A Conversation for Various Historical Methods, or, How to 'Do' History

About categories

Post 1

Delicia - The world's acutest kitten

The line between revisionist and teleological history can be an extremely fine one, and where you draw it might depend on what newspaper you take in.
Where for instance would you put Vine Deloria? I file him under teleological. I might be wrong but I suspect the writer of this excellent entry would consider Deloria revisionist in a positive sense?
Actually, the blame for the bad name of revisionist history really belongs to the teleological glitches abounding therein. I think these teething troubles must be overcome really soon, so as not to let this very necessary novel way of looking at history sink into the bog of political agendas and entrench new subjective slants and skewednesses under the cover of underdog history.

In the same way, what has given "objective history" a bad name is that a good deal of it has been shown to have a teleogical taint, in fact is not objective at all. The infamous "Bell Curve" by whatshisname is in my opinion a modern example of teleological posturing as objective, and the author doesn't even have the excuse of 19th century historians, who hardly could know better, but whose work still is a valuable part of our understanding of history.
So instead of dissing the objective method, one must take historical historians for what they're worth and clean up the category from the teleological clutter.

Yes, there is a dead sure sign of teleologicality, just like the rattler's rattle, it is that certain smugness, paired with the branding of other fellow human beings as "guilty group" and generally unkind and illmannered behaviour. As Dorothy Sawyers once remarked, you can prove anything, if your outlook is sufficiently limited.
And one time or another we're all in danger of falling into that trap, quite independent of what category we like to think ourselves in.


About categories

Post 2

flyingtwinkle

i think except the dates there are always different versions and opinions on the same event


About categories

Post 3

Norton II

Charles Murray wrote the Bell Curve. There's an excellent debunking of his views in Stephen Jay Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" (the 1990's edition).
Oh, BTW, great article!


About categories

Post 4

Delicia - The world's acutest kitten

The average statistician could have debunked that, and he, Murray i mean, so fearfully pleased with himself about his "ranking" of achievements. So according to Murray Marie Curie's work is only 40 % worth of Einstein's, oh well, in any case she did deliver sound science, as opposed to Murray.


About categories

Post 5

DalisLlama

Even dates can be relative depending on what calendar you elect to use.


About categories

Post 6

Montana Redhead (now with letters)

Vine Deloria is an excellent example of history that needs to be written. Where would I place him? His work tends to have a bit of a strident tone, but for all that, it isn't shoddily researched, nor is it so polemic that it stops being history.

Yes, I would consider it revisionist, in a positive sense...but then I would also think that there's something of ethnohistory in it, too...


About categories

Post 7

Fragilis - h2g2 Cured My Tabular Obsession

Teleology versus revisionism is the great debate where history intersects with modern politics. Governments will tend to prefer teleology in most cases, since the government funding of public school textbooks allows them to inoculate against antiestablishment thinking.

On another note, I fear the some feminist historians have themselves become teleological. As women are given increasing access to power within governments and corporations, they are proving themselves to be every bit as prone to corruption and abuse of power as men. Historical texts should be clear that women have traditionally lacked the means but not necessarily the motive to beget violence and broad societal harm.


About categories

Post 8

Delicia - The world's acutest kitten

Montana Redhead: Yes I thought so. I must admit his tone annoys me so much, that the excerpts I found on the net were difficult for me to get through. So I wouldn't buy his books, as I know I'd never finish reading them, because once I spot the monomania I distrust anything the author says on principle. You say his research is sound, well I would have to check up on each and every fact, as I can't believe him because of his obvious prejudices.
I'm a bit sorry about that, since some ideas are interesting, and yes you're absolutely right, we need revisionist history, and we need ethnohistory. But I see no sense to put a new skewed history in the place of the skewed history we had before. Sounds like poetic smiley - winkeye justice but would bring us no nearer to that elusive historical truth.
And I simply feel that something really worthwhile knowing couldn't possibly be said in an arrogant manner. Mind you, I may be wrong there, maybe I'll give it another try, when I run out of other things to annoy me.

Fragilis: With some "feminist" authors I have exactly the same problem, that their tone becomes too, lets call it strident. See, I'm a woman, and the mere thought of certain old restrictions and injustices makes me terribly sad, and also afraid, it's not like it couldn't happen again even in the West, and then I don't know how I'd survive.
But I find to many "feminist" historians neglect important aspects, such as the wide field of women's roles in women's oppression or the role of women as instigators of war. Or they totally overestimate the influence of certain female personages on the course of history, Boudicea and Jean d'Arc for instance?
Mind you, feminist historians are not the first who err along those lines, it's just the reverse to male historians.
And it's still simply not sound sience.


About categories

Post 9

Montana Redhead (now with letters)

There's a lot of truth to what you're saying, Delicia. I have problems with some of the current feminist works simply because the tone is one of ardent preaching. The same can be said for Benjamin Netenyahu's monumental tome on the Spanish Inquistion. I'm sure there's plenty of good things in it, but the fact remains that his premise --that the Spanish Inquisition was simply a way to get rid of Jews -- is so specious that I question everything else he has to say.

My advisor is one of those humble scholars who nonetheless says some incredibly profound things. But he firmly believes that all forms of historical inquiry are valid, even the teleological ones, if for no other reason than it allows you to see where they went wrong. I read a lot of "classics" for him, including Braudel (argh) and Marc Bloch. And Henri Pirenne. Way too much Pirenne.


About categories

Post 10

Delicia - The world's acutest kitten

Your tutor sounds very reasonable, subjective takes on historic subjects are indeed very revealing. It reveals a lot not only about medieval times, but also ours, meseems.
Inquisition is another example how treatment of one subject can fall into all the categories of history writing you mentioned, but most seem to be teleological of one ilk or the other. When I open a book on the inquisition and read that the witch hunt was an instrument used by male doctors to squash female practitioners i put the book firmly back on the shelf. Same goes for inquisition as Christian persecution of the followers of The Goddess and Benjamin Netenyahu. They can of course write what they want, but what does worry me a bit, is finding about a hundred tomes of teleology to one attempt at objectivity on the bookshelves worldwide.

People were truly afraid of witchcraft, it was a very real fear, the same fear that brought the Pueblo Indians to knock a witch's head in AND heave a big stone slab on the dead body so as to make sure the fiend's soul would be trapped in all eternity.
That fear even today causes Africans who believe themselves bewitched to fall ill and die, and brings a whole village population out to attack a family of "witches" with machetes.
But it was only last year that i heard somebody saying that the inquisition was in fact supposed to stem the witchcraft mass panics and lynchings by reasonable and legal inquiry, and didn't everybody yell at him or her (i forget which) for it.
It isn't really surprising that those supposed to deal with the people's panic caught it themselves, is it? I hear that religious sects believing in satanic possession are the ones who have far higher rates of "possession" compared to non-believers. And finally the inquisitor would see witches everywhere and think they were out to get him. To make things worse you only needed a year with bad occurrence of Claviceps purpurea to really think the devil was loose.


About categories

Post 11

Montana Redhead (now with letters)

Part of the problem is that the various inquisitions of the middle ages and early modern periods get lumped together into this monumental ~thing~ everyone calls "The Inquisition." There were so many different inquistions, inquisitorial practices, and, frankly, inquisitors, that it's impossible to say that this or that is true as a blanket statement.

The Spanish Inquisition was very different from the one in the 13th century in Languedoc, and both were radically different from the one in Venice in the 14th century (or was it 15th...they're all blending together). Spain was about relapsed Jews, Muslims, and Christians who constorted with them. The Languedocian inquisition was about the duelist Cathars. The Ventian inquisition, on the other hand, had more to do with "alchemical practices."

Sex sells, and torture and burning at the stake are very sexy. Which is why the witch hunts are sexy...there were probably a vast majority of inquisitors out there who honestly believed they were hunting witches, and helping society. And then there were the few who went around poking witches with retractable stickers, and creating the fever pitch that occured largely in the German lands. Those are the ones we hear about first. As Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said, well behaved women rarely make history. I would amend that to well behaved people rarely make history.


About categories

Post 12

Delicia - The world's acutest kitten

Yes you're right Montana, regional and time frame differences are rarely considered, so people, including me, usually don't know sufficient details and then try to find overly simple explanations for a very diverse phenomenon.
Talking about sex, there was an actual case in Germany I think where a girl refused a guy involved in the inquisition. Well one always meets twice, and he met her in the interrogation, and got her to the stake too, which I call a thorough revenge.
That brings me to another aspect, and that's the people who fried their own fish by the flames of the stakes, financial and power more often than sex related motives I dare say, although it must have been a very exciting time for sadists.
And you know, I think even those people with selfish motives very successfully managed to persuade themselves that what they did was right and proper, until they were really honestly convinced. Is I think a psychological mechanism, the ability to convert our own advantage into what is "right" in a higher social context. Which then leads to Nazis, Stalinists, child abusers, rapists, racists of the original as well as the reverse kind, chauvinists, rabid feminists... did I forget anyone ... to be completely unable to see anything wrong with their conduct.
I wonder Montana, does humanh psychology play a significant role in historical studies, are there thesis who look at historical phenomena from a psychological viewpoint? Be grateful for any references, i would.


About categories

Post 13

Montana Redhead (now with letters)

I meant sex in the sense that torture is sexy when trying to sell books, not really sex in the sense of sex...I'm not making much sense, am I?

Psychological history. Well, if you're up for it, Michel Foucault's works are about how the mind impacts the reality. Try Madness and Civilization, or Discipline and Punish. Or even History of Sexuality (but only the first volume). A lot of the more recent history talks about the psychology of things, but the problem is making the connection between what people think and what they do. It's easy to say that X number of people were tried for X, but getting into the mind of an inquisitor is difficult, and fraught with the danger of the author projecting him or herself. With more recent history, oral histories can do the job, but it still isn't exactly acceptable.


About categories

Post 14

Delicia - The world's acutest kitten

No no, you made perfect sense, it was just me, haring off on a tangent. It's long interested me, how the human psyche has influenced historic actions. And how paradigms and their change influence the perception of historic action. We seem to have undergone quite a sharp volte face in the 20th century regarding the relationships for instance of genders, have and have nots, and races (I haven't yet been dissuaded from believing in that category, strictly in the sense as I also understand it for doggies and kitties and horsies). I think that's a problem for historical movies, btw. as the understanding and evaluation of aggression or oppression for instance seems to have been very much different from ours. Take your inquisitor, can it be that the more generous and conscientious a churchman was, the harder an inquisitor he was? He probably worked terribly hard to overcome impulses of mercy, and suffered with his victims, only on another lever. Horrendous idea.


About categories

Post 15

Montana Redhead (now with letters)

The number of people actually put to the stake by the inquisition is actually quite small compared to the number of people deposed. However, that doesn't really mitigate the situation, does it?

I think there were contiencious (spelling that word has never been by strong suit!) inquistors, but they were overshadowed by the sadistic ones who were just beyond the pale. Then again, most of what we know of the inquistors comes from people like Martin Luther, who had an agenda of his own.


About categories

Post 16

Delicia - The world's acutest kitten

I learned a bit about the "witch smelling" practices in Africa. Did you know that the people pointed out by the witch smeller themselves believe that they are IT? They accept that they perpetrate their sorcery without knowing, in their sleep or otherwise unconscious. That is the idea, anyway. It's quite well known that people whove grown too "high" or who have opposed the witchsmeller or maybe not "thought" of him frequently enough have a higher hazard of being found out as witches.
I hear that a certain proportion of people accused as witches in Europe believed themselves to be one, although they usually had consciously tried to tap into some dark powers.


About categories

Post 17

Montana Redhead (now with letters)

And that certain proportion tended to be male. A lot of it had to do with the type of witchcraft was practiced. Warlocks, who were quite boastful, tended towards alchemy and finding the philospher's stone, while women who were witches were most often healers, midwives, and herbalists. It must have seemed pretty amazing that someone was healed of a deadly fever by some little old lady, given that during the period, people knew next to nothing about how the human body functioned. They were presented as witches because how could a woman not affiliated with a convent heal people? Of course, it was usually when they *couldn't* heal someone that they were accused.

What saddens me is how much we have lost about herbal medicine because these women were killed.


About categories

Post 18

Delicia - The world's acutest kitten

That's interesting what you mention, about women having to be members of a convent if they wanted to heal. That idea is really going way way back to shamanic traditions, isn't it, where spirits are called to aid medication, or even used all alone without medication. Only of course, the spirits a lay woman would call would not be considered the Holy Spirit, and thus the healing achieved by unholy means.It's so interesting but also extremely hard to try to think how the medieval people thought, by now there are so many paradigm shifts lying between them and us.


About categories

Post 19

DalisLlama

The number of people actually put to the stake by the inquisition is actually quite small compared to the number of people deposed. However, that doesn't really mitigate the situation, does it?


True, but even if you weren't executed your property was usually still forfeit to the church, or at least to whatever branch of the church was running that particular inquisition, which probably was a driving force behind a lot of inquisitorial behavior.(much like the War on some Drugs being conducted in the U. S.).


About categories

Post 20

Montana Redhead (now with letters)

Actually, property wasn't forfeit unless one was convicted of heresy and either put to the stake or imprisoned "perpetually." A great many heretics recanted and were forced to wear either yellow crosses on suplices that they were required to wear at all times (ring any bells?) or went on pilgrimmages to such places as Compostela or Rome (the 7 Hills of Rome tour was quite popular).


Key: Complain about this post