I do not understand how this claim can be supported: “The SHEAR debacle has very little to do with history and a whole lot to do about politics.”

In a number of ways and on a number of levels I struggle to understand this line of thinking. https://twitter.com/johnfea1/status/1285591173227327488

First, I am not a member of SHEAR but outside admirer of many members’ work, envious of the collegiality that seemed present in forums like the 2nd book workshops, which is to say a distanced social media observer

Second, I should be doing other things rn! I have a one hour window to work as my 6 month old naps but yet I’m on Twitter thinking about the production of knowledge and “peer” review and guilds.

Third, public scholarly exchange with @JohnFea1 launched me from grad student lurking on academic blogs to being a recognizable scholar with name recognition, however modest in academic circles. Still what a thrill to get “recognized” at a conference before you even have a book.

I have assigned _Was America Founded as a Christian Nation_. There, Fea argues history can/should be divorced from political, social, and cultural agendas. (Bc it truly exists outside of “them”)

To imagine such a thing possible, “history” exists disembodied from the people who write and analyze it. “History” is a static subject-object of study not a subjectivity reflective of the mind and body who articulates it.

This mind and body studying history is reminded of the politics of my presence at every graduation ceremony when my regalia—the material sign of my credentials—literally chokes me because I do not wear a button up shirt like professional men of a certain class typically do.

I cannot separate “politics” from “history” even if I tried because my presence in these spaces is the product of historical political processes, wherein gatekeepers policed the guild through claims of who is legitimate (historical) and who is not (political).

The production of knowledge has always been political. And the credentialing of peers to review each other’s work is political. Publishing and promotion is political. The development and maintenance of power to lead a guild is, and has always been, political.

We typically vote for the leaders of our academic societies (!) so I struggle to see claims of “being political” as anything other than legitimizing certain lines of thought & delegitimizing “others,” esp critics who refuse to stand on the shoulders of “giants”

And that’s the thing, the historians and histories being “political” here are the same people who have long battled for legitimacy as central to the discipline of History rather than as “sub”fields who have resisted marginalization by forming new “Centers” on campuses