Lewis Nicholson

What Can We Know of History?

If one generically searches for quotes about history, a treasure trove can be found giving a variety of conflicting opinions by people with the title of historian. For the most part history is seen a “map” of sorts that helps “modern travelers” navigate the present: Henry Glassie. However, the idea of navigating the present based on the past comes with an array of complexities, as well as many ways of theorizing this ‘map’, its conditions, and its consequences. What might it mean for two very ‘different’ people to either write or use history? What if one of these two people wrote/ constructed this history, while the other chose to use it? These are some of the questiones of interest within this paper as we take a look at the issues and concepts posited by theorist and author Derek Walcott in his essay The Muse of History published in 1974. Dealing heavily with topics of Existentialist philosophy such as the self, and the other, Walcott is considered in this analysis as a way of making sense of our world today. Taking up the topic of history as narrative, this essay hopes to develop an understanding of enacting subjectivity today with a connection to the January 6th, 2021, Capital Riot. Looking at Walcott’s ideas of subjectivity and history, this essay examines the Capital Riot’s media and historical response and what it means to explain a historical event. However, in the end we examine Existentialist philosophy, and how it can provide valuable insight on both; how history can be seen to both hinder, and provide way for the enactment of subjectivity.