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necessary to ask how we can achieve a more authentic understanding, why we should
dredge up the "real" past of political science, and to whom this task should fall.
Some political scientists are puzzled by what seems to be a growing interest in
the details of the history of the field, and a few even question the idea that, at least for
practitioners, exploring the past of the discipline is a valid or relevant undertaking. It
does not seem, in any obvious way, to belong to the normal business of mainstream
political science, and although much of the recent work on the history of political
science has been conducted by political theorists, such research does not attract many
who identify with the current conversations that define that increasingly independent
subfield. Although theorists of a postmodernist persuasion are much attached to the
general idea of recovering voices from our discursive past that have been forgotten or
silenced, they have, in general, not found the progenitors of mainstream political
science sufficiently romantic. It may seem, then, that most political scientists are not
interested in history, even their own, and that political theorists are not interested in
political science. The irony, however, is that the past of mainstream political science is
also the past of academic political theory, but the intellectual separation between them,
subsequent to the 1960s, has often resulted in the denial, on the part of both, that there
is any familial connection. Like contemporary instances of reluctance to use DNA,
many worry about discovering their actual ancestry and genetic inheritance. Renewed
interest in the history of political science may, however, in some small measure
contribute to reestablishing contact between these academic enclaves, since, despite a
somewhat careless or callous attitude toward their history, images of the past are a
significant part of the intellectual and professional identity of both camps.
Convention