Coronavirus & Historiography – How will the history of Coronavirus be written?
How will the history of coronavirus be written? Will it be recorded as a footnote to a larger story, or a profound ‘turning point’ in the economic, political, social and cultural history of the human race? To what extent are prior historical experiences and events shaping how the pandemic is interpreted? What factors will shape the writings of future historians? How should we be collecting evidence about the pandemic, and are there any particular ethical issues we should be taking into account? How will the current political climate impact on the historiography of the pandemic? What are the influencing factors? Who are the stakeholders? What changes, if any will it effect on the discipline of history?
On November 26th 2020 The Pandemic Perspectives group debated the issue of “Covid and Historiography”. The session was led by Dr Helen Kingstone and Sadegh Attari. Members were advised to attend one of History Workshop’s excellent ‘Covid-19 in Historical Perspective’ sessions, “Can we learn any lessons from history?” The group was also guided by the National Geographic article ‘How some Cities ‘Flattened the Curve’ during the 1918 Flu Pandemic’ and the contrasting piece by Mari Webel in The Conversation, ‘Compare the pandemic of 1918 with Covid-19 with caution – the past is not a prediction’. The rigorous comparison by Roberts and Tehrani, ‘Environments, behaviours, and Inequalities: reflecting on the impacts of the Influenza and Coronavirus Pandemics in the United States’ was also recommended. Debate on the ethics of collecting oral testimony were guided by Jennifer Cramer’s Oral History Review article, ‘First Do No Harm: Tread Carefully where Oral History, Trauma and Current Crises Intersect’. Two chapters from Partner and Foot’s , The SAGE Handbook of Historical Theory (2013) ‘Cultural Studies and History’ and ‘Memory: Witness, Experience, Collective Meaning’ were recommended to give context to the debate.
Dr Helen Kingstone opened the debate by asking what prior events were being used as reference points for the current pandemic. David Christie argued that surprisingly in the UK it was not previous pandemics such as Spanish Flu or The Black Death, but the events of the second world war, with phrases such as ‘it will all be over by Christmas’, and notions such as ‘the blitz spirit’, that were most commonly referenced. Niall Gallen noted that it was unsurprising to see a conjoining of a national crisis and the history of the Nation. Richard Kendall argued that given a prime minister obsessed by Churchill, such a narrative was inevitable in 2020, and would have been employed for Brexit had the pandemic not arrived. Helen noted that this form of referencing could be seen as another example of conceptions of British ‘exceptionalism’ and wondered how the pandemic was being located in other countries. She noted that one of the speakers at the History Workshop conference had praised the emotional content of the British presentation, describing the French equivalent as ‘robotic’. Marie Allegre (attending for the first time from our affiliated group, PGR Feminisms), herself French, noted that in France too, there was much talk about ‘waging a war’ against the virus, using belligerent vocabulary often in the form of ‘Our grand-parents were asked to suffer [insert whichever hardships the French had to go through during WW2], we’re asked to stay indoors and sit on a sofa; we’ll live / can do this.’ Carmen Jones, from New York, argued that American’s were much more present-centred than Europeans and were arrogantly convinced that contemporary America had no need to draw on references from the past. Alastair Gardener noted that in Sweden, the consensual, less restrictive, response to the pandemic had been couched in the unique character and social structure of the Swedish state, and had been used to buttress national pride, although the ambivalent results of this approach were perhaps weakening this corollary. David noted that, given the readings accounts of the American response to Spanish Flu, where social distancing, mask wearing and social isolation had been successful responses, he was amazed that so little attention had been paid to historical precedent. Liam Knight summarised the debate, arguing that it was both inevitable that recourse to the past focussed on times when the nation had ‘pulled through’ in the face of existential threat, and that rather than any kind of direct analogy, people were drawing on tropes from the past that gave them hope and using history as ‘a comfort blanket’. Commenting on its absence in the current discourse on the pandemic, Sadegh Attari, whose research engages with the influence of the Black Death on the human body and human ideals, argued that the distant past could be illuminating for the present as it could highlight the historical specificity of ideas, thereby challenging, for example, the modern cultural conception of science as being purely empirical, infallible and impartial. He also noted that civic authorities during the Black Death took similar measures to those taken against coronavirus (social distancing, self-isolation, travel bans, etc.). David suggested that more attention should perhaps be paid to programmes of vaccination against other deadly diseases in the more recent past such as small pox or polio, leading to a likely validation of scientific endeavour. Richard noted that this was a thoroughly ‘Western’ perspective, and that whilst Europe had long been free of deadly contagions, diseases such as Malaria, TB, Sleeping Sickness and Ebola still repeatedly swept through Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Niall moved the debate on to speculating how future historians would construct a narrative from current events. He suggested perhaps it would be one of the triumph of globalisation – of a world collectively overcoming an existential threat; or that it would the combination of covid and technology that would frame its representation, signalling a new ‘technoviral’ age. He also postulated that perhaps there would be no unifying theme, but, given covid’s uneven impact, it would more be couched as a stream of smaller, competing narratives. Helen noted the difficulties of writing contemporary history highlighted by this multiplicity of potential narratives and the dangers of over emphasising the significance of particular events. She questioned the application of the phrase, ‘event of the century’ as applied to covid, which suggested that people had forgotten about climate change. Sadegh raised the question of when it was acceptable to historicise events which were characterised by trauma, noting the German ‘historikerstreit’ (historians controversy)’ of the 1980s’ which centred on the questions of the right to turn traumatic memory into dry historical fact. David disputed the analogy, arguing that the historian’s controversy was more about agency and responsibility and the question of the relativisation of the holocaust, factors which bore little relevance to the pandemic. He pointed out that he had started Pandemic Perspectives specifically to historicise Coronavirus. He then argued that the Coronavirus pandemic was a clear ‘turning point’ in history, radically altering the dimensions of economic, political, cultural and social history for the whole globe. Helen was more cautious in her analysis, suggesting that previous events considered as ‘turning points’ were in fact much more nuanced. She noted that whilst WW2 is often cited as a turning point in British history with the landslide victory for the Labour party in 1945 and the creation of the welfare state, Churchill was re-elected in 1951 and much of the structure of British society and its mores went unchanged. She suggested that often people conceived of historical turning points more from a hope for radical change than the actuality. David attempted to defend himself from an excess of hope, arguing that another pandemic, the Black Death death, had proved a turning point in history, not through willed change but the consequences of massive loss of life that had led to the collapse of the feudal system in much of 13th century Europe. The group was asked if they believed the pandemic represented a ‘turning point’. There was much equivocation and expressions of hope. New member Marta Starostina suggested the technological changes and their effect on work patterns, the destruction of whole sectors of the economy and enhancement of others, would be permanent. Liam argued that it would be merely a footnote, noting that Bird Flu, Swine Flu and Zica virus had already been long-forgotten. Hanan Fara also saw oblivion as more likely, propounding a more circular version of history than David’s oft expressed positivism. Alastair noted that WW2 could at least be considered a turning point in historiography, with the development of the Annales school of historians and new trends in the writing of Marxist history. Helen suggested that perhaps covid would lead to the writing of more ‘history of the mundane’ or perhaps its near opposite, a greater emphasis on global history. Niall noted that the tendency for writing pluralist histories that acknowledged the specificity of experience would be enhanced, but that ultimately it was the post-humanist writing of history that would prevail, as humankind’s inter-relationship with the environment would become the prevailing paradigm. Richard argued that apparent ‘turning points’ were coming along at such a fast rate of knots, citing the rise of populism, the election of Donald Trump and Brexit, that the term had begun to lose meaning. This took the debate in the direction of the concept of accelerationism in the digital age. Liam noted that ‘the digital’ had become a hyper-object, one we were so immersed in that we were unable to see its boundaries, and that other huge ‘turning points’ were embedded within its larger confines. Sadegh noted the contemporary terms post-capitalism, post-truth, post-theory and post-modernity, whose collective use implied that we suspected we were beyond something, but had no idea where we were going. Alastair noted philosopher Walter Benjamin’s argument that history was one single and growing catastrophe upon which historians attempted to find and impose a narrative. Radically confused, we moved on.
The difficulties future historians would face was raised in terms of the overwhelming volume of information that the internet age was producing. Helen contrasted this with the difficulties of Medieval historians, where the gaps in the historical record were the primary difficulty, although Alastair pointed out that for a scholar of 13th Century European history there was already more data than would be possible for an individual to read in a single lifetime. He pointed out that future historians would have access to time and date stamps for each item, enabling the most precise chronology ever, and that there would inevitably be powerful tools to help sift through the mass of data. David referenced William Gibson’s novel ‘Neuromancer’ which had posited the idea of inaccessible technological formats and hardware, and cited the ‘floppy disc’ as an example. Alastair noted that ‘digital archeology’ had already begun as a means of addressing this very problem.
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