Post #10

Political Activism and Historical Agency in the Historiography of the American West
Readings

Becoming Mexican American by George Sanchez
Indians In Unexpected Places by Philip DeLoria
"Still Native: The Significance of Native Americans in the History of the 20th Century American West" by David R. Lewis
"Significant to Whom?: Mexican Americans and the History of the American West"
by David G. Gutierrez

In this weeks readings, we were once again challenged with some of the same issues that we encountered when studying gender in the historical interpretation of the West. In particular, the issue of the historical agency of the minority is an issue that the historian must constantly wrestle with. After reading David Gutierrez's article, this issue and the varying ways in which historians confront it were brought to the forefront.

Gutierrez provides the reader with an excellent overview of the historiographical trends in Mexican American history. He argues that the real long-term legacy of conquest is not the domination of territory itself but the domination of the interpretation of the history of that conquest. He writes, "Ultimately, however, the most crucial development as a result of expansion and domination is the subsequent construction of elaborate sets of rationals which are designed to explain why one group has conquered another and to establish and perpetuate histories that help 'set...And enforce...Priorities, [repress] some subjects in the name of the greater importance of others, [naturalize] certain categories and [disqualify] others.''' (520) Clearly historical agency and the way in which the historian analyzes that agency are issues that are just as central to the historiographical debate on race as they were in the debate on gender. [In fact, Gutierrez pieces together this poorly organized quote from a work by Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History.]

While I agree that the agency of minorities must be incorporated into the historical debate when relevant, some of the historiographical initiatives designed to present that agency that Gutierrez highlights are questionable in my opinion. The red flag that caught my attention was the repeated connection of historian and activist. This correlation is clearly evident in his analysis of Mexican American historiography of George Sanchez (526), through the Chicano history movement (527), and into his analysis of historiography dealing with minority and gender history today(535).

The extent to which these two terms should be literally connected is a debate in and of itself. This forces the historian to wrestle with issues of objectivity and biases. I found it interesting that Gutierrez referred to Peter Novick's work, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession. In this work, Novik likens the quest for objectivity to one attempting to "nail jelly to the wall". Thus, I hesitate to take on this daunting issue yet again here. But unfortunately the question must be asked: does the inability to write purely objective history mean that the historian should quickly fall into the dangerous ground of tieing activism to historical analysis?

It is clearly impossible to avoid biases completely, the historian is human. Furthermore, I would not advocate a history that is completely void of interest on the part of the historian. That is the recipe for poorly written history. On the other hand, if the historian begins his or her analysis with an agenda rather than a research question, the evidence can very quickly begin to speak in unintended ways. Gutierrez makes it clear that this was the intent of many scholars attempted to bring new levels of agency to Mexican American historical actors.

I did not see this bias come out strongly, myself, when reading Sanchez's book. In fact, Gutierrez acknowledges that Sanchez, as a part of the first wave of historians struggling to provide a more clear picture of Mexican American history, was very intentional in maintaining the scholarly quality of his work (526).

I believe the line between the scholarly and political is crossed when one looks at Gutierrez's analysis of the Chicano history of the 1960'S and 1970's. Gutierrez acknowledges and then attempts to downplay the fact that, "the history produced during this period helped to create a different totalizing discourse that in some ways was as distorting, essentialistic, and exclusionary as the one activists were attempting to transform." (529) At that point, no matter how well intentioned the historian is in his or her analysis, that analysis has becomed blurred.

Again, it is not my intention to downplay the necessity of providing a more complete analysis of the impact of race and gender in the history of the American West. My concern begins when the agenda, and not the evidence, begins to speak. The historian must be passionate about unraveling the mysteries of the past, but at the point that the historian becomes and activist, that analysis can very quickly be limited and blinded by a political agenda.