Can We Know the Past? | Talking Points Memo

Can We Know the Past? | Talking Points Memo
by Josh Marshall

If you’ve observed or been engaged in the debate over The New York Times ‘1619 Project‘ I have a book I want to recommend to you. It’s not about that specific debate at all, not about slavery or the Civil War or American history, at least not directly. It’s called That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession. I was reminded of it today for a totally random reason – a quote from deep in the book by the late historian of slavery Eugene Genovese.

That comes from a debate within the American Historical Association between left-radicals and more methodologically traditional and politically moderate historians. Genovese, the one-time communist, current marxist and future conservative – in a characteristically over the top demand – labels the left group “totalitarians” and demands the Association “put them down, put them down hard, and put them down once.” Not that Genovese wasn’t capable of some humor. On being expelled from the US Communist party as an undergraduate he said it happened “for having zigged when I was supposed to zag.”

As the title implies, Novick’s book is about whether such a thing as objective history is even possible and more specifically how the 20th century academic history profession wrestled with that question over time. The question is a central though in some ways implicit one in the ‘1619’ debate. And I’m sorry to say this book will not answer the question for you. It’s a far more diffident read than that. But it is a fascinating, fascinating, quite human study – intimate and idiosyncratic like most of Novick’s work – and you will learn something about the historical profession, a lot about how historians have thought about this question and how they’ve understood the value or significance of their work in the context of that question.