I’ll add another comment after first reactions on Fourth of July Eve: this essay shows a bold entry into discussion of status, in particular, with reference to those who teach at less-prestigious institutions and are often graduate students and non-tenure-track faculty. Like people’s wealth, status usually remains mum in American society. Yet status plays a large role in professional achievement: achievement of a position at an elite university is an entrée to other status achievements
Intellectual history offers a chance gain perspective about the paths of history and the course of culture. It’s a hilltop view. That in itself has elements of both elitism and a posture for thorough critique. A collection of essays that range from problems in women’s history to the borders of race, from philosophers unstiffening theories to debates over public reason, may not always be free ranging or going in totally new directions.
In the language of this review, which does a good job focusing attention on the lived social experiences of historians, the essays are trying to break out of whatever status limits their authors feel, even if readers of their bios say, Why so eager; you are already Top Guns?
Perhaps what seems static here is not so much the familiar professional world of striving as the neglect of the chance for perspective that intellectual history can provide. Perhaps what seems “relatively unchanged” is the tendency for those out of power to seek parts of the very power that had been excluding them.
The benefits of perspective would bring an awareness that, to paraphrase Malcolm X, instead of seeking a place inside that power structure, the designs of that structure need revising. After all, how many problems that engulf us can be solved by adding more people to the claims for power? This expansive path runs the risk, in the words of Sam Adler-Bell, of “doubling down on elite technocracy,” which will likely make our social, racial, environmental, and international problems worse, and worse still, stimulate populist backlash, which will further distract from the problems—or make that worse.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe opening the ranks of influence will allow for more problems to be addressed effectively. Or maybe not. This would suggest that the major issues that the culture is grappling with and that historians assess are not so much about access to power but about the widespread clamoring for power itself.
I’ll add another comment after first reactions on Fourth of July Eve: this essay shows a bold entry into discussion of status, in particular, with reference to those who teach at less-prestigious institutions and are often graduate students and non-tenure-track faculty. Like people’s wealth, status usually remains mum in American society. Yet status plays a large role in professional achievement: achievement of a position at an elite university is an entrée to other status achievements
Intellectual history offers a chance gain perspective about the paths of history and the course of culture. It’s a hilltop view. That in itself has elements of both elitism and a posture for thorough critique. A collection of essays that range from problems in women’s history to the borders of race, from philosophers unstiffening theories to debates over public reason, may not always be free ranging or going in totally new directions.
In the language of this review, which does a good job focusing attention on the lived social experiences of historians, the essays are trying to break out of whatever status limits their authors feel, even if readers of their bios say, Why so eager; you are already Top Guns?
Perhaps what seems static here is not so much the familiar professional world of striving as the neglect of the chance for perspective that intellectual history can provide. Perhaps what seems “relatively unchanged” is the tendency for those out of power to seek parts of the very power that had been excluding them.
The benefits of perspective would bring an awareness that, to paraphrase Malcolm X, instead of seeking a place inside that power structure, the designs of that structure need revising. After all, how many problems that engulf us can be solved by adding more people to the claims for power? This expansive path runs the risk, in the words of Sam Adler-Bell, of “doubling down on elite technocracy,” which will likely make our social, racial, environmental, and international problems worse, and worse still, stimulate populist backlash, which will further distract from the problems—or make that worse.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe opening the ranks of influence will allow for more problems to be addressed effectively. Or maybe not. This would suggest that the major issues that the culture is grappling with and that historians assess are not so much about access to power but about the widespread clamoring for power itself.