You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Subversions of Contingency Part 2: The Westphalian State
In a sense, all "histories" have the perspective of the ancient Chinese: history is a tool in service to legitimize the present. The desire for objectivity in recorded history in academia seems to cloud not only the lay public, but also the bureaucrats themselves, in thinking that their version is the "correct" perspective on complex cause-effect spacetime phenomenon.
I agree, with the caveat that it exists to commentate on the present, not to legitimize it. Plenty of influential histories are written to decry or even delegitimize the present.
I've been doing a lot of thought lately on the histories bandied by political movements and ideologies, and I've come to the conclusion that they must present their own version of history to compete with other histories in order to succeed. I might do a blog post on it soon.