The Political Uses of History

Abstract

The study of history enables us to explore the ways in which prevailing relations of power are asserted, imposed, challenged, and modified (if not entirely displaced). This, in turn, lets us think the relationship of past, present, and future as a problem to explore, and not as a fixed set of factual truths, moving in a singular, ever improving, continuous line of development. I want to use my definition of history – as the study of contested relations of power – to examine the ways in which, in our current moment, “history” functions rhetorically for political ends. Interestingly, although there are different meanings of “history” at play, they all rely on variations of what I have termed the conventional disciplinary approach. An exploration of the popular uses of this conception of history reveals (among other things) the extent to which politics is inseparable from the workings of the discipline itself.