incompleteness and the imperative to act...

Landscapes of power. Social fabrics.

Metaphors of three-dimensional space allow us to integrate geographical and temporal dimensions into explanations of history. They allow us to begin to capture the more intricate human moments of which our story is made. Meetings, distances, physicality, chronology, simultaneity, imagined futures and enshrined pasts....

Because that's the challenge isn't it? To keep the intricate alive in the macro story. To not let grand histories that "make sense" cover the confusions, the half-truths, the incomplete information with which we build our lives.

That's why history is as it is -- our lack of omniscience. This sounds a silly thing to point out, i.e. that we don't know everything, but I think it's important when trying to understand why many political actors behave as they do. They have got to pretend that they are sure, that they are confident, that they have the answer. And in general, we all have to act -- we cannot wait to know everything. We have to move on through time....it doesn't stop for us.

But it's all based on incomplete information. Incomplete information which then has to be used to create logics of action. So be suspicious of neat explanations, of overly determined histories of messy situations. This idea is stressed in a book I am reading about Somalia -- Anna Simons' Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone (1995), which is well worth checking out.

All this does not mean that history cannot be told. Indeed, it makes that task more urgent....how to express not only what happened but how it was told, is told, and can be told. A tough calling....