Bridging The Boundary Of History
One year can pass by quickly. Five years can as well. Ten years seems a pretty substantial period of time, but still stays in recent memory. Multiply this period of time by seven and we get 70 years—the span of time between now and the Holocaust, an event that almost feels hardened into a relic of a distant past. What is different about these spans of time that historicizes events at a seemingly arbitrary point in time? And when exactly is that changeover? Some historians have posited a “30-year rule” as the year at which an event becomes history. However, we believe that this separation isn’t a sharp boundary, but rather a liminal transition period. The danger of defining an event as “historical” is that the definition constructs an artificial separation between then and now. Understanding this grey area will help us recognize our relationship with past events, simultaneously affected by not only our recent biases, but also our tendency to separate ourselves from an event the moment it slips into this concept of the “past.” Once we recognize our relationship with past events, we can begin to make accurate assessments and comparisons within times marked by sensationalist narratives, biased portrayals, and pervasive political appropriation by politicians and social activists.
Let us delve into the historical to analyze how quickly history can be rewritten during this liminal time due to the actions of a few people. One such transitional period was during the French Revolution. One of the most famous figures of the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre, had a visible shift in his portrayal in portraits throughout the Revolution. His first portrait, done before the Revolution, contains the inscription “tous pour mon amie” (everything for my love), and is painted softly and flatteringly; he has a rose in his hand and his hand on his heart. We can understand this portrait in the context of traditional portraits done for noblemen, with no reason for them to be anything but flattering and reasonably true to image. However, with each additional portrait done during the Revolution, Robespierre’s face becomes gaunter, sharper, tenser, grimmer; the romantic smile in his first portrait evaporates into a grim, haunting frown. In 2016, scientists published an article in the Lancet Medical Journal with a 3D reconstruction of Robespierre’s face based off his death mask and found the first portraits to be the most accurate. This demonstrates that during the fragile liminal period of the French Revolution, a historical figure was easily and permanently altered due to the political biases at the time.
We see this same conscious choice in the contemporary media posts with pictures of Michael Brown, the notable figurehead of the Black Lives Matter Movement. His unfair representation by the media inspired the #IfTheyGunnedMeDown Twitter movement immediately following the shooting. With this hashtag, Twitter users posted side-by-side photos, one of “respectability” and one conforming to “menacing” stereotypes, to raise awareness of how the media portrays black victims of police violence. Nowadays, smartphones have enabled people to have hundreds of photos of themselves in various situations, giving the media unprecedented access to someone’s personal life. What will happen when these movement begins to be written down in history books? Will this rewriting of history be addressed, or erased by the writers of these textbooks, intentionally or unintentionally disempowering the Black Lives Matter movement?
However, this is not the major only event slipping into a crystallized historical lens. Others are natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the BP oil spill, school shootings from Columbine to Parkland, and even the election of Donald Trump. Once we separate ourselves from these events and relearn their context we can correct collective memory. This mental space shared by individuals of a certain generation with respect to specific historical events contains both our personal reactions and the influence of political currents at the time. This is an essential component of the transitional period, when the event crystallizes in the group’s collective mind. People of the past transition into unchangeable relics of a “different time.” Even though it is not always on our minds, we are constantly in a transitional period relative to certain events. It is during the transitional period that we have the power (and, one might say, obligation) to detach ourselves from emotional and political biases to define the truth of an event for future generations.
Daria Locher ’20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at daria.locher@wustl.edu.
Christian Fogerty ’19 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at c.fogerty@wustl.edu.[btn type=”default or primary or success or info or warning or danger or link” link=”null”]null[/btn]