Charlie Hebdo and the Judgement of History
How much are actions – especially extreme ones – the result of impersonal historical forces and how much are they dependent upon the impulses of individual actors?
Millions of people took to the streets of France in January to protest about the murders of eight satirists at the magazine Charlie Hebdo, of four Jewish patrons of a kosher food store and of three police officers.
Many in the media have identified the slaughter in Manichean terms, reflecting a battle between religious sensibilities and free speech, between the forces of reaction and modernity, between Islam and the West.
Historians have to judge such claims, both in the present and where they arise in the past. Discerning motive is perhaps the hardest task we face. It is an intellectual challenge but also a narrative one. How far to use the individual act to explain wider societal, cultural and intellectual forces? How far to claim those forces diminish the role of the individual and the extent to which his or her uniquely personal experiences shaped and defined their choices?
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