Maybe We Got Some of It Right

A Response to Alan Filewod

Abstract

Whose views may be right or wrong depends a lot on perspective. In his article “History’s Sides,” social anthropologist Nicholas Lackenby calls the tendency to situate oneself on the right or wrong side of history, as Alan does, “sideism.” Lackenby contrasts that perspective with the notion of “plural, local, individual histories.” To the sideist, history is a totalizing concept, a rhetorical binary that leaves little room for the local and individual. Without denying the importance of critiquing colonial history, I argue that one can do so while still allowing the virtues of those local histories that live within its shadow.