challenge of "opinionative assurance", The

National Forum, Summer 1997 by Kerber, Linda K

CLAIMING SPACE

It is long past time to shake off intimidation by opinionative assurance. We have begged for a little bit of space in the survey course long enough; it is time to make our claim to space frankly, openly, passionately. We must make this claim because to claim space for the experience of people of all classes, of all races, or varying ethnicities is to be true to the state of historical knowledge as it has now developed. And there is another, deeper reason as well.

There is a connection between the respect people can claim in their daily, public life, and the extent to which they are understood to have a history that is worth respect. As teachers we know that the names, dates, and "facts" that are explicitly part of the curriculum are only a portion of what is actually taught. Students will forget those dates or remember them with resentment. As teachers we know that what is conveyed in our subtext is at least as important as what is conveyed explicitly. It is not necessary for emotional and intellectual health that what students learn about historical experience be always pleasing or flattering; men and women have been victims as well as agents, capable of evil as well as of good. But those who are only part of someone else's story, as Peter Pan is of Wendy's, can make no claims of their own. If Africans are only a chapter in the history of imperialism, if Jews are only a chapter in the history of heresy, if women are only a part of the history of "universal man," then living people who are African American, or Jewish, or women, are marginalized into consumers of or supplements to other peoples' stories. What is necessary is that we recognize that the past has been constructed by men and women of many backgrounds and identities, individually and in their relations with each other. Lowered self-confidence is a perfectly reasonable conclusion if one has been subtly instructed that what people like oneself have done in the world has not been important and is not worth studying. The promise of democracy is that we always seek more stories to tell.

We now stand firmly on a base of a quarter-century of exciting research and writing. We at last have the capacity to disrupt old ways of telling historical stories. It is time for a little "opinionative assurance" of our own.

Linda K. Kerber is the May Brodbeck Professor in the Liberal Arts and professor of history at the University of Iowa. She served as the president of the Organization of American Historians in 1996-97.