"Much more is at stake here ... ": A Response to "The Construction of History" Judith P. Zinsser Given the current desire on the part of many historians to question and subsequently reaffirm or reformulate the philosophical foundations of the discipline, it is potentially constructive to have a philosopher assist in the endeavor.1 Martin Bunzl brings special qualifications to this enterprise. He has studied "the nature of explanation" in science and, more recently, similar processes in history.2 Tliis investigation of what he calls Joan Scott's "manifesto for the incorporation of poststructuralist philosophy " is part of a longer work. In Real History, Bunzl examines how one approach to historical explanation, "realism" (which he makes synonymous with "objectivity"), has functioned. Bunzl hopes these carefuUy moderated analyses will act as a bridge between philosophers and historians, that they will make each discipUne understandable to writers of the other. He sees his works as "a translation manual from the language of debates in history to those in philosophy."3 Bunzl also has a more specifically historiographical purpose: to study "the tradition" by which both groups of scholars operate, and, in particular, how historians' "practices" do and do not reflect and support the underlying philosophy of history their authors espouse.4 This third task most directly relates to the essay published here, "The Construction of History." In his commentary on Joan Scott's theoretical and practical work, Bunzl responds to her efforts to formulate and use a new epistemology of history.5 The medievalist, Nancy F. Partner, has suggested that when historians venture into epistemology, they are wise to learn from philosophers, who deal regularly with such abstractions in systematic ways. As a phUosopher, Bunzl takes an uncompromisingly literalist approach. He holds Scott to her words, and analyzes the possible meanings and intentions they imply. In careful, structured prose, he describes the logical consequences for Scott's practice of history using these meanings and intentions . "The Construction of History" deals with Scott's work. Elsewhere, Bunzl has done the same for Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, as well as for Peter Novick.6 Bunzl acknowledges in his endnotes some of the progression in Scotf s theoretical model.7 To chart the vigorous, active process of debate and refinement that has characterized the evolution of her thought, however, is not his purpose. Instead, he fixes her ideas, her intentions, and the mean- © 1997 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 9 No. 3 (Autumn) 1997 Theoretical Issues: Judith P. Zinsser 133 ing of her words for his philosophical analysis. He hypothesizes that he can analyze her whole body of work from her 1988 collection, Gender and the Politics of History, which gives him Scott writing both theory and practice. Thus, Bunzl tells us that he has all the material he needs to demonstrate what he reasons are inherent contradictions in Scott's epistemology and, by impUcation, in all her writings. By close analysis of a few sentences in Gender and the Politics of History, he shows, for example, that despite her desire to have "meanings" locally contextual, never "fixed," "always potentially in flux," Scott does have common, "recurrent references " across time and place. In fact, he avers that neither the scientist nor the historian could do science or history without common referents, and without "minimal generalization."8 When Bunzl discusses Mary Poovey's efforts as a literary critic to resolve these contradictions, he correctly links Scott's project to "deconstruct" the history of "the category of 'women'" with feminist politics . Not surprisingly, however, he chooses to return to the philosophical, and offers a modestly phrased hope that current "work," Uke Scott's new book Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man, may help us "to understand how deconstruction (and more generally poststructuralism) may be reconciled with an interest in historically located experience."9 Perhaps because I am a historian, I would like to follow the alternative path suggested by Bunzl's concluding remarks, namely, the political aspects of this ongoing debate. What Bunzl's abstract analysis leaves aside is the emotional vigor of the exchanges between Scott, her critics, and her defenders. For example, one of Scott's essays has...