Revisionism as Dogma

Dear Ben:

The academic view of minorities is just what you detail above, and it has more relationship to literary theory than you might think. “New Historicism” has taken over the academy: it affects the study of literature, history, political science, and other disciplines, and its influence is great. This kind of historicism has produced a new set of social norms, and a righteous crusade referred to popularly as “political correctness,” with which you no doubt are all too familiar.

The problem with New Historicism (it may go by other names) is its assumptions, some of which you mention below. It assumes that man is a creature made by his environment: he is “socially constructed,” not constructed by God. It assumes that the Marxist view of history is essentially correct, that history is a tale of power, with some people having power and oppressing others (it has no room for God or virtuous action). It assumes that male-female relationships function on a power principle, too, so that “gender oppression” describes the history of man-woman interactions (which belittles love).

Because the above ideas are the assumptions of historicist scholarship, work done with that approach tends to fit the specifics of a culture into a preconceived plan. The spirit of genuine inquiry is dead, because the assumptions can’t be challenged. The work of the scholar is to reinforce them: if he doesn’t, he becomes immoral. For these assumptions make up a religion of sorts, not merely a philosophy. Historicism proposes to take up the sixties’ crusades for the rights of the oppressed, which gives the scholarship its motive, but also cuts it off from any true disinterestedness (new historicists continually deny the reality of any disinterest: everything, including scholarship, is political, and is based on power relations and self-interest). It is not too much to say that historicism entirely misses the boat, by judging sinful self-interest and struggles for power to be the only realities in this world.

But we know God is in charge here, and that he works mightily to recover his creation for its original purpose, which has nothing to do with sin. Consider the history of the Puritans, or the very public Victorian age struggles against moral and spiritual darkness. When people seek the Lord, His love begins to work in this dark world, and people do selfless things in His power, and the whole axis of life on this planet is changed.

Historically, the principal champions of the oppressed have been Christians (like the abolitionist William Wilberforce) who believed that every person is of eternal value in the eyes of God. Most historicists, though they appear to champion in the oppressed, are in fact anti-humanists who believe that individual will and freedom are illusions only. The downtrodden are of interest to them not primarily as human beings, but as challengers of social norms. The real goal of the historicist scholar is not human equality (which he considers a romantic, naïve notion at best), but the destruction of authoritative moral standards to which all of us must answer.