A Shared Authority

Michael Frisch's book A Shared Authority points out that by encouraging a more democratic approach to the telling of history, then both professional historians and the public can simultaneously particpate in how history is expressed.

One of the more interesting essays in this book is"Oral history and the presentation of class consciousness." It deals with The New York Times and how their editorial choices told a story of bluecollar angst when the oral histories of Buffalo, New York were, in actuality, more expressive of how unemployment affected all kinds of people at all stages of their lives. The histories also presented a narrative that was more general to the country, rather than specifically to the hardships of Buffalo alone. The point that Frisch makes here, and in last week's article, is that the presentations of oral histories are often enmeshed in presentations of power. The editors of the oral histories wanted to tell a specific story and used the resources to tell it rather than shaping a narrative around the documents presented. Frisch, just as Rose and Corley last week, argues that more democratic approaches to storytelling would result in richer, fuller, more complex histories.

However, maybe the editors didn't want a more complex history. They wanted something simple and, just as Corley and Rose accused Burns of doing, the editors found proof of their argument in the histories rather than finding an argument in the evidence. They would certainly get an A + in Bad History 101.

Some of Frisch's argument, while impressive for its time, feels stale in 2009. It seems that historians today are constantly trying to find more democratic approaches in their work and if they fail to do so it is one of the first criticisms that other academics will point out. Perhaps today's historians today have gotten more better about keeping other scholars accountable.