As an aspiring “amateur” historian myself (a full year into the research I have yet to even begin actually writing anything about STO), and an old acquaintance of Bob Helms, I liked this post. I especially liked the anecdote from Linebaugh, and it makes me think that there is a general tendency in the left to look more carefully at the experiences and lessons of revolutionaries in other places (and times) than in our own communities. I’m not sure this is a bad thing either; the perspective gained may more than compensate for the lack of applicability. In this vein, I spend more time thinking about STO than I do about any currently existing revolutionary group, and I know significantly more about anarchism in Venezuela than I do about anarchism here in Chicago. At the same time, this stuff can devolve into a total waste of time. An ex-STO’er said offered this self-criticism during an interview: “We were experts on Iran, but knew nothing about Cleveland!”

Anyway, two of my favorite history books:
P. Novick, That Noble Dream (a history of the history profession in the US, viewed through the critical lens of “the objectivity question”)
W. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis (a fantastic assessment of the relationship between Chicago’s development during the 19th century and its environmental surroundings)

Still liking your blog…

Solidarity,
Mike

The rabbit hole with historiography is that each text on historical writing, is itself located among other historical events, as well as the institional structures of the academy. But then, acknowledging and examining these historical connections to academic production is just good history…

I love this post. Great approach to wobbly history. History the academic discipline is indeed often taught as if its subject is a thing that happened rather than a method, a discipline, subject to constraints. That stuff often ends up in upper-year courses on historiography (the history and method of historical writing). I think this bifurcation is central to the sleight-of-hand in the discipline. But there are historians who don’t artificially divide their method and research from the events they study (which I think serves the defensive interests of professionalizing the discipline and rendering it beyond outside criticism).

I think university students are so programmed by this sleight-of-hand that they feel they are walking off the edge of a map when they learn of the contingencies and structures of historical writing itself.

There is so much phenomenal historical writing. I really like Carlo Ginzburg who often foregrounds his own sources as part of his narrative. If you can read French, check out Mohammed Harbi’s Une vie debout: memoire politique. He’s one of the best historians of Algeria, and was quite active himself in the Revolution. His memoir is a great mix of biographical, social and political (and empirical).