Musings on history (1): History and experience.

Oh, what is history?

As someone who aspires to write history, this happens to be a question of rather particular relevance. Indeed, it is also something I do even enjoy musing about, but I also do not possess the sufficient leisure of time to pursue to the extent I would like to. Which is unfortunate: after all, would it not be much more reassuring to confidently know what one does before one does it? But then, can there even be a definite answer to this initial question? When asking, “What is history?”, one can expect numerous answers.

Some might reply, “History is what happened in the past.” This, perhaps, overly common view does betray a certain naivety, since, in a sense, this equates history with the past. It also devaluates the historian’s craft to that of the task of mere description, expressing an idea of history as being a faithful reconstruction of the past: history as the mimetic representation of a long-gone reality. (As if that even were possible!)

Some might say, “History is the unfolding of God’s plan.” History as telos, with or without a god as the progenitor of its final cause, has a long tradition indeed, be it in religion or the great philosophies of history of the 19th century and before. Certainly, religion without some philosophy of history simply cannot function. Religion, when facing the sheer-impossible task to explain not just the here and now, but also the before and after, the origins of our existence and what happens to our existences once this life ends needs a view on history to explain the unfolding of time that every human being experiences, and to give meaning to it.

But let us change scale, perspective. Let us talk about me, or you: the single individual, the present me (or you). Think for a moment, who “are” you? Why are you “you”? What makes you “you”? A lot of things may come to mind: on the one hand, characteristics, on the other, memories. Things that happened in the past. These are experiences, experiences that have a meaning, that serve as explanation of what makes you “you.” But not everything a person ever experiences may be deemed important enough to make them what they are: does it matter that I had breakfast an hour ago? (Oh, to my stomach in this moment it certainly does, but I doubt I will remember when or what I had to eat today in a week from now. Not eating anything for a week, however, oh that I would remember!)

No, we are talking about happenings we deem important: tragic or happy experiences which changed us, which made us profoundly reflect about ourselves, our world, and our place in the world. Experiences which defined us, how we feel, think, what we like, and so on. But also experiences which change where we are situated in this world, even if the only reason for this change may be found in the institutions given to us by our society and culture: graduation, employment, marriage, childbirth. Being a student, or no longer a student. Being a manager, a musician, unemployed, being a husband or wife, a parent. For many of these experiences the institutions of our world give use ready-made frameworks of interpretations: we more or less know what a parent, what a manager is—or rather: at least we know what they are supposed to be like. We also know what it means to like heavy metal, or soccer, or what it means to smoke tobacco (or weed). And so on. All that is left is to find a convergence between ourselves and the framework, the institutionalized expectations.

For other things, we lack these frameworks: what if a war breaks out where we live, and the bombs start falling? When our children, or beloved, fall victim to unspeakable terror? Our lives, within mere moments, are in shambles. Socio-cultural institutions have not prepared us for this. After such a moment, can we still just be a manager, teacher, musician, parent? How can we be, when our workplace is no more, when our children might have been sacrificed to the predatory occurrence, the senseless violence that wills to deny all rational explanation? How do we cope with this? What does it mean? There can be no doubt that such an event bears significance, and demands making sense of. It imposes so totally a demand of making sense of it in our minds, lest we are in risk of losing all meaning in life.

Be it the mundane, regular experience of graduating school, or a dystopian vision of destruction—that, unfortunately, is all too real for many in this moment: it is this need to understand what they have in common. This is what makes them a historical experience, on a very personal level.

And this is why I reject the naïve idea of history as mere description of the past. Certainly, description is part of the task: without an object, there is nothing to make sense of to begin with, after all. But the more interesting questions are: Why did this happen? How does this change our world? To the person, or persons, who witnessed it, and to those who are told the story. And, in the end, to us.

This conceives of history as surrounding us, everywhere. History becomes a near-total entity: life is always historical. Even a mundane act at least bears the potentiality, under some circumstance, of being imbued with historical significance. And this is where history may have a parallel to the past as seen in religion: here, too, it serves to make sense of the world. But usually, religion offers a ready-made answer, located in the beyond of divine providence. The historian does not. Indeed, this train of thought may serve to recognize what demands an explanation (my breakfast today likely doesn’t, by any stretch of the imagination!). This makes it a useful heuristic tool, if we assume that people in the past faced the same predicament of making sense of their world as we are. Or if we only find out which activities carried with them a meaning, elevating the mundane to the profound.

But this personal view of a historical experience, how can it justify why we still need to understand the remote past? The remote past of a different culture that seemingly bears no direct significance to our everyday lives? Studying a culture from the other side of the globe, and events that precede our time by hundreds of years, this is a very real predicament. For me personally, it might be enough of a justification to state "because its interesting"—but, if I think beyond my selfish desires, I cannot help but feel this is not really satisfactory. And, although I do find merit in this approach to think about what history is through the notion of experience, I have not found a means to reconciliate both the desire and the rational demands of an external world guided by economic rationale.