Demonstration outside School of Oriental and African Studies, London, of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. 27 April 2017. Wikicommons/ Philafrenzy. Some rights reserved.Carol Que (CQ): An explicit political agenda in scholarly work is commonly regarded as disreputable. Mahmood Mamdani once talked about this in a lecture at the University of Cape Town that considered the role of the university and scholar – academic freedom true to its classic vision – as a commitment towards the call for justice. Working as a historian and activist, how have you brought the two together, especially when, as you have said before in a lecture at Exeter, historical research works as an analysis of present reality? Is politics everything?
Ilan Pappe (IP): Yes, for me it’s been a long journey, finding the golden mean between scholarship and activism. Probably one of the biggest hurdles was the criticism that my work would be too political, too politicised… implying that it is of a lesser quality. It takes a while to be bold enough, and say that this is almost a ridiculous idea, that one can write an objective history of a place where a conflict rages on today. In fact, in almost every case, one would find it quite presumptuous to think that the historian can provide a neutral narrative.
The only way that you can provide a neutral narrative, and this is also true for social sciences, not only for analysing the past but also analysing the present – the only way to do it is to be extremely boring, to be so careful, to be so literal, that you don’t say anything of significance.
