The Revenge of "Gentlemen's History?"

Some years ago Michael Parenti coined the term "gentlemen's history" to refer to the generally self-congratulatory historiography produced by, of and for a society's elite, justifying and flattering itself and promulgating its prejudices--while shutting out everything not conducive to that. (Thus are we expected to see in a collection of pleb-hating patricians given to the most unbearably pompous oratory the height of civilization, and in the doings of "Great Men" the sole cause of everything that ever mattered.)

For most of history, gentlemen's history was the norm, and it never vanished. It is still the foundation of what most people get in school; what they are likely to see in the kind of popular history that will be seen plugged on C-SPAN's BookTV and get authors on the bestseller list. Still, it is one of the advances of the past century that historiography has grown beyond this. If the research and publishing of history, like the publishing of anything else, never really became open to all, it is less exclusively aristocratic in its authorship, and its focus. And for all its many flaws (like the hierarchy and orthodoxy that prevail in academic life, giving it at times a clerical atmosphere in the least flattering sense of the term) academic history has had something to do with that, creating opportunities for other kinds of work, of which some have made good use. Thus do we now have images of the life of the past that are not just about the 0.1 percent with the rest reduced to extras whose joys and sufferings are of no account, while also having more than reactionary homily or "patriotic" indoctrination at its worst as explanation of events.

Of course, in a period in which universities are in trouble, and the humanities in particular withering for lack of interest from students, administrators, donors, policymakers--indeed, from hostility in many cases (there's no shortage of those who would like to see the universities and colleges reduced to a purely technical-occupational training system)--this can seem in growing jeopardy. Indeed, looking at the state of hiring in the field certain ideological hacks are gloating over the decline of the humanities, and the death of academic history, among whom the author of one particularly mean-spirited piece gloated over the return of history again being the exclusive purview of aristocratic amateurs as the lower-class folks who had hoped to be historians have to go "get real jobs" as, barring a miraculous stroke of luck that elevates them to the rank of dutiful courtier to a better-born patron, they renounce the life of intellect and culture above their lowly stations, while the field is purified of any of that silly social concern.

I am certainly convinced that American higher education cannot go on as it is now--but it is my hope that the humanities will manage to endure on campus, precisely because society needs them now as much as ever it did.