Revisionism and Recent History

In popular parlance, “revisionist” tends to be an undesirable label. It’s usually applied to someone who changes their story, or who ignores the evidence. Yet historical revisionism is really just the work that we go about doing every day in making sense of the past. Given that any sort of empirical knowledge only has a scientific certainty, the task of revision is a methodological necessity. We must revisit what we know about how things are in order to reassess our reasons for knowing and re-ground our certainty based upon more recent evidence, consideration, or perspective.

The most pronounced revisions to historical knowledge end up being seismic shifts in our understanding of the world. The work of Foucault, Kant, Lyotard, or Barth may not be as widely known, but they are analogous to the shifts in physics represented by a Newton or an Einstein. Generations of common sense and assumption were overturned by their revisions, and we live quite differently as a result. Revisionist history may allow us to better understand the reasons why our Constitution was written, or may uncover atrocities committed within our borders against Native Americans, or Japanese Americans. It may change our views about medieval Europe or classical Rome, or our understanding of how global politics has been affected by colonialism.

These are all rather distant examples. While they have serious implications for public understanding, much of the work behind them is not public, but professional, private, and quiet. The public tends to entertain only a few current or recent events at any given time; after a while things are either forgotten or filed away with more distant histories. During this brief window of time, however, historical revisionism is no less at work. In many ways revision of recent history is what should concern us the most, as the general impression of an event as established by those who remember its occurrence will form the basis of future opinion about it.

When the conflict between Russia and Georgia broke out this past summer, where did you first find out about it? CNN.com? A Russian news station? A political blog? When you didn’t know the first thing about Tskhinvali, did you Wikipedia it? All of these sources of information might vary widely based on ideological commitment, and all of them can be revised and republished in minutes. Sometimes such revision is acknowledged and sometimes it’s just out there, perhaps a minute before or a minute after you read or watch it.

The benefits of revisions of recent history have to do with the immediacy of the material, and communication technologies afford us the ability to increase the immediacy on many different fronts, by way of access to data, speed of distribution, etc. It’s the reason why Daniel and I were able to comment last week on wars, countries, and enemies that we’ve never seen before. The cost of this immediacy, on the other hand, is the lack of gatekeeping that is built into it. I don’t need an economics degree to access information about the current stimulus package. All I need to do is navigate a google search towards those think tanks with which I most agree, and read their interpretation of the numbers. When I read about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there are a limited number of people who are commenting from experience about the region and its politics. There are many more available for comment, however, who speak second- or third-hand, or who speak based upon preconceived notions of who holds divine right to the land.

This is not to be entirely cynical about the prospects of revisionist accounts of recent events. We wouldn’t be commenting publicly if we didn’t think that reasoned correction and argument could get to the bottom of a number of issues and problems that surround us. This is to say, however, that there are significant pitfalls present in the revising of historical accounts of recent events. This is not a reason to leave off our attempts, but rather to renew them with more vigor. Yet in doing so we must remind ourselves of what technological or ideological advances have contributed to our ability to revise our thought on matters in the rather democratic fashion that blogs provide.