Legal Love through Poetry

LAW

I choose to pursue the legal path,
For many years a voice within me hath,
Longed to help the cheated and oppressed,
And with that opportunity I have been blessed

I choose law though they are many,
Who ridicule my passion and naivety,
I hope that someday they will come to realise
That a strong will can make dreams materialise.

I choose law so when I speak,
For the voiceless and the meek,
People will sit up and pay attention,
To the world’s plight and affliction.

I choose law so that each day can be filled,
With a renewed chance to let injustice be killed,
To know I didn’t sit in silence and complacency
And to my children I’ll leave that legacy.

I choose law for the knowledge it bestows on me,
Fills my being with confidence and dignity,
To know each case won might
Help someone sleep better at night.

I choose law not for the money
But for the smile on the faces of many
I refuse to become like the ones who prey,
On the vulnerable to advance their selfish way.

I choose law for I truly feel,
That it’s my purpose according to His will,
To fight the battle in my own way,
So others can awake to a brighter day.


By Trishelea Ann Sandosam

To what extent does power influence the production of historical knowledge?

The production of historical knowledge can tailor the truth to one’s needs, and even one’s whims. Nowadays, in this day and age when people have more power and access to write history as they see it, we have the freedom, if not the opportunity, to change history. Let us say that I am going to write an essay on how Queen Cleopatra VII and the Imperator Marcus Antonius plotted to kill Julius Caesar and having succeeded, claimed joint rule over the Roman Empire. As fascinating as it may sound, my story is most inaccurate. However, if I were to show my essay to someone who had never heard of Cleopatra, they would take my words to be right; looking at my background as a history student, the reader would even assume that I had done research and relevant readings. This is in its own small way, is the power I have as a writer over a reader and how I can use this authority to change the production of historical knowledge.

In order to answer this question, it is important to reach some sort of common understanding of what power truly is. At its highest level, one could say that power lies in the government of a country, or with its head of state. They are elected and therefore given the authority to rule over society; however in some cases, they had seized power and imposed their authority on society. At its medial level, we could say that power is in the hands of an employer, or a company and they would “rule” over their employees. At its lowest level, we would look at the family unit and the power lying with the head of that unit. However, for this discussion, we shall focus on power in the hands of those in positions with access to power levels that allowed them the influence to produce historical knowledge.

The production of historical knowledge can be seen as the writing of books, school textbooks, novels, articles, and even films. It would convey a historical event of a certain time and place. They could be purely factual in the sense that it is completely narrated and only wants to tell the reader what had happened. However some of these writings would try and analyse why and how that event occurred. This is where we have to see how power has influenced the analysis of such events. Power in this context could come from the poetic license of a writer or even a government and how they wanted to portray that event. On the same token, we could point to the power that a government has over certain historical documents. For example, in archives there are materials which have been deemed sensitive and therefore cannot be viewed by the general public. They would be allowed access to ‘official’ documents and in this way, the government would have power on the historical knowledge produced from such documents.

There is a saying that ‘history is written by victors’. This could point to the extent of how their power over the losing side and for future generations to come, indeed especially if their rule as victors is unchallenged. With the enemy defeated, there really was no alternative voice to the production of history so one is left with only the victor’s point of view of their struggle and success. They would, after their victory, write stories of their glorious battles and how they are the rightful winners.

In a modern day context, the government would commission school textbooks and they would indeed sift through a country’s history to provide the necessary information. The government would have set what would be taught, from Science to History. In Malaysia, for example, history textbooks are written by the government and it teaches, narrowly as one might argue, how all negative aspects of society and history were caused by the West while the East is usually portrayed as the innocent victim. Conflicts such as the Russo-Japanese War were seen as a triumph of the East. Though this should not be seen as an insult to the West, it is simply a way of portraying the East, and with it Malaysia, as a competent unit of power. This just shows how the Malaysian government uses its power to produce history that would put the nation and region in a good and flattering light. As it produces school textbooks, its influence is spread among students and teachers alike and thus their historical views are shaped from an early start.

Providing historical contrast would bring us to the next point in this discussion. Sometimes in order to show the superiority of a country, government, or, in some cases, race, it has been necessary for those in power to provide some sort of contrast to their approved way of life. They would portray a common enemy that could be despised by the general population, as a focus point to deflect blame from the government. This theoretical enemy was also a useful way of consolidating one’s authority over a society; it gave the raison d’etre and mandate the people needed to be protected. One is reminded of George Orwell’s novel 1984, where Big Brother was constantly fighting or allied with either the Euroasians or Eastasians. They were used to whip up support for the government against a common target. In order to this, the government would create, or alter history in order to find some sort of existing animosity against this group as can be seen with the work of Winston Smith of the Ministry of Love where he recreates and changes history to suit the ever changing needs of the government. Historically, this method is commonly practiced by various power units.

If we look to British India, we can see how the Orientalist and Utilitatian historians such as William Jones and James Mill portrayed India in such a light to emphasise the superiority of European civilisation. The Indian subcontinent was described as stagnant, corrupt, amoral, and foreign. These points of view were a way of justifying the continuing presence of the British. They were so successful that the local Indian population began to believe what these European historians claimed and this just shows how influential their power was in producing not only ‘believable’ history, but history that worked in their favour.

In seeking to answer this question, it would also be interesting to look at gender power. Not wishing to offend feminism, it is necessary to look at the role played by men in the production of historical knowledge. Let us look to the time of Augustus Caesar, the Roman ruler who established Pax Romana after annexing Egypt in the aftermath of Antony and Cleopatra’s suicides. His was a time of male dominance where women were seen as subordinate to men, especially in Rome where its senate was dominated by men and its leader known for his sexual and foreign prejudices . It has been suggested that in those days, all things Roman were seen as superior, morally apt and therefore the ‘right path’; this was certainly seen in contemporary writings .The prime enemy of Rome at that time was Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt and in his propaganda to discredit this generally effective ruler of Egypt, Augustus painted her as a femme fatale whose sexual charms as a woman enticed the Roman general, Marcus Antonius to abandon his Roman loyalties and in doing so, becoming womanly himself. This was an affront to Roman values, which upheld rationality, loyalty to Rome, and above all, male power. Such was the dangerous charms of a woman and it is this view that distorted the portrayal of Cleopatra for years to come, from Shakespeare’s tragic play to Elizabeth Taylor’s depiction of the Egyptian-Ptolemaic Queen. Augustus’s status as a Roman, male, leader of the empire gave him the power to produce such knowledge that would colour history’s interpretation of the Queen.

However, nowadays with more and more books and research being done to find out the true face of Cleopatra, we are faced with a truth far from the ostentatious and debauched Roman portrayal. We now know that she did not possess the beauty of the femme fatal, as we can judge from her generally unflattering profile stamped on coins. She was intelligent and protective of her country as any true leader would be but this does not necessarily make her cunning and ruthless. These recent revelations only show that although power can influence and therefore produce their own brand of history, it cannot be sustained and eventually, the truth would be revealed as newer information and interpretation eventually surface.

From what we can see in this discussion, from government commissioned text books to Roman inspired propaganda, power through the authority of rulers can and does influence the way we read and understand history. However, like most mortal things, governments fall and leaders die, but most importantly, their power and authority over the study of history can be questioned, if not immediately then during the course of time, by later generations, the general public and future historians. It can be concluded that even though power may assert its influence over the production of historical knowledge, this does not mean that this assertion is permanent.


Bibliography
Books
1. Romila Thapar, Early India From the Origins to AD1300, (Penguin, 2002).
2. Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Cleopatra: Queen, Lover, Legend, (Pimlico, 1996).
3. George Orwell, 1984, (Penguin Classics, 2003).

Articles
1. David Morgan, ‘The Evolution of Two Asian Historiographical Traditions’ in Bentley (ed.), Companion.

Writen by Rowena Razak (SOAS, 2007)