In my focus on the "facts and documents" end of historic research, I tend to have little patience for discussions of "theories about theories" far removed from a consideration of the lives and experiences of actual people in history. That doesn't mean that I don't value them. The study of history is far from an objective, value-neutral practice, and if we don't examine and address the subjective, value-infused context in which history is done, we end up accepting those contexts as "fact" when they are far from any such thing. Freeman's discussion here brings exactly that sort of challenge to historic theory, using the imagery of a religious transformative experience as metaphor. I've ended up enjoying reading and thinking about these theoretical articles a lot more than I expected to. And if any of you find yourselves intrigued by the summaries of them that I'm presenting here, you might enjoy reading the collection itself as well.
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