That Noble Dream & Historical Objectivity

Particularist commitments--national, regional, ethnic, religious, ideological--were seen as enemies of objective truth. They had to be transcended if unitary truth was to be approached.

However, Novick perceives a particularist backlash, as it were, which has challenged universalist assumptions about cognitive style and modes of discourse, and this is seen in various writings on issues which have generated a particularist form of discourse or particularist literature, such as issues of race or gender:

Turn-of-the-century racists had asserted that blacks were naturally subjective, whites objective. The popular belief that women were naturally intuitive while men were analytic has a long history. These were propositions which Negroes and women in the academy had scornfully repudiated as racist or sexist slanders. Enlightened egalitarians had consistently maintained that the approved academic cognitive style, including all the elements which went to make up objectivity, was uncorrelated with color or gender.

A consideration of what Novick has to say about this point of view and the historical approaches it and its opposite have engendered is analyzed here in terms of the

. . .
content: For example, if in return for being a man's property a woman receives economic security, a full emotional life centering around husband and children, and an opportunity to express her capacities in the management of her home, she has little cause for discontent. While this statement is arguable in the way it assumes that women are not discontented under such circumstances, it is clear that for most of history women were expected to be content with this sort of life and were trained for that purpose. Clearly, circumstances of family life have changed in the modern era. Industry has been taken out of the home, and large families are no longer economically possible or socially desired. The home is no longer the center of the husband's life, and for the traditional wife there is only a narrowing of interests and possibilities for development: "Increasingly, the woman finds herself without an occupation and with an unsatisfactory emotional life." The change in sex roles that can be discerned in society is closely tied with changes in the structure of the family. Sociologists recognize that women have roles in the family and roles in public life, and they find that "the relative status of women in family life is
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Europe America, Hope Franklin, Noble Dream, Linda Gordon, Nat Turner, History United, Evolution Revolution, Woman's Studies, America Vietnam, Native American, black nationalism, history united, black history, women's history, evolution revolution, changes family, american society, american history, writing history, noble dream, historical review june, review june 1991, novick examines development, american historical review, seen perspective history,
Approximate Word count = 2676
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)