Historical writing begins only when events close enough to permit backward analysis

Evidence

With the defeat of Nazi Germany, part of the story had come to an end. This seemed the first appropriate moment to look upon contemporary events with the backward-directed glance of the historian and the analytical zeal of the political scientist, the first chance to try to tell and to understand what had happened, not yet sine ira et studio, still in grief and sorrow and, hence, with a tendency to lament, but no longer in speechless outrage and impotent horror. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 35

Categorization

• XREF: Arendt’s distinction between lament and analysis echoes the scaffolding-theory concern with how the Islamophobia field’s own historical work moves from testimony to analysis. — connects to: The meaning of historical events remains perpetually in suspense; Narration is historically possible only in concrete dramatic moments — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 401