History: a dangerous weapon in political hands?

Article by Chloe Janssen Lester. Edited by Ellie Veryard and Liz Goodwin. Additional Research by Ellie Veryard.

History, in its most literal translation, is that which is in the past. What is in the past, however, does not always stay there. Given the centrality of the past to our lives, it is unsurprising that history is used in, and to make sense of, the present, as ‘all consciousness is mediated through’ memory. Importantly, the past is not limited to the confines of an individual’s mind and experience, with the past, and collective memory of it, being public. As sociologist Jürgen Habermas has shown, it is because the past is in the public sphere that questions about the past, and more specifically how it should be treated, become political. It is here that questions about how the past is used by political hands, and whether this use of history can be termed ‘dangerous’, arise. 

Public, and therefore often political, history can often be seen in what can be termed a ‘memorial culture’. Paul Williams’ book Memorial Museums ‘emerged out of a desire to describe and analyse… a remarkable phenomenon…the seemingly unstoppable rise of memorial museums and sites’ and addresses the Srebrenica Memorial and Cemetery in Potočari, Bosnia. In 1995, as part of the wider war in former Yugoslavia, the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia was attacked by Serbian forces and more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were systematically killed. The memorial remembers where 1,300 Muslim men were killed and buried and is commemorated by yearly ceremonies. Yet just ten miles away, in the village of Kravica, a counter-memorial of Srebrenica commemorates ‘Serb victims of the civil war’, despite Kravica witnessing the mass killings of Muslims and Serbs alike. The Kravica memorial was opened just one day before official ceremonies marked the tenth anniversary of Srebrenica and was attended by religious and political leaders from the Republika Srpska.

Memorial sites are public acknowledgements of the past. What makes these sites political is not purely that political hands commission their construction, but that these hands in fact construct the history behind what the sites commemorate. In the post-modern world the past is understood to reach us only ‘through fictional devices which invest it with a range of highly selective and hierarchical readings’ influenced by political leanings. Therefore, these sites express a ‘rite of remembering in public’ which has been ‘adjusted to a publically or politically approved narrative’. In the case of Srebrenica, these two memorial sites have been subjected to these processes, creating an approved narrative of genocide. 

History is considered particularly dangerous when narratives are created because of, and to express, identity politics. In political hands history has very real consequences for the present: it is significant that six days before 610 bodies were due to be buried in the Potočari Cemetery and Srebrenica’s tenth anniversary marked by the attendance of 60,000, that two bombs were found at the memorial centre. 

However, by reversing this perspective of a present influenced by the past history can be transformed from a passive vessel to an active resource, exposing its danger. It is not the past that has consequences on the present; it is the present that has consequences on the past. History is not invoked but constructed; it is not presented but re-presented, and used to give meaning to the present. If the present is unsatisfactory, the past can be looked to as a way of reconstructing the present. But this past is reconstructed to satisfy the present. 

Scholars have often understood this perspective of history as deriving from a sense of loss. Reclaiming that which is lost is implemented to make sense of the present, and provide a means to move forward. One study of this has been undertaken by Zala Volčič with her concept ‘Yugo-nostalgia’; an attempt by former Yugoslav communities to re-create a shared cultural memory by invoking a romanticised unified past. The political agents who promote it capitalise on a sense of longing for the lost past as a means of consumption. Thus the driving force behind Yugo-nostalgia, as Volčič understands it, is capitalism. 

The use of history for specific political gains in former Yugoslavia history is determined by Volčič to be dangerous. Conversely, Dubravka Ugresic has described Yugo-nostalgia as a ‘productive’ and essential resource for citizens to negotiate difficult historical transitions. In contrast, Paul Miller shares Volčič’s disdain describing the aforementioned burial ceremony at Potočari as a kind of ‘genocide tourism, a kind of morbid pornography’. Whether the use of history is understood to be productive or destructive, it is clear is that the past is being used, advertently and inadvertently, by political hands.

History, because of the authority with which it is bestowed, is of particular utility for political agents. Invoking the past is a way of evidencing the circumstances of the present. Nationalism, and the discourse associated with it, has long been recognised as doing just this. Benedict Anderson’s now infamous concept of ‘imagined communities’ has illustrated how nationalist societies, and their governments use the power of the past to summon change in the present. 

Now scholars are awarding increasing attention to the growing anxiety attached to the disappearance of memory, and subsequent attempts to ‘preserve as “memory” things that are in the course of becoming “history”. Miller has attributed this as one reason behind the immediate establishment of a cult of commemoration for Srebrenica. The power of history as an authority that can inform the present is very much rooted in the self-perpetuating inadequacies of history; the potential to apply history to any situation or ideology, and the impossibility of all of memory to become history, allows only certain narratives to become dominant. For those wishing to utilise history it is imperative that they shape it accordingly from the outset. At the heart of this crisis, where danger is most apparent, lies the question of who owns history and the reality is, that those who own the means to present or re-present history, own it. And the hands that do so are political. Take an example elsewhere; in Cambodia, Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide Crimes is a presentation of the Cambodian government’s narrative of the Cambodian genocide. The museum is more a space for reification and remembrance than a presentation of various, and possibly contentious, narratives designed to inform visitors on the genocide and its context. 

Whilst the cases above are very extreme examples of historical conflict, and may not serve to prove that all history is dangerous in political hands, it cannot be denied that the past can be manipulated. In fact by selecting specifically extreme historical cases to use as evidence for the above argument, this article is guilty of that which it aims to elucidate. 

It is clear that history does not always stay in the past and is often translated into the language of the present by people with the power to be heard and represent. This power to represent the dominant view of the past is not because they have translated the past accurately, but because the past is inadequate and lends itself to mistranslation. This propensity toward manipulation may be deemed ‘dangerous’, but just as all historical truth is subjective, so is all danger. Where can the line be drawn? It is a question that must be asked, and answered, by all of us. 

• The Srebrenica massacre took place during the Bosnian War 1992-1995, following the break-up of Yugoslavia. After Slovenia and Croatia left the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, the multi-ethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina passed a referendum for independence which was rejected by Bosnian Serbs. In the rush to secure territory war broke out across the country, leading to widespread ethnic cleansing, predominantly lead by Serbian forces. NATO intervened after the Srebrenica and Markale massacres in 1995 bringing the war to an end in December of that year. At least 100,000 people were killed, with many more displaced. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, continues to prosecute war crimes committed during the fighting. 

• Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide Crimes is based in a former high school which became Security Prison 21 under the Khymer Rouge communist regime 1975-1979 in Cambodia. The Khymer Rouge was involved in social engineering, leading to genocide, imposed agricultural reform which led to famine and refused imports, including medicine, under a policy of self-sufficiency, resulting in widespread deaths. The regime was known for it’s torture and execution of subversive elements. Subversive elements could mean anyone connected to the former government or foreign governments, professionals and intellectuals, ethnic Vietnamese, Thai or Chinese, or economic saboteurs.

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