Gender and Intellectual History

by Brian M. Ingrassia

Recently I have been thinking about gender and intellectual history.  Without going into all the details, this reflection was prompted by Lauren Kientz Anderson’s post of October 31, in which she referred to her (perhaps) “infamous” post from last year on women in intellectual history. After rereading that 2011 piece—and the 47 comments it generated!—I started asking myself a few questions.  These are not necessarily new questions, but it might help to air them in one place and ponder their implications. First of all, why does it seem that relatively few women (compared to men) identify with the field? Second, is there something inherently “male” about the field? And a third, much bigger question: What is intellectual history, why do we do it, and what bearing might the answer to this question have upon the field’s ability to incorporate analysis of women and gender?

Regarding the first question, I posit a practical answer that at least one commentator has already suggested.  While there certainly are women historians who do intellectual history—especially the intellectual history of women, gender, or feminism—many (though not all) tend to identify, or be identified, as historians of women or gender. Of course, they use intellectual history methods primarily as a way to understand the place of women and gender in society more broadly, not necessarily as a way to understand only "intellectuals," whether male or female.  In addition, there are practical incentives for scholars (many of whom are women) who study the intellectual history of women or gender to identify as historians of those fields rather than as intellectual historians. Quite frankly, there are many fewer academic positions in intellectual history than there are in women’s and gender history.  In the current academic job market, a young scholar has little or no reason to identify as an intellectual historian when s/he could identify as a scholar of a more professionally viable field such as women’s or gender history.

Regarding the second question, I do not think that intellectual history is inherently a “male” field—nor is it simply a place where men who reject gender or race analysis go for affirmation. Speaking from personal experience, I am a male who embraces gender and race analysis, yet I still think that it is important to study intellectual history. Nevertheless, there may be a grain of truth to the perception that intellectual history is for men because it is about men. Consider the obvious: in many historical contexts, especially before the twentieth century, very few women were considered intellectuals. To study the intellectual history of many time periods, one must focus largely, if not exclusively, upon men who were in a position to construct and disseminate discourses that were perceived as “intellectual” in nature. For those interested in the history of women and gender—including many female historians—this may not seem to be a worthwhile project, since it is just reinforcing androcentric models rather than critiquing or challenging them.

This is where things get thornier, and where I start to ask that third question. What is intellectual history? A few days ago, one guest blogger noted that we analyze the “history of ideas.” That may be a good definition of what intellectual historians do, but I think it compels us to ask more questions. Which ideas—whose ideas—do we analyze? Do we merely seek to understand ideas that were consciously appreciated as ideas in the times and places in which they were created? Or should we seek to understand the ideas of a number of different groups or individuals—including women—even if they were not necessarily seen as intellectuals within their own historical context?

If we define intellectual history as the history of ideas that were perceived as part of an avowedly intellectualdiscourse in their time and place of creation, then in many cases we have to restrict our analyses to male subjects. But if we interpret the field more broadly, then the methodology of intellectual history can be applied in many different contexts.  I will never forget the day in 2002 when one of my professors at Illinois—a prominent practitioner of the “New Social History”—propped his feet up on his desk and told a first year graduate student interested in intellectual history (me) that someday a historian would find a way to write the intellectual history of sanitation workers (i.e., the ideas of “garbage men”). Ever since that day, I have found his suggestion to be a fascinating one, and if I could only find the primary sources I might write such a study!

I suspect, though, that at least some of us would be turned off by this idea, or would suggest a caveat: If we write the intellectual history of sanitation workers, then we would have less time or energy to devote to those individuals who were consciously focused on the life of the mind.  On a related note, I suspect that maybe a couple of folks might (quietly) say something similar about studying the intellectual history of women: it’s interesting and important, but it could take our energy away from studying those individuals who were considered intellectuals within their historical context and thus shaped the most prominent discourses of their time and place.

So why do we do intellectual history? Is it so that we can understand how prominent individuals (academics, theologians, statesmen, cultural critics, and so on) shaped predominant discourses? Or is it so that we can understand how the ideas of diverse individuals or groups developed and changed over time?  We might frame this as an issue of canon—of whether or not we draw boundaries around the parameters of the field. Furthermore, how do we approach the history of ideas? Do we first strive to understand the inner logic of ideas and then place them in historical context, or do we strive to show how historical context has caused certain ideas (and not others) to emerge in a particular time and place?  The latter approach, I would note, is much friendlier to an analytical framework that consciously critiques categories such as gender, race, and/or class.

In short, is intellectual history a field that studies intellectuals, or is it a methodology that studies the history of ideas generated in many different cultural and social contexts?  In all honesty, I do not think that these are mutually exclusive categories—and many of us have probably pursued either at one time or another. Nevertheless, it is helpful to think about why we do what we do. And, admittedly, we should note that there are strengths and weaknesses to either approach. On the one hand, if intellectual history is a subject field that studies prominent idea creators (“intellectuals”), then it may be a more coherent field even though it will probably have less relevance for those scholars (especially women) who are interested in fields such as the history of women and gender. On the other hand, if intellectual history is primarily a methodology, then it may have larger utility to a wider variety of scholars even though its identity as a distinct, coherent field of study may be diminished.

These are just some thoughts, and I am sure I have said nothing new here.  But perhaps this will spark some interesting discussion about what we do and how that affects who identifies with this field.

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Brian M. Ingrassiateaches American history at Middle Tennessee State University.  He is the author of The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education’s Uneasy Alliance with Big-Time Football (University Press of Kansas, 2012), as well as the new series editor of the Sport and Popular Culture Series at the University of Tennessee Press.

Inarticulate by Choice: the Decline of Letter Writing and the Future of the Intellectual Past, Part Four

By Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn

Letter-writing and kindred practices that involve at least a minimal degree of contemplation, even if it is only the momentary breath before folding, sealing, stamping, addressing, and mailing a real letter, can remind someone of nothing less than the existence and importance of the inner life. They are emanations, indications, signs of an inner existence that is paradoxically the only pathway to any real connection with another person.

Horace Pippin, Interior, 1944

If that's all such practices were-signs of an inner life-maybe one would not need to worry unduly about the demise of any particular ones. The inner life endures and is revealed in other places too, after all. But what if the realm of thought and feeling is more fragile than many, seemingly in thrall to the engines of "creative destruction," seem to presuppose today, and what if each event that occurs in it is unique and not replicable?

What if practices like letter-writing are not just signs and reminders that the inner life is real, but are preconditions for it, the very materials and means from which the inner life is forged in the first place? Or, barring that, what if they tend to produce interiority of a particular kind, nature, or quality some, if not all, of us cannot dispense with?

But wait. I can hear them already, the echoes of the usual, exhausted post-post-modern (or did I miss another post when I blinked?) alleged critique. Hasn't the veil been removed and all such practices revealed to be just so many adornments with which members of the elite decorate their palaces?

Why don't we ask all those living lives in constant drudgery, from slaves to sweatshop workers, whether the inner life matters? Perhaps they would drop their prayers and work songs, their aspirations to read the Bible and classic works of history and literature, their heroic efforts to learn to write so they can keep in touch with loved ones wrenched from their everyday environs by joblessness, war, or the sale of human  beings, upon learning from latter day progressives that letter-writing and allied practices are functions only of Leisure, accoutrements of the pampered classes. Well, we have asked them. Historians who have traced their intellectual history have found the inner life alive and well among the less privileged.

Even if the charge of elitism were true, that letters and the inner life they represent are the sole preserve of the well-off, it would be a heartless argument. Not everyone who has it all, as they say, necessarily has anything of real value. Even those among us with wealth, material luxuries, and education are hardly by definition untroubled. Letters sent and received could actually mean something in their case too.

Letter-writing has been practiced by those from all walks of life, whenever possible, in many places and times before our own. It is not only the social elite who has kept such practices alive, but also those who were shut out of the corridors of power and financial gain. Those who dismiss the practices of the inner life as frills mistake the chimera for the real thing--the life-saving phenomenon I have in mind, the activity that has kept so many of those mired in the complexities of their own thought process from the abyss.

In these posts, what I have been trying to get across is perhaps best seen as an existential-spiritual case for the state of mind letter-writing as a serious mode of sustained communication between two people tends to foster. A way of living intentionally, perhaps in tune with the current notion of mindfulness, which seems like one of the more promising developments on the therapeutic horizon. My concern is about whether treating letter-writing as merely a frill that can be unthinkingly dispensed with in our rush to embrace whatever computer salespeople want us to embrace next not only demeans an activity many have found deeply meaningful but brings more alienation to people showing rather significant signs of alienation already.

Arguments dismissive of letter-writing as merely another mode of communication that can be superceded without conscience or improved upon with electronics may prove to be right. But they may also be a product of a way of thinking promulgated by those with a direct investment in casting the inner life as an agent of the status quo rather than something that is, potentially anyway, a radically free space uniquely resistant to the incursion of direct politicizing or marketing. It is possible that complacency toward the therapeutic consumer capitalism of these times blinds us to the way that the inner life might be something that is perhaps only ever forged in struggle, in resistance, in opposition. What if the inner life is always an act of total desperation? What if the forming of a self is only ever an attempt to cast out a lifeline, à la Whitman's "noiseless, patient spider"? In the potentially soul-destroying realities human beings face even in the best of times, to say nothing of the sheer terror and ugliness of the time in which we live, with total annihilation always just a push button away and goodness too often denied, dismissed altogether as something off the grid, or trivialized as a commodity like everything else, meant only for consumption, the death of the inner life is, I would contend, simply not an option. Its death is the luxury that we cannot afford.

Those most eager to embrace today's "speed of light" pace in all things, even in regards to that most precious of all reasons for living and staying alive-the quality of our interactions with fellow human beings-seem all too happy to dispense with contemplation and meditation as though these were character flaws out of sync with our new post-post-post-ness, signs of hesitation and weakness of will. If anything, they may be the very opposite. The aforementioned paradox, that it is through a rich inner life that we reach out to others most completely and consummate our desire for true connection, reveals practices such as letter-writing, or anything else that makes us keen more toward articulating our innermost thoughts and feelings and less toward suffering in our solipsism or spiritual and intellectual death, no frill. Anything that makes this possible is no luxury; it is a life and death issue. Indeed, ask the suicide in all of us: this is the direst of needs.

To put it more simply, lest I be misunderstood: the conditions for thinking in this way, a way that leads us so directly to others, should be cultivated at all costs. In many letters, a gift of a part of ourselves is conferred. Can the same be said of electronic communications, as we know and use them today?

Image Credits: Horace Pippin, Interior, 1944, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Meyer P. Potamkin.

Writing About Emotion in USIH: Vidal, Buckley, and Tanenhaus

Sam Tanenhaus reflected yesterday, in The New York Times*, on the unexpected similarities between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr. The piece caught my eye because I just finished a section in my manuscript on Mortimer J. Adler's multiple Firing Line appearances and his interactions with Buckley.

In writing about both figures a prominent theme in Tanenhaus' piece was elitism in U.S. intellectual history---the class solidarity that bound both.  He finds other parallels, which I will point out below. But I'm most interested in larger thing Tanenhaus is trying to do in the article: write about emotion in the context of U.S. intellectual history.

Before going there, let me relay the last third of Tanenhaus' article, particularly these passages on American exceptionalism in the context of the Vietnam War (YouTube link moved here from earlier in the story):


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Buckley and Mr. Vidal both subscribed, though in very different ways, to the ideal of American exceptionalism — ...[particularly its] susceptib[ility] to foreign infection. Mr. Vidal feared the evils of empire building...and warned against the decline that had overtaken other civilizations brought low by imperial hubris. 

For Buckley the threat came from global communism and “statist” domestic policies that would reduce Americans to servitude and weaken their connection to the moral values of Christianity.

It was this two-sides-of-the-same-coin idealism that led to the heated exchange in 1968. The actual topic that evening was the Vietnam War. Mr. Vidal opposed it. Buckley supported it. Again their reasons were parallel. For Mr. Vidal the war betrayed the tradition he was raised in, which sought to keep America untainted by the temptations of empire. For Buckley, supporting the war meant holding back the tide of communism. 

As their tempers rose, each seemed to be battling not so much the other as the distorted image of himself that his opponent represented. The terms they haughtily flung at each other were those other critics sometimes applied to them, only in reverse — Buckley, whose arch mannerisms were sometimes mocked as effete; Mr. Vidal, whose disdain for American vulgarity was tinged, some said, with anti-Semitism and dislike of the “lower orders.” 

Divided by so much, Mr. Vidal and Buckley were united in their iconoclasm, however uneasily.

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Again, I love the Vidal-Buckley parallels in relation to iconoclasm, elitism, American exceptionalism, cavils from critics (e.g. effete), and fears of distorted images. For me this says that the so-called conservative-liberal divide of the post-war period is more, among intellectuals anyway, of an intramural contest within liberalism.  That contest was about shades of American liberalism, not a rejection of the larger project of liberalism.

As a professional historian (but not as a person with feelings of disgust) I very much appreciated (loved?) the visceral dislike and passion in the YouTube clip. It's rare to see that kind of open emotion, on air or otherwise. But it's not surprising given the period. To paraphrase today's cool kids, "That's what Vietnam do."

It's hard to top the source when one is writing about events like that---hence the link to the clip in the NYT article. How are you, dear reader, capturing emotions in your USIH work? How does one write about emotions effectively, and concisely, in age of multimedia? How can a traditional media article (journal, newspaper), with its two-dimensional limitations, convey the essence of an event best remembered for the passion conveyed in three dimensions? It seems that a YouTube clip is worth a thousand words. - TL

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* Since it's only August 2, I'm going to assume that you can read the piece because you haven't used up your ten free online NYT viewings.

Who's In? The Hierarchy Of Intellectuals

Comments by "Nils" on a recent post by Andrew Hartman, which was a reflection on Daniel Rodgers' Age of Fracture via Lisa Szefel's book review, reminded me of past discussions at USIH about always touchy subject of elitism in U.S. intellectual history. By this I mean elitism in the objects of analysis by historians of U.S. intellectual life.

I have encountered some of that elitism in my professional life. About three years ago, here at USIH, I wrote about what I called "The Varieties of Intellectual Experience" . In post I cited what I believed to have been unjust discrimination in relation to my work on Mortimer J. Adler. The gist was that a reviewer (a senior intellectual historian) believed I had more spade work to do in an article because Adler was a "pseudo-intellectual." It was not that my topic was illegitimate, or that my citation of Adler's contribution to that topic was illegitimate. Rather, I had to prove to the reader that Adler himself was a legitimate object of study in any sense. At the time I saw the reproof as a sort of historical ad hominem. Since Adler was an intellectual who appealed (purposely, I should add) to middlebrow readers, his person and thinking were suspect.

As a corrective I called for the study of "event-oriented thought" and proposed the category of "occasional intellectual." Here's an excerpt from the post:

----------------------------------------
"In analyzing intellectual events, one can freely explore the work of interlopers or so-called pseudo-intellectuals. Let's group both in the class of 'occasional intellectuals.' The only assumption the historian need have in these explorations is an optimistic belief that people can rise above. Profundity need not only come from those who've dedicated their lives to higher matters, yes?

"What are some examples of event-oriented intellectualism? One might say that newspaper editorials, call-in radio, presidential debates, and TV talk shows provide opportunities for discrete high-level thought. Could Oprah's TV show rise to a level worthy of exploration by intellectual historians? Surely. Perhaps an episode of Rush Limbaugh's radio program? Certainly. A one-time article in the editorial section of tabloid-style newspaper? Definitely. Could an Obama-Clinton debate (to use a [then] current example) provide fodder for intellectual historians? I would hope so. These examples, furthermore, underscore potential intersections of cultural, political, and women's history with intellectual history. Perhaps this is just, in the end, a way of intensifying the philosophic component of certain kinds of cultural history---moving some cultural history into the category of intellectual history?"

"The point here is that the work of historians of U.S. intellectual life need not focus on the consistent output, over a long time span, of philosophers, academics, and public intellectuals---the regulars of intellectual history. That old approach favors established institutions, people, and commonly accepted works of thought. While those objects of an intellectual historian's thought should never be ignored, they should also never be used to build walls around a subdiscipline. Occasional intellectuals ought to be just as important to historians of U.S. intellectual life if the field is to avoid prolonged periods of stagnation."
----------------------------------------

The most obvious weakness of my proposal is that the intellectual life does not work solely in terms of events. So a broad definition of event is in order. I should also give it a French name to make it sound more formal and theoretical: événement (approx.. "incident"). But I stand by my proposal that all sorts of people can fit in the category of "occasional intellectual." One can be given that label, or another less (apparently) condescending one, without denigrating or uplifting the rest of that person's intellectual life. I concede freely that I do not apply my full intellect to every event in which I participate. Indeed, I would argue that's kind of participation is not humanly possible (i.e. in terms of the finite energy every person possesses).

Otherwise, we will have to live with some kind of hierarchy of intellectual capability in order to grade their ability to participate. Here's a possible ordering (given from highest to lowest---and with my tongue in cheek):

1. The Intellectual
1.a. Philosopher
1.b. Literati/Humanists
1.c. Women and Men of Letters
2. Expert (e.g. eggheads, mere scientists)
3. Academic intellectual/scholar (e.g. professor, academician)
4. Pseudo/middlebrow intellectual (e.g. popular intellectual, bookworm, pundit, the clever)
5. Ignorant (i.e. passive)
6. Anti-intellectual (i.e. must be active), and last but not least...
7. St. Patrick's Day "plastic" Paddies

To my USIH compadres, how do you determine who's in and who's out? - TL

Who's In? The Hierarchy Of Intellectuals

Comments by "Nils" on a recent post by Andrew Hartman, which was a reflection on Daniel Rodgers' Age of Fracture via Lisa Szefel's book review, reminded me of past discussions at USIH about always touchy subject of elitism in U.S. intellectual history. By this I mean elitism in the objects of analysis by historians of U.S. intellectual life.

I have encountered some of that elitism in my professional life. About three years ago, here at USIH, I wrote about what I called "The Varieties of Intellectual Experience" . In post I cited what I believed to have been unjust discrimination in relation to my work on Mortimer J. Adler. The gist was that a reviewer (a senior intellectual historian) believed I had more spade work to do in an article because Adler was a "pseudo-intellectual." It was not that my topic was illegitimate, or that my citation of Adler's contribution to that topic was illegitimate. Rather, I had to prove to the reader that Adler himself was a legitimate object of study in any sense. At the time I saw the reproof as a sort of historical ad hominem. Since Adler was an intellectual who appealed (purposely, I should add) to middlebrow readers, his person and thinking were suspect.

As a corrective I called for the study of "event-oriented thought" and proposed the category of "occasional intellectual." Here's an excerpt from the post:

----------------------------------------
"In analyzing intellectual events, one can freely explore the work of interlopers or so-called pseudo-intellectuals. Let's group both in the class of 'occasional intellectuals.' The only assumption the historian need have in these explorations is an optimistic belief that people can rise above. Profundity need not only come from those who've dedicated their lives to higher matters, yes?

"What are some examples of event-oriented intellectualism? One might say that newspaper editorials, call-in radio, presidential debates, and TV talk shows provide opportunities for discrete high-level thought. Could Oprah's TV show rise to a level worthy of exploration by intellectual historians? Surely. Perhaps an episode of Rush Limbaugh's radio program? Certainly. A one-time article in the editorial section of tabloid-style newspaper? Definitely. Could an Obama-Clinton debate (to use a [then] current example) provide fodder for intellectual historians? I would hope so. These examples, furthermore, underscore potential intersections of cultural, political, and women's history with intellectual history. Perhaps this is just, in the end, a way of intensifying the philosophic component of certain kinds of cultural history---moving some cultural history into the category of intellectual history?"

"The point here is that the work of historians of U.S. intellectual life need not focus on the consistent output, over a long time span, of philosophers, academics, and public intellectuals---the regulars of intellectual history. That old approach favors established institutions, people, and commonly accepted works of thought. While those objects of an intellectual historian's thought should never be ignored, they should also never be used to build walls around a subdiscipline. Occasional intellectuals ought to be just as important to historians of U.S. intellectual life if the field is to avoid prolonged periods of stagnation."
----------------------------------------

The most obvious weakness of my proposal is that the intellectual life does not work solely in terms of events. So a broad definition of event is in order. I should also give it a French name to make it sound more formal and theoretical: événement (approx.. "incident"). But I stand by my proposal that all sorts of people can fit in the category of "occasional intellectual." One can be given that label, or another less (apparently) condescending one, without denigrating or uplifting the rest of that person's intellectual life. I concede freely that I do not apply my full intellect to every event in which I participate. Indeed, I would argue that's kind of participation is not humanly possible (i.e. in terms of the finite energy every person possesses).

Otherwise, we will have to live with some kind of hierarchy of intellectual capability in order to grade their ability to participate. Here's a possible ordering (given from highest to lowest---and with my tongue in cheek):

1. The Intellectual
1.a. Philosopher
1.b. Literati/Humanists
1.c. Women and Men of Letters
2. Expert (e.g. eggheads, mere scientists)
3. Academic intellectual/scholar (e.g. professor, academician)
4. Pseudo/middlebrow intellectual (e.g. popular intellectual, bookworm, pundit, the clever)
5. Ignorant (i.e. passive)
6. Anti-intellectual (i.e. must be active), and last but not least...
7. St. Patrick's Day "plastic" Paddies

To my USIH compadres, how do you determine who's in and who's out? - TL