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June 22, 2006
competing voices
I'm lying with the boys last night as they fall asleep. Equipped with my head lamp and a book, I dutifully waste no idle moment, and read while I wait for their breathing to become heavy and even.
Hayden White: Romantic artists went to history for their themes and appealed to 'historical conciousness' as a justification for their attempts at cultural palingenesis, their attempts to make the past a living presence to their contemporaries...
Me: Must look up "palingenesis."
HW: In fact, when many contemporary historians speak of the 'art' of history, they seem to have in mind a conception of art that would admit little more than the nineteenth-century novel as a paradigm...
Me: Mmm. History as narrative, as story-telling.
Jack: Mom?
Me: Yes?
Jack: Do frogs bite?
Me: Um. None do that I know of. I could be wrong, of course. We can look it up tomorrow. I think there are frogs that shoot poison darts, though.
Jack: Do we have those frogs in Parish?
Me: No, I think they're only in the rainforest.
HW: A similar criticism can be levelled at the historian's claim to a place among the scientists. When historians speak of themselves as scientists, they seem to be invoking a conception of science that was perfectly suitable for the world in which Herbert Spencer lived and worked, but it has very little to do with the physical sciences as they have developed since Einstein and with the social sciences as they have evolved since Weber...
Me: [Herbert Spencer?] ...
Jack: Mom?
Me: Yes?
Jack: Do frogs have teeth, though?
Me: Um. I don't think so. Not that I'm aware.
HW: In sum, when historians claim that history is a combination of science and art, they generally mean that it is a combination of late-nineteenth-century social science and mid-nineteenth-century art. That is to say, they seem to be aspiring to little more than a synthesis of modes of analysis and expression that have their antiquity alone to commend them.
Jack: Well. Do frogs just catch flies and then swallow them whole without CHEWING THEM??
Me: [still trying to think of who Herbert Spencer is, and wondering if this is why Oh Great Leader in Composition told me to come back to White, after I had an effluvious epiphany about the history of technology, rhetoric, and pedagogy earlier that day] I suppose, if they don't have teeth.
Jack: Man. Didn't their mom tell them to chew their food? They're going to choke. Plus, they won't get all the goodness of the flies if they don't chew, huh Mom?
Posted by mryonker at June 22, 2006 09:17 AM
Comments
LOL
Posted by: Marcia at June 22, 2006 11:08 AM
I really find that to be true--unless you chew at least 20 times, you don't get the fully yummy goodness of the flies.
Posted by: susansinclair at June 22, 2006 11:10 AM
One must also chew Herbert Spencer 20 times, to get the goodness of the Spencer.
Posted by: senioritis at June 22, 2006 12:16 PM
Your dialogue here perfectly captures many of my attempts at reading: I think the girls are so used to seeing me read all the time that they can't register that as time to let Mom alone to think.
Posted by: Ancarett at June 22, 2006 04:48 PM
Very funny! I try to blog and parent at the same time which is a technical disaster. I'm ashamed to admit my toddler has learned how to turn off the computer to get my attention. I'll have to give books more face time since I have no idea what "palingenesis" means either and reading makes for good snuggling.
Great blog - I really enjoyed your post about the Mommy Blogger phenom in January.
Posted by: Sarah at June 28, 2006 03:58 AM