Re: Hofstadter
Dennis Claxton wrote:
Doug wrote:
What do you mean by that? Isn’t political history pretty important?
Classical political history, also legal and military history, is associated with positivist notions of proof and is now more often called the “great men” school of history. It was blown out of the water beginning with the French Annales school in the 30s.
Now I’m confused. I thought the criticism of Hofstadter was that he blamed the masses too much for right-wing paranoia and manipulative elites too little. Now he’s a Great Man theorist, just like the target of that Gang of Four song.
Doug