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Obviously, we need to continue the debate rather than remalmng
silent. People have been silent because if they spoke out they were called
racist, which is a charge you can't defend yourself against. I think we're
now getting to a point where more and more people are willing to say,
"Look. That won't wash. Give us a real argument for what you want to do.
You can't just call us names."
And, as argued, we have to wrest history from the hands of the post–
modernists and the ethnic politicians, who simply invent the history that
serves their own goals. Columbia University historian Eric Foner, for
example, certainly a man of the Left, challenged errors in the Amistad
movie. People need to challenge bad history, not think, "Oh well, if this
makes some people feel better, it's okay."
C. Vann Woodward:
I'd like to support your remarks. Yes, history is not
to be determined by racial boundaries or poli tical purposes, even those that
we all generally support. History is not the purpose or the promotion of
political causes, however good they are. History is something else.
Jerry Martin:
A new historians' society has been formed precisely on that
premise. I think they're calling it-I love the simplicity of the name-the
Historical Society. Scholars of a range of political points of view are say–
ing, "We're going to leave our politics back in our bedroom-or wherever
you leave your politics-and we're going to get together and talk history
in
terms of the evidence and reason," a very promising note.
Victor Kestenbaum:
Thank you. Both this morning and this afternoon
the matter of standards and the relativizing of standards has come up.
French postmodernism and poststructuralism come in for their share of
criticism and ridicule. But what about our own intellectual history, i.e.,
how have we dealt with the relative and the absolute? What do you make
of Emerson?
In
an essay like "Circles," was he making it easy for absolutes
or absolute standards? Do you think in "The American Scholar" that
Emerson was saying, "Let's celebrate the disciplines," or was he not saying,
"Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if we had Man Thinking?" What is the
relationship of Emersonian Man Thinking and curriculum frameworks?
Steven Marcus:
I'm not qualified to speak in any real sense about
Emerson since I'm only an amateur reader of him, but my sense is that
you've touched on a very interesting theme. Yes, of course there is one side
of Emerson that
in
a particular context does relativize, but there's another
side,
in
another context, that absolutizes, and what he absolutizes is
Emerson, the reasoning self, his individuali ty, and
things
like that, and that
