Historiography, Objectivity, and the Case of the Abusive Widow

Bibliographic Data

ID4495648
AuthorsBonnie G Smith (0000-0001-6211-8432, corresponding author), Bonnie Smith
Year1992
Volume31
Issue4
Pages15
Publication date1992-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory and Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2656 • E-ISSN: 1468-2303
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2505413
OpenAlexW2314255620
LanguageEN
Citations received8

For the past century French intellectuals have increasingly censured Athenais Michelet as an abusive widow who mutilated the work of her husband. This article explores the role such censure, often vituperative and emotionally charged, has played in the development of French historiography and argues that it has been crucial in constructing the revered figure of Michelet. Further, the figure of Michelet is itself central to the more important trajectory of historiography that depends on the establishment of authors as focal points of disciplinary power. Because the authorship of Michelet is so reliant on the scientific scholarship deployed to prove that Athenais Michelet was no author herself, the historiographic enterprise of establishing authorship is more than a little tainted with gender not immune to it, as the profession claims to be. To the contrary, Michelet scholarship, like other historiographical debates, has taken great pains to establish the priority of the male over the female in writing history. If, as Howard Bloch has noted, this pointing to a male original and a female copy is the archetype of misogyny, then, the paper asks, is not scientific history so grounded? What is an author? the philosopher Michel Foucault asked some two decades ago, and although this question has fascinated literary theorists, it has barely interested historians, who are more absorbed by such disciplinary issues as objectivity.' Since the nineteenth century the profession of history has taken pride in its ability to purge itself of biases arising from class, gender, race, and politics; and these claims continue to be made and disputed. With each generation the discourse of objectivity is revitalized, most recently and notably at the hands of Peter Novick, who has woven the story of this noble dream into a popular saga of origins, testing and challenge, and ultimately rescue by a heroic historian. In his and other accounts the founding myth of objectivity is constantly reworked, refurbished, and thus reborn through challenges from those with political, gendered, racial, or other concerns. The story of objectivity, as Novick and others tell it, is one in which individual * I thank Donald R. Kelley, Susan Kingsley Kent, and Ann-Louise Shapiro for their contributions to this article, and the ACLS and the National Humanities Center for supporting the early stages of this research. 1. Michel Foucault, Qu'es-ce que c'est l'auteur, Bulletin de la socijtkfrancaise dephilosophie 64 (1969), 73-104. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.57 on Fri, 09 Sep 2016 04:10:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Aesthetics · Art · Discipline · Epistemology · Historiography · Literature · Objectivity (philosophy) · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · French Literature and Criticism · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy

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