ABSTRACT

‘The Ethics of Writing History in the Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching’ raises questions about the ethical obligations of historians who write about historical traumas like lynching, in particular when the subjects of their histories cannot give consent for their violent and deeply personal stories to be published in books and articles. This essay argues that, though historians are charged with unearthing the ‘truth’ of the past without whitewashing or tempering violence, bigotry, and the like, we also have an obligation to preserve the dignity and privacy of the victims and survivors of historical trauma. Some stories (or certain parts of stories), like those of Black women who were raped as part of a lynching ritual, may be legitimately unspeakable, especially given the real potential to veer into the gratuitous and threaten to re-objectify victims and retraumatize survivors. Expanding upon an essay by Teju Cole, ‘Death in the Browser Tab,’ that critiques the ease with which anyone can access videos of police shootings, this essay proposes strategies for forging ethical relationships with these historical subjects and navigating these difficult writing choices.

摘要

“在林奇的创伤性来世中写作历史的伦理”提出了有关历史学家的伦理义务的问题，这些历史学家写关于诸如私刑的历史创伤，特别是当他们的历史主题无法同意其暴力而深刻的个人故事要出版时在书籍和文章中。本文认为，尽管历史学家被控发掘过去的“真相”，而不用粉饰或抑制暴力，偏执等，但我们还有义务维护历史创伤的受害者和幸存者的尊严和隐私。某些故事（或故事的某些部分），例如作为私刑仪式的一部分而被强奸的黑人妇女的故事，在法律上可能是无法言说的，尤其是考虑到真正有可能转向免费用户，并威胁将受害者重新客观化并使其幸存者重新受伤。Teju Cole在“浏览器选项卡中的死亡”一文中展开了评论，该评论批评了任何人都可以轻松访问警察枪击案的视频，该文提出了与这些历史主题建立道德关系并应对这些困难的写作选择的策略。