The historian does simply not come in to replenish the gaps of memory. He constantly challenges even those memories that have survived intact.
Interpretation
The historian not only fills in memory gaps but also questions and critiques what we remember.
This quote emphasizes the role of historians in society, suggesting that their work extends beyond merely recording events to actively interrogating and challenging our collective memories. By doing so, historians help us understand history not as a static account of the past, but as a dynamic narrative that is influenced by perspective, interpretation, and context.
In practice
In a lecture on historical analysis, this quote can illustrate the importance of questioning sources.
Laila Lalami has fashioned an absorbing story of one of the first encounters between Spanish conquistadores and Native Americans, a frightening, brutal, and much-falsified history that here, in her brilliantly imagined fiction, is rewritten to give us something that feels very like the truth.
I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God's Will, united in spirit and in aim.
I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was.
One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.
Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as it was yesterday when you and I laid wreaths at the Garden of Remembrance.
When I started working on women's history about thirty years ago, the field did not exist. People didn't think that women had a history worth knowing.
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