The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past

Roger Kimball wrote an especially fine review of Keith Windschuttle's excellent book in the New Criteron in September 1996; he began by asking "Where is Dr. Johnson when we need him?" He meant Samuel Johnson, of course, of whom Boswell wrote, "Accustom your children constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end." On the other end of the spectrum, regarding historical facts lies Nietzsche, who argued, "There are no facts, only interpretations." In the nine years since Kimball's excellent review ran, the general view of history and historical facts has only degenerated further. I have seen in countless critiques of my own work, for example, that recalling historical facts will only rekindle the hatreds of the past. Of course, the opposite is true: recalling the past, and the facts of history, is an important, indeed, critical antidote to hatreds, as they offer the only sure way of avoiding the errors of bygone eras. If we refuse to acknowledge those errors, we are consigned to repeating them. And today, with so much emphasis placed on the importance of relative "narratives" and so little emphasis placed on facts, knowledge itself--and all the libraries that secure it--stands highly at risk. This book is a fantastic and much needed treatment for the disease of relativism. Not only does it offer myriad details on the various schools of thought that have brought us to the current desperate pass, but it contains a stunning set of historical facts as well. One learns for example a bit about the Aztecs' conquest by Cortes, the mutiny on the HMS Bounty in 1789, French deconstructionist Michel Focault, and the end of the cold war in 1989. Windschuttle uses those pieces of data to illustrate his points. Today one risk one runs "in defending anything traditional is to be seen simply as a knee-jerk reactionary," he writes, "a middle aged academic defending the remnants of his own intellectual capital" while holding the fort against younger ideologues. But that reaction is a dead letter, as the vast majority of professors pushing "the new humanities" have entered their forties or fifties, and many of the Continental gurus that floated these history-bashing ideas are "already dead." No, the truth and history are at stake. Windschuttle makes a great case for studying the "old-fashioned" facts. Let us hope that a majority in the professoriate soon see the light of his wisdom. --Alyssa A. Lappen

Don't let the title of the book fool you. While the title may seem to be something of an exaggeration, I think Windschuttle makes his case. He argues that relativism (the idea that there is no absolute, universal truth or knowledge) is making history, a discipline that seeks to discover the truth about the past, impossible.He starts the book by showing where relativism came from. Primarily, relativism was thought up by a number of French intellectuals in the 1960's. These philosophers and theorists (e.g. Derrida, Foucault, etc) also drew some of their ideas from 19th century philosophers such as Nietzsche (who is frequently quoted as saying, "There are no facts but only interpretations.") and Heidegger. The theories that these thinkers came up with have several different names (e.g. structuralism, post-structuralism, post-modernism etc...) but they all have a common commitment to relativism. The fact that relativism is an incoherent, self-contradictory philosophy should be obvious to all after some reflection on the topic. I would recommend, "Relativism: Feet planted firmly in mid-air," by Francis Beckwith and Gregory Koukl (which I have reviewed) for a book length treatment of why relativism is false. Windschuttle focuses on the cultural relativism (i.e. the idea that all cultures are equal and that there are no ideas or truths which transcend culture) whereas Beckwith and Koukl focus on moral relativism (i.e. the idea that there is no universal morality).Windschuttle makes his case by examining a number of theorists and their writings about specific historical events. For example, Windschuttle discusses the death of James Cook in Hawaii, early Australian history, the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Columbus' discovery of America and the like. Windschuttle demonstrates that all these "historians" (who are often trained as literary critics or some other discipline) take their theory or ideology and force it upon the evidence to the point of fudging important details, ignoring the research of other historians and even in a few cases to the out-right fabrication of information.Although parts of the book can be difficult to follow, Windschuttle endeavors to make his work understandable to most intelligent readers in contrast to many of the intellectuals now in favor who deliberately engage in obscurantist writing. The author also makes several interesting observations regarding the motives of many academics. For example, one of the reasons that cultural relativism is so popular is due to the fact that academics wish to seen on the side of oppressed native peoples and other disfavored people (Michael Focault's books are good example of this). Also, these academics could be accused of taking these positions simply because they wish to be seen to be fully politically correct. At one point, Windschuttle says that writing history in this new politically motivated, theory-laden fashion is easier than traditional research. He says, "[t]ackling the main issues

If you ever wonder who killed truth and the whole nature of empirical history, even empirical science, Windshuttle has the answer and it is unequivocally the fault of the Post-Modernists. If you ever wondered who exactly the PoMo crowd is, then Windshuttle will do his best to teach you, though he admits, even with the post-modern crowd, the hardest thing is arriving at a definition that everyone agrees upon: overly abstruse, opaque in their turgid writing style PoMo literary critics and social theorists have been creeping into the Queen of the Social Sciences --- History --- since Nietszche and Foucault. Here in crisp, clean and logical style, Windshuttle makes a powerful polemic, wiping the slate clean and reclaiming traditional narrative, empirical history from literary critics and social theorists. Some of the books highlights for me were:1) The PoMo use of the the arguments of Popper, Kuhn and Lakatos, to reach a conclusion that purports, because science is relative then so is knowledge. Since these people are my heros I was very surprised to learn that their ideas could be used in a fashion they never intended. Windshuttle puts their ideas in their proper perspective. 2) That vast proliferation of any university course that has the word "studies" appended after it has always caused me concern; I have run into a lot of people, some from good universities, that have no idea about even simple ideas of science, morality and elementary history. But who lack elementary thinking skills (such as how to reason from a first premise, how to detect a fallacy or even understand the simple elements of science). In almost all of these cases, many of these people have graduated in one of the hodge-podge disciplines that seem to be proliferating in Universities --- disciplines that do not teach thoroughgoing knowledge in any discipline and therefore, more often than not, turn out graduates who have no credible thinking skills. 3) The fallacy of Great Theory History. Windshuttle reminds us by critiquing the Fukuyama "End of History" idea, that the goal of history is to make accurate descriptive statements about events in the past. That subscribing a single prime mover or explanation for diverse historical events --- whether they are the discourses of Marx and his economic determinism or the grand social theories of Victor Davis Hanson "Carnage & Culture" or Jared Daimond, "Guns, Germs and Steel" --- are merely poor attempts to pound history in the shape historians wants. And that is one of the most stimulating and problematic elements of this book: I think that Windshuttle has as much problem with some people in his own discipline as he may have with others in the lighter "disciplines" of social theory.Also, although I sympathise with Windshuttle and wince at the low number of people graduating from traditional historical disciplines and share his chagrin at the rise of Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, (and yes even Canadian Studies), I do not think that w

I am a college professor of the social sciences and have watched as "critical theory" has crept into the academy with alarm. I loved The Killing of History and stayed up at night reading it, and I strongly recommend it. Windschuttle focuses on the issues of the debate between old-school historians and post-modernists, although he does point out that the latter group tends to use a supercilious, derisively dismissive tone as their response when opposed (see the review below which refers to the author as a "hack," uses phrases like "so-called 'intellectuals'," and a snub about "if you subscribe to the Reader's Digest then this book is for you" as a perfect example of what he is talking about]. The specific examples he gives about the history of Mexico and Australia make this an interesting read in that vein as well.

Keith Windschuttle's book The Killing of History is a brilliant response to the often monumentally silly social crusading that modern academia works so hard to pawn off as "scholarship" and "history". Windschuttle reveals Relativism and Deconstructionism for the arrogant, self serving pernicious evils that they are. He adroitly skewers the more well known purveyors of Deconstructionist History and persuasively relegates the work of the darlings of the Post-modern, (Focault, Derrida, Popper and so on), to its proper place in the lower regions of the ash-heap of bad ideas. Windschuttle's book is foremost a brilliant defense of the truth of the past. It is also a scathing indictment of the increasingly fashionable practice of passing off convenient fictions as legitimate forms of "history". Partents, teachers of History, and their students are facing a concerted effort by Relativists to destroy history as a coherent intellectual discipline by collapsing the distinction between fact and fiction. Given the historical truth of the first half of this century one cannot deny that the stakes in this particular game are incredibly high. To deny the truth of History is to ultimately doom our progeny to re-learn the most terrible lessons of the past and to make meaningless the sacrifices of literally millions who lost everthing for the sake of our future. Windschuttle writes that "The study of history is essentially a search for the truth. ... A work that does not aim at truth may be many things but not a work of history." Amen and bravo!