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September 26, 2005
Jenkins and Cronon
If Keith Jenkins read William Cronon's article, "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative," he would probably criticize Cronon’s choice of the word “story” to connote the narratives produced by historians. Jenkins’ own essay on the historical practice, “Introduction: on being open about our closures,” argues that even the most careful narrative of the past is inseparable from present and personal ideology. Cronon also flirts with this idea, citing the challenge of postmodernism to historical scholarship, and Jenkins would nod in agreement with many of Cronon’s concessions. But Cronon stops short of accepting postmodernism as the new and absolute standard of truth (or nonexistence thereof). His reply to Jenkins would be to point out that the past was at one time real, regardless of how one represents it, and narrative is an intrinsic part of the way humans perceive existence. Therefore narrative is impossible to ignore and, “rather than evade it [historical narrative]… we must learn to use it consciously, responsibly, and self-critically.” (p. 1376)
Taken to their logical conclusion, Cronon would not dispute many of Jenkins’ assertions—that historians interpret history on their own terms and according to their beliefs and experiences, that histories and even the documents they are based on cannot be viewed outside of their contemporary context, that history is inherently self-referential, etc. However, the difficulty of Jenkins’ position is that the brand of extreme postmodernism he uses to challenge the “bourgeois” assumptions of academia offers no allowance for imperfection. Cronon, on the other hand, accepts that he cannot separate himself from the narrative he produces, but still finds validity in an imperfect narrative form that acts as a tool of communicating ideas and finding meaning (even constructed meaning) in the past.
Cronon’s argument raises a key aspect of scholarship and emphasizes the major point of our last class discussion. Without conscious reexamination of the past and its meaning, and continued reevaluation of previous histories, Jenkins’ critique of history as ideology gains more weight. Thus argument, criticism, and debate are at the heart of historical validity, not the false objectivity that haunts Jenkins view of historical narratives.
Posted by miles at September 26, 2005 02:52 PM