Timely Critique

The Killing of History
by Keith Windschuttle
Macleay Press, Sydney

Who would have thought that this book would have been written by old Windy?  Keith Windschuttle has delivered a handsomely produced hardback decrying the influence of the fashionable literary critics and social theorists on the way the discipline of history is treated in the academy.  Explicit in this critique is the finding that the mindset of a culture is at stake.  A generation will be influenced in its ability to think clearly and accurately if the rot continues, he argues.  He is amazed how history, once so intellectually respectable, is now a prey to fashionable and bizarre theories.

The appearance of this book comes as a surprise to many others besides the current reviewer.  Ten years ago, Keith Windschuttle was rather a favourite of the academic left.  His best-seller The Media, a Penguin paperback, was a staple for introductory courses at many universities, and, while, as the author cheerfully admits, it is now out of date, it is still being adopted as a text.  Windschuttle actually gave, and this is no mean feat, a clear comprehensible explication of French structuralist Marxism in his treatment of Australian media.  The media, he wrote in the preface, "should be seen as arenas of conflict between the social classes".  While one must suppose that a socialistic bent was a basic requirement, given the views of the teachers who would adopt the text, that phrase sounds like so much ritual cant today.  But times change, and a new vision is required.

Enter, in 1994, The Killing of History.  The book is interesting in the same way that this blog is interesting.  Within the academy, at least within the humanities faculties, it is rather naughty, beyond the pale.  It tends to say things which are perceived to be against the interests of those in administrative control and of those academics who see opportunities in the fashionable changes brought in by the "cultural studies" movement.  The conventional wisdom is, of course, predominantly socialistic, "liberal" in the American sense, and, while claiming to be very "Australian", slavishly copies American trends.  The current establishment, while building on the premise of finding the former verities wanting, will brook no questioning of their own key assumptions.

FASHIONABLE AND CHEAP

There is currently, in the academy, an unholy alliance of administrators and trendy academics.  The administrators are foisting "cultural studies" on the curriculum because they are fashionable and cheap, and are not dominated by fuddy-duddy professors who waste time talking about "standards".  As Windschuttle demonstrates, the cultural studies devotees appreciate the philosophical position that the traditional disciplines (in the physical sciences and the social sciences) cannot produce knowledge.  This doubtful epistemological theory is not only adopted as such, but also as a manual for action.  (Old timers will recognise agitprop when they see it).  If there is no "truth", but rather merely a cultural agreement, then why not organise some like-minded colleagues, stack the committee and change the curriculum?  Windschuttle sees them as following Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions):

"... a bevy of sociologists have entered the field to take up what they see as one of the most enticing consequences of his position:  the idea that what is believed in science is determined by the customs and power relations prevailing within a particular scientific community".

The author says that he chose the word "killing" in the title of his book because "there was a lethal process well under way".  He chose history as he considered it "the queen of the humanities", but his argument applies equally to many disciplines, especially to sociology, anthropology, or English literature.  He finds it surprising that the post-structuralist theory of Michel Foucault is now "taken seriously enough" to be taught to graduate students in accounting at the University of New South Wales.  So surprised is he that he puts in the sentence:  "No, I am not joking".

The case studies which the author chooses to describe are international in interest, and some of them have been covered in the popular as well as the scholarly media.  For example, the European discovery of America and the Spanish conquest of Mexico, while quite apposite for Windschuttle's case, have been the topic for revisionist historians, scholars, journalists and political activists for well over a decade.  The fuss culminated in a media blitz with Columbus's 500th anniversary, and may be a little stale now.

Of more direct interest to Australians may be the coverage of the exploration of the Pacific and the mutiny on the Bounty.  The various motion pictures about the Bounty are described in a classic "media studies" or "cultural studies" (small letters) style.  "This tale of class conflict, of tyranny versus just cause, remained the basis of the 1935 Hollywood clash between Charles Laughton's Bligh and Clark Gable's Christian.  By 1962, the movie reflected a reassessment by historians that it was Christian who was both better bred and better mannered and that Bligh was an uncouth, opportunistic upstart from the lower orders".  This film (with Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard) had a sub-text of humane and liberal values against the dictates of profit.  By 1984, Anthony Hopkins's Bligh to Mel Gibson's Christian had homosexual attraction as that sub-text.  But we could never know presumably, as, if we disown the empirical or realist account of history, then each accounting is as valid as any other because all are merely cultural projections of their times.

Perhaps the most interesting case study for Australian readers is the recounting of the European settlement in Australia, including British exploration, the convict system and relations with Aborigines.  This is important for so many of our current national decisions depend on the acceptance of dominant myths for legislation and practice.  There is not much point in defending one's stake in a nation if one believes it is founded on a fraud.

The history of mental asylums and the penal policy in Europe will hold no surprises for those familiar with the theories of Michel Foucault, but will enlighten every other reader.  The other topics seem to cover the ground of a doctoral seminar on modern theories of philosophy, politics and communication, and include one current example:  the fall of Communism in 1989.

The book was published by Macleay Press in Sydney, was printed in Australia and is well presented.  One can expect some attention from overseas.  Perhaps one of the clubs may pick it up, as its topic is international.  Whether or not it finds a market here will probably be determined by the author's reading of the temper of the times.  The conservative conquest of Congress, the Gingrich phenomenon, may have some ripple effect in Australia.  In the meantime, we are on the cultural periphery, and cultural events occur in a time lag.  Right now, the book will be appreciated as confirmation of what you suspected but hadn't the time or the energy to find out.  Windschuttle has done his homework.  You will enjoy the book.  You may be appalled at what you read.  But ignorance isn't really bliss.  It is better to be knowledgeable.  That is, unless you think that truth is not an absolute concept, that knowledge can never produce certainty.  Then you had better rely on the authority of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Benjamin, Bakhtin, Baudrillard, Deleuze, et al and you will be welcome in the academy.