Historical/Philosophical Comment (Inspired by Poetry)

Last Thursday I went to a poetry reading at the University of Montana Western (where I teach), to hear the work of one of my colleagues, Roger Dunsmore and also the Poet Laureate of Montana, Greg Pape. It was a pleasant affair, with a nice turnout of colleagues and students and community members. In introducing one of his poems, Greg Pape talked of how so much of our lives are shaped by memories, but that there is often at best a blurry line between those memories and our imagination. It was an interesting comment, and one that speaks directly to the creative process related to poetry (and much of the rest of the arts too, I suppose). But in thinking about it as I walked home, it occurred to me that this tricky relationship also plays a part in shaping historical understanding, in ways that can be both positive and negative.

I'd like to think it goes without saying that the study of history is driven primarily by a desire to learn from the past. Most of the questions we have about the past have their origins in current situations and issues. For example much of the current discussion of the ongoing economic crisis leads naturally to consideration of the last similar catastrophe, the Great Depression of the 1930s; by the same token, a lot of the debate over events in Iraq over the past few years was framed by tacit or explicit references to the Vietnam conflict. This is natural, to make those kinds of connections, especially for those who have direct memories of the earlier period and recognize similarities. But of course, not all the participants in the debate do, and that creates the opportunity for imagination (or, just as profoundly, lack of imagination) to play a role in shaping how we put the past to work in the present.

As a professional historian, I know that in examining the past I'm subject to all kinds of limitations related to the availability or accessibility of records, and also my own tendencies to engage those sources from a unique, and in all likelihood somewhat biased, perspective. If I'm intellectually honest about it, I acknowledge the possible flaws in interpretations drawn from my less-than-comprehensive sources, and how my own experiences shape my reading of them. I suspect though that for many not steeped in the discipline that there may be a tendency to avoid such qualification, and promote an interpretation that serves their vested interest without coming clean about what those interests are. I'm certainly not suggesting that this needs to stop-- it's inevitable. But it does mean that as consumers of information and opinion we recognize the potential impact of imagination to color-- intentionally or not-- the way we view the past, and employ at least some modest skepticism as we follow the coverage or public debates. In poetry, that kind of mental collaboration should be prized, but in history, well, it's a more complicated proposition.