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The triumphalism of the "end of history" school was short-lived, especially with the rise of Derridian "spectropolitics" and its emphasis of the inevitability of the perpetual and repeated return of Marx wherever there is dominance or violence. Such a critique of the unilateral philosophy becomes a necessity for the rise of antagonism in any democracy. Understandably, Marxism is a pluralist philosophy and cannot be straitjacketed under a single view. Conflictual politics and the admission of antagonisms seen in upheavals caused by various ethnicities, of gender issues, of anti-war demonstrations, of green politics are at the heart of Marx’s view of history and world revolution. Instead of the heralded "New World Order", the victory of universal values, and the generalisation of "post-conventional" identities, we are witnessing an explosion of ethnicities and an increasing face up to Western universalism. The liberals blamed this, according to Chantal Mouffe, on the "deferred effects of totalitarianism" and predicted that this worldwide disturbance was only "a short parenthesis before rationality reimposes its order, or the last desperate cry of the political before it is definitely destroyed by the forces of law and universal reason". In this lay the possibility of the full elimination of the political, most certainly "devastating consequences for democratic politics". With the demise of Marxism, it has often been felt that antagonisms can be fully curtailed, a position that is rather dangerous as it leaves us unprepared for "unrecognised manifestations of antagonism". The political is thus always linked to the inherent element of hostility, which, in other words, is the opposition between pluralist democracy and essentialist politics. The enemy has to be converted into an adversary so as to introduce the politics of the possible or of alternatives. The elimination of antagonism is thus not possible within democratic politics. This has largely been the overarching ideology of Howard Zinn, one of the most celebrated historians of the West. The myopia of much mainstream history, according to him, comes mainly from the methodology of "naive realism" on which it bases itself. The occasional text written by one who belongs to the margins is often ignored by orthodox history or not considered seriously. He observed in an interview sometime before his death: "When I began work, five years ago, on what would become the present volume, Voices of a People’s History of the United States, I wanted the voices of struggle, mostly absent from our history books, to be given the place they deserve`85and I wanted my readers to experience how at key moments in our history some of the bravest and most effective political acts were the sounds of the human voice itself." Here is a strong case for people "who seem to have no power, whether working people, people of colour, or women, but once they organise and protest and create movements they have a voice no government can suppress". Such history from below lends a somewhat authentic character to the representation of "truth". As it is, Zinn himself belonged to a working-class family and laboured in a shipyard for a few years until he joined the Air Force as a bombardier. A doctorate in history from Columbia at the outset made him suspicious of objectivity in the writing of history. Howard Zinn was aware that controversies concerning objectivity or subjectivity, singularity or plurality, relativity or universality of truth abound in historiography that treats areas of knowledge, culture and traditions as sites for conflict, with the main purpose of getting rid of the essentialisms reached by colonial Western historians. He would often refer to the impact of historians like E. H. Carr or E. P. Thompson on his views on historiography, though his favourite books were Peter Novack’s The Noble Dream or Hans Meyerhoff’s The Philosophy of History in our Times, which taught him the essentials of questioning the objectivity of a historian. Taking a view of the major historical events of the day, Zinn has drawn attention to the activism which is at the centre of any political enquiry or critique of history. These 30 shorter writings of Zinn amply indicate his passion for speaking the truth, and often against the state. In one of his seminal essays, "Empire or Humanity", he asks the tough question: "Have we reached a point in history when we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity?" The question is implicitly directed at the education system in the US which ignores the reality of the empire and its imperialist tendencies that have disturbed world peace. For Zinn, "education can and should be dangerous" always asking embarrassing questions and bringing down the stranglehold of political hypocrisy and double-speak. History for him, therefore, has no bystanders or neutral spectators. His experience in the civil rights and anti-war movements taught him "that change happens not because of what our elected leaders decide, but when mass movements force our leaders to act responsibly and justly". Indeed, Zinn had full faith in the power of the people and civil disobedience which he had experienced during the Civil Rights Movement. He had complete mistrust of governments which he expressed in his interview with me a few years ago. Very close to his death, he had begun to preach that civil disobedience should now be practised by the United States’ military. This was indeed "speaking truth to power" and possibly one of the major steps towards the curtailment of unnecessary military interventions.
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WE
now stand at a juncture when the discipline of history is surrounded by
confusion. The traditional, analytical and conceptual structures of
historical knowledge stand eroded. It is not possible to reconstruct the
past in all its actuality as all reconstructions are provisional and
interpretative. However, it is imperative to have a historical
consciousness that makes us aware of the past so that an approach to the
present and the future is accordingly defined.