13 quotes
In their eagerness to neutralize themselves, scholars tend to neutralize the subject matter. But history is never neutral. And relatively little of it is purely stochastic and accidental.
History as Mystery (1999)
History has many unanswered questions, but it is no mystery as such—except for those who make it so.
History as Mystery (1999)
Much written history is an ideologically safe commodity.
History as Mystery (1999)
To say that schools fail to produce an informed, critically minded, democratic citizenry is to overlook the fact that schools were never intended for that purpose.
History as Mystery (1999)
Whether a leader is acting with admirable “firmness” or “aggressive rigidity” in a situation will often depend on the political values and views of the observer.
History as Mystery (1999)
This established familiarity and unanimity of bias is frequently treated as “objectivity”.
History as Mystery (1999)
The important thing is not just to identify specific historical events—as might a quiz show contestant—but to think intelligently and critically about them, and be able to relate them to broader social relations.
History as Mystery (1999)
That a religious belief is propagated by its lower clergy and ordinary adherents does not make it any less the hierarchy’s dictum. Indeed, such lower echelon transmission is an essential factor in maintaining the belief’s hegemony.
History as Mystery (1999)
Too often, however, history is written and marketed in such a way as to be anything but liberating. The effect is not to enlighten, but to enforce the existing political orthodoxy. Those who control the present take great pains to control our understanding of the past.
History as Mystery (1999)
If the founders of the American Historical Association could visit a contemporary campus, they might be puzzled by the swarthy complexions among the professors, they might wonder at the strange-sounding Celtic, Latin, or Semitic names, but the flavor, the atmosphere of college life would not be unfamiliar to them.
History as Mystery (1999)
Indeed, what really bothers those who endlessly carp about the campus tyranny of “political correctness” is not the orthodoxy of the politically correct “tyrants” but their departure from orthodoxy, their willingness to critically explore gender, ethnic, and class topics in ways that normally are treated as taboo.
History as Mystery (1999)
Throughout its history, the CIA has resorted to every conceivable crime and machination to make the world safe for the Fortune 500, using false propaganda, economic warfare, bribery, rigged elections, sabotage, demolition, theft, collusion with organized crime, narcotics trafficking, death squads, terror bombings, torture, massacres, and wars of attrition.
History as Mystery (1999)
Contrary to conventional wisdom, class conflict in feudal times was not a rarity but a constant. Even in the early Middle Ages, various kinds of peasant resistance probably occurred more frequently than we realize: sabotage, fleeing the manor, violating prohibitions, and refusing to pay dues or perform certain services or abide by particular regulations.
History as Mystery (1999)