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How do revolutions--periods of great political, social, cultural uncertainty + possibility--happen? I have been thinking a lot lately about
historical contingency (chance)
central role of aggressive resistance to change (sometimes mistakenly called "conservatism). https://twitter.com/RebeccaSpang/status/1279430902574206976
historical contingency (chance)
central role of aggressive resistance to change (sometimes mistakenly called "conservatism). https://twitter.com/RebeccaSpang/status/1279430902574206976
Contingency has been a very easy concept to teach this semester:
Did the #Covid19 pandemic HAVE to happen when it did? NO.
Does its having happened change just about everything? YES.
[Also easy to teach that human beings alone do not make human history.]
2/n
Did the #Covid19 pandemic HAVE to happen when it did? NO.
Does its having happened change just about everything? YES.
[Also easy to teach that human beings alone do not make human history.]
2/n
Contingency. RBG _could_ have retired in 2015; she _might_ have lived until Dec. 2020.
Neither of those things happened.
And so, because of the context in which her death occurred (SCOTUS balance, voting rights, ACA, Roe v Wade etc) it became a major historical event.
3/n
Neither of those things happened.
And so, because of the context in which her death occurred (SCOTUS balance, voting rights, ACA, Roe v Wade etc) it became a major historical event.
3/n
Contingency and related concept of historical hindsight--we recognize turning points (and economic bubbles!) chiefly in retrospect, such that effects exist *before* causes [see Tolstoy, see Freud]--are ideas that any historian might teach, regardless of specialization.
4/n
4/n
As a historian of revolutions, though, I have been thinking especially of late about the under-researched role played by *resistance* to change. It was crucial, but not thematized as such in my last book https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674975422
[aside] French Rev monetary policy became problematic, I argued, because it was politically divisive, i.e., many resisted or refused it, or speculated against it, because it was based on nationalization of Church properties...
7/n In his _Becoming a Revolutionary_ Tim Tackett asks "How did men and women become revolutionaries? How did they come to the opinion, so rare in human history, that everything they knew had to be started all over again" [my paraphrase]
8/n Remember, the members of the revolutionary National Assembly were lawyers, judges, military officers, major land owners, physicians, noblemen. Not one of them had a vested interest in shaking up the status quo. None of them _wanted_ the country to plunge into chaos + war.
What DID they want? Among other things:
an executive branch bound by law, and subject to its judgements;
voice and vote in legislation;
no taxation w/o representation;
and the revolutionaries at least SAID they wanted a single legal system for all [but not for the colonies].
an executive branch bound by law, and subject to its judgements;
voice and vote in legislation;
no taxation w/o representation;
and the revolutionaries at least SAID they wanted a single legal system for all [but not for the colonies].
9/n So any undergrad who's had a few lectures on absolutism should be able to tell you that the demands in previous tweet challenged the theory but not so much the practice of Old Regime monarchy. 18C kings were all about centralization, would largely have liked uniform laws.
10/n What made those demands *revolutionary* was the resistance of many at court and some (not all) in nobility to any reforms, to any gradual change at all.
It should be obvious: Revolutions don't happen in context of compromise, collaboration, mutual understanding.
It should be obvious: Revolutions don't happen in context of compromise, collaboration, mutual understanding.
11/n So: I'm a middle-class, middle-aged, white woman w/ a good job. Not so for my whole family (2 of my sisters are pandemic unemployed, 3 of my siblings aren't white, textbook "deaths of despair" among cousins and in-laws), but I am "the establishment." What's radicalized me?
12/n Why do I think the WHOLE SYSTEM has to change (when I am so clearly benefiting from it)?
Because babies + children were kidnapped at the border.
Because a sheriff sanctioned by DOJ in 2012 for racism + abuse of force was re-elected 2x and teargassed voters.
Because...
Because babies + children were kidnapped at the border.
Because a sheriff sanctioned by DOJ in 2012 for racism + abuse of force was re-elected 2x and teargassed voters.
Because...
13/n Because you have to make a "plan" to vote.
Because elected and appointed officials in Texas, Pennsylvania, no doubt elsewhere are speaking openly about NOT COUNTING votes that have been cast.
Because so many in executive branch behave as if laws don't apply to them.
Because elected and appointed officials in Texas, Pennsylvania, no doubt elsewhere are speaking openly about NOT COUNTING votes that have been cast.
Because so many in executive branch behave as if laws don't apply to them.
14/n I am angry and upset about so much, but I am not being "radicalized" by youthful Marxists, strident feminists, utopian socialists--none of the textbook "revolutionaries." NO, I am radicalized by the heinous, not-at-all "conservative" acts of "the establishment."
15/n This POTUS and his agents have aggressively denied scientific findings in every area: climate change, environmental protection, health, safety, diet.
Just as retrograde about social science, humanities!
WHO are the radicals now? WHO resists reform, destroys all it can?
Just as retrograde about social science, humanities!
WHO are the radicals now? WHO resists reform, destroys all it can?
All good tweetstorms 
must come to an end.
But the revolution really and truly is only just getting started. https://twitter.com/RebeccaSpang/status/1246832331580719107
must come to an end.But the revolution really and truly is only just getting started. https://twitter.com/RebeccaSpang/status/1246832331580719107
