Free Association on Legacy #67 #cong24 #legacy

Total Words

Please indulge me while I engage in some free association. The paragraphs below are not really linked together in any coherent way. They are just different reflections on the theme of legacy.

There are lots of questions that come to mind when I consider legacy, some that strike me as more profound than others. Is legacy something that can be planned and nurtured in advance, or something that only exists after the fact? Can one have a legacy in one’s lifetime? Who is entitled to a legacy, and are some groups of people regarded, by virtue of their social position, as more worthy of legacy than others? Who, if not the person in question, defines someone’s legacy? What possibilities exist for reevaluation of a person’s legacy, and by what criteria? Can legacy be claimed by people, places, and things (or events) in equal measure?

As an academic, I often meet colleagues who profess to care about legacy, and I suppose I do too. But what is legacy to an academic? One way to think about my own legacy is to reflect on my body of published research. For example, many academics wonder whether they have had “impact,” by some particular definition of the term. This strikes me as relating to legacy in the realm of ideas, specifically, one’s scholarly contributions. If other scholars cite my research and continue to do so, that suggests some form of intellectual legacy. In a digital information age, moreover, there is an opportunity to grow one’s legacy well beyond what would have been possible in a pre-internet age.

When I think about legacy, I am reminded of a book I read by historian Laura Thatcher Ulrich, entitled Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. The title comes from something she published in a journal article in the 1970s, but a subtle variation of the phrase became something of a feminist anthem that has withstood the test of time: “well-behaved women rarely make history.” The most interesting thing about what Ulrich wrote is that the feminist expression is the complete opposite of what she intended when she wrote it. The feminist expression is assertive and has an “I am woman, hear me roar” vibe. But the original intent of the phrase was to honor women who labor in the background of history and who essentially remain invisible because of it. In an unexpected twist on the feminist expression, then, honor stems from ordinariness rather than assertiveness. Both “flavors” of the expression are worthy of their own legacy, in truth, but this strikes me as a fascinating example of how we have little control over our legacy.