counterintuitive tuesday
(Contrarian may be a more accurate word, but counterintuitive+the day has a better ring.)
One of my most peevish pet peeves, other than the use of the phrase “pet peeve,” is the saying of phrases that you hear all the time, that you yourself are tempted to use, and that quite plainly aren’t true. One of many such phrases is:
It is the victors who write history.
The exact origin is unknown, but the most authoritative of sources—Yahoo Answers—suggest that it is loosely attributed to Winston Churchill and used as an idea by many historians like Howard Zinn. I don’t mean to say that I object to Zinn’s writing of history from the perspective of the oppressed; I don’t. In fact, it’s probably quite useful as an intellectual exercise for students, writers, and readers of primary sources. The more ancient you get the more weight it carries because humankind was slightly less squeamish back then (think Carthage). But by now the phrase itself is so overused, so redundant, that for many it has no meaning and more dangerously it hammers an idea into popular belief without justification. Logically, this is really, really easy to disprove. So we, the mighty tumblr community, should do it.
Reblog and post examples of the non-victorious, conquered, or oppressed that have written history. Or if you disagree I guess you can say so.
primo levi, jews, palestinians, the british after american terrorists and many other colonial populations kicked them out, african-american slaves, the american south, the french (a lot)….
