deconstructing Drew Glipin Faust

Here's an honest, play-by-play interpretation I had of Faust while reading, Drew Gilpin Faust, "Why We Love the Civil War," in Civil War History, (Kent State University Press, 2004).

1.) First and foremost, Faust was trained in the traditional ways of empiricism. Some might say, "So what, mft!" But when we look at the made-up conversations in such titles as, The Cheese and the Worms, (John Hopkins University Press), or what our buddy Foucault published, foot- and end-notes do matter.

2.) It looks as though Faust is interested in pushing the latter half of 19th-century American history in new directions, and she applauds the various angles that contemporary scholars have delivered. Of the Civil War Faust herself says, "Three
developments seem to me of particular note: the introduction of social history, with particular emphasis on the life and importance of the common soldier, into study of the Civil War military; the use of the community study as a window into the interplay of war's myriad effects and actors; and the growing interest in the experience of women and of African Americans." (Drew Gilpin Faust, "Why We Love the Civil War," in Civil War History, (Kent State University Press, 2004), 377. In the following paragraphs, not only does Faust quote and comment on the various aspects of the Civil War — and War — through the eyes of male Americans, she also wonders aloud why the field of Civil War History has been dominated by Military Historians, a rather crazy lot if you've attended serious History Conferences. I call some of them crazy because this variety of historian could easily and willingly deliver a fifteen minute paper on how many shell-casings were uncovered at a particular skirmish within some sub-battle of the Civil War. Yes, this type of information is still important (casing after casing), but when the historian becomes somewhat self-absorbed, if they are only uncovering knowledge for the sake of knowledge, then they have failed to incorporate the singular casings into the broader battle. As professionals, they have also failed to make their findings accessible to a public that is largely responsible for their salary and professional existence.

Another excerpt from Faust: "In the new Civil War history [what Ann Coulter despises] homefront rivaled battlefront as the decisive factor in war's outcome; common soldiers, rather than generals became the critical military factors in triumph or defeat; women undermined the stability of slavery and the level of civilian morale and contributed to Southern defeat or, conversely, struggled both at home and in military disguise to ensure victory." Here I understand Faust as saying women contributed to Southern defeat, but I don't read it as saying they were the sole factor. Again, I could be wrong in that I'm only reading one of her sources (seriously, who has the time and hence money to follow it all?).

In response to how Ken Burns portrayed the Civil War in his 1990 documentary, Faust says, "The American public loved The Civil War not primarily because it dealt with constitutional or political or racial or social questions that matter today, but because it was about individual human beings whose faces we could see, whose words we could hear, as they confronted war's challenges." It was a sort of escapism, or rather Americans could see and attach themselves vicariously to those who partook in a war that nearly resulted in the implosion and self-destruction of what is now — and has been — the most powerful nation in the history of the world.

Perhaps this next segment is where Faust dares too far: "In the United States's need to respond to terrorism with war, we can see a key element of war's appeal. War is not random, shapeless violence. It is a human, a cultural construction, an "invention," as Margaret Mead once described it, that imposes an order, a purpose, and indeed a control on violence. Through its implicit and explicit conventions, through its rules, war limits and structures its violence; it imbues violence with a justification, a trajectory, and a purpose. The United States sought a war through which to respond to terrorism—even a war against an enemy who had no relationship to September 11's terrorist acts would do—because the nation required the sense of meaning, intention, and goal-directedness, the lure of efficacy that war promises; the control that terrorism obliterates. The nation needed the sense of agency that operates within the structure of narrative provided by war."

Okay, now we're getting into Pepean Land. I'm starting to understand a bit more of the neo-con polemic against Faust, because she has committed one of the bigger mistakes of any historian: in her abled pursuit of the 19th-century American Civil War, she has already forgotten the more contemporary events that are closest to her. Post-September 11th action was not some cultural construct. This implies that it was a socio-psychological movement, merely fabricated to give the nation purpose... I don't think I need to comment any further on this. ...wait. Then Faust slips a Susan Sontag quote in there. Sontag, "Is there... an antidote to the perennial seductiveness of war?" I don't know, Sue. You tend to forget about those cultural constructs, especially when someone has a scimitar to your throat, or a Luger inches from the back of your Jewish head (you get the idea). Michael Herr (whom Faust touches on towards the end of an article that was going pretty well up to the Susan Sontag quote) once remarked on a particular black American soldier who was too busy killing to save his own ass to wonder about the ideology that started it all in the first place.

Enough of Faust for this evening. Thank you JJ for sending that article. I'm gonna get back to Rousseau.

~mft