What is history?
What is the nature of the past? How can we investigate it? Is it possible to obtain insights into the absolute essence of history?
These preliminary questions are meant to get the student of history into the right mindset when approaching earlier times than our own.
Personally, I believe that an absolute knowledge of history, or the prospect of reaching the end of history itself, are equally implausible.
Indeed, a straight-cut answer is not just unlikely – it would actually be restrictive in the sense that it would preclude the articulation of novel insights into and helpful notions about the past.
I will concentrate on the latter approach, namely to find some ideas that can help us think critically about the past. A full-fledged theoretical system is not my end goal, but rather to identify some key notions.
Firstly, there are a number of parameters that will play their part in fleshing out an incisive and galvanizing historical theory: e.g. asking the right questions, the process of evaluation, analysis, free pondering, critical and flexible thinking (what if A is B, or vice versa) and many others.
Secondly, it is important to remember how the transmission problematic is an integral part of history. The historical record would not be what it is had it not been for the various chronicles, clay tablets, letters, and landmark Supreme Court rulings that have been passed down to us.
These artifacts of history have left their mark past and present by forming a part of our collective memory – it has been encoded into our consciousness by sociocultural institutions and practices in society. One cannot root them out completely, because they have become as ingrained in us as folklore, stereotypes, and urban legends.
Our understanding of history is thus invariably shaped by bias: what we believe to be true, what others deem important, and what the prevailing culture and or elite has foisted upon us. As oblivious and contingent as these names, dates, and events may seem to us, they remain so entrenched into the fabric of society, the public sphere, and the sociopolitical order that they cannot be ignored.
In our increasingly polarized world, the subjective comes to constitute objectivity in an ever greater degree: we have seen how unabashedly Western governments and political parties defend their liberal democratic viewpoints as essentially true; they no longer hide behind decorum or convenient relativism, a polite acceptance of differing values and politics behind the scenes.
For example, the Trump Administration, whose reactionary and conservative political stance, with its emphasis on appealing to Anglo-American identity, Bibles and guns and the like are presented as if they were essentialist American values. The sociopolitical world has become so transparent that everyday people are no longer terrified about rumours that the FBI is spying on your mobile phone; people know and accept this passively, after which they continue to move along as mindless iPhone consumers.
The most striking fact is that the former presidential administration did not even try to sugarcoat their approach any bit, but were openly harsh, principled-as-truth, and corrupt. This transparency masquerades as sincerity, i.e. a genuine striving to make America great again, but it only shows how politicians in the ‘Trump Age’ could act as they wished to without any instantiation of brute force or softening biopower, and without any regard for the consequences: corruption, mass surveillance, secret dealings, debauchery, and the worst of excesses can happen, as they continue to inform the new normality, which ceases to have shock value when the average voter becomes increasingly dumbed-down, desensitized, and docile.
The average Joe will continue to keep up with the Joneses, watch Netflix, and superficially discuss news, current events, and other important issues, but this will not inspire him to advocate and fight for real change – he will still remain a useful news junkie idiot for the real powerbrokers.
I went off on a tangent there, but concrete analogies are essential when we want to discuss the nature of history and how to approach related epistemological questions. Stay tuned for later reflections!
