Memory, Archives, History: The Intellectual Legacies of Carter J. Eckert

Abstract This memorial article extends conventional tributes to Carter Eckert’s contributions to Korean history and Korean Studies, using personal, analogical, and multidisciplinary perspectives to examine the empirical foundations and analytical tendencies of his scholarship. Engaging with Eckert’s two touchstone books, this essay examines his drive for archival research, stemming from an awareness that he was not “a man who knew too much,” but rather “a man who knew he did not know too much.” This intellectual curiosity and humility produced significant empirical contributions and deep engagement with works in Korean and Japanese. For methodology and analysis, his implicit explanations and inductive approach meant the linkages between his data and arguments were occasionally opaque, leading to varied readings of his works. The richness of Eckert’s empirical scholarship, however, is a vital lodestar magnifying the complexities of historical inquiry and memory, especially amid Fordist academic production and large language-model-generated data. Ultimately, this essay encourages an appreciation of Eckert’s intellectual legacy through his awareness of the limits of his knowledge, rather than the usual metrics of scholarly accomplishment and institution-building.