We explain what the historical context is, why it is important to understand it and various examples.
What is the historical context?
The context Historical is the set of temporal, social and cultural circumstances that surround an event, a artistic work or a specific reference, and that may be relevant to better understand its content. In other words, it is about the diverse circumstantial information that frames an event or an object and that establishes its relationship with the rest of the things that happened in its time.
Thus, when reviewing the historical context of something, we simply must place it in a place and a weather, since all the events of the universe always have a where and a when. In this way, it can be observed what type of relationship existed between what we study, and its environment.
Understanding historical contexts allows us to know more fully what an event meant at the time or, conversely, what it means today, once enough time has passed to have a perspective. Thus, we avoid making untimely judgments, that is, being unfair with our evaluation of the object.
Suppose, by way of example, that we read about Athenian democracy, the first that existed in the world (in the 6th century BC). If we judge it with today's criteria, it will be paradoxically very undemocratic: the only ones with a vote were free and adult male Athenian citizens.
Then women, foreigners and obviously slaves were excluded. Nobody at that time demanded the right to vote for women, nor the respect of the human rights slaves, nor many of the norms with which we understand today the democracy modern.
But if we take into account its historical context, we will understand that the Athenian case was unique in the Antiquity, since most of the Greek city-states were ruled by the more or less absolute monarchy.
On the other hand, the rest of the Middle Eastern empires were theocratic, ruled by a priestly and military caste, in which power was exercised vertically and the kings were considered gods on Earth. Seen like this, no one would hesitate to consider the government of Athens as a democracy.
Another typical case of lack of historical context has to do with many artistic works, especially in the art modern and contemporary, whose aesthetic forms and strategies can be very disruptive or revolutionary at the time, to later become mainstream in the history of art.
Thus, for example, the famous urinal of the French surrealist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), presented with the title Fountain in the Society of Independent Artists of 1917, under the pseudonym “R. Mutt ”, was a provocation, a slap on the art concepts of the time.
One hundred years later, Duchamp himself would have laughed at the fate of the urinal, which today is part of the artistic canon. Its importance is not due to its having an aesthetic value in itself, but because given its historical context, it perfectly condenses the revolutionary attitude of the time, which among other things tried to question the nature of art again.
However, if we evaluate it stripped of all historical context, all that information We would be lost, and we could come to the absurd conclusion that anything is art, that art does not exist, or that it is a matter for snobs.
In conclusion, the historical context is always relevant when judging something or someone, issuing opinions or understanding the importance of the events that affect it. humanity choose to remember against the passage of time.