Unlearning the Past, Imagining a Future

History isn't celebration, so where do we get inspiration?

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Last weekend, in lieu of the cancelled American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM) meeting, some of the smartest historians of medicine out there gathered for a virtual conference called “Pandemic, Creating a Useable Past: Epidemic History, COVID-19, and the Future of Health.”  The archived webinar isn’t up yet, but I’ve been promised it will be soon. In the meantime, you can preview what was said by searching for the hashtag #AAHMPandemicHistory on Twitter. (Updated added 5/26/2020: The recordings now available!)

The assembled crew shared brilliant insights about what epidemics past can teach us about the present. They also reflected on a theme familiar to readers of this newsletter: The challenges of critiquing technocracy and medical power relationships without coming off as anti-science. Oh yes.

But today I want to reflect on one comment in particular, from Nancy Tomes, a historian at Stony Brook (and an all-around excellent human being). In the first session, in response to the idea that epidemics “reveal” various kinds of inequality, Tomes quipped, “That’s not news.” We know that epidemics always expose those who are already vulnerable to greater risk (as do climate change and disasters in general, but that’s a story for a different post). Tomes described the way that policymakers in the United States consistently and routinely ignore this predictable phenomenon to “purposefully unlearn the lessons of the past.” I wish I could have been there in person to cheer her on.

Many contemporary professional historians, myself included, see our work as about uncovering forgotten truths. Sometimes, the things we excavate from the past are celebratory. Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures, a book (and hit movie) about NASA’s Black mathematicians and computer scientists, is a perfect example of a work that (rightly) celebrates the stories of those whose contributions have been erased from the historical record. But the book isn’t entirely upbeat, as how their contributions came to be disappeared in the first place is a central part of the story.

More frequently, professional historians write about things that shouldn’t be celebrated. We write about land grabs, power grabs, and massacres. We uncover how political and social institutions support and reinforce existing hierarchies of power, including but not limited to racism, sexism, ableism, and classism. We uncover cover-ups, whether they took place in the White House or a state psychiatric hospital. We have written, and will continue to write, many books and articles about the ways that epidemics disproportionately affect people of color and people living in poverty.

This is why we call it “history,” not “heritage.” Heritage is about celebration. A heritage approach to pandemics past would craft warm, nostalgic stories about heroic doctors and nurses, far-sighted public servants, and the luck and pluck of those who survived. Heritage is “safe” and “inspiring.” History, with its commitment to telling uncomfortable truths, is rarely either of these things, which is probably why those in power so often chose to ignore it.

Historians’ commitment to writing about horrible things is necessary, but challenging for readers and writers alike. It’s no coincidence that the popular book market in fields that traditionally focus on people who hold at least a modicum of power (political history, diplomatic history, history of science) continues to be dominated by books better described as heritage, rather than history. The relentlessness of critical history can be numbing, and, by this point, we kinda know. I worry writing it risks curdling our souls.

Scholars working in a variety of fields less traditionally associated with those who hold power—African American studies, Indigenous studies, feminist philosophy of science, radical history, to name only a few—have long grappled with the problem of how to tell stories of resistance and persistence, stories that both tell hard truths and offer room for hope. These are wildly divergent fields, with different approaches to evidence and storytelling, but they share a commitment not centering the voices of the powerful.

In the history of medicine—a field that (mostly) adopted these practices a generation ago—this has often meant focusing on patients’ perspectives, or the role of caregivers, or activist movements that demand access to health care. This is why we have such rich histories of pandemics to draw from, even as policymakers steadfastly ignore them. The challenge remains: How do you get from the past to the future?

When I pose this question to experienced activists, they tell me that you have to devote as much time thinking about the world you want to see as to the broken one before us. This is hard work, for anyone, and sometimes I wonder whether a historian’s tools are really suited to the task. In her article, “Racial Fictions, Biological Facts,” Princeton University sociologist Ruha Benjamin urges scholars to turn to speculative fiction to envision the worlds that might yet become. As she puts it,

Fictions, in this sense, are not falsehoods but refashionings through which analysts experiment with different scenarios, trajectories, and reversals, elaborating new values and testing different possibilities for creating more just and equitable societies. Such fictions are not meant to convince others of what is, but to expand our own visions of what is possible.

I keep re-reading this, seeking ways to acknowledge the injustices of history that don’t push me into numbness or despair. I want to see history—not heritage—as a tool for making change in the world, even as the historical record reminds us how very, very hard is it to make that change happen. I want to believe that some day we can learn, rather than unlearn, the lessons of history.

Comments are open this week. What’s a work of history that inspires you to action, even as it tells hard truths?

Speaking of Heritage vs. History: Have you read the essays in the 1619 Project? Last week, project architect Nikole Hannah-Jones received a Pulitzer Prize for her lead essay, which is a powerful example of finding hope and inspiration in a story more easily recognized as struggle. The introduction to the project explains that it seeks “to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” The phenomenal success of the project has attracted its share of detractors, to whom I will not link (but I’m sure you can figure out it if you’re curious).

Something Nice: We humans are stuck in place, but birds are on the move. Track their migrations at Birdcast. This has nothing to do with anything in this post, but I like birds. And it’s science!

All for now. Be well.