Truth and Historians

 I take Lies, Damn Lies, and…Primary Sources? - JSTOR Daily as the basis for today's homily.

Historians have trust issues—and they should. When scholars evaluate texts, art, material objects, and oral histories from the past, they’re diving into deeply personal and inherently human sources. And humans lie all the time. As professionals, we understand that no single source stands alone as a voice of authority. The research process requires contextualization, layering, and a nuanced understanding of interpersonal dynamics. In my classroom, this is a problem.

Trust issues dominated my life. While in prison, I trekked into the past of my psyche, and I came to an end at my parents' divorce. I had thought myself long past this trauma, only to find that I had lived thinking every relationship would end. My great-uncle's death I took very badly; I felt betrayed by his dying. I thought I - a 6-year-old -should have died instead of an 81-year-old man. There is probably where I first found myself not wanting a long life, or expected to live very long. Now, that I have lived far longer than I care for having done, all see is a very poor basis for a life.

I should have followed my instincts and go on to be a professor of history. It is so poorly taught - it forgets humanity. But not always:

Understanding documents is much harder when students don’t see historical actors as people with actual lives and personalities. Failure to see the humanity in a source means students might miss when a law is written to exact revenge, when a diary is embellishing an event, or when a preacher’s sermon has a joke in it. However, these types of sources exist everywhere. Just like today, people in the past stretched the truth on personal documents because they knew those documents could later be used to support claims in court or to verify property ownership for taxation. Even in our most personal diaries and letters, humans decontextualize and exaggerate to save face. A historian’s job is to see people for who they are—humans.

Those of you think history is concrete, that the truth drops into one's hands like an overripe apple, do read the full article.

Meanwhile, I need to remind myself that I am alive, and my honesty must be foremost in my writing, even if good taste and monitoring software restrain me from using certain words.

sch 7/20