Scare Quotes Scare Me
When the AHR comes, the first things I read are: the table of contents, the Asia book reviews and the"Communications to the Editor" in the back. The first is mostly an exercise in futility, as there's an average of one article per issue that I feel obligated to read. The second is an obligation: I'll get longer reviews of most of the same books in my JAS and JJS, but it's interesting to see who gets what kind of attention. The third is a guilty pleasure; this is where the knives really come out: scholars complaining about the reviews their work got, scholars kibitzing the articles, and the inevitable defenses.... you can actually learn a lot about the political and disciplinary cleavages of the field this way, the"backstory." Admit it: you do the same thing.
But these less-than-formal communications have their perils. In an exchange (October 2005: 1321-1322 [AHA Membership required]), between Dominick LaCapra of Cornell and his reviewer Bryan D. Palmer of Trent over the nature of the historical profession (the original review is here [AHA Members]) LaCapra defends himself from a charge of binary thinking by suggesting that he was employing"scare quotes" in the following passage:
Theory is an attempt to understand better what one knows or thinks one knows. It must be informed but cannot be reduced to information or simply found by 'grubbing' in the archives. It is an attempt, however non-totalizing and self-critical, to turn erudition into learning.
(History in Transit, p. 270)
"Grubbing," LaCapra claims, is Robert Darnton's phrase, and the use of single quotation marks is intended to have, presumably, ironic effect. Palmer's response seems on the mark
The use of the term"grubbing," in relation to archival work, was an oddly provocative metaphor to employ in closing his book. Placing the term within single quotation marks can signify a variety of things, and in this case, with no reference of any kind offered, the meaning was certainly ambiguous.
Palmer goes on to suggest that proper citation of the term might have lead to more interesting discussions of the relationship between archival and theoretical work, and that his review cannot take into account what the book itself does not contain. I say the same thing to students all the time: I grade what's"on the page" (emphasis in original). (Perhaps, in his defense, LaCapra thought the reference sufficiently well known to qualify as a cliché, requiring no more citation than Shakesperean or biblical allusions? Perhaps, but as Palmer points out, much of LaCapra's communique consists of references to material outside his book; LaCapra surely isn't such a canonical writer that his works require no citation?)
So, in addition to structuralist/post-structuralist fireworks, we have a sign of the continuing degradation of scholarly writing:"scare quotes" in the text of a published monograph and as an issue in review. I thought it was a bad habit of online writers: I had no idea it had penetrated so deep into the academy.