Presumed national deficiencies are historical facts, not permanent traits

Evidence

But such factors are not natural phenomena, deficiencies inherent in a people as permanent characteristics. They are “historical facts”, whose explanation is to be found in past history and in the social conditions of the present. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 864

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the historicist move: what looks like an inherent people’s defect gets reclassified as a contingent historical artifact.
• XREF: Core scaffolding for reading against essentialist claims about Muslims/Arabs as inherently something — the same historicization later Islamophobia readings deploy.