The Historian's Trauma

 

To an individual, getting embroiled in an experience that would be unsettling or traumatic would be of one that no one would wish to. Yet, in everyday life, there are professions wherein an individual would get into these experiences. To a policeperson, it would be an everyday affair perhaps to visit the crime scenes, investigate, and talk to those families all of which would perhaps be unsettling. It would be something similar to a doctor or a nurse attending medical emergencies on a daily basis. Something similar would exist for lawyers either as prosecutors or defence lawyers. Yet in many of these instances, the situations are not something you are prepared for. There is essentially a reaction to the events that unfold in front of the eyes. In the corona crisis, the events would unfold and there was very little the doctors or other health care workers could do. As jounralists report from different areas including war zones or terror zones, there is very little they could do as they are immersed in the events that are occurring all around them. It is perhaps much later that the reality dawns on them and they begin experiencing the stress. Post stress traumatic disorder would something be pretty common.

 

Yet there are occasions when the actor willingly embraces a choice. The choice of talking or investigating or researching on something that has happened in the past, something traumatic. It is through conversations with those who lived through those experiences that are sought to become the foundation for new research output. The output would perhaps be a documentary, a book, a movie or maybe research paper or a monograph. Each of these would entail the investigator to remain neutral in understanding the events that have occurred perhaps long time ago. There would be occasions when the sources of study would be the archives print or audio or video trying to dissect something that has happened ages ago. As one peruses the archival footage, it would not be easy to imagine the upheavals one would have gone through in life in combating the situation.

 

As one revisits these events for the benefit of the future generations, the choice exercised apparently willingly is something that does have a price to pay. An interesting piece has appeared in the New Republic. It seems to discuss a little known aspect of studying history. It is about the psychological impact on the historian as they seek to unravel facets of history something that remain undiscussed or bringing those facets of history to a new audience. As one examines the facts in history, it is not certainly comfortable. History might be replete with peace punctuated with wars, yet it is those wars which attract the most attention. Wars are not without horrors. The story of these horrors would perhaps send a chilling note to more than a generation or so. The historians are those who are presumed to have the duty of recording and interpreting these events for posterity. As they immerse themselves in the study if these events, they bring their own cost-benefit analysis. The benefits might be to the society but the costs are to the individual presenting the story to the audience.

 

The article does present quite a few instances of historians impacted by the experiences as they research on their subject. An historian would be expected to take a neutral stand something that would be instilled in them in their academic training. Yet as they begin investigating, it would be difficult for them to escape from being judgmental. There would naturally arise an empathy as they interview the victims. It would be impossible for someone not to get touched or traumatized merely listening to those who survived the Holocaust for that matter the rape of Nanking. Someone seeking to write the history of Yazidis in their struggle against ISIS, would not be immune to experiencing the traumas they faced. The historians might be recording through perhaps a second hand experience or may be merely through archival footage, yet as they immerse themselves, they would in many ways become a part of the story. Research might have qualitative or quantitative dimensions, but as they engage in immersion, the story writer becomes the story, the dancer becomes the dance, the singer becomes the song.

 

As the story evolves, it would be natural to getting trapped into judgments. The stories as they are recounted and retold, it would be the historian taking notes who would be in many ways getting involved into the act. It is not merely about the notes, but the reviewing those notes, those footages, those archives and doing so again and again will draw them into the story. The story does not begin or end in the drawing room but happens in the theatre of activity. Historians often are known to spend months in the war-zone or the theatre if one might call it seeking to imagine what would have happened in those tumultuous times. Imagine being in Chittorgarh as Khiji invaded it or in one of those expeditions of Genghis Khan ravaging the Central Asia or in the 16^th century Europe being a Protestant being tried of Inquisition, the story would be the same. The emotions that would draw, the personalization that would emerge would be a different historical picture than something drawn out of cold blood or no linkage to the event.

 

Therefore, contrary to the assertions of historians being detached from their subject, the practical experiences seem to dictate a different story. There is certainly a judgment that emerges through those stories. Judgments are often not something positive but they could be negative with respect to the persona of the narrator. There is no doubt, that the judgment need not be negative. The immersions could well might be positive. Yet, as history unravels, it is essentially the survival of the fittest. It is about trials and tribulations that have societies have undergone in their path to survival, subsistence or prosperity. It is about the triumph of the human spirit. Someone has to tell the story. The story therefore becomes a part of the persona. The storyteller cannot escape the emotions of the story. Therein lies the historian’s trauma, the trauma that one might willingly seek to embrace so that the future knows what happened in the past.