Comments on <italic>That Noble Dream</italic>

Abstract

WE ARE ALL IN PETER NOVICK's DEBT for this book. It is a gift to historians and other scholars, present and future, and the labor and intelligence crystallized in it could not easily be surpassed. Oddly, it is an achievement that we can all take pride in, wherever we stand in relation to Novick's interpretations, for it represents so well the richness of our discipline's contributions. Given what a vast compilation he has created, and what a good storyteller he is, it is all the more astonishing that the book is so thoughtful and insightful. If the book makes many of us begin to dream of other books that should be written-that we might want to write-that is further testimony to its value. With a view to stimulating substantive discussion, I want to limit my praise for this work-which could be extensive and time-consuming-in order to concentrate on two differences I have with Novick. First, it seems to me that the fundamental question and organization of Novick's approach tend to reify a dichotomy-objectivity/relativism-which only partly characterizes the approaches of historical scholarship over the past century. Second, I believe that his approach privileges an epistemological issue, when his own evidence suggests that the present-day political agendas of historians were often the more fundamental determinants of their apparently theoretical choices. The evidence suggests that historians got excited about the objectivity question when it was mobilized in the service of political conflict. In general, the method of the book is to look for the abstract theoretical statements of historians (and other scholars who influenced historians) regarding objectivity. Novick's implicit definition of what counts as theory, privileging metahistorical rather than historical statements, has been challenged lately, particularly by scholars from groups traditionally excluded from high learning who may choose different forms of discourse. Novick's book may provide yet another example of the distortions produced by such a definition. It seems likely that abstract theoretical statements tend toward more simplified, pure expressions of positions, and indeed Novick may have sought out the more extreme positions. Many historians-and this includes those whose theoretical views are studied in the book-use more complex, nuanced, even ambivalent and contradictory, assumptions regarding objectivity in their actual historical writing and teaching. There is room for ambivalence about the very question of whether historians should articulate their epistemological assumptions abstractly. I have regretted the