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Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History by Richard J Evans review | Books | The Guardian http://j.mp/1gUzwt0 歴史の反実仮想への厳しい批判
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Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History, by Richard J. Evans
27 MARCH 2014
Books in brief: ‘Altered Pasts’ by Richard J Evans
by Jonathan Derbyshire / MARCH 27, 2014 / LEAVE A COMMENT
Altered Pasts by Richard J Evans, review
Is the study of what might have been anything more than a parlour game?
Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History, by Richard J. Evans
27 MARCH 2014
Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History
ああして、そうなって、それから、こうなった、というのが、歴史であるが、現に、こうなっているのは、運命論者ではないかぎり、不可避、必然とは限らないわけだから、こうしかありえなかったわけでもなく、現実とは異なる、こうもありえた、という仮想の過去を考えることもできるし、現に、人々はよくやっているわけである。
それでは、一つ違えば、全く違う結果が生まれたか、というと、例えば、
The removal of a single element may not be sufficient to make the complete about-turns that counterfactual historians imagine. An example might be the Battle of Waterloo. If Napoleon had won this battle, would it have changed the overall course of history and enabled Napoleon to continue his domination of Europe. Evans' guess is that it would only have delayed his downfall. The British forces were still stronger than the French and maybe Napoleon's depleted army would have suffered a crushing defeat months later. Similarly, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, which was the trigger for the start of the First World War, may not have been the underlying cause for the War and therefore there may have been other potential triggers.
ワルテローの戦いで、仮に、ナポレオンが勝ったとしても、イギリス軍の優勢は、確固としたものであったので、ナポレオンの敗北が数ヶ月遅れただけであろう、と。
Evans, for his part, allows that counter-factual hypotheses do have a role to play in serious historical research, since they allow historians to test the strength of their causal explanations.
というように、因果関係の強弱を考えるうえでは、反実仮想も無意味とはいえないのだが、
On this analysis, the “what if” accounts often read more like “if only” hypotheticals, and sometimes merely wishful thinking. Counterfactual history done in such broad strokes, Evans maintains, “allows historians to rewrite history according to their present-day political purposes and prejudices”
特に右翼の歴史家による、”もしも、シリーズ”は、自分たちの現在の政治目的や偏見に基づいた希望的観測にすぎないのであって、けしからん、というわけなんでしょうね。
ーーーーどうなんでしょうね。
そういう意味では、反実仮想の場合ではないが、
When Women Wanted Sex Much More Than Men
And how the stereotype flipped.
March 19, 2013
こっちのほうが面白くて、かつては、女性は性欲ムンムンで、自制心がないものと思われ、女房の性の相手を長らくしないだけで、非難されることもあったほどだったが、
By positioning themselves as naturally chaste and virtuous, Protestant women could make the case for themselves as worthy moral and intellectual equals. They could carve out a space for themselves to participate in political life as social reformers advocating for moral causes like charity for the poor and prohibition. And in an era when men could legally rape their wives (an era which did not end in the US until 1993), womens’ supposed passionlessness provided at least some limited grounds for them to abstain from unwanted sex with their husbands. Yet these benefits were available for only a certain subset of women. As John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman point out, “The idea of innate female virtue, or of sexual passionlessness, applied primarily to native-born, middle class women; working-class, immigrant, and black women continued to be seen as sexually passionate, and thus sexually available.” (Think back to Windscheid’s claim that women, but especially affluent women, were naturally born without sex drives.) Middle-class white women could emphasize their similarities with men of their race and class, and thus access some of their privilege, by embracing an ideology that posited fundamental sexual differences between themselves and those other women.
プロテスタントの中流階級白人女性が白人男性との平等が認められる前提として、自分たちも自制心があるというナラティブが役立ったし、また、性欲がないとすることで、したくない夫との性交を断る口実にもなったのだ、と。
ところが、
But perhaps the longest-lasting consequence of the rise of the passionless woman was the ushering in of a sneakier type of sexism--whose evidence we see in any number of fast-food and beer commercials that portray men as a bunch of dim-witted five-year-olds in the bodies of adults. Women are smarter, more responsible, more caring and upstanding; not like men, whose instincts are base and appetites carnal. Since men are utterly unfit for helping to raise their own children (as they are little more than children themselves), that job must fall to women. Since men are too incompetent to do housework, their stolid, levelheaded wives must do it. Since men are unable to restrain themselves, women must keep their skirts long, stay away from alcohol, refrain from flirting. For women, the failure to have appeared passionless enough means that they are now the ones responsible if they are raped. “The purity of women is the everlasting barrier against which the tides of man’s sensual nature surge,” as one nineteenth-century reformer put it, and this attitude still persists today.
Even when gender roles change, sexism has a remarkable ability to adapt--and historical amnesia enables this ability. The association of men with lust is as much an artifact of recent times as the association of girls with pink and boys with blue (less than 100 years ago, this system of gendered color-coding was also reversed). Yet even with all this switching-around, some things have stayed suspiciously the same. When women were sexual, their proper place was in the home as caregivers and mothers. When women became passionless, their proper place was still in the home as caregivers and mothers. Isn’t it funny how that works? Gender roles gain their power from the fact that they appear natural and eternal. By looking to the past, we can draw aside this veil and see these categories for what they are--made by people, and able to be changed by people.
女性が性欲の獣ではなく、冷静で、合理的だと認められるようになっても、今度は、男性は子供のままで、子育てに適しないから、という理由で、子育ては冷静な、女性に、というように、女性のいるべき場所は、やはり、家庭だ、ということになってしまった、と。
ただ、歴史を学ぶことで、自然で、ずっとそうだった思われることでも、過去を省みることで、実は、自然ではなく、人為で、違うようにもありえた、ということがわかる、と。
で、こっちは、
SUNDAY, APR 20, 2014 09:00 AM +0900
Before the bridal thong
Honeymoons weren't always such sexy affairs. They began as a trip with friends to lessen the “trauma” of marriage
TRACY CLARK-FLORY
Where did the idea of the honeymoon come from?
The act came about in the early 19th century in both England and America. It might be related to the decline of direct family engagement in marriage negotiations. One of the first roles of honeymoons was as “a bridal visit.” You went and visited other relatives, basically introducing each other to them. Originally, they were almost like a period to ease the transition into coupledom. Women often brought a relative or friend along. You would visit other friends or family and bring along a female companion.
Women brought friends with them on their honeymoon?
That needs to be put in context. At the same time as there was this huge increased emphasis on the couple relationship and being in love ― instead of marriage as a utilitarian arrangement ― you were getting a redefinition of male and female roles. That was a reaction to the fears of instability, because once marriage is based on love, how do you keep people married? I think in part, as a probably unconscious reaction to that, love got redefined, and male and female roles got redefined. The idea became that men and women are total opposites and they need each other to complete each other. The man is believed to need a woman to have access to emotions and caregiving; and the woman, who is increasingly defined as economically dependent, rather than a coproducer on the family farm, needs a man to have access to the practical parts of life.
In some ways, it was a very good arrangement for making men and women think that they needed each other, but in other ways it turned them into strangers. Lots of research shows that one of the results was a sense of marriage trauma on the part of women.
Marriage “trauma”?
I found lots of letters from the 19th century where women would refer to men as the grosser sex ― and this is totally unlike the past. There was a sense of, “I have so much more in common with other women, how will I make this transition to this guy who I need but don’t understand at all?” I suspect that honeymoons arose ― totally unlike we think of them today, as getting away from your friends and family to focus on your own sexual intimacy ― it was like, “Let’s slow down this traumatic transition.”
How has the meaning of the honeymoon changed over time?
In the early 20th century, people began to see the downsides of the division of labor and the rigid sexual distinction between nurturing females, sexless females, virtuous females, and then males being all the opposite of that. There began to be a real emphasis on sexual adjustment, on getting mutual sexual pleasure. In the early emerging profession of marriage counseling, people began urging the man and the woman to go [on vacation] together, to make time and effort for this.
ハネムーンってのは、親戚への挨拶まわりみたいなもので、独身貴族から、結婚へのトラウマを和らがれるために、他の女友達も連れ添っていったものだった、と。
そもそも、結婚、男、女の概念が時代によって違うわけですね。
つまり、こうした社会的制度や役割は、それぞれ、ずっとそうである、というわけではなく、いまあるあり方が必然とか、一通りではなく、他にもありえた、ということは、歴史を学ぶ一つの意義ではあるんでしょうね。
