Theory: From Findings to Conclusions

I have here and here in the past suggested that some degree of presentism is crucial to writing significant historical scholarship. I’d like to revisit that line of inquiry as it applies to theory and analysis in history. One problem I’ve been running into more and more in history—especially in my field of early U.S. and early North American history—is that much of what I read from recent years appears short on theory. Historians are so intent to recover the past, I think, that we feel uncomfortable applying our own categories, developed in the present. (A similar argument has been made by several prominent scholars elsewhere). The allergy we have rightfully developed to anachronisms has, I think, led us to hold concepts of the period as inherently superior to anything else we can bring to the table. The trick, as I see it, is to develop theoretical categories that can be both meaningful for readers in the present and applicable to the past.

Recently I have noted that such tendencies and their attendant limitations on scholarship have seeped into my own writing and interests. Take for example the idea of the nation, which I have been applying in my scholarship of late. Losing sight of what we know the nation to be today—as the concept has developed over decades of thoughtful scholarship—I have been far too sensitive to what my research subjects thought they knew about the nation. The problem I have run into is that nationalism is such a powerful ideology that contemporary uses and constructions of the term nation are bound to be flawed. In some ways, knowledge I can bring from theories devised in the present about the nature of the nation are far more useful than what contemporaries “tell” me they know about the nation and its appeal to them. After reconsidering some of my findings, for example, I have concluded that quite often deeds—not words—prove more reliable for hacking an ideology as self-deceiving as nationalism. 

For me such anti-theoretical tendencies were a new development. When I came to grad school I was convinced that theory was crucial to what we do, but heeding signals from the field I watered things down and have certainly not been reading up on theoretical literature as much as I used to. To some degree, I have come to realize, this zeal for contemporary vocabulary and meaning also has some ramifications for argumentation: for where theory is given short thrift and precise categories of analysis are few and far between, it’s hard to arrive at penetrating conclusions. In the words I heard pronounced by one historian after a panel that was strong on primary research but a bit weak on argumentation, I think that downplaying theory means that historians are not sufficiently making the leap from findings to conclusions. Especially since the best conclusions, I think it would be fair to say, tend to have some degree of significance in the present.

I’ll take a positive example of a recent history that in my opinion transcended much of what the field regularly produces by applying an ingenious but simple category of analysis. When reading Ibram X. Kendi’s recent (rightfully) celebrated book, Stamped from the Beginning, I derived from it a sense of satisfaction that I have not too often felt in recent years when reading historical work. I think I have now figured out why: it was sufficiently presentist, especially when examining a concept that is crucial for us in the present: racism. While I appreciated many books that have come out in recent years and learned much from them, Kendi’s ability to offer meaningful insights in simple and straightforward language was a breath of fresh air. No less importantly, for my tastes, it was also polemical and avoided employing what I often refer to as the dark arts of nuance, that many historians have come to master.

For as opposed to most scholarship in history, Kendi’s book made what was to me a profound analytical intervention to our understanding of the past, and by implication to the present as well. First, Stamped from the Beginning clearly defined what a spade was, and then went on to call a spade a spade. In this regard, the most innovative and insightful analytical concept was assimilationist racism. While we all knew that what Kendi referred to as segregationist ideas were racist, the jury on what he defined as assimilationist ideas was still out. Kendi’s conceptualization of assimilationist racist ideas refused to accept this ambiguity, defining it as a different set of racist ideas.

In developing the concept of assimilationist racism, Kendi appears sensitive both to what he sees in his scholarship and to his interests as an intellectual who lives in the present. From what I could gather while reading the book, he noted that his subjects had two distinct modes of talking about race, but also that both modes were deeply flawed from our perspective—sensitive to the needs of the present. Rather than encouraging us to sympathize with ideas that cast Black people as inferior “only” as a result of circumstances—as so many have done before—he suggested that, in fact, such ideas were just a different form of racism. He also went on to demonstrate how the supposedly more enlightened assimilationist racist ideas could lead to no less pernicious consequences.

I have read somewhere (sorry I couldn’t find the link, but I’d be happy if someone posted something to that effect in the comments) that historians are going through a bit of a backlash to the supposedly hyper theoretical nineties. This is probably to some degree true, but as I hinted earlier, I think the problem also lies with the field itself and its overly zealous adherence to historicism and contingency. While over theorizing can certainly hurt a field, as I think it has done in cultural studies and elsewhere, we need to search for the right balance, rather than turn away from theory. I would suggest that because historians are so grounded in the past, we might actually enjoy an advantage over other fields; we are not as likely to use theory too heavy-handedly. Historians often debate why they are not relevant enough; perhaps one way is to write scholarship that attempts to be more explicitly relevant. Rather than shying away from theory and analytical categories, we need to search for the right kinds of conceptual frameworks.