Good luck at Harvard History! The program is immensely improved from my days…. years…. 12 years….

Good luck at Harvard History! The program is much improved from my days…. years…. 12 years…. Say HI! for me.

I have since come to have deep reservations about this approach, especially when applied to history – even as I continue to harbor equally deep concerns about the consequences of a nihilistic approach. This, however, only adds to my excitement, and I look forward to thinking a lot about these questions in the years to come and I study the philosophy of history and its pomo critics.

I’m confident that I will not come to “homogenize into dismissal of “propoganda”” but even if I become re-convinced that there is some way to distinguish “valid and invalid discourses” without appeal to the sort of deeply held convictions that mark, say, Cliopatria contributor Hugo’s approach to history, or the simple posing of a minimum standard of say logical consistency plus accurate and frequent reference to empirical sources (which exemplifies, for example, the pre-war Japanese historiography of China).

I have no issue with identifying the use of blatant lies and factual error in historical accounts or the accounts of betrayal and treason. However, as I first came to see while taking a class with Carol Gluck on the differing narratives of modern Japanese history, it is entirely possible to have narratives of history which are completely incompatible, or at least rich in contrast – none of which would necessarily deny any individual fact of the other.

In the case of treason, for example, the increase or decrease in accusations of treason in history do not, I believe (and obviously I have no data at this point) correspond to a decrease in loyalty to the nation for the time in question. As I am sure you would agree, I need not join the more giddy ranks of post-structuralism to appreciate that the relationship between historian and fact is not sufficient to produce history. The all-important element of choice – choice in the questions I choose, in the facts I make space for, in the way I tie them together, and the causal relationships I posit – these introduce that uncomfortable space into which politics, moral conviction, and material conditions of my times inevitably pour.

As a student just entering the field, I promise to be conscious of my responsibility not only to maintain integrity in my work, but to be conscious always of that space where my times and I stand between my work and the past.

As I plow into the archives, I may not be thinking about “raising up young feminists” (to borrow Hugo’s interviewer’s expression) but I am aware that my own thoroughly scrambled identity and deep dislike for nations and nationalism will always be reflected in what I write.

I have gone a bit off mark here, as your points were specifically about doing discourse history as such, not necessarily historiography in general. I’m not actually all that fond of discourse history and the way it “takes a step back” from the “action” of what is going on (in this case, the acts of treason and collaboration during Japanese control of Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, and mainland China where I will focus). However, I discovered that within the process of (re)building national identity in earl postwar East Asia, the positive project of celebrating thousands of years of Korean or Chinese greatness is mirrored (to greater and lesser extents) by a negative project of identifying, excluding, and marking those who betrayed the nation. In South Korea, this process was largely delayed.

I think we both agree that hideous acts were committed by those who were part of the collaborating or puppet regimes, but it just isn’t as simple as all that. In Norway thousands of Norwegian Nazi party members, a party which was legal before the coming of the occupation, were all prosecuted as traitors – based on their membership alone, not whether or not they did anything during occupation. While few were killed, across Europe, thousands were killed for being associated with the ethnic or political group which was responsible for the crimes and or cooperated with German occupiers (Mazower’s Dark Continent and his other works has lots of this). Now, assuming there is a “valid” discourse in identifying and punishing both the perpetrators of crimes during the war, and those who willfully and without significant coercion cooperated with them – that still doesn’t explain what was going on. The discourse wasn’t simply one of punishing evildoers (except for the case of the war crimes trials), it punished those who betrayed the nation. You and I, and indeed most historians, can probably agree to the “valid” discourse of punishing torturers in Iraq or wartime occupied China – but I for one, see nothing wrong with treason for a just cause. The thing is, I am not going to write a thesis on “when is treason justified”, which is a normative question that would have put me in a different department. I will do the ground work of understand and exploring the negative project which mirrors the positive creation of national identity.

Are Iraqi civil defense officers, trained by the American occupier, traitors? I think most of us suspect that how they will be judged will depend largely on the success of America’s successor state there. From the outside, we may want to say, “Who cares? We should ask, did that civil defense officer do anything nasty?” However, the fact that this is and may continue be an important question for Iraqis can only really be grasped when see how betrayal and treason are still so politically powerful tools in America today. Were the 偽軍 (puppet soldiers) of occupied China traitors? Well, many of them lost this stigma through their valiant bravery and patriotism fighting against the 奸匪 (traitorous bandit) Communists or the 賣國賊 (country selling traitors) nationalists. Korean President Park, former Japanese military officer not only lasted for years, but was able to push through normalization with Japan. Were the Taiwanese traitors or 漢奸? They were Japanese citizens, according to international law. That got some of them exempted on the grounds they weren’t Chinese citizens at the time. Others were tried as 漢奸 because they were ethnically Han, 漢. And yet, some European citizens were even tried as 漢奸 under the same law (this bizarre case is one of the records I would love to track down, I just have a reference to a Taiwanese defense ministry archive record).