The Problem we seem to be confronting is the issue of academic bigamy: can
a scholar marry two disciplines at the same time.  Jack Williams seems to say
yes and goes so far as to criticize those who would not climb into both
matrimonial beds so to speak: "paying someone to make love for you."  He
clearly articulates the case for bridging the obtacles between history and
archealogy and invokes an Annales historian.  The Annales "school", it
should be remembered, called for a breaking down of the barriers between
disciplines like so many backyard fences.  Williams also seems to make the
Annales case for "problem oriented" history, and the use of whatever
techniques suit the problem.
 
However, Patrick O'Bannon and Clarke Harrison raise questions that cast
doubt on the prospect of a happy joining.  If I read this right, (and if this
historiographic essay isn't a dead giveaway, I'm a historian) both O'Bannon
and Clarke are coming from a postmodern perspective which would argue that
our problems of perspective are insurmountable.  We are condemned to be
"other" to one another.
 
Whether one accepts this school or not, it raises another question that
itself casts doubt on the enterprise: is it possible to keep up in two
fields in an adequate way?  I do not have an answer to this.  I suspect that
it is possible, but very, very hard.  What I see more often than not is
cross over borrowing rather than real interdisciplinary conjunction.  As for
myself, my own interdisciplinary instincts are an obstacle in itself to
a real marraige to archaeology, since it must compete with economics,
literary theory, and an awarness of the important schools, Marxism, pomo,
Feminism and other gender studies.  All of which is merely suplimentary to
my real interest, adminsistrative and institutional history of the
eighteenth century.  Time being the one resource I can't make more of,
the idea of cooperating with Spanish reading colleague seems more like
a neccesary evil rather than a cardinal sin.  Of course the problem will
determine the methods.
 
Kenneth Gauck
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