ABSTRACT
Chapter 5: Reading history, especially as written from the perspective of those silenced and violated by history’s usual telling, can be an ethical and therapeutic project that makes a difference in the readers and in those around them. Hearing the voices of those drowned out by selfishness, by presumptions of superiority and entitlement, and by sheer historical unconsciousness, can challenge and change presumptions. Until we call into question the basic assumptions denying solidarity, we cannot begin to read history as an ethical project. We will continue to read the triumphalist versions of history as we have always read them, without noticing anything awry. Ethical unconsciousness may make the other impossible to perceive as brother or sister. But once we have begun to wonder about these assumptions, if not to overcome them, such reading may take us into sensibilities and conversations we had never before imagined. This chapter examines some examples, and suggests others.
