> Within the discipline, he's inevitably grouped in with and tarred
> as a consensus historian. Most historians in early-to-mid career
> today are part of a cohort that rebelled specifically against the
> consensus bent. The focus has shifted more towards studying out-
> groups and their struggles, rather than identifying broad,
> encompassing patterns of "American" life.
>
> In any case, I gather there are relatively few historians under 60
> who have strong opinions about Hofstadter since political history
> almost doesn't exist anymore, so he's just not in their sub-field.
The New Left didn't have much impact on American politics, but they had a huge impact on the study of it in such old disciplines as history, sociology, geography, anthropology, area studies, and literature (though exercising little influence on economics and political science) and created such new disciplines as women's studies, ethnic studies, and queer studies. The upshot is that we gained a great deal in new methods of historiography (more attention to oral history, popular culture, low-brow mass culture, etc.) and new subjects (a whole new field of what might be called a history of social reproduction opened up, and marginalized subjects of history -- from women to Blacks to subalterns in colonies -- and forgotten radicals -- anarchists, communists, feminists, revolutionary Black nationalists, anti-imperialists, etc. -- took center stage in many of the most cutting-edge books and articles), but perhaps at the cost of paying less attention than it deserves to the elephant in the living room. The same happened in labor history, Robert Fitch asserts, and the center of gravity of the best of labor history is "exemplary history" of radicals and radical movements (the Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, the CIO, etc.) that challenged -- and failed to defeat -- the power elite of US organized labor. Therefore, the actual workings of power in the AFL-CIO, the CtW, Internationals, locals, etc. are less understood by leftists than they should be.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>