A note on "Revisionist Historians"

The other day, I wrote a thoughtful (toot toot), albeit poorly edited (my apologies) blog about archives, how they work and how archives are affected by naturally occurring historical processes. Today, the professor I work with as a Graduate Assistant brought up a pet point of mine- revisionist history. I’ll admit, I’m a dirty-R word revisionist historian. According to talking heads, that must mean I’m out to destroy America, destroy families and education and I alone am responsible for the Red Menace, the economic downturn and TSA body scanners.

Let me alleviate your fears, dear reader. All historians are revisionist historians. Historians seek to answer historical questions, sometimes the same questions that have already been answered. To not do so, to simply accept the master/dominant narrative as it has been written is not conducive to the field. The dominant narrative exists because it provides structural framework to communicate historical events and actors to large numbers of people. This narrative changes over time (slowly) to reflect the needs and changing times. But once one looks past this dominant narrative, one becomes a revisionist merely by not accepting the dominant story as “correct.”

However. Dominant narratives are constructed. They can be patriotic (American Revolution!), parables (Washington, meet cherry tree) and can reflect biases in our own, modern day society (I promise you, in early America, women were involved in Revolutionary thought, as the very least, even if there are not countless biographies written in their memory). Some standards need to exist for the purpose of education and that is true of any field. Also, there is too much to discuss in one term. Imagine trying to teach, in one term, all interpretations of the American Revolution. Also, many interpretations are simply too advanced to teach to students who (at the level I work with, freshman college students) are just beginning to gain intellectual bearings. For these reasons (and others, although probably less altruistic), a basic, overarching narrative exists. Once we accept that, we can start to conceive of that dirty R word differently.

If you were to accept the talking heads at face value, you’d assume dirty liberal hippies, assisted by evil Muslims and Karl Marx’s disembodied head drive the revisionist movement. However, what is seen as being revisionist is often changes in historical theory, methodology and the “culture” of history, as well as technology, access and national culture. In the quest for legitimacy, historians strove to be objective. This here’s the facts, ma’am, and nothing but. Yes, this is noble; however what is considered objective changes over time. Now acknowledged as a bias, or cultural baggage, Eurocentrism used to be accepted as something factual, cool, rational and objective. Those who established slavery as an institution objectively thought it was the best method to “civilize the uncivilized.” We now understand, because of new methods, science and changes in our cultural fabric, that slavery is not only wrong, but also probably not a useful way to make outsiders feel as thought they are being “civilized” or learning a new culture. And why do we want to do this? It gives us a more accurate, complete depiction is the past, and that’s what we want from history, correct?

Now, we accept and unpack our biases, which become more clear with time. It is easy to write off older monographs as being biased and not objective, but in reality, those historians were upholding the historical standards of their time. This becomes much clearer when looking at the historiography. Take, for example, the historiography of American Indians, first, they were ignored, then seen as savages, later as victims and only with our more recent historical tools (such as understandings of agency, etc.) have historians begun to suggest American Indians had their own motivations. It’s not that earlier historians didn’t read documents correctly, or anything else it’s that they lacked the historical lenses to look at these sources in this manner. Also, the construction of the American Indian as a non-white, savage other (how Ethnocentric!) was accepted and supported by societal biases, attitudes, etc. Examining these historical players as human beings, with agency, motivations, goals, etc., helps paint a more clear historical picture, of the colonists and the Natives.

As historical lenses (theory), or technologies, change, so do people. It’s not necessarily conscious, and it’s not always malicious. There’s a phrase for this- shit happens. For instance, the Genoveses, a historian husband and wife team, used to be a left leaning, Marxist theory using historian couple. For one reason or another, they had some sort of religious epiphany and are now conservative, right leaning, etc. Where Fox-Genovese used to deconstruct gender, she now upholds gender roles. That doesn’t mean she’s a liar, necessarily, just that shit happens. Shit happened, her beliefs changed. She wasn’t trying to dupe her readers, and her change of lifestyle doesn’t invalidate her previous work. Of course, there are liars and malicious people, but people also change, and they and their work should not be thrown out entirely because of it.

New discoveries and technology can also change the historiography and challenge widely accepted theories. For the longest time, the idea that the first Natives come to America across the Beringia land bridge was the strongest theory. However, with new technology, we discovered most of North America was covered by huge glaciers AND we also found artifacts from South America, as far south as Argentina and Chile, that date earlier than North American artifacts. A new(er) theory suggests the first Americans moved down the east coast by boat- island hopping, as it’s known to historians and anthropologists. This isn’t to say the Beringia theory is out, or that it wasn’t sound- it was for its time. New technology coupled with new archaeological finds poked holes in what was formerly the dominant theory.

All this in mind- developing historical lenses/tools/theoretical frameworks, changing worldviews and societal norms, technology and potential for new discovery and new readings of previously accept works- why WOULDN’T a historian want to be a revisionist? Part of being a historian is contributing new ideas, and one does not contribute by simply accepting the dominant narrative. To not be a revisionist historian, I’ll conclude, is to simply bend over and accept the status quo, the dominant narrative as it has been handed to you. To be against looking at history with modern tools and fresh eyes is to be against historical innovation and to deny potential for new interpretations and applications of new theory.