A historians manifesto

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. 

The point, however, is to change it. - Karl Marx

Throughout the last semester I have time to reflect on why I am a historian and why I want to continue down this road. To me the answer always ends up the same: the past is relevant in order to create an understanding of how society could have been arranged another way. This is however not why I became an historian the first time. 

After I graduated from highschool I wanted to become an engineer. However, my highschool education needed to be completed in order to get accepted and hence I got one year with nothing really to do. Therefore I started studying history at Lund University, as way to prepare myself for higher education and also learn something along the way. After the year was up, I started studying engineering but for different reasons I came to the conclusion that it was really for me. Therefore I started studying the bachelor degree course and wrote a bachelor thesis in labour history. Around the same time I came in contact with labor history and felt that for the first ever, history actually reflected my story. After finishing my bachelors degree I went on study another subject, but during this time was also possible to write a one year masters which I did on disability history. 

Labour history back then worked for me as a way to write a history that did not really dwell upon those in power, but rather as a way to write the history of common folks. There was an idea that by doing this, I would challenge how historical writing upon til the last decades had focused on national history. For several reasons, this form of history writing became important since I viewed as something that needed to be done. There really was no deeper understanding of why this was important to me, it was rather a scientific curosity that drowe me. 

Looking back at this, I think myself as somewhat naive and lacking an intellectual analysis of my own work.  However, a year ago I visited a lecture by Jack Halberstam whom spoke about queer-theory and what queering history would do to those in power. According to Halberstam, once something was de-constructed it was not up to the historian to put things back together. Rather the historians task was to show that society is the result of patterns of thinking, and that it was then up to the democracy to highlight whetever or not this was desirable. Thereby, the historians position is rather speaking truth to power than wielding power itself. 

This insight actually led me to re-evalute the use of my own research. In my PhD-dissertation I layed out a context of how the concept of immigrants were the result of people in powers way of thinking about the group. Therefore, integration policy took a certain form that were derrived from the political and scientific understanding of the group. By illuminating this, I did not solve any social issues. But I did however but forward the possibility of imagining how this way of thinking had consequences for politicians, thus making it possible for politicians and the public to think otherwise. And perhaps that does not really help re-shaping the world, but in some way I still hope that it accounts for something. 

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