Thanks, John, for an excellent concluding piece in this series--which highlights the groupthink and the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) tyranny underpinning it. The censoriousness that accompanies "rightthink" and being "On the Right Side of History" is very much with us now. In a way, #Critlib has become the new hegemon that can't be questioned in a profession supposedly dedicated to intellectual and academic freedom and freedom to read. #CritLib champions need to question their assumptions about the ethos of librarianship, and likely, their entire worldview.
The young librarian who approached you after your talk at the ALA conference was manifesting "preference falsification" in dealing with his or her colleagues in the workplace. That is, by now, a familiar phenomenon for too many in the field who have reservations, or who want to ask questions, or who have more complicated views, about the idols of #CritLib. A great irony of our times is how the "critical" attached to "CritLib" may not mean "critically reflective" at all, or interest in real critical inquiry, but induction into groupthink itself in order to be part of the socially acceptable group in the field. Independence of thought, whether about the anti-empiricism of either woke Left, or populist Right, now requires summoning a lot of courage and stamina in order to avoid self-censorship, and to ask some of the searching questions you've asked.
Thanks again for writing these courageous and necessary articles.
"John Stuart Mill argues that the tyranny of collective opinion often is more dangerous to intellectual independence than restrictions imposed by political rulers"-- incredibly pertinent.
Thank you for this series, both for your personal candor and your insights into the profession. It's very dispiriting to learn how both Nancy Pearl and yourself were treated, and unfortunately there are many stories like these out there in our field.
My own take on this is that for a long time, most people were pretty happy with their libraries. People who took their children to libraries had fond memories of the libraries of their youth. Library problems were viewed as caused by outside forces, typically. But, suddenly, these people noticed that the libraries were up to no good. They had trusted the libraries their whole lives, and now, suddenly, the libraries have gone weird and they have no idea what to do. So they re-acted, spasmodically. Library Watchers of Greater Lowell tries to give patrons agency and to be pro-active (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556735437296) which is why it should spawn a thousand copies all over the US.
These are good articles. But as with the first article; there is the utterance of too many shibboleths. Many have excellent reason to believe that what killed George Floyd was the drugs he was on. He and Chauvin apparently disliked each other because they had both been bouncers at the same club at one point, so the very personal entered into that interaction. The fact that you still stick with THE NARRATIVE , that you don't seem to be aware that some people believe something radically different than you based on _facts_ has significance when you bring it up in this discussion. That you are aware that there are a few sides to the COVID-related pharmaceutical question is a point in your favor.
I think that there is an epistemological side to this question. "Flat-earthism" v.s. "holocaust denial" doesn't make much sense as antagonists. The problem here is that the question of the roundness or otherwise of the earth is empirically testable, so much so that Aristotle could offer convincing proofs of its roundness which work just fine today. I don't believe that any librarian is putting books that actually espouse a flat earth theory in the geology section. The roundness of the earth is really just a fact, the International Space Station orbits it every 90 minutes. Evolution is actually a theory constructed to explain a whole lot of phenomena; fossils, geologic formations, species. It's a subtle theory and relies on genetics which Charles Darwin had no concept of. I believe that there are books that seek to challenge the standard evolutionary theory shelved in the 500s. I haven't read them, but so long as they do it with science, that seems like the right place for them. Any history is a theory, too, and about facts that may be harder to discover than those on which evolution is based. There are no test tubes for history, no electron microscopes, no core samples. There are no time machines; no one can go back and check for themselves. It's just a bunch of humans, none of whom are us, doing stuff, some time ago, and maybe we have some records. We should recollect that humans lie all the time, unlike fossils and rocks, which are just mute witnesses. It is utter arrogance for any librarian or book reviewer to claim that they know that such and such a book belongs in the "holocaust denial literature" section as opposed to the WWII section, or the Germany in the 30s and 40s section, or such like. That's interjecting their belief into their cataloging, because they can not actually know, and they should have the humility to resist this sort of opinion-based classification, as should the LoC.
I think that "civil war denial" books would be the best antagonist to"holocaust denial". A "civil war denial" book would be a book that told the history of the American Civil War from a distinctly pro-Confederate point of view. It would argue that it became politically expedient for politicians in the northern states to be anti-slavery when the importation clause of the US Constitution kicked in and the wealthy merchants of those states could no longer make money importing slaves to sell to the south. It would point to the aggressive rivalry prevailing among the states before the ratification of the Constitution, with all the states levying tariffs against each other and so forth and point out that this hostility and rivalry was very much ongoing in the early 19th century. It would trace a history of deliberate provocations of the southern states by the northern ones. It would point out that an enslaved person could lead a reasonable life, better than some. For example, Frederic Douglass lived in his own apartment in Baltimore, worked on the docks, got a paycheck like anybody else, got Sundays off, got married. He had to remit a whole lot of his paycheck to his owner, but could keep the rest. The book might ask whether his life was really that different from the modern person's, who must pay a massive amount of tax to a government with a great deal of power over it, including imprisonment. It would point out that there is a good argument that the states of the Confederacy had every legal right to secede. It would make an analogy of the Northern states to an abuser who chases down someone who just wants to get away from them, beats them up, and forces them to come back. It would point out that the title "Civil War", is a misnomer, since the Confederacy asserted no right to rule the other states, just to leave, but that history is written by the victors, so that's what it is called. It would dwell on the atrocities committed by the Union armies and the tremendous and deliberate destruction that the armies caused. It would ask, rhetorically, whether a former slave, starving to death in a shattered country, was really gaining all that much benefit from the Emancipation Proclamation in far off DC. It would have an epilogue showing how the destruction's effects are still felt in modern times. And all of this could be done using sound historical methods. I do not know if this book exists nor if the LoC has a special section for "civil war denial". But in a situation without bias this book should exist _and_ it should be shelved with the other history books that cover the same events. (I think there is a generic problem of history being written by the victors in that those histories tend to elide the most horrible things done by those same victors. This possibly hypothetical book would have value in part because it would make people less enthusiastic about war because more realistic, which would be a good thing.)
Thanks, John, for an excellent concluding piece in this series--which highlights the groupthink and the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) tyranny underpinning it. The censoriousness that accompanies "rightthink" and being "On the Right Side of History" is very much with us now. In a way, #Critlib has become the new hegemon that can't be questioned in a profession supposedly dedicated to intellectual and academic freedom and freedom to read. #CritLib champions need to question their assumptions about the ethos of librarianship, and likely, their entire worldview.
The young librarian who approached you after your talk at the ALA conference was manifesting "preference falsification" in dealing with his or her colleagues in the workplace. That is, by now, a familiar phenomenon for too many in the field who have reservations, or who want to ask questions, or who have more complicated views, about the idols of #CritLib. A great irony of our times is how the "critical" attached to "CritLib" may not mean "critically reflective" at all, or interest in real critical inquiry, but induction into groupthink itself in order to be part of the socially acceptable group in the field. Independence of thought, whether about the anti-empiricism of either woke Left, or populist Right, now requires summoning a lot of courage and stamina in order to avoid self-censorship, and to ask some of the searching questions you've asked.
Thanks again for writing these courageous and necessary articles.
"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), Chapter 1, Lord Henry Wotton.
Great quote.
"John Stuart Mill argues that the tyranny of collective opinion often is more dangerous to intellectual independence than restrictions imposed by political rulers"-- incredibly pertinent.
Thank you for this series, both for your personal candor and your insights into the profession. It's very dispiriting to learn how both Nancy Pearl and yourself were treated, and unfortunately there are many stories like these out there in our field.
Your mention of Jonathan Israel 's book reminded me again of what a profound effect it had on me.
I think what really sticks in your craw about Pearl is the inescapable image of a fallen hero.
The ALA adheres to no principle; so none of its work can, in fact, be admirable. Library Watchers of Greater Lowell (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556735437296) however, is awesome and highly principled.
My own take on this is that for a long time, most people were pretty happy with their libraries. People who took their children to libraries had fond memories of the libraries of their youth. Library problems were viewed as caused by outside forces, typically. But, suddenly, these people noticed that the libraries were up to no good. They had trusted the libraries their whole lives, and now, suddenly, the libraries have gone weird and they have no idea what to do. So they re-acted, spasmodically. Library Watchers of Greater Lowell tries to give patrons agency and to be pro-active (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556735437296) which is why it should spawn a thousand copies all over the US.
These are good articles. But as with the first article; there is the utterance of too many shibboleths. Many have excellent reason to believe that what killed George Floyd was the drugs he was on. He and Chauvin apparently disliked each other because they had both been bouncers at the same club at one point, so the very personal entered into that interaction. The fact that you still stick with THE NARRATIVE , that you don't seem to be aware that some people believe something radically different than you based on _facts_ has significance when you bring it up in this discussion. That you are aware that there are a few sides to the COVID-related pharmaceutical question is a point in your favor.
I think that there is an epistemological side to this question. "Flat-earthism" v.s. "holocaust denial" doesn't make much sense as antagonists. The problem here is that the question of the roundness or otherwise of the earth is empirically testable, so much so that Aristotle could offer convincing proofs of its roundness which work just fine today. I don't believe that any librarian is putting books that actually espouse a flat earth theory in the geology section. The roundness of the earth is really just a fact, the International Space Station orbits it every 90 minutes. Evolution is actually a theory constructed to explain a whole lot of phenomena; fossils, geologic formations, species. It's a subtle theory and relies on genetics which Charles Darwin had no concept of. I believe that there are books that seek to challenge the standard evolutionary theory shelved in the 500s. I haven't read them, but so long as they do it with science, that seems like the right place for them. Any history is a theory, too, and about facts that may be harder to discover than those on which evolution is based. There are no test tubes for history, no electron microscopes, no core samples. There are no time machines; no one can go back and check for themselves. It's just a bunch of humans, none of whom are us, doing stuff, some time ago, and maybe we have some records. We should recollect that humans lie all the time, unlike fossils and rocks, which are just mute witnesses. It is utter arrogance for any librarian or book reviewer to claim that they know that such and such a book belongs in the "holocaust denial literature" section as opposed to the WWII section, or the Germany in the 30s and 40s section, or such like. That's interjecting their belief into their cataloging, because they can not actually know, and they should have the humility to resist this sort of opinion-based classification, as should the LoC.
I think that "civil war denial" books would be the best antagonist to"holocaust denial". A "civil war denial" book would be a book that told the history of the American Civil War from a distinctly pro-Confederate point of view. It would argue that it became politically expedient for politicians in the northern states to be anti-slavery when the importation clause of the US Constitution kicked in and the wealthy merchants of those states could no longer make money importing slaves to sell to the south. It would point to the aggressive rivalry prevailing among the states before the ratification of the Constitution, with all the states levying tariffs against each other and so forth and point out that this hostility and rivalry was very much ongoing in the early 19th century. It would trace a history of deliberate provocations of the southern states by the northern ones. It would point out that an enslaved person could lead a reasonable life, better than some. For example, Frederic Douglass lived in his own apartment in Baltimore, worked on the docks, got a paycheck like anybody else, got Sundays off, got married. He had to remit a whole lot of his paycheck to his owner, but could keep the rest. The book might ask whether his life was really that different from the modern person's, who must pay a massive amount of tax to a government with a great deal of power over it, including imprisonment. It would point out that there is a good argument that the states of the Confederacy had every legal right to secede. It would make an analogy of the Northern states to an abuser who chases down someone who just wants to get away from them, beats them up, and forces them to come back. It would point out that the title "Civil War", is a misnomer, since the Confederacy asserted no right to rule the other states, just to leave, but that history is written by the victors, so that's what it is called. It would dwell on the atrocities committed by the Union armies and the tremendous and deliberate destruction that the armies caused. It would ask, rhetorically, whether a former slave, starving to death in a shattered country, was really gaining all that much benefit from the Emancipation Proclamation in far off DC. It would have an epilogue showing how the destruction's effects are still felt in modern times. And all of this could be done using sound historical methods. I do not know if this book exists nor if the LoC has a special section for "civil war denial". But in a situation without bias this book should exist _and_ it should be shelved with the other history books that cover the same events. (I think there is a generic problem of history being written by the victors in that those histories tend to elide the most horrible things done by those same victors. This possibly hypothetical book would have value in part because it would make people less enthusiastic about war because more realistic, which would be a good thing.)