Submitted by:   Alan Steinweis <aes@unlinfo.unl.edu>

Several of the previous contributors to this discussion have noted the
importance of cultural capital and intellectual commitments in
influencing receptivity to postmodern theory or methodology. Although
the sociology of academic disciplines is undoubtedly a factor, I fear
that we might exagerrate its importance, in the process
underestimating the moral and philosophical relevance that modern
German history has for many of us. Many scholars show little
reluctance to experiment with new methodologies and to assimilate what
is useful. Over time, the cumulative effect of this process can amount
to quite a radical intellectual transformation. Konrad Jarausch and
Michael Geyer come to mind as examples, and both are widely respected
and admired. I think that the historical discipline in the United
States tends to be quite hospitable to scholars who move on to new
things, or who change their minds. Inasmuch as pressure exists to
maintain methodological or theoretical continuity in one's scholarship
from one project to the next, it is mostly self-imposed. If today's
champion of postmodernism was yesterday's Marxist or cliometrician,
most of us don't seem to mind. Many scholars are rigid; many are not.

I also believe that the generational factor has been overstated in our
discussion. There may well be a statistically demonstrable bias toward
postmodernism among younger scholars when compared to the preferences
of their senior colleagues, but I suspect that the correlation between
generation and attitude toward postmodernism is not a strong one.
(Please excuse the positivist outburst!) The obvious fact that many of
the exponents of postmodernism are junior scholars should not be
misinterpreted to mean that most junior scholars have embraced
postmodernism. Moreover, it may well be the case that the
younger--untenured-- scholars who have made this embrace are more the
prisoners of their recent cultural-intellectual-professional
investments than are their --tenured-- senior colleagues.

Perhaps it is arrogant for German historians to believe that there is more
at stake in their field than in others because of Auschwitz. Nonetheless,
many of us do indeed feel that way. And this sentiment is, I think, what
lies at the core of the resistance to the postmodern. Ken Barkin, in his
AHA presentation, sincerely attempted to give vent to a discomfort that
many scholars feel--including those of us who are somewhat more amenable
to certain postmodern insights than he is. It is not postmodernism's
insistence on multiplicity of legitimate interpretation that bothers
people; even "modern" scholars routinely concede that a book or a corpus
of scholarship is an "interpretation" that contributes to an ongoing
dialectic; even those who believe that a single factual truth exists do
not insist that they have found it, or expect to.

No, postmodernism generates discomfort for other reasons. In a
previous message, Shelley Baranowsky put her finger directly on one:
the negation of human agency in history. To reinject Barkin's critique
into this discussion, I would add the following:

-the playfulness of much postmodern scholarship often seems to
deteriorate into frivolousness;

-the reluctance to face up to the implications of the Heideggerian
pedigree;

-the needlessly obfuscatory jargon;

-the tendency, at times, to overlook the difference between history
and "memory;"

-the readiness to deflect criticism by questioning the motives of the
critic.

I do not believe that any of these problems are beyond rectification,
and i do believe that our discipline could profit from a careful and
responsible integration of methods and insights from the postmodern
movement. But I think that resistance that many of us have to much
that characterizes the postmodern should not be ascribed to narrow
professional and intellectual interests. There is more at stake than
careers.

--

Alan E. Steinweis
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
aes@unlinfo.unl.edu

.