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This is the kind of response that simply *sharing* unfamiliar histories often generates from both owners and followers of "IDW" and associated accounts.
They are not concerned with defending "history" or "scholarship". They are interested in silencing histories they don't like.
They are not concerned with defending "history" or "scholarship". They are interested in silencing histories they don't like.
These days, that silencing often takes the form of accusations of "victimhood", or "wokeness", or "social justice", or "theory" (Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, deconstruction, PoMo, it all means the same thing in this context).
But the point is to keep history quiet.
But the point is to keep history quiet.
Consider how oblique and half-assed their engagements with "history" as such often are. Conceptual James plodding his way through a comically ignorant, fabricated version of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Quillette discovering the "suppressed" history of... the Vendée.
PSU's Professor of YouTube Atheism pronouncing an utterly unsubstantiated defence of empire as good enough for him, as if there are no "rebuttals". Pinker dismissing contextual studies of science and the Enlightenment, none of which show up in his own bibliography, as "nihilism".
These are not people who read current (or in many cases even generations-old) historical research. They don't engage in any *historiographical* debate at all. Instead they use attacks on "theory" or "wokeness" or "grievance studies" as substitutes for actual reading and learning.
And they encourage their followers and fans to do the same. This is the opposite of a public service.
There IS no single hegemonic view of the past. History IS contested all the time. Hardly any work appears that does not question what went before.
None of this interests them.
There IS no single hegemonic view of the past. History IS contested all the time. Hardly any work appears that does not question what went before.
None of this interests them.
When was the last time any of them offered real, focused, detailed, substantiated criticism of a specific work of academic historical research?
I don't mean mining footnotes for the names of theorists, or making fun of titles or big words. I mean looking at sources and methods.
I don't mean mining footnotes for the names of theorists, or making fun of titles or big words. I mean looking at sources and methods.
It's a rhetorical question.
Because that is not how these engagements go. Take the 1619 Project. Probably no recent phenomenon has generated more ire from online "centrists". It has motivated umpteen denunciations of academic history.
It's not an academic history. It's a magazine issue.
It's not an academic history. It's a magazine issue.
And the same people who use 1619 to attack academia also seize on any academic criticism of it as a demolition.
Academics supporting a history you don't like = bad. Academics criticizing a history you don't like = good.
The issue here isn't research. It's the story being told.
Academics supporting a history you don't like = bad. Academics criticizing a history you don't like = good.
The issue here isn't research. It's the story being told.
And in this sense it is the height of irony that so many IDW, Quillette, Areo, Grievance Studies, etc., types decry the "politicization" of the past.
They have made the political implications of historical research into the *sole* criterion of whether they accept it or not.
They have made the political implications of historical research into the *sole* criterion of whether they accept it or not.
