Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial

By Gary Alan Fine

We take reputations for granted. Believing in the bad and the good natures of our notorious or illustrious forebears is part of our shared national heritage. Yet we are largely ignorant of how such reputations came to be, who was instrumental in creating them, and why. Even less have we considered how villains, just as much as heroes, have helped our society define its values.
Presenting essays on America's most reviled traitor, its worst president, and its most controversial literary ingénue (Benedict Arnold, Warren G. Harding, and Lolita), among others, sociologist Gary Alan Fine analyzes negative, contested, and subcultural reputations. Difficult Reputations offers eight compelling historical case studies as well as a theoretical introduction situating the complex roles in culture and history that negative reputations play.

Arguing the need for understanding real conditions that lead to proposed interpretations, as well as how reputations are given meaning over time, this book marks an important contribution to the sociologies of culture and knowledge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: Dec 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9780226230498

Gary Alan Fine

Gary Alan Fine is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. Among his books are Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work (California, 1994), Difficult Reputations (2000), and Manufacturing Tales: Sex and Money in Contemporary Legends (1992). Patricia A. Turner is Vice-Provost of Undergraduate Studies and Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of I Heard It Through the Grapevine: Rumor in African American Culture (California, 1993) and Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture (1994).

Book preview

Gary Alan Fine is professor of sociology at Northwestern University. He is the author or coauthor of eighteen books, including A Second Chicago School? The Development of a Postwar American Sociology and With the Boys: Little League Baseball and Preadolescent Culture.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2001 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2001

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN 978-0-226-23049-8 (e-book)

ISBN: 0-226-24940-9 (cloth)

ISBN: 0-226-24941-7 (paper)

Chapters 1–8 of this volume were previously published. Original publication information appears in the acknowledgments.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fine, Gary Alan

Difficult reputations / collective memories of the evil, inept, and controversial / Gary Alan Fine.

p.   cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-226-24940-9 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-226-24941-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. United States—Historiography.   2. Celebrities—United States—Biography—History and criticism.   3. Popular culture—United States—History.   4. Scandals—United States—History.   I. Title.

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973'.07'2—dc21

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

DIFFICULT Reputations

COLLECTIVE MEMORIES OF THE EVIL, INEPT, AND CONTROVERSIAL

Gary Alan Fine

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

CHICAGO AND LONDON

TO BARRY SCHWARTZ

A Lamp, A Mirror, A Mentor

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction. CONSTRUCTING DIFFICULT REPUTATIONS

One. BENEDICT ARNOLD AND THE COMMEMORATION OF TREASON

Two. WARREN HARDING AND THE MEMORY OF INCOMPETENCE

Three. JOHN BROWN AND THE LEGITIMATION OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE

Four. FATTY ARBUCKLE AND THE CREATION OF PUBLIC ATTENTION

Five. HENRY FORD AND THE MULTIPLE-AUDIENCE PROBLEM

Six. VLADIMIR NABOKOV, LOLITA, AND THE CREATION OF IMAGINARY SOCIAL RELATIONS

Seven. HERMAN MELVILLE AND THE DEMISE OF LITERARY REPUTATION

Eight. SINCLAIR LEWIS, MAIN STREET, AND COMMUNITY REPUTATION

Conclusion. DIFFICULT REPUTATIONS

NOTES

INDEX

Acknowledgments

The eight studies collected here emerged from a research program I conducted at the University of Georgia and, in one case, at the University of Minnesota. Five were coauthored with former graduate students, and for all of these, the students are properly first authors. The chapters dealing with Sinclair Lewis (written with Amy Campion) and Henry Ford (written with Adam King) were originally master’s theses. While I had input throughout the projects and revised the final products, Campion and King deserve credit for the data collection and analysis. The other three chapters, those dealing with Benedict Arnold (written with Lori Ducharme), Vladimir Nabokov (written with Todd Bayma), and Herman Melville (written with Jeanne Barker-Nunn), were collaborative projects for which my colleagues did much of the research and a significant portion of the writing. Although I was the constant throughout the five projects, I do not deserve primary credit for these chapters.

I owe much of the inspiration for this volume to Barry Schwartz. The prospect of becoming his colleague was in part what prompted me, in 1990, to move from the University of Minnesota to the University of Georgia. While we rarely think of full professors as students of each other, that metaphor in many ways aptly describes my relationship with Barry Schwartz. Barry’s research on George Washington inspired me, as a contrarian, to explain the counterpoint to Washington, Benedict Arnold—the Bizarro Washington, as it were. If Washington became a heroic embodiment of the American republic, what can we say of the interpretation of Benedict Arnold, whose goal was, in part, the defeat of the Revolution? If America had not gained independence, which was a definite possibility at the time, would Arnold’s courage now be taught to Americans as the salvation of the British Empire in the Americas in its time of grave peril?

More recently, Barry Schwartz’s careful research on the development of multiple images of Abraham Lincoln motivated me to attempt the same for Warren Harding. If it is important to understand how we learned to appreciate America’s greatest president, surely something can be gained from examining how Harding became America’s worst president.

For a time I jokingly labeled myself Barry Schwartz’s dark twin. However, over time, as a result of some provocative and stimulating conversations, we both realized that our perspectives on reputation are not identical. He is a much stronger believer in the unproblematic character of historical facts. I struggle with the reality of facts in the essays I write. As a cautious naturalist I grant the facts some legitimacy, but I simultaneously wish to argue as a good contrarian that each fact has its own provenance, grounded in interests and relations. Barry Schwartz examines the world through a Durkheimian lens, believing that reputations are grounded in historical particulars and, more significantly, that historical reputations work for societies. Following Geertz, he argues that history serves as both a mirror (reflecting society to itself) and as a lamp (illuminating how society should see itself). I go further as an interactionist and a social psychologist. Reputations are matters of contention—they are in play. I argue that the interests of reputational entrepreneurs and the outcomes of their battles over reputation are significant. Still, the following pages would not have been written without all that I have learned from my colleague. It is to him—one of the most profound sociologists of his generation—that I dedicate this volume.

Many individuals read and commented upon chapters of this book. In particular I wish to thank Joel Best, Peter Conrad, Norman Denzin, Wendy Espeland, Paul Finkelman, Rick Frederick, John Galliher, Wendy Griswold, Steven Hahn, Lori Holyfield, Thomas Hood, Sherryl Kleinman, Shawn Lay, Richard Lempert, John Lofland, Donald McCoy, Gale Miller, Robert Murray, Burl Noggle, Stuart Oderman, Peggy Russo, Michael Schudson, Neil Smelser, Robert Sutton, and Robin Wagner-Pacifici. I am grateful for invaluable help with library research to Jean Michel, M. K. Park, Brian Reder, Joy Scott, and Ryan White. Individual case studies were presented at seminars at Northwestern University, Indiana University, Stanford University, Texas A&M University, the University of Georgia, the University of California at Davis, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania. Parts of the manuscript were written while I was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California. I am also grateful for financial support provided by the National Science Foundation.

Chapters 1–8 of this volume were previously published in slightly different form as follows:

Chapter 1 appeared as The Construction of Nonpersonhood and Demonization: Commemorating the Traitorous Reputation of Benedict Arnold in Social Forces 73, no. 4 (June 1995): 1309–31. © The University of North Carolina Press.

Chapter 2 appeared as Reputational Entrepreneurs and the Memory of Incompetence: Melting Supporters, Partisan Warriors, and Images of President Harding in American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 5 (March 1996): 1159–93. © 1996 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

Chapter 3 appeared as John Brown’s Body: Elites, Heroic Embodiment, and the Legitimation of Political Violence in Social Problems 46, no. 2:1–25. © 1999 by The Society for the Study of Social Problems. Reprinted by permission.

Chapter 4 appeared as Scandal, Social Conditions, and the Creation of Public Attention: Fatty Arbuckle and the ‘Problem of Hollywood’ in Social Problems 44, no. 3 (August 1997): 297–323. © 1997 by The Society for the Study of Social Problems. Reprinted by permission.

Chapter 5 appeared as Ford on the Line: Business Leader Reputation and the Multiple Audience Problem in Journal of Management Inquiry 9, no. 1 (March 2000): 71–86. © 2000 by Sage Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Inc.

Chapter 6 appeared as Fictional Figures and Imaginary Relations: The Transformation of Lolita from Victim to Vixen in Studies in Symbolic Interaction 20:165–78. © 1996 by JAI Press Inc.

Chapter 7 is reprinted from Poetics 26, Jeanne Barke-Nunn and Gary Alan Fine, The Vortex of Creation: Literary Politics and the Demise of Herman Melville’s Reputation, 81–92, © 1998, with permission from Elsevier Science.

Chapter 8 appeared as "Main Street on Main Street: Community Identity and the Reputation of Sinclair Lewis" in The Sociological Quarterly 39, no. 1:79–99. © 1998 by The Midwest Sociological Society.

INTRODUCTION

Constructing Difficult Reputations

EVERY CONCEPTION OF THE PAST IS CONSTRUED FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE CONCERNS AND NEEDS OF THE PRESENT.

–GEORGE HERBERT MEAD

Remember O. J. Simpson? For much of 1994–1995 the American public was consumed with the question of what kind of person Mr. Simpson was. Americans—almost all of them complete strangers to O. J.—believed that they knew this man well enough to speculate on his motives, describe his character, ponder his future, and, not incidentally, freely call him by his nickname. Except for those who were totally isolated, every American had an impression of this man. His murder trial consumed enormous amounts of television time. O. J. was a text that became required reading as part of the popular culture canon. So dominant was his presence that some magazines described themselves jocularly as 100% O. J. Free to distinguish themselves from other magazines larded with O. J. stories.

Although O. J. Simpson was never reputed to be a great American or a significant historical figure, his image was for a time pervasive in American life, a considerable achievement for a man born into poverty. Of course, the trial of O. J. was so prominent in part because of his previously established reputation. This former athlete had already become a figure of commercial culture by the time of his ex-wife’s death. He was known for being known and used for his ability to cause others to identify with his sponsors. Consumers admired him in large part simply because they liked him.

During the trial, O. J. became a hero, a villain, a saint, a sinner, and an average man caught in a web of troubles. This everyman wrote a bestseller simply by answering letters from the public, even though few believed that the answers were entirely to be trusted or that they were authored by him alone. Even today O. J.’s reputation is such that he flickers in and out of public consciousness whenever he makes news.

The following chapters focus on figures whose presence was, for the most part, more weighty than that of Mr. Simpson. They address the ways by which reputations are created and how people deal with reputations that turn sour or become contested by groups with powerful agendas. The question of whether O. J. will become part of historical memory is open. Americans do recall Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper, the Boston Strangler, and Leopold and Loeb. That O. J. had a potent reputation that mattered for a time, there can be no doubt. Through his reputation Americans were able to discuss race, spousal abuse, police misconduct, legal strategy, biochemical evidence, and other topics far removed from the game of football.

It is often suggested that celebrity, grounded in systems and institutions of publicity, is a feature unique to our age (Gamson 1994; Harris 1994), a claim made plausible by the public attention to the Simpson trial. Yet, before embracing this claim that public reputations are a peculiarly modern (or postmodern) phenomenon, caution is needed. Reputational discourse of the type discussed here may not occur equally in all societies, but rarely is it entirely absent. Certainly media frenzy depends on a desire for sensation (Altick 1986; Langum 1994) and on an economic structure and communication technology that can produce information and focus public attention (Schudson 1978). These are qualities that Smelser (1962) refers to as structural conduciveness.

In some measure, then, the desire for information about famous others is more dramatically evident today than ever before. Without modern economic and technological structures, collective discussion of reputation by those outside of the interactional sphere of the person in question would be limited. Yet in all human societies people create hierarchies that connect to issues of status, and in all complex societies, reputation precedes and follows interaction with important and consequential figures. Reputation becomes a form of social capital or debt that society uses to respond to individuals and that individuals can build upon or squander according to their abilities and choices.

By reputation I mean a socially recognized persona: an organizing principle by which the actions of a person (or an organization that is thought of as a person) can be linked together. On one level a reputation constitutes a moral gestalt that is linked to a person—an organizing principle for person perception.¹ However, there is something more to reputation than this social psychological model: reputations are collective representations enacted in relationships. A reputation is not the opinion that one individual forms of another; rather, it is a shared, established image. Reputations are embedded within social relations, and as a consequence, reputation is connected to the forms of communication embedded within a community.

Social identification and reputation operate in several domains: personal, mass-mediated, organizational, and historical. Identification and reputation begin within circles of personal intimates (Sherif and Sherif 1964; McFeat 1974), then they spread outward. First, people create and share the reputations of those who exist within their social circle—friends and consorts. Personal reputations are of immediate consequence, because the actions of those in our social world have the potential to shape directly our lives and the outcomes of our interactions. We are concerned with the repute in which we are held by others because of the options that reputations open and close, and because these reputations allow us to conceive of our selves in particular ways (Snow and Anderson 1987; Cooley 1909); the identities that we are given channel the identities that we can select (Schlenker 1980). Further, these personal reputations directly affect how we come to see ourselves. They are one reason why we attempt to shape our behavior when we are with those whose opinions matter to us. Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi (1998) emphasizes this point in explaining the importance of high school reunions for the identities of those who attend. People engage in forms of self-presentation and impression management to modify their images in the eyes of others. Our personal reputation matters. No wonder that the concept of that status has been one of the central building blocks of sociology from Max Weber on—whether personal standing or group position is at issue. Status is a powerful resource that can be employed in achieving the rewards one desires.

Second, in any media-saturated society a large and powerful domain of public discourse operates. The media help to determine whom we should know about and care about. This space is populated both by individuals who are famous by virtue of their formal roles (e.g., political leaders) and by celebrities, figures who are deemed worthy of shared attention by virtue of their prominence in the central institutions of society (Boorstin 1964; Meyrowitz 1985). Celebrities have a discursive power, both as voices and as images (Marshall 1997:x). Even if we recognize the thinness of our knowledge of these figures, their celebrity serves to connect us to each other and provides us with an unthreatening space to converse about vital social matters (Gamson 1994:196; Braudy 1986:9). In this domain we felt comfortable knowing O. J., just as we know Janet Reno, Michael Jordan, and David Letterman and can speculate on their motives. There is only one Hillary, Roseanne, or Tiger. Indeed, when we are talking about specific institutional arenas, this casual naming is still more common: in the world of American sports there is only one Michael, and on TV, only one Jay. The recent discussion of the sexual appetites of President Clinton and of whether he suffers from a sexual addiction is part of the same personalizing of great men, as is the debate over whether these intimacies matter when it comes to his performance with regard to affairs of state. The scandals surrounding such clergy as Father Coughlin, Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggart are similar cases. These discussions are a function of choices of the media, whose emphasis on celebrity exemplifies what Daniel Boorstin (1961) has labeled the graphic revolution. Boorstin refers to the increase of visual displays of public figures that emphasize their immediacy and our confidence in reading their motivations.

The media have made the determination—based, to be sure, on their estimates of news-consumption preferences—that certain individuals are notable (Levin and Arluke 1987; Braudy 1986), that these individuals are topics of conversation among audiences who have never met them, but who consider them known. Subsequent media coverage results in these individuals becoming the focus of interactions among strangers: strangers to them and often strangers to each other. We feel that we have the right to judge these public figures, even though we are not familiar with them personally, and even though our knowledge has been gathered secondhand. We engage with them through parasocial interaction (Caughey 1984; Fine 1977), whether these individuals are film stars, terrorists, presidents, or fictional characters. They enter into our personal universe, where we respond to them as if they were part of our personal circle and as if we knew their motivations and values.

Third, not only individuals have reputations. We live in an organizational society, and organizations develop reputations that influence their effectiveness (Forbrum 1996; Galaskiewicz 1995). Even if they are not always known to the wider public, CEOs come to characterize their companies in the business community (Chen and Meindl 1991). At times the public recognition of what is seen as a corporate culture shapes a corporate image (Dutton and Dukerich 1991; Deal and Kennedy 1982). What we know of Apple, Disney, General Motors, and Time-Warner parallels in important ways what we know of the persons widely associated with those organizations. The dramatic growth of the public relations profession since the 1920s testifies to the need for reputation specialists to shape organizational images. The press, with its focus on reputation and moral evaluation, reflects this pervasive concern with how organizations rate.² In a country where a corporation is legally a person, the existence of corporate reputations that mirror celebrity reputations should not be surprising.

Finally, history serves as a more formal and sedimented version of this process of establishing reputations. Members of a society learn of the reputations of others through institutionally sanctioned knowledge. The building blocks of this collective memory are facts—ostensibly unquestioned claims about the past. History represents settled cultural discourse (Swidler 1986) about the past; experts determine what is important for citizens to know if they are to be culturally literate (Hirsch 1987). This knowledge is distributed through the social institutions of the school and the media. It is significant that in many school districts students are exposed to American history at three points: fifth grade, eighth grade, and eleventh grade. Students in each grade are taught a national narrative larded with facts that they should be able to understand and that provide lessons necessary for citizenship. History consists of the narratives as taught; collective memory involves how these narratives are recalled.

When history is too contested by rivalrous parties, schools and other institutions simply ignore it or attempt to pacify it (Wallace 1996). This explains why, by institutional design, Alabama students learn so little about the Civil War (Horwitz 1998). Much historical knowledge is a presentation and sorting of the reputations of great men (and, now, a few great women) according to those in control (Loewen 1995).

Citizens do not use history in the same way that they rely upon reading, writing, and arithmetic. Knowledge of history is not a technical skill but a moral aptitude necessary for public involvement. In one sense, a person without historical knowledge can function well in social domains, yet this individual would not really belong to the polity. Even if, like many revolutionaries and progressives, they choose not to embrace the history that they are taught, people should at least be aware of what they are rejecting.³ As a result of exposure to history, people are expected to learn lessons about character and motive, and justifications for the legitimacy of the nation-state and associated institutions. Positive figures should be emulated (we engage in hero worship of our role models), and negative figures provide cautionary tales (Schudson 1992; Maza 1996)—a feature that reputations share with narrative instruction (Darnton 1984).

Images of public figures are used in an attempt to teach citizens how they should think about the issues that confront them. People share memory by virtue of what they have been taught about others, and by what this information is supposed to mean. While, in practice, training in history is hardly a perfect educational enterprise and individuals will learn different lessons, one goal of education in history is to provide a moral grounding for society. History is legitimated by its cultural resonance and contemporary relevance (Yoder 1997). The real goal of a history lesson is not to have students learn the past, but to enable them to shape the present, to avoid fulfilling the gloomy cliché—if we do not know history, we are doomed to repeat it. As sociologist Charles Horton Cooley (1964:342) asserts, Fame may or may not represent what men were, but it always represents what humanity needs for them to have been.

I focus on historical-reputation building, which is similar to, yet distinct from, the reputations of organizations and personal associates, and which connects in places with the cultural understanding of celebrities. While the scope of public interest in historical reputations is wider and deeper than is true for individual reputations, the rationale for interest is similar. Admittedly, in the latter case individuals have the power to shape their own reputations, but even historical figures are burnished or tarnished by interested others.

WHY HISTORICAL REPUTATIONS MATTER

When we recall the historical past, we often highlight individuals. Historical writing has traditionally centered on accounts of the great and the mighty. Our chronicles, particularly those by which we instruct our young, often appear to be nothing more than linked biographies. We find it easy to think about the past by focusing on the lives of people whom we see as having created events; history becomes a personalistic narrative dripping with agency. While Americans from Ralph Waldo Emerson on (Schwartz 1985) have responded to the demands of democratic ideology in an egalitarian society by being ambivalent about magnifying the power of heroic figures, there are good reasons for our emphasis on individuals. Focusing on the individual seems right within a society that prizes individualism, and, conversely, emphasizing the individual in historial narratives helps to legitimate individualism. Further, narrative accounts help make the story of structural trends compelling and memorable.

In practice, narrative history is, in considerable measure, biographical history. Indeed, only in the past few decades have professional historians turned from the great man theory of history. Now they focus instead on social history—history from the perspective of the average citizen—and examine institutional and cultural forces that transcend individual action, recognizing that events will not happen without social forces and collective action.

When we focus on a specific individual, that person serves as a synecdoche; he or she stands for a historical period and set of events. How can we think about the American Revolution without thinking of the profound influence of those figures who created it: first George Washington (the father of the country), then Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Sam and John Adams, Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton (collectively labeled the founding fathers), and finally Betsy Ross, and, of course, Benedict Arnold. Likewise, to think of the Civil War is to recall Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. Woodrow Wilson and Black Jack Pershing represent World War I, and Lyndon Johnson stands for the war in Vietnam. We tell stories about these people and memorialize the heroic among them in stone and marble (Savage 1997; Levinson 1998).

We come to know historical figures through their reputations. A reputation is a shorthand way of conceptualizing a person, and it is a powerful metaphor for thinking about a period or set of events. Reputations are, in the words of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1962), good to think. As a consequence, the study of reputations is important for any historical analysis of how memories are shared within a population. It is through stories about representative persons—who are typical in their atypicality—that societies define themselves (Billig 1992). Nations unite through remembrance, through sedimented narratives, and through tradition (Anderson 1983). Battles over what is recalled and commemorated constitute the politics of memory (Scott 1996; Wallace 1996; Zerubavel 1997).

Several models help explain how we evaluate historical others: approaches that I label the objective, the functional, and the constructed. Each model powerfully explains features of the creation of reputations, but none provides a full explanation.

The objective explanation comes naturally to those who assume a transparent world: a world of facts. Individuals and groups have reputations achieved by virtue of their actions. We judge them by the fruits of their labor and assume that these fruits can be easily evaluated. Some people are great because of their great actions—actions of which the society and historians are aware. Truth is a fundamental building block of reputation. History, however we might attempt to shape it, is not totally under our control. Widely recognized and recorded events have occurred, and these events are filtered through a lens of shared values. History is not bunk, or at least not entirely bunk. Likewise the reputation and status that we accord people are grounded in our interpretation of their actions—behaviors with contours about which there is typically little doubt. Reality, while always influenced by interpretive standards, is still present, and always obdurate in channeling interpretations.

The second model postulates the creation of reputation in response to the functional needs of society. Certain roles must be filled in a social system. Someone must serve as a leader, and although leadership roles can be formulated in various ways, some type of status hierarchy is important for organizing the routines of social structures. These leaders will be given reputations that legitimate their positions. Likewise, the reputations of villains and deviants help to establish the boundaries of society. These status hierarchies are expected, if not universal, features of group life. Biological and demographic differences, while not objective, may be functional for creating predictability, even if the choice about which distinctions are considered central varies from group to group.

The final model sees reputation as socially constructed, not entirely grounded in objective reality or in the functional needs of groups. In this view, reputations are a result of the socio-political motives of groups that gain resources, power, or prestige by the establishment of reputations. History, then, is constructed through the establishment of reputations of central narrative figures. To this end, entrepreneurs engaging in the politics of memory promote, protect, and defend their interests—interests that they may sincerely define as consistent with those of society at large.

The existence of a set of texts that we label history presumes some measure of consensus. Without considerable agreement on the meaning of events, a social system can have no past. Given the focus on individuals as the agents of social change, members of a society must concur on how to think about actors who are deemed significant. Obviously some contention is common in a heterogeneous society, but if the dispute is too sharp people find it difficult to talk and think about the past and present. Continuity and discontinuity must remain in balance. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the problem of Christopher Columbus and his discovery of America (Zerubavel 1992). The five-hundredth anniversary of the first voyage of Columbus promised to be a major celebration of the founding of the United States the way that the four-hundredth had been. But prior to the ceremonies a loud debate erupted about the character, actions, and reputation of Columbus. Critics asserted that his voyages of discovery were accompanied by acts of brutality and genocide. Many claimed that the voyages were unworthy of collective celebration. The outcry was sufficiently vigorous that governmental and business entities downplayed the commemoration (a decision that was particularly striking when contrasted to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago). The absence of consensus on Columbus’s reputation made any large-scale, collective commemoration problematic. Whereas Lincoln and Washington bring Americans together, Columbus pulls citizens apart. Columbus’s voyages are seen as offensive to Native Americans, rather than legitimating for Hispanic Americans. Columbus is seen as Italian more than his voyages are seen as Spanish.

Émile Durkheim and his followers argue that societies emphasize historical figures who represent their ideals. Even if societies are never as cohesive as the theory asserts, some common glue does exist. In general, citizens focus on the figures they believe best exemplify their strengths as a people and as a nation. Durkheim was correct: commemoration reflects the desire to strengthen the social community’s allegiance to a set of ideals, drawing boundaries against those who reject and undercut those ideals. When Americans think about politicians, most recall George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy. In the arts, many Americans revere Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, James Whistler, Aaron Copland, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway. Other figures in our pantheon include Martin Luther King, Susan B. Anthony, Daniel Webster, and Frederick Douglass. These are figures whose reputations have become solidified as almost entirely positive. While each of these figures was controversial in his or her lifetime, sometimes reviled by contemporaries, their glory and stature is largely uncontroversial today. It is not that these figures can no longer be attacked by revisionists. Conor Cruise O’Brien’s book-length polemic on Thomas Jefferson, The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution 1785–1800 (1996), is a recent example in this genre. It is precisely the fact that O’Brien is attacking one of America’s traditionally revered heroes that gives the volume power and public notice. A volume on the sins of James Monroe would have far less of a claim on public attention. Our heroic figures have settled comfortably into collective memory, and only an intellectual stink-bomb thrower would dare attack these monuments. Historians routinely take up the cudgel of revisionism, but only to reassess consequential historical figures or periods about which a solid consensus has emerged.

DIFFICULT REPUTATIONS

As the example of Columbus reminds us, not all of the figures we recall have a halo or a rosy glow. Not surprisingly, scholars who have examined the development of reputations and collective memory have generally examined figures who are treated as heroic or as moral exemplars. In contrast, my concern is not with those who have stable and positive reputations, but with people whose reputations have not been solidified in such complimentary terms: those figures who are tarnished with what I label difficult reputations. The chapters in this volume are concerned with these controversial figures. The eight case studies do not by themselves make for an intellectually coherent argument; my task in this introduction is to sketch what a broader approach to the analysis of difficult reputations might entail.

Three Types of Difficult Reputations

Difficult reputations can be of several kinds. I address three: negative reputations, contested reputations, and subcultural reputations. The first—and perhaps the most obvious—type is the consensually held reputation that attributes negative traits or characteristics to an individual, and implicitly to the historical matters that the individual represents. Surely the most dramatic exemplar of this category of reputation is that of Adolf Hitler (Fine 1998). Hitler’s reputation is such that it is almost impossible to say anything positive about Der Fuhrer without one’s own moral standing being called into question.⁴ His stigma is contagious. Hitler is the tar baby of history. To suggest that Hitler’s agricultural policy or personal hygiene was worthy of emulation might lead others to worry about the character of the speaker. Those who question the existence of the Holocaust, and thus practice deviant history, are not merely pronounced nutty (the common fate of those who promote deviant science [Gieryn 1983]), but are considered profoundly immoral and dangerous. In this volume I do not consider the stigmatizing quality of Hitler’s reputation, but Benedict Arnold, America’s great traitor, surely has a solidified negative reputation. Negative reputations emerge when historical figures are perceived to have violated canonical values of society. President Warren Harding, not an evil figure like Benedict Arnold or Adolf Hitler, was defined as being ignorant, a poor judge of character, and unconcerned about corruption.

A second class of difficult reputations involves individuals with contested reputations. Christopher Columbus is one such example. Contested reputations are in the process of being formed (or in the case of Columbus, re-formed). Contested reputations are reputations that are in play. When politicians leave office, their reputations are contested as other political actors attempt to solidify the reputation in ways that yield partisan benefit. Among the figures covered in this volume, John Brown fits this category well. In the aftermath of Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, considerable controversy emerged as to how Brown and his actions should be perceived. As Southerners left the reputational field through secession, the contestation diminished, but for a period of time it mattered how Americans thought about John Brown.

Some difficult reputations are solidified differently by conflicting subcultural groups. Some individuals have more than one reputation. In some cases the reputation is not in active dispute, but subcultures view the individual differently. Richard Nixon is a profound example. Nixon’s reputation, more than is true for most presidents, is a function of the party affiliation of the judge. Republicans praise Nixon far more than Democrats do. This does not apply to the same degree to Eisenhower, Harding, or Theodore Roosevelt, or to John Kennedy with the parties reversed. Malcolm