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The Counterfactual in the Age of Trump
Victorian Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2018-12-07 , DOI: 10.1017/s106015031800133x
Rachel Ablow

“If Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election …” Wouldn't it be nice to climb down into that imaginative rabbit hole and stay there for a while? The possibilities are so reassuringly normal—as opposed to the strange nightmare in which we find ourselves today. For the purposes of this roundtable, however, I wish to consider only one small potential consequence of a Hillary win: and that is what it would have been like to read Catherine Gallagher's new book if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election. I would probably have experienced Telling It Like It Wasn't as a fascinating intellectual history of a mode or a discourse that has enormous political purchase today, largely as a result of its “affiliation with legal and political historical justice projects.” Although thinkers of all political persuasions use this mode, Gallagher explains, the political counterfactual has played a particularly prominent role in “the pressure exerted by the civil rights movement in favor of a Second Reconstruction, affirmative action programs, and claims for reparations” (124–25). It has served as a way to right the wrongs of history, in other words, and as such has served us extremely well. Or, at least, that is how I would have felt if Hillary Clinton had won the 2016 election. But she did not. As a result, rather than simple intellectual pleasure and political hopefulness, reading Telling It Like It Wasn't filled me with a strong sense of dread.

中文翻译:

特朗普时代的反事实

“如果希拉里·克林顿赢得了 2016 年大选……” 爬进那个富有想象力的兔子洞并在那里呆一会儿不是很好吗?这些可能性是如此令人放心的正常——与我们今天发现自己的奇怪噩梦相反。然而,出于本次圆桌会议的目的,我只想考虑希拉里获胜的一个小潜在后果:如果希拉里·克林顿赢得 2016 年大选,这就是阅读凯瑟琳·加拉格尔的新书的感觉。我可能会经历过告诉它就像它不是作为一种模式或话语的引人入胜的思想史,在今天具有巨大的政治价值,主要是由于其“与法律和政治历史正义项目的联系”。尽管所有政治派别的思想家都使用这种模式,加拉格尔解释说,政治反事实在“民权运动施加的压力支持第二次重建、平权行动计划和要求赔偿”中发挥了特别突出的作用(124 –25)。换句话说,它是一种纠正历史错误的方式,因此对我们非常有用。或者,至少,如果希拉里·克林顿赢得 2016 年大选,我会有这种感觉。但她没有。因此,阅读不是简单的智力愉悦和政治希望,而是阅读告诉它就像它不是让我充满了强烈的恐惧感。
更新日期:2018-12-07
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