Historical Voyeurism

Like most of my deeper thinking about my subject, this one sprung from a conversation with kunfuramone in the Bunker. The more I read, and now I'm reading a lot of "Old School" (pre-cultural turn) historical writing out of Britain, the more creeped out I get with the relationship many authors have (or think they have) with their subjects. I understand that studying a particular person creates a relationship between historian-object of study that becomes increasingly intimate over time - but it's really a one way relationship in which the historian's interest draws them to a particular historical figure which they then "recreate" (reconstruct, whatever), literally by breathing life into the dead corpse. They pull out parts of the private persona that may not have been know before because *they* found an extra dusty box full of letter, diaries, whatever. Through their privileged position they recreate the historical figure in the image they see them in. Hoping to bring to life a more truthful, nuanced, or well-rounded portrait. But in some ways we're dealing with historical zombies led around by their biographers. Or maybe we're just a bunch of nerdy fanboys, but our object of affection are historical rather than fantastical figures.

What drives me nuts about some of the older books I'm reading is that you get the tone of "Well, I really know what Good Old Queen Bess was thinking..." "I know what she was really like and it was ....". It's part exaltation of the object and part stripping bare for all the world to see. We hope that digging deeper and deeper, not unlike someone doing an autopsy, we'll find the cause, what made the person tick - whether it's into the psychology, social conditions, gender (either confirmed identity or confusion), or economic situation.

So back to what I'm reading: these guys' (and they're all guys) biases and assumptions read clear as day. The obsession with their historical figures (demons or heroes) is frustrating, but incredibly easy to find. The unbalanced bits are so obvious that the more balanced historical analysis shines through. I think most recent historians try very hard not to duplicate that type of arrogant history, but they do so by using language that while seeming to be more transparent can actually hide personal biases behind an illusions of non-biased-ness.

It makes me wonder which is the more "honest", at least on the part of the author, approach? Should we, as historians, take a cue from the anthropologists and really interrogate our subject-object relationship? What we do is pry into other people's lives and the decisions they made without consent (they're dead), and without consultation other than from other historians who are doing the same thing. Should we be more upfront about that when thinking and writing about our work?

I know this is long, but I'll go for some short and quick honesty. I study Jewish History because I'm struggling with my own identity. Part of my historical interest is really guided by a desire to know more about the Jewish great grandparents and grandparents I never knew, and to look for example of Jewish/Non-Jewish interaction as I try to figure out my own mixed background. I study the Holocaust because I'm fascinated by 1) the worst in people and 2) basic human survival mechanisms. I also seem to have an attraction to pain and suffering, which is so far removed from anything I've experienced in my comfortable, privileged class, whiny, little white girl life... and I'm not sure why. Because it's not for the higher causes or for figuring out what went wrong because I want to make it right, but because I like observing a lot of horrible things from my comfortable point of view. The problem is, I'm not sure what that says about me.

Maybe it's time to go back into therapy...