Abstract
Based on the Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lectures, this very short volume (each page contains few words) might have benefited from publication online. It seeks to address topics on which there is a vast literature, focusing on politicians acting in what they claim is the name of history, and looking at means to repudiate the past in order to help create a better future, notably with reference to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and pressure in the United States for reparations for slavery. Scott, Professor Emerita at Princeton, argues a case, namely that ‘the political work of critical history’ focuses correctly on the present: ‘on exposing the institutional, structural, and cultural arrangements which perpetuate inequality and injustice, despite the “lessons” about progress we have so long been taught. It’s those lessons we need to interrogate, asking what work they are doing to secure specific political ends.’ In practice, Scott’s analysis and remedies are as ahistorical, presentist and slanted as much that she decries, a point for example made by commentators about the ‘1619 Project’ she discusses. Moreover, the treatment of most of the past is very presentist, as is that of the range of uses of history. Not recommended.