That’s another pet peeve of mine. No one can be an effective advocate for social change without becoming some kind of historian. Learning about the past and synthesizing a heartfelt opinion about that story. It’s part of every activist’s practice.
So the elitism surrounding literary history, and who’s an expert and why their opinions matter more than your or mine- that conveniently sidesteps the enormous social privilege typically enjoyed by a published expert in history.
Which of course is not to say there’s not a lot of really awful history being regurgitated by amateurs who misquote experts… That’s a real problem. But it can’t be solved by appeals to authority.
As a professional historian, I’m always happy to see people taking an interest in writing their own histories, especially from communities that have bee ignored in our historical narratives.
And I don’t think “historian” is just defined by having a phd, it’s by those doing the actual work of reconstructing the past and writing about it. Plenty of excellent historians don’t have phds.
Which isn’t what I did. Notice I did not say “phds” or professors of history at elite universities". I said ACTUAL historians which are not defined by one’s degree or by one’s job. It’s by what you do to help others understand the past.
maybe “historian” isn’t the right word to use, then? I was trying to critique the narrative -typically a military one, where, since a lot of good kids died taking that hill, there must then be some kind of sacred significance to what they did. Regardless of what a bad idea it was to go sending kids to that hill in the first place.
Maybe a properly trained and vetted historian knows better than to make that kind of argument. My tendency is to chalk that up to political differences, rather than to risk a “no true scottsman” fallacy.
I’ve got mad respect for the kind of work you do- f I qualified my gripe by accusing “vernacular historians” of this sin, would that be more clear?
One thing about the Twitter is it always reveals the level of sympathy journalists extend - and expect the rest of the country to extend - to people they broadly consider to be in their club.
As a Wall Street Exec who gets 10 years for stealing all the pensions (hey it could happen) is not the poster child for sentencing reform, I don’t think a rage-fueled intoxicated accused wife beating asshole with a giant gun collection who gets carted away after possibly expressing suicidal thoughts is the appropriate guy to inspire a sudden public concern for mental illness sufferers. As they say in other contexts, he was no angel.
Sure, but to be fair, this happened here (FL), so I’m going by those standards?
Great man history that naturalized nation-states and white supremacy.
They tend to, though we all have our foibles. History is still a pretty conservative field compared to other academics fields in the humanities/social sciences/etc.
I think that depends on what you mean by vernacular?
Anyway, put this in the ArseBook page but here is the C4 piece on voter discouragement in the 2016 election. I don’t know if this piece of shit was responsible:
I would have to guess that Brad above was a long way from the top of the chain in voter suppression. Following Cambridge Analytica money is the real deal.
I think there is more on CA later, this is nothing illegal. It is however brazenly evil.
Though the CA stuff is, or a lot of it anyway, legal in the US. Which is why Facebook is prima facie illegal in Europe. They are “threatening” to pull out of Europe at the moment. Don’t tease us Zuck! Get the fuck out!
It’s even dumber than usual because he was a campaign manager. It was precisely those political opponents that kept him in a job and(until El Presidente’s ego demanded sacrifice) contributed to the general impression that he was punching above his weight at what was a relatively difficult exercise.
