Here’s the puzzle. Wood, Zuckerman, and Henretta call for historians to overcome their postmodern scruples and specialized nooks, and instead tell stories that make the past relevant to the present. Yet Wood reads Zuckerman and Henretta as accusing Bailyn of historical narrow-mindedness, refusing to admit the sins of the past and therefore unable to help “reform our present.” What’s going on here?
Let us say there are two kinds of presentism: present-blinded and present-minded. To be present-blinded is to anachronistically impose the knowledge and morality of today upon the past: to demand that historical figures see the world as we do, and refuse to see the world as they did. To be present-minded is to do history while bearing in mind that one lives in the present. The present-minded historian turns to the past and asks questions that are shaped by the world the historian lives in. While the present-blinded historian refuses to empathize, the present-minded historian must empathize. In practicing historical empathy, the present-minded historian learns to see his or her own world afresh–like an astronaut gazing at the earth.
Wood, Zuckerman, and Henretta all, to varying degrees, call for present-minded history, history that respects the past but also tells stories to the present. But Wood doesn’t recognize his own presentism; he assumes all presentism is present-blinded rather than present-minded. When he read Zuckerman and Henretta criticizing Bailyn for not being more present-minded, he thought they wanted Bailyn to be more present-blinded.
Much of the criticism of Wood has been unfair or at least unkind. I think Wood is right that historians could learn to have a little more empathy. (Honestly, we all could.) But Wood’s point would be stronger if he recognized that historians can both practice historical empathy and engage with the present. Wood knows this; he strives to do it and praises Bailyn for doing it. The problem is that we tend to conflate the present-minded and the present-minded. Thus Wood decries the presentism of historians who, to a large extent, share his conception of the historian’s task.