Everyone knows, but no one is talking...

Controversy:

[ˈkäntrəˌvərsē]

 

NOUN

1. disagreement, typically when prolonged, public, and heated

 

 

His·to·ry

[ˈhist(ə)rē]

NOUN

1. the study of past events, particularly in human affairs

   • the past considered as a whole:
2. the whole series of past events connected with someone or something

   • an eventful past:
   • a past characterized by a particular thing:
3. a continuous, typically chronological, record of important or public events or of a particular trend or institution

 Truth

[tro͞oTH]

 

NOUN

1. the quality or state of being true

 

 

 

Controversy. History. Truth.

 

What do these three words have in common? Go on. Take a moment. Look at them. Think about it.

 

What do they have in common?

 

Ready for it?

Nothing... And everything.

 

 

 

This week in class we studied the controversy of history and the historians role. I missed it, at first. I thought, these two themes (corporate historians, historical sites and race relations, and digital archives) have nothing in common. We're focusing on three different, but valid points.

 

Yet, when I mixed up the articles, read them out of "order." It hit me: the controversy of everything. How did I miss that? 

 

History is filled with controversy. Historical decisions such as the Emancipation Proclamation and the ideas behind it, the Black List, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cold War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, 9/11, the Patriot Act, and on and on and on... Controversy. Controversy in the historical decisions and the decision about history, the motivations of the past and the motivations of the present perspective, the factions then and now, the beliefs of both, the culture of all, the representation, the writings, the portrayal, and the remembrance. The collective memory is filled with controversy. It's like the dirty family secret that everyone knows, but no one is talking about.

 

To help you better understand, let me break it down into the three points that I stumbled through on my way to this obvious realization (I say obvious because this week's reading list was titled "Controversial Decisions.")

 

First: Corporate Historians. What, you may ask, is a Corporate Historian? That would be an historian or archivist that works for a major company. Such as Coca-Cole, Ford, Proctor & Gamble, etc. Their responsibility is to maintain the records and artifacts for the company, much the same as a Public Historian. However, that is where the similarities end. The Corporate Historian's primary loyalty must lie with the company. To do any differently would be to figuratively slit their own throat. They are moderated through the company's legal and PR on what they can publish regarding the records, and everything is viewed through the medium of "how does this make the company look?" It is for these reasons that Corporate Historians have been viewed as not "true" historians. I think the controversy here is fairly obvious. Can an honest historical record be made when run through such filters as enacted by a major company? If the truth makes the company look "bad," then would the truth be published? Can what historians employed by or contracted to major companies produce be trusted?

 

Second: Digital Archives. We historians have a passion for the old and the dusty. The dirtier and the more obscure, the more our nerdy little hearts just pitter-patter. However, with digital archives there is no physical record. No dusty box. No molded paper. While there is a massive opportunity here to collect more of the average person's thoughts and words on significant historical events and everyday lives, there is the question of how to sort it. What is important enough to save? How do you organize it? Where do you keep it? How do you access it? How do you search it? How do you verify it? The controversy here is the material itself. It is no longer physical, it is this thing we see, we read. But we cannot touch, we cannot feel it in our hands. How do we lovers of all things old cope with and capitalize on this foreign thing?

 

Third: Race relations. The slaves and the servants, the Japanese and internment camps, the Chinese and the railroads, the Irish and the mines, the natives and the reservations. How do we incorporate these historical controversies into memorials and historical sites today? We are comfortable with challenging our idealistic view of the past as long as it is done in small doses. Little teaspoons covered with sugar that we can choke down and move on from. However, how and when do you set fire to a powder keg? We all know these events are out there, so how do we engage, in an honest representation, not the sugar coated views and not in the over-played victims, but in the truth of the events that took place. How do we engage the descendants, the margins in the history that is theirs, that has been downplayed or left on the edges? Not in comfortable little spoonful's but in all its warped and disfigured glory. How do we create an honest record and bring history to them?

 

 

If you have an answer for these questions, you're a much better historian than I.

I fear I will spend the rest of my career attempting to answer these.

I look forward to the challenge.