up the professional
proportion of recently tenured histori- ladder to affect even tenured and mid-
ans who have published books is very career professors. Frenzy for produc-
high.4i tion then leads to a duplication of pub-
The fear that lurks behind the scare lishing that wastes paper; a frantic
stories propagated by graduate students search for sellable, often trendy, and
and assistant professors to each other sometimes overly general topics that
rests less in demonstrable trends than will be snatched up by publishers ; and,
in rumors ; but it rests above all in pres- most dangerously, to a deferral of cre-
sure to publish at an increasing rate in- ativity. For such frenzy defers the time
flicted on younger professionals by necessary for finding genuinely new
deans, department chairs, tenure com- (and by definition un-trendy) topics,
mittees, and senior colleagues. Pushed for editing long and hitherto unknown
to speed up production beyond what is texts, for returning to the archives for
humanly possible and in ways that have research radically different from one's
the potential to injure scholarly excel- earlier forays there, for the painful re-
writing and rethinking necessary for
true innovation ; it may postpone dis-
12 : Academic Publishing (American Academy covery and intellectual adventure so
of Arts and Sciences, 2008). And see Patrick long that historians no longer remem-
Manning, "Gutenberg-e: Electronic Entry to ber the courage and curiosity that moti-
the Historical Professoriate," The American
vated their vocations in the first place.
Historical Review 109 (5) (2004) : 1505 - 1526,
I have no facile or immediate solution
for a somewhat less positive assessment.
to such pressures, rumors, and fears. But
41 See Manning, "Gutenberg-e," 1513; Thom- since the problem appears to lie less in
as Bender et al., The Education of Historians for impersonal market factors than in the
the Twenty-First Century (Urbana : Published
culture of the academy, I propose that
for the American Historical Association by what we need above all is a new under-
the University of Illinois Press, 2004), 27 ;
Robert Townsend, "History and the Future standing of what we are about as histo-
of Scholarly Publishing," Perspectives 41 (7) rians. To describe such an understand-
(2003) ; Francis Oakley, "Ignorant Armies ing is not, of course, to list a set of con-
and Nighttime Clashes : Changes in the Hu- crete proposals. But to outline propos-
manities Classroom, 1970-1995," in What's
als would be to write another essay
Happened to the Humanities ?, 67 ; and Human-
ities Indicators Prototype, http ://www and might in any case contribute to the
.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoIII impression, which I am attempting to
.aspx: Partili. The Humanities Workforce. counter (at least for the United States)
that current professional anxieties are of scrambling to compile ever more col- Perspectives,
connections
owing primarily to economic or insti- lections of essays on predictable topics
& objects :
tutional forces.42 Instead, I hope that in some false hope of "covering" a top- what's
articulating a new self-understanding ic, or commissioning essays from differ- happening
in history
will encourage all historians, but espe- ent fields that talk past each other while now?
cially the young (and their mentors on claiming an "interdisciplinarity" that
their behalf), to resist both the rumors fails to recognize the radically different
of alarm and the pressures of speed-up. languages and techniques necessary
And I suggest that embracing this self- from one expertise to another, we might
understanding will be easier for all of relax into true collaboration, which is
us if we note that it is based in where above all predicated on listening.
we actually are in the substance of our
work as scholars. 1 do not mean by this to extol simply
Hence I propose that we adopt to- the recognition that historical interpre-
ward professional practices the same tations are forever remade as genera-
postmodern stance that has facilitated tions change ; historians have known
creative new work in the substance of that for a long time. Nor do I mean sim-
our scholarship. For if we could really ply to point out that our accounts are
understand what we undertake as his- constructed. I mean something more
torians to be by definition partial and radical and more postmodern - some-
discontinuous, forever redone and in thing I have elsewhere called "history
need of redoing because of our own in the comic mode."43 1 propose a rec-
cultural situated-ness, we - all of us, ognition that every stance is by defini-
young scholars and old - would be able tion on the margins, that every story
to slow down. If there is no goal at the or analysis has of necessity an arbitrari-
end of the race - that is, if the point is ly imposed ending or conclusion, that
the running not the goal - why sprint there can be no so-called meta-narra-
instead of stroll (especially if sprinting tive (that is, a narrative for something
damages our knees forever)? No longer simply referred to as "us"), but that
pressured to read everything, consider there is no shame in any choice of sub-
everything, account for every new turn ject, as long as it is made with method-
and twist of scholarship, we would rec- ological self- awareness and attention
ognize that each of us is - and can be - to a range of relevant evidence, none
only one perspective. Accepting the frag-of it treated as transparent.
mentary and necessarily partial nature After all, it will probably always be
of our own contribution, we might be- true that one person's buzz word is an-
come more truly collaborative - that is, other person's discovery; one person's
more open to using, even seeking out, "over-theorizing" is another person's
work different from our own. Instead methodological self-scrutiny; one per-
son's "under-theorizing" is another's
42 To say this is not to deny the deleterious ef-
fects that government-imposed standards and 43 Caroline Walker Bynum, "In Praise of
requirements can have. An example is the ac- Fragments: History in the Comic Mode," in
ademic assessment procedures imposed in the Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption : Essays
United Kingdom. Awareness of such pressures, on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Reli-
however, makes it all the more important that gion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 11 - 26.
scholars resist rather than exaggerate or colludeSee also Bynum, "The P Word," Perspectives
with them. 45 (7) (2007): 58.
Caroline W. archival research. But awareness that
Bynum
on the we all write from a particular perspec-
humanities tive and with the aid of specific meth-
ods and interpretations does not mean
that there is no difference between good
and bad arguments ; opposing the trans-
parency of evidence - whether objects
or texts - does not mean opposing evi-
dence. Indeed, exactly the opposite is
true. More attention to the complex
and indirect ways in which evidence
renders up the past leads to more at-
tention to the cogency and accuracy of
argument. But paying more attention
means taking more time. What I sug-
gest is that an enthusiastic acceptance
(instead of a grim fear) that each of us
writes from a partial perspective might
free us from the pressures of speed-
up and over-production. Hence an ac-
ceptance of our postmodern partiality
might accord us more time to make our
partial arguments well.
If I am right in this seemingly odd vi-
sion that connects the postmodern to
the modest, then a recognition that we
are not beyond the cultural turn might
lead us not only to embrace fully the
achievements of the past decade but also
free new generations from pressures that
may inhibit the achievements of the de-
cades to come.

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Perspectives, Connections & Objects, What's Happening in History Now?

Author(s): Caroline W. Bynum

Perspectives, connections & objects:

Dcedalus Winter 2009 71

6 Dan Frank, "Symposium on Editing," The

72 Dœdalus Winter 2009

postmodern (in particular, deconstruc- intellectual historians have tended to happening

Dœdalus Winter 2009 73

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from, respectively, an anthropologist, a recent historical writing has absorbed happening

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them - without, however, suggesting species, the drift of continents, climate

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78 Dœdalus Winter 2009

Dœdalus Winter 2009 79

80 Dœdalus Winter 2009

Dœdalus Winter 2009 8l

82 Dœdalus Winter 2009

39 As Richard Handler argues in "Cultural The-

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