Dear Sir: This is not how historians do research

Mar 22, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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In yesterday’s column, I made passing reference to a letter in another newspaper. The composer praised a certain organisation that was active in the 1970s against the Burnham dictatorship.
The missive went on to state that historians will judge this so-called civil rights groups generously and history will judge harshly those critical of the once famous group. This article here is a tame response. When I was younger I would have used a harsher judgment on this letter. I guess we all mellow with age.
I rather suspect the Kaieteur News columnist Peeping Tom in his/her offering yesterday had this very subject in mind. When historians assess an organisation or a person, they use the methodology of holism. They take the entire span of existence then come to conclusions.
The historians do not select which circumstances to highlight and which to obfuscate. When they do that, they write history selectively and they open their credibility to devastation. The most exciting example of how the historians operate is Forbes Burnham.
He was a complex personality with fine examples of visionary thinking way ahead of most if not all post-colonial leaders. He was also the embodiment of deep Freudian darkness. Any biography of Burnham must capture his superb futuristic plans in remoulding post-colonial Guyana and the manifestations of the demons that destroyed him.
The historians will be kind to Nelson Mandela. He did not live long enough so the historians can fault him if he had supported the war in Iraq. Martin Luther King (MLK) will receive a generous biography from the historians because he did not live long enough for the historians to criticise him for admiring Black American music whose lyrics demean Black women. Of course MLK would have spoken out against such things.
The historians then in the cases of Mandela and MLK do not have to do the odious thing and decide what to highlight and what to hide. In relation to the letter written by this gentleman, he needs to understand that the organisation he praises for its activities in the 1970s have undergone transformation and this is where the historians’ work comes under scrutiny.
In writing about the person or the organisation historians have to use two perspectives. One is to sift through materials not released before but currently available. Archives around the world release state documents after 30, 40, 50 years and we learn unflattering things about people. Also when people die, others publish their experience of the person.
The famous actor, William Hurt died last week. Two memoirs put him down as a very violently abusive boyfriend. Hurt’s biographer will have to take these women’s accusations when he/she writes about the legacy of Hurt. The other perspective is the present-day functionalism of the entity or the person. The historian when they write, they have to look at the entire years of activism not selected periods.
So we come to the organisation that was praised in a letter in the press last week. The entire commentary was about what this group did when Guyana was in the throes of dictatorship in the seventies. Many, many Guyanese made phenomenal sacrifice in that very period. Many are alive today and their presence is visible around us. Many of them have stayed true to the things they believe in, one of which is priceless – the right to vote and have that vote counted.
I am no young man. I don’t want to be young again. But I was around in the entire two decades of the seventies and eighties. I have seen people who stood up courageously and defend that right. And in the 21st century for whatever psychic reason, they went through a transformation process. They have changed entirely and their activism is now open to question.
Many of those persons I knew, up, close and personal. Our friendship is dead. They supported rigged elections in March 2020 and still do. How can you say the historians must only concentrate on what they did when they were part of a broad anti-dictatorship movement 50 years ago? What happened to this very moment now, right now in the 21st century?
The March 2020 election has been a turning point in the contemporary history of Guyana. Too many people that we expected to help save Guyana did not. I believe those people will never be seen with positive eyes any longer. The organisation that gentleman wrote about falls into this category. The columnist Peeping Tom is right. He/she wrote that the organisation in failing to condemn election rigging in the 21st century has met its Waterloo.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

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