all historical scholarship is displaced autobiography

absolutely no exceptions

whole lot of people wondering 'how can i write my experiences back into my scholarly work' when they are always always already there and you have mistaken the huge, trained *distancing* that education foists on you, for distance

yes, the passive voice, but also so so much more - making the past make sense, building a credible past is also building something that connects to you

the past is not the source of lessons because it is the outcome of the lessons you have already learnt

god i feel so angry about this today - this is not a subtweet, in case this anger shows through - i think this is a rationalisation of a whole lot of things

but whether history prizes sameness (look at these connections) or difference (look how things we think are universal are not universal), it is still always a story about lives, and a life story at the same time

and maybe i'm just projecting, but i have felt so much *better* since i realised that it is ok for this to be true and i can keep the systems of thought, and the power/knowledge, and all the constructedness, and *also* the human being

and then it seems so weird, from this point, that we ever thought histories were about anything other than the human beings writing them at a certain point in time - which doesn't make them useless, but lets us ascertain their use much more clearly

i want to be writing my book during my leave but i can't (among many other reasons) because i cannot access the space where i can actually put myself into gear, into history, in a way that generates words and arguments and insight

because how can anyone write anything at this point - where we don't know even slightly where the world will be in 6 weeks time, and we (maybe I) cannot therefore produce that connection between self and historical root that makes the past-making make sense

right that's enough of that