I passed along some of this discussion to a historian/librarian friend of
mine, and I thought his comments were put quite well, and that you might be
interested in them.
>
>My take on this has always been quite simple: it is the job of a
>historian to put him/herself into the position of the subject under
>study.  That's how you make a living as a historian.  That's what puts
>bread on your table.  Thus, you'd better be pretty good at it, or you'll
>starve.
>
>Are there uniquenesses about every ethnic, gender, geographic,
>linguistic, whatever you want to describe it as, group?  Of course.  Does
>membership in that group give one an additional insight into the
>experiences of another member of that group.  Probably.  (Although I'd
>guarantee you that I have no particular insights into the lives of Mark
>McGwire, Bill Clinton, the head of the National Weather Service, or any
>of 38 other white American men who appeared on the news last night.)
>
>But, is membership in that group a necessity to gain an understanding of
>the condition of another member of that group?  Absolutely not.  If that
>were the case, we couldn't write ancient history anymore, since we
>weren't there to immerse ourselves in it.
>
>You can, of course, carry this to its logical extreme.  How unique must
>an experience be before someone who didn't take part in that experience
>can understand it?  Can a European-American historian not understand the
>lives of African-Americans?  Or must it be a sub-group: African-American
>life in the rural South during the 1950s?  Or a sub-sub-group:
>African-American life in Rockingham County, North Carolina in 1957?  Or a
>sub-sub-sub-group: John Smith's life at 346 S. Main St., Reidsville, NC
>on August 17, 1957?
>
>Sorry, you caught one of my soap-box issues.  I will quit complaining
>about this with the line I always end this lecture with:
>
>It's been said that history is ultimately biography, and that may be
>true.  But that doesn't mean that history must ultimately be autobiography.
>
>
>--

Katherine Steiner Stocker
[log in to unmask]
"If the world were a logical place, men would ride side-saddle."  --Rita
Mae Brown