Jonathan Dresner has a great posting over at Cliopatria on how interesting it would be to think about the Swift Boat issue from the perspective of historiography.
Historiographically, how would we balance contemporary documents against decades-removed oral history, if it were not a partisan issue? When is absolute certainty justified in the face of contradictory sources? What bigger questions does this connect to (i.e., is this really an avenue worth pursuing) or are there analyses that need to precede asking the questions we’re asking?
He concludes by asking how close historians need to get to the “truth” of history.
Do we, as historians, really need to answer these questions, or is it enough to note the “interesting” vagaries of sources and leave it at that?
This kind of question is one that also deeply troubles me, just as I am about to begin a PhD program in history. I hope Dresner will have more words of wisdom on this in his future postings. My feeling right now is that how “vague” we leave contested moments that find their way into our narratives will depend ultimately on the questions we posed in our work. For example, the Swift Boat veterans, and those who seek to reveal their contradictions at least both seem to agree that the questions are “Was Kerry a liar?” Or more broadly, “Is he ‘unfit for command.'”
The shift of public debate to this kind of question marks a significant “historiographical” coup for supporters of the Bush campaign insofar as Kerry’s military record was previously approached with questions like, “How much does his military service make him a better presidential candidate to lead a country at ‘war'” or at worst, “Does Kerry’s activism following his service in Vietnam show a profound disrespect for America’s men and women in uniform?” While I personally find all these questions completely uninteresting, it is easy to see how the latter two allow a historian or commentator of any flavor to leave the vagaries of his months of service alone. Jonathan Dresner really brings up some important issues in postings like this one but to his, “Do we, as historians really need to answer these questions?” I would add one more query, “Do we, as historians really need to ask these questions?”
You are entirely correct: what ambiguity we tolerate depends on our questions. There is no single satisfactory answer to the question of certitude, because the sources are not consistent, nor even a helpful equation that I’m aware of.
And I have been avoiding the whole Swift Boat issue (because I, too find it distracting and irrelevant) but I thought the accessibility of it as an historiographical issue was too good to pass up. I actually think that some of the broader questions might actually be of interest to military historians, but I’m a social historian, myself.
Thanks a bunch for stopping in! Ya, despite the issue itself not being particularly interesting, it certainly becomes more useful when we think of it from the perspective of historiography – which was what I thought was so fresh about your posting.
What I find so interesting is how Kerry is deliberately misrepresenting his own history. It should never have been a story about whether or not he is a “war hero” but about a man who stood up against an unjust war. As Molly Ivins put it:
“Sooner or later, someone is going to ask Kerry the question he so famously asked about Vietnam: “How do you ask someone to be the last man to die for a mistake?” He’d better have an answer ready.”
http://www.alternet.org/story/19605/
Fortunately, this movie should set the record straight:
http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/tickermaster/listing.cfm?TMID=1275
Even if Kerry won’t.