The Anarchy of History

History Against the Grain

Sovereignty makes its own claims, enforces its own reality, and as we learn in this week’s episode, writes its own history. Our special guest, Professor Ali Anooshahr of UC Davis joins us to discuss his research on the history claims made by the great sovereign empires of Eurasia. He explains how Persian, Indian, and Turkish chroniclers invented genealogies for the ruling dynasties they served, to cloak them in the mythic glory of an invented Turco-Mongol past, and thereby provide them with suitable claims of legitimate authority. To avoid being trapped by such invented claims, Dr. Anooshahr suggests we must think broadly about the past, beyond the bordered histories of states and their sovereign claims, to gain valuable insights and perspective, especially on the more local subjects we study. Josh and Chris consider how such perspective benefits our understanding of the history outside our windows, as it unfolds in real time. Taken from this week’s headlines, we ask how the passing of Civil Rights warrior John Lewis offers perspective on the claims of sovereignty, the most racist of which he fearlessly confronted. John Lewis’s story of confrontation and civil disobedience reminds us of what Michel Foucault termed the “mechanisms of security” that sovereign states impose on those who protest oppressive laws, whether the steel helmeted police and high pressure firehoses of Lewis’s day, or the current arsenal of military shock weapons seen in Federal deployment of stormtroopers this week in Portland, Oregon. To keep a clear focus on the telling of these stories, the saucy boys argue we must ditch the shibboleth of ‘objectivity’ and exchange the narrative of history-as-sovereignty for an anarchy of history that serves no master.