How must we tell the history of the oppressed?

[My lecture at Sesam Identity 2.0, which was delivered on 7th March 2025]

Introduction

“History is written by the victors!” Most of you, if not all of you, must have heard this well-known proverb, often attributed to Winston Churchill. I think this proverb has, by now, established itself as a truism, namely, as a self-evident statement that does not really add anything to what we already consider as common knowledge: Of course history is written by the victors! It is written by the ones who are in power to dictate history, to tell us how history unfolded, to choose the events they deem important and to offer their interpretation as “objective/impartial world history”. So, history is written by the ones who are in control of the means of production of history, the means of production of historical narration, the ones who are in control of the Ministry of Education, of education in general, of the production of books, of the government offices in charge of cultural matters.

But we live in an era in which the production of narratives is not monopolized by one group, where books are produced from various voices and political subjects. Thus, one would be justified in raising the question about who the victor would be in this historical phase where more than one grand narrative has established itself. Does history today indeed reduce to ONE narrative and ONE victor? Don’t we often have several narratives running at the same time concerning the same historical period and the same events and the same opposing groups? And aren’t these narratives competing? So, in cases where we have two competing groups that have historically clashed, and each develops its own narrative, does that mean we have two victors? For example, what about the two main communities here in Cyprus, the Greek-Cypriot and the Turkish-Cypriot community. Both communities have developed their own narrative, their own account of their cultural heritage, competing narratives, each community having established an official version of events on the side of the island that it de facto or de jure controls through established structures. Are they both winners? And are they both losers, at the same time? (One could of course here point out that the Greek-Cypriot formal history is more of a winner here, since it has established itself not just de facto, but also de jure, having won the legitimacy of international law {and the Security Council’s resolutions, etc.}).

What complicates matters even more concerning the dictum that “history is written by the victors” is the fact that both of these dominant narratives in Cyprus, each construct the identity of the subject whose history they narrate, as the victim of history, as a victim of great injustice. This holds for both the dominant Greek-Cypriot narrative in the south, and the dominant Turkish-Cypriot narrative in the north. The dominant Greek-Cypriot history constructs an identity whereby the protagonist, the Greek-Cypriot subject, is the victim, the oppressed, in need of emancipation and justice; likewise, the dominant Turkish-Cypriot history constructs an identity whereby the protagonist, the Turkish-Cypriot subject, is the victim, the oppressed, in need of emancipation and justice. 

Doesn’t this undermine the point made by Churchill, that history is written by victors? Does it not contradict it? Doesn’t this show that history is not always written by the victors, but it is sometimes written by the defeated, by the oppressed, by a subject that has been subjected to great destruction, that has suffered great injustice and which is searching for salvation and redemption?

The short answer to this question is no, it does not contradict Churchill’s proverb. Because despite the fact that the author of history here is represented as a victim, there are two important characteristics that we need to consider: (1) that the subject has gained relative control and power over the means of production of history, which is a form of victory; (2) that the historical narration stems from a historical awareness that understands time as a linear continuum and as a progression; as a result it fails to grasp oppression, and it fails to mobilize a revolutionary potential in the suppressed past.

As regards the first point, that the subject has gained relative control and power over the means of production of history, thus establishing itself as the victor: this is evidenced by the fact that the narrating subject has enough control over the means of narration to the extent that it allows it to narrate its own history and cultural heritage; the subject has established itself as a dominant author of history in a certain context; this in itself shows that the subject has won the power struggle to the extent that it can narrate a linear, progressive, history with itself as the protagonist. In other words, what I am arguing is that the act of narration where the narrating subject is in a position to record and narrate a linear and progressive history of its own subjectivity, is performative evidence of victory.

A victory over whom? It’s a double victory. It’s a victory over those who have been negated and transformed, and do not have the means of production of historical narrative; but it is also a more radical and comprehensive victory over those whose subjectivity becomes so radically and deeply negated to the extent that history does not recognize them at all, not even as victims, not even as a negated other. These are nowhere to be found in this historical power struggle. They play no acknowledged part in the construction of historical identity of the narrating people.

The subjects I have in mind here as the oppressed, are those whose identity does not figure at all in any historical narrative, whose identity is radically silenced, who remain invisible. The key here to understand and fully appreciate the depth of oppression is the absence of a recorded negation. The subject whose oppression is not even negated and is not even recorded, is nowhere cited in a chronicle, is a subject that remains indeterminate and thus totally powerless, because it does not even have the means to understand itself as oppressed, to show up in history as a subject, to claim a history and an identity. If it is not even negated, then it lacks the very condition of possibility for a revolutionary present.  

These are neither the Greek-Cypriot ruling class, nor the Turkish-Cypriot ruling class, since the Greek-Cypriot ruling class does figure and is named in the Turkish-Cypriot ruling class’ narrative, as a dialectical part of it, as a negated other; likewise, the Turkish-Cypriot ruling class also does figure in the Greek-Cypriot ruling class narrative, as a dialectical part of it, as a negated other. Both of these political subjects are determined in the other’s narrative, as an other, as an antagonistic subject, and is identified as a subject against whom the historical struggle takes place, and against whom history is defined as progressive and gradually emancipative.

Let me now turn to the second point, the second reason I mentioned as to why the two dominant historical narratives (the Greek-Cypriot and the Turkish-Cypriot narrative) amount to “histories written by the victor”. This is concerned with the way historical narration constructs temporality and historicity itself. These narratives stem from a historical awareness that understands time as homogeneous, that understands history as a linear and progressive continuum. Linearity and continuity is afforded by the fact that history has one substantive subject, a protagonist, that unifies the whole story: all historical moments are moments of the history OF the narrating subject, which despite the negations, conflicts and contradictions, it supposedly remains the same. This means that the narrating subject wins its own continuity and its identity as self-sameness, by surviving and overcoming destruction and any oppressive negation. Thus, when this subject narrates its own history, it narrates the contradictions and oppositions it has historically encountered as already overcome. This fails to preserve the struggle and the oppressiveness, and it ultimately fails to mobilize any revolutionary necessity and potential.

Thus, we return to the title of my talk: how, then, can the history of the defeated, the history of the oppressed, be told? How should history and time be conceptualized, and how should historical identity be represented in order to properly grasp the oppression suffered by the losers of history? And what role must negation be given to such a history of the oppressed?

We can start answering these questions by turning to the Jewish German Marxist philosopher, Walter Benjamin, taking inspiration from his 1940 essay titled “Theses on the Philosophy of History” or “On the Concept of History”. Though Benjamin’s biographical information is extremely interesting, I’ll omit any biographical references (you can, anyway, always read about him), and I will focus on some of his ideas.

Dialectics in history

Benjamin’s critical thinking was heavily influenced by Marxist thought, and his ideas on history have deep affinities with historical materialism, which is a materialist version of dialectics. As such, Benjamin’s thought can be understood as a sub-species of dialectics. Before we proceed with Benjamin, it would help to say a few words about dialectical thought in general.

The history of dialectical thought is long, complex and intricate, and impossible to summarize in a short lecture. While it would be misleading to talk about “the essence” of dialectics in general, as if dialectics is a fixed method that has a transhistorical form that is applied onto different historical phases and contexts, nevertheless the attempt to summarize dialectics and refer to a dialectical “essence” is an inescapable necessity.

How, then, would this “essence” of dialectics be defined? We could argue that “dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of things.” [Lenin] That dialectics is the principle of the unity of opposites [Lenin]. This would mean that any attempt to define the identity of any given thing, the identity of any formation, must refer to its contradictions, must see its opposite as a part of that identity. But we are not talking just about opposition, but about negation.

Hegel laid the foundations of systematic modern dialectics, which explicated the decisive importance of negation. For Hegel, negation is an indispensable moment of the dialectic. Negation is not simply an opposition (Widerspruch) or difference. Negation plays a decisive role in the formation of identity, and of self-awareness in general. Negation is a necessary condition for the intellect: negation moves the intellect, it moves understanding (Vernunft). Without negation there can be no understanding, and no self-understanding either.

Understanding is negation because the work of understanding is negative, i.e.: it identifies opposites, makes distinctions, and moves the dialectic. When we say “moves the dialectic”, we mean that it moves experience itself and moves the very formation of consciousness.  Consciousness is gradually formed, and acquires, through knowledge, its freedom. Therefore, the formation of identity cannot be the result of a direct “neutral” intuition. It is through successive determinative negations that the intellect acquires a better grasp of the world and its history.

Nevertheless, and this is an important point, the dialectical movement, for Hegel, is not accomplished only by [determinate] negation, but also by rational reflection (Reflexion): once the subject reflects on the opposition and on the negation, it grasps identity as a whole, it grasps both opposing sides as parts of the same identity, thus overcoming the negation and the contradiction and produces a new simple identity. This reflective moment “reconciles with negation”.

In Marx’s historical materialism, what changes is that the dialectic is applied to a materialist background where the dialectical process, the negations and transformations, concern existing social, economic and political formations, and their internal contradictions.

In both Hegel and Marx, dialectical thought enacts historical progress, where the subject achieves self-awareness, by grasping its whole history as a unity in successive contradictions. Hegel’s and Marx’s dialectical thought has a sense of intellectual optimism, owing to the fact that they expound a linear progression in history, a progression that leads to emancipation, and which overcomes negation – an intellectual optimism that at a first glance is incompatible with Benjamin’s negative dialectic, with the dark dialectic of history he describes.

Let me now turn to Walter Benjamin.

Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History”

In the Ninth Thesis in “On the Concept of History,” Benjamin writes:

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair, to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.

Let us analyze this dark and enigmatic text. First of all, let us clarify that the Angel of History provides the answer to the question posed earlier, concerning how can the history of the oppressed, the history of the defeated, be told. But we need to understand what sort of historical awareness this involves, especially since, at a first glance, this is a history of destruction, a dark negative history of ruins, of sheer negation.

Let’s start from the fact that the narrator of history here, the one who came to narrate is not a scholar of history, but an Angel. Angels are (1) messengers, (2) they are protectors and bearers of hope for redemption, and (3) they move between the transcendent and the immanent.

Here, the function of narration and protection overlap, since they have the same object and are actualized through the same act: the Angel of History came to protect the History of the oppressed by narrating it. History is protected from oblivion through narration.

And this narration bears the hope of redemption because hope for redemption is inherent in the very essence of the Angel: The Angel is a being that comes from heaven, and is here pushed from heaven. And he is a being who intertwines the immanent and the transcendent: these two realms are both incarnated in Angel’s being.

But despite the hope in redemption, what Benjamin describes, the dialectic he describes, is too dark and negative, and does not have the optimistic characteristics of Hegelian and Marxian dialectic. How could the movement of the Angel of History bring about redemption in history? On the one hand, yes indeed the wind of Paradise, the “storm of progress”, pushes the Angel towards the future. This aspect brings the hope of redemption. On the other hand, however, the Angel’s gaze looks only back to the past, and only accumulates destruction and ruins. So, we have a contradiction here: the progressive movement towards the future piles up destruction and ruins in the past, which is all he sees and narrates. What sort of progress is this? This is the opposite of progress! And why does the Angel see and narrate only destruction in history? What kind of progress can such a dark narrative, such an overwhelmingly negative gaze, bring about?

Here, we are helped by Benjamin himself to interpret this. This historical gaze, Benjamin tells us in The Seventh Thesis on History, is contrasted with the gaze of the “detached,” the “neutral” historian, who in their attempt ostensibly to “relive” an era authentically so as to narrate it “as it happened”, putting out of his mind all that he knows of the subsequent development of history, they simply identify themselves with the hegemon, with the one who has already triumphed as the victor. This supposedly “detached” and neutral narration gives no hope of redemption to the losers of history, to the oppressed, since it does not even tell their story. Therefore, if one is to tell the history of the subaltern, the one who needs redemption from oppression, it will inevitably be a story of defeat, a story of ruins. Otherwise, it is simply the history of the victor.

In any case, in the dialectic of the Angel of History, progress does not mean to remove the negative, to remove destruction, but to narrate the negative, to narrate what is left behind as destroyed and to stay with it. So, negation prevails, since the Angel has their back turned to the future and cannot see or foresee a future transformation of the negative (into something positive). Consequently, the dialectic in the “Angel of History” is a negative dialectic, where negation (destruction and ruin) is not removed, it not overcome or transformed, but accumulated.

No positive moments in the history of the defeated is citable, because, as Benjamin says in the Third Thesis, “the past would fully befall only a resurrected humanity [...]: only for a resurrected [that is, a redeemed] humanity would its past, in each of its moments, be citable.”

Another  task of the historian who wants to tell the history of the oppressed, is to introduce the sense of emergency in the history they are narrating; this explains why we must not narrate it as a history of linear progress, which relativizes and normalizes the status quo, which normalizes oppression, but we must tell it as a history of accumulation of ruins, a repugnant history (in the Eight and Tenth Thesis). We cannot tell the history of the oppressed, as a history of “cultural heritage”, writes Benjamin in the Seventh Thesis. I will return to this point soon, and try to indicate the way Benjamin’s ideas on History could pertain to architecture.

Concluding Remarks

The Angel of History tells the history of the defeated, of the oppressed. It tells of their destruction. From the perspective of historical awareness and temporality, it institutes a time that is not homogeneous and empty, but it is here-and-now, radically negative and urgent. This is not a renunciation of hope for transformation, but it is already a transformation of sorts; it contains within it the sperm of transformation, the fuel, the motivation.

Death and destruction are memorialized, and thus preserved in memory. The commemoration of death and ruins does not amount to the brutal domination of death, but it is the signification of transformation. In the Seventh Thesis, Benjamin notes that “there has never been a document of culture, that is not simultaneously a document of barbarism.” In that same Thesis, Benjamin also argues against the notion of “cultural heritage.” “Cultural heritage” is the parlance of the victor; it is the way the oppressor talks about culture and about cultural artifacts and world heritage sites, and architecture, having contextualized them in a linear progressive history where negation, destruction and oppression has been sublated, transformed and relativized. The task of the historian who wants to tell the history of the oppressed and the defeated, must talk about the horror of cultural heritage, of its barbarism, its destruction, its ruins. Let me give you two examples: we can talk about the al-Wakrah stadium in Quatar, which was built for the 2022 World Cup, as an architecture of destruction. That would be the history of the stadium as told from the perspective of the 500 Indians and 382 Nepalese migrant workers who reportedly died in building the stadium. Or, another example, which is way milder, we could talk about Eleftheria Square right here, as a site of barbarism. That would be the history of the Square as told from the perspective of disabled persons, specifically the blind.

To reconceptualize history in this way, as a history of barbarism, would not amount to surrendering to barbarism, to destruction and oppression. When Benjamin argues that “there has never been a document of culture, that is not simultaneously a document of barbarism,” it does not also mean that the reverse is also equally true, namely that “there has never been a document of barbarism that is not at the same time a document of culture.” The two propositions are not equal. Barbarism itself carries no transformation within it, yet transformation is haunted by barbarism. The dark dialectic of the Angel of History is both a document of barbarism and a document of transformation.