Abstract

The claim that historians “write from a present-day perspective” does not entail that the past only matters when interpreted by categories of social justice. The past is a set of amorphous events and people, including their actions and motives. So, historians are free to explore various aspects of it to offer meaningful and compelling interpretations without necessarily privileging one category. The past is richer than we can humanely understand. Hence, it is important that new generations of scholars revise it from different angles and without ideological restrictions.