Things Noted Here and There

by Cliopatria

David Lowenthal,"Heritage Wars," Spiked, 16 March, argues that heritage claims are primarily exclusive, fly in the face of historical realities, and destructive of our common heritage. Thanks to Arts and Letters Daily for the tip.

At The Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein and Yale's Stephen Carter explore the fascinating counter-factual possibilities in Senator Robert Taft's proposal for federal equal employment opportunity legislation in 1946.

Scott McLemee is too gracious to shove the point in my face, but he explains why I was a muttonhead for noting John Fund's"Sayed and de Man at Yale," Opinion Journal, 20 March. Fund continues his criticism of the University's admission of Sayed Rahmattulah Hashemi as a special student in"Taliban Man at Yale," Opinion Journal, 23 March. He and others ought to ask the State Department and INS why Mr. Sayed has F-1 status, while his compatriots languish in Guantanamo or why Sayed should be a special student at Yale and Tariq Ramadan should not be a professor at Notre Dame.

Robin Wilson,"A Well-Behaved Scholar Makes History," CHE, 24 March, (subscribers only) features Harvard's Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and her well-wrought sentence,"Well-behaved women seldom make history."
Hillel Italie,"Historian Holds Dual Job of Dylan Buff," Washington Post, 22 March, features Princeton's Sean Wilentz. Thanks to Kevin Murphy at Ghost in the Machine for the tip.

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Richard Newell - 3/24/2006

For those interested in the "archeology" of the famous Vietnam-era quote, or urban legend, as the case may be, here's an interesting link. You'll have to page down a bit.

http://lincolnplawg.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_lincolnplawg_archive.html

On the existence of the term 'deconstuctionism', and whatever it refers to, simply go to amazon.com and select 'books' from the drop-down menu, and put 'deconstructionism' into the search function. On the page that returns there is a hyperlink 'click here to see additional results'. You'll get close to 2,000 returns. Authors that used the term include Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Raymond Brown, Allan Bloom, Howard Gardner, Jagdish Bhagwati, Richard Popkin, Avrum Stroll, Jane Smiley, Peter Gomes, Richard Evans, Deborah Lipstadt, Richard Rorty, Peter Jay, Peter Novick, Walter Ong, Clifford Geertz, Neil Postman, Robert Murphy, Saul Bellow, John Searle ... well, you get the idea.

Richard Newell - 3/24/2006

Thankyou for pointing out Scott McLemee's piece. I found it interesting not just for the good points it made, but for those that didn't quite make the mark.

McLemee has it that "Deconstuctionism" doesn't exist, particularly since Derrida said it wouldn't. That reminds me of the lesson from 'pragmatism', a term coined by Pierce, but hijacked by James, to the extent that Pierce then called his philosophy 'pragmaticism'. Not even the originator of a term controls it's later meaning, nor the later development of the term itself.

'Deconstuctionism' is a term found in any number of dictionaries, used by PBS and Time, and is found in the title of a book edited by Michael Soule. To hold that the animal doesn't exist is to join the "burning bush" school of linguistics (that meaning is determined by someone who was there at the time).

McLemee then ends with an allusion to a famous saying that came out of the Vietnam War. It is one of those sayings that is always vaguely attributed to an American general, or more vaguely still, an American officer (neither named, of course). It turns out the story may be apocryphal, a sort of urban legend, like the GI who was spit on when he returned to the US. Vietnam War debunker BG Burkett has tracked it to ground (supposedly), and it originates from Peter Arnett misquoting an American officer in a case where the village was actually destroyed by the VC. Now the fact that Burkett claims more detail for an account that, in its other manifestations remains gloriously vague, doesn't make Burkett right. But it should make one pause when passing on stories that are just too good to check.

Whatever the actual history of the quote, it survives because it captures a truth -- great damage was done in Vietnam, to a failed purpose. But, I fear, too many of our really good stories in history, and in teaching, have nearly equally shakey foundations. Consider the ultimate sources for Patrick Henry's speech before the House of Burgesses; John Paul Jones' retort in the middle of battle; and the quote attributed to Hearst in regards to journalism and the Spanish-American War. I think we write history, and criticism, without reference to such ephemera, even when they capture larger truths.