Challenging Certainty: The Utility and History of Counterfactualism

PREVIEW VERSION VIEW THE COMPLETE ARTICLE ONLINE AT HTTP://ONLINELIBRARY.WILEY.COM/DOI/10.1111/J.14682303.2010.00527.X/ABSTRACT CHALLENGING CERTAINTY: THE UTILITY AND HISTORY OF COUNTERFACTUALISM SIMON T. KAYE1 ABSTRACT Counterfactualism is a useful process for historians as a thought-experiment because it offers grounds to challenge an unfortunate contemporary historical mindset of assumed, deterministic certainty. This article suggests that the methodological value of counterfactualism may be understood in terms of the three categories of common ahistorical errors that it may help to prevent: the assumptions of indispensability, causality, and inevitability. To support this claim, I survey a series of key counterfactual works and reflections on counterfactualism, arguing that the practice of counterfactualism evolved as both cause and product of an evolving popular assumption of the “plasticity” of history and the importance of human agency within it. For these reasons, counterfactualism is of particular importance both historically and politically. I conclude that it is time for a methodological re-assessment of the uses of such thought-experiments in history, particularly in light of counterfactualism’s developmental relatedness to cultural, technological, and analytical modernity. Keywords: counterfactualism, alternative history, science fiction, historiography, causality, plausibility, sureness, methodology 1 My thanks to Professor Donald Sassoon, who read and commented on versions of this work throughout its earliest development, and to Professors Ethan Kleinberg and Brian Fay for their commentary and recommendations. Remaining errors are, of course, my own. I. THE CHALLENGE AND THE OPPORTUNITY OF COUNTERFACTUALISM Labeled variously by the terms “Alternative History,” “‘What if?’ History,” “Allohistory,” and often the bad misnomer “Alternate History”, the usage of counterfactualism within academic history is growing. However, it is but little recognized as the methodologically implicit pursuit that it is: a by-product of any historical statement that implies causality. “The study of history,” E. H. Carr assured us, “is the study of causes.” 2 Methodologically, there can be little disputing this statement. Most historians tend away from usage of the “material conditional” in favor of the so-called “indicative conditional.” That is to say, history is not usually written in a stream of statements of understood historical facts; rather, causality is an assumed component of the vast majority of historical argument (B occurred because of A). But causal imputation involves subjunctive conditionals (If A had not occurred, B would not have occurred, or would have occurred differently) such that counterfactual claims are implicitly present in virtually all academic histories. Still, it would be fair to suppose that, in historical academia generally, counterfactualism is rendered explicit only in unusual cases. Leaving this everpresent counterfactualism implicit occurs far more frequently in cases where historians approach their understanding of a given period or event with a certain sureness: if one is positive that A caused B, then one isn’t moved to wonder whether B would have happened if A had not occurred, or whether A could have occurred and B not. Unconsidered counterfactualism in history may be the product of scholarly sloppiness or of a given historian’s underlying certainty of a specific causal relationship. Conversely, the primary potential of deliberate and explicit counterfactualism, defined here as a historical narrative of events that never occurred, is that it immediately begs a historian to consider the extent of his or her own sureness. The quantity of counterfactual histories, positive and negative, and the breadth of eras and subjects that they deal with, is expanding rapidly. A new and popular sub-genre, for example, is already emerging in the form of counterfactuals that discuss the imaginary political outcomes of a victory for Al Gore in the U.S. presidential elections of 2000, as well as the often overlapping theme of alternative foreign and domestic strategies in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. President Gore and Other Things that Never Happened was published in 2006 as part of a series of specifically politically themed counterfactual essay collections.3 The phenomenon is not limited to academia and popular history; rather, there is an emerging cultural fascination with the implications of counterfactualism. Al Gore himself appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch in May 2006 that playfully suggested a Gore-led USA instantly resolving the problems of climate change and international terrorism. On the opposite end of the American political spectrum, Newt Gingrich, a long-term writer and collaborator on alternative history novels, delivered a speech in September 2007 entitled What If? An Alternative History of the War since 9/11.4 His alternative history is “offered to dramatize what we as a nation need to do in the years ahead”— 2 . E. H. Carr, What is History? [1961] (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 81. 3 . President Gore and Other Things that Never Happened, ed. Duncan Brack (London: Politico’s, 2006). 4 . Newt Gingrich, What If? An Alternative History of the War since 9/11, September 10th, 2007. http://www.aei.org/event/1570#doc (accessed November 10, 2009). specifically, identify what Gingrich terms the “irreconcilable wing” of Islam and set about systematically destroying it, meanwhile implementing far more stringent antiterror legislation domestically. From these and other examples it appears that the presence of counterfactual arguments in politics and political rhetoric is clearly increasing. Yet it is not original. Paul Alkon perceives in the wartime rhetoric of Winston Churchill—his prediction of a “new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science”—the influence of a growing cultural awareness of alternative possibilities: of branching, plausible outcomes from a single point of divergence. 5 Since World War II, political oratory has tapped into the emotive language of allohistory, fueled by a common, consensual understanding of the nature of human history, and human agency’s impact upon it—an understanding that lies at the very heart of counterfactualism. In academia, Niall Ferguson seems set to remain among counterfactualism’s most read and respected proponents. In a recent article for New York Magazine, Ferguson refers to a current project that involves the use of computer modeling in plotting more plausible alternative histories. Specifically, the historical potential for advanced computer games and other interactive media is beginning to filter into the counterfactual historian’s consciousness: “‘What if D-day had gone wrong?’ is only one of scores of counterfactual questions historians have asked about the war. . . . These are questions that computer games ought, in theory, to be able to help answer. And yet no military historian, to my knowledge, has made use of them.”6 The increasing subtlety of these virtual worlds and their ability to simulate the conditions and ramifications of historical periods and actions will undoubtedly inform the coming generation of popular alternative histories. Whether this trend is reflected in the most academic and analytic uses of counterfactualism remains to be seen. Why would historians contribute to such a body of work? Why is it that so many historians—professionals as often as amateurs, if the distinction need be made—have started to produce so much material of this sort over the course of the last two decades? What, if any, are the uses of counterfactualism in academic histories and beyond? It is my assertion that counterfactual arguments, thought-experiments, and allohistorical essays constitute an extremely useful “toolkit” in the field of historical analysis. This is not to say that the benefits of counterfactualism that I will discuss are meant to be presented as wholly original: counterfactual historical statements and thoughtexperiments have been under use, knowingly and unknowingly, since before the birth of history as an academic pursuit. 5 . Paul Alkon, in Time, Literature and the Arts: Essays in Honour of Samuel L. Macey, ed. Thomas R. Cleary (Victoria, BC: University of Victoria Press, 1994), 70. 6 . Niall Ferguson, “How to Win a War,” in New York Magazine (October 16, 2006). http://nymag.com/news/features/22787/ (accessed November 10, 2009).