And I wouldn't exculpate postmodernism - among other things a non-innocent way of avoiding dangerous questions. Eagleton's After Theory (2003) made the case.
Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
> Yes, I almost made that point, myself -- the one about wanting to avoid
> Marxism, which I of course wouldn't attribute simply to postmodernism. A
> friend and former colleague noted to me the other day that in some material
> she was reviewing from ostensible libertarians appealing for funding, the
> applicants took some very fundamentally Marxist approaches, but of course
> didn't realize it. The irony is that in many respects Marxism continues to
> affect basic approaches to history, even where people think of themselves as
> rejecting it.
>
> But I agree, and thought something very similar when following a mailing-list
> debate not too long ago on just this question (and a couple of related
> questions), that is, that there was a certain categorical rejection of the
> idea that we might be able to describe historical periods and processes in
> terms other than those used by the people who lived it. And I wanted to say,
> do you really reject any attempt at all to generalize about history? But I
> admit I kept my mouth shut. Which in general I should do more often.
>
> On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 10:34 PM, C. G. Estabrook
> <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:
>
>> Largely a result I think of a generation of medievalists being brought up
>> to avoid any taint of Marxist historiography. The baleful effects of
>> postmodernism included the avoidance of the slightest attention to modes of
>> production. That was not the road to success in US history graduate
>> schools of the last quarter of the 20th century. --CGE
>>
>>
>> Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Matthias Wasser
>>> <matthias.wasser at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>> "Feudalisms" were diverse.
>>>>
>>> For what it's worth, "feudalism" is mostly a dirty word among
>>> medievalists, these days. This is not my specialty, but there are
>>> multiple problems, probably the most serious being that the term implies,
>>> as you suggest, a non-existent uniformity (and rigidity/stability) of
>>> practice across Europe "during the 'feudal' period" (whenever that was).
>>> I certainly can't speak for Medievalists, but in general I think you will
>>> find that medievalists will say the word doesn't mean very much, and they
>>> tend to avoid it. If you want to troll a medievalist list, ask them about
>>> feudalism. ___________________________________
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>>>
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