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Roy Weintraub's response to Gunning and Lee does not face the consequences 
of his own important work.  If there is "no position apart from the doing 
of economics which can inform the consideration of the doing of economics," 
then the same should hold true of 'the doing of studies of the past.' Or 
anything else for that matter.  All studies of anything are, in an 
important way, "presentist" (the more important of Roy's criteria of 
Whiggism), because they are informed by the present position of the author 
of the study. 
 
This understanding has often been used to unmask the ideological purposes 
of studies purporting to be objective -- whether the studies are about the 
way the economy works, or about the way thought about the way the economy 
works has developed though time. 
 
Having done the unmasking, one can (a) offer an alternative record of the 
past that is frank about (or at least implicitly conscious of) the way 
one's own ideological premises and purposes color the record; or one might 
instead (b) offer an alternative record that tries to free itself of the 
ideological muddle altogether, ridding itself of the present context and 
setting itself instead in the "historical context". 
 
Roy likes (b), and for good reason: first, one might learn something new in 
the writing or reading of such a record; second (though I am not as sure 
that he agrees with this), airing openly one's ideological commitments and 
metaphysical preconceptions often makes for impolite conversation. 
 
His next step, though, is ironic: in order to promote (b) he wants to call 
it "history" and demarcate it from nonhistory, much as logical positivists 
wanted to demarcate science from nonscience, notwithstanding his belonging 
to an intellectual legacy that is skeptical of the latter attempt.  So he 
quotes with approval Latour's claim that a self-contained self-referential 
history of science "does not count as history at all.  At best it is court 
historiography ..." 
 
(One heard a lot of this at the April HOPE conference on "The Future of the 
History of Economics".  At least three times someone said in discussion, 
"but that's not history ...," revealing a demarcation criterion that the 
speaker thought he met but others did not.  The disagreement about what we 
mean by "history" is widespread.) 
 
The trouble is that if you took Roy seriously from the beginning, you're 
already persuaded of the omnipresentness of presentism.  Which means that 
every study of the past is to a degree "court historiography" -- the 
court's presence living in the premises and preconceptions of the 
historian.  Which means that history, as Roy has demarcated it, is an empty 
category. 
 
So why even have it around?  It would seem that the thing to do would be to 
define history broadly enough so that it includes even what the quotation 
of Latour excludes, and then to talk about "kinds of history that I don't 
like" instead of nonhistory.  And sometimes Roy does seem to do this -- and 
at other times he does not.  In any case I don't think he considers the 
pernicious use that can be -- is not necessarily, but can be -- made of the 
empty category. 
 
Namely, after history is demarcated from nonhistory, terms like "historical 
reconstruction" and "historical context" can be used as badges while 
forgetting about the reason and criterion of demarcation, and so forgetting 
that the category must really be empty.  It is necessary to forget, because 
to remember would be to realize that one's history can't meet the standard 
of "history" as it has been demarcated; to remember would be to deny one's 
own objectivity and admit the validity of some criticisms of prejudice.  
And that, the author fears, would be rhetorically fatal. 
 
The other day I was reading Barbara Fried's _The Progressive Assault on 
Laissez Faire:  Robert Hale and the First Law and Economics Movement_ 
(Harvard, 1998).  She writes, "This book is primarily a work of 
intellectual history -- an attempt to excavate and restore in its 
historical context an elaborate and (in its time) seditious argument about 
the nature of law and legal rights" (p.28).  To me the book represents an 
impressive work of research into past thought -- as well as a transparent 
work of advocacy for more state involvement in the constitution, 
regulation, and taxation of markets than Hale's foes (or current political 
consensus?) would accept.  What kind of work does the term "historical 
context" do for her? 
 
Pat Gunning got it pretty right.   
 
Steve Meardon 
 
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