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[misatheredpanda.livejournal.com]

CAMILLE DESMOULINS IS 250 TODAY!

I don't actually have anything to commemorate the event, sadly. However I would like to encourage you to spare a thought (and perhaps a few words, if you feel so inspired) for this man who slipped into history - and more than a few peoples' hearts in the past 250 years - against the odds. I could never express how grateful I am for it.

Comments

[maelipstick.livejournal.com]

Take the word, "dictator," which I recently posted about. When you say "dictator" in the 1790s, people take that as a classical reference. Not exactly the reaction you get now.

I've been reading your post and should comment when I get my brain together, but the democracy is crap only dictatorships achieve anything is a line you get a lot in public health, it apparently being much easier to put in needle exchange programmes etc when one doesn't have to worry about voter reaction. (True. Although conversely, it is much easier to shoot drug addicts too. But I digress.) But no, nobody thought of Hitler and Stalin in 1790.

Though translation issues do often seem to trip up anglophone historians.

So an Anglophone can get double tripped - missing the historical context as well as the finer linguistic meanings. Perhaps it's because I'm from the crinkly, embarrassing, bilingual bit of the UK but I'm very wary of translation issues as there is a fair bit that doesn't go smoothly between languages. (I can't quite articulate this point correctly, but one of the things I like about LTeLV is it's Frenchness, the idea that this is what they actually sounded like, I dunno.)

I mean, how the hell does it make any sense to encourage honest people who have ideals to do anything but get involved in politics?

It's the current prevailing wisdom. Fortunately, prevailing wisdom can change.

History is context. History is everything we know so far that can't be observed at this moment. How could studying that be pointless?

And if it is so pointless, why do people keep changing it?

Scurr's methods in general struck me as pretty irresponsible.

Do you know what really anoys me about her. She never shuts up and lets her subject speak. She seems constantly to be diving in telling one what Robespierre thought, which unless she had a crystal ball and a clairvoyant to hand, seems pretty dodgy ground to me.