Bound By Our Own Subjectivity? ...

Dana Lindaman's and Kyle Ward's new book, History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U. S. History, is reviewed by Daniel Swift in the New York Times. When a textbook emphasizes Leif Erikson's role in Europe's exploration this side of the Atlantic Ocean and minimizes that of Christopher Columbus, you might guess that it is a Scandinavian textbook. But does a British textbook necessarily describe Tom Paine's pre-revolutionary vocation as a"maker of ladies' underwear," while an American text identifies him as"a radical English printer"? Not necessarily; those are choices. Swift argues that Lindaman and Ward have not taken their own subjectivity seriously enough. Their book suggests that"all tellings of history are biased," says Swift, but they fail"to examine their own preconceptions.""A central motif" in Lindaman's and Ward's excerpts from textbooks around the world, he concludes, is"American foul play."

A Saudi Arabian textbook suggests that all American intervention in the Middle East -- peace plans, oil deals -- have been part of a continuing war on Islam. The Cuban textbook also accuses the United States of spreading crop diseases though Cuba in the 1980's. An Iranian textbook describes the hostage crisis of 1979 as a popular reaction against an American conspiracy to undermine Ayatollah Khomeini and reinstate the shah, who had taken refuge in the United States.
These may be conspiracy theories, or they may hold some traces of truth. But either way, neither ''History Lessons'' nor the United States can afford to dismiss the ways the rest of the world sees America, and how America is represented to young people in schools.

There are three or four difficult issues at play here: To what degree is objectivity a possibility, a necessity, or even desireable? If objectivity is not possible, what makes one subjectivity preferable or superior to any other subjectivity? Is it possible to get some critical distance on one's own subjectivity?

We've discussed some of these issues earlier, but it seems to me that: a) if we give up on objectivity as a valued goal in history, writing it easily degenerates into mere propaganda; b) for a wide variety of reasons, perfect objectivity is not a possibility; c) objectivity in writing history is, therefore, the"necessary impossibility" or the"impossible necessity"; and d) any life of the mind worthy of the name must include critical examination of one's own dearest beliefs. That doesn't mean that you give them up, but it does mean that you try to be fully aware of their flaws and blinders. Otherwise, in polarized worlds, we could become cheap imitations of Ann Coulters and Michael Moores or worse.

There's another issue here, too. If in their survey of history texts from around the world Lindaman and Ward find"American foul play" a central theme, what do we make of that? Is it to be dismissed as international paranoia? Is it a function of envy of American wealth and power? Or, viewed from any subjectivity outside the United States, does American action in the world rightly appear"foul"?