Qual é exatamente o problema de um historiador publicar na Amazon cáusticos comentários anônimos em relação aos livros de seus competidores? Katie Engelhart comenta as questões levantadas nesse tragicômico caso.
O caso
Em abril de 2010, um comentador misterioso, sob o nome “Historian”, começou a publicar cáusticas resenhas de livros que estavam sendo lançados sobre a história soviética no website Amazon.co.uk. “Historian” considerou que o trabalho da professora Rachel Polonsky era “denso” e “pretensioso”, e que o último livro do professor Robert Service era “um lixo”, “um livro horrível”. Ainda no mesmo website, o comentarista elogiou o “belo e necessário” trabalho do professor do Birkbeck College Orlando Figes. Em mensagens eletrônicas particulares que circularam entre especialistas da área (incluindo Figes), uma suspeita foi levantada: “Historian” seria, na verdade, o próprio Figes. Em um desses emails, Service definiu as resenhas como “desagradáveis ataques pessoais à moda antiga da União Soviética”.
E então começou uma saga acadêmica de estardalhaços. Figes negou categoricamente as alegações de que era o autor das resenhas e acusou seus rivais de difamação. Em seguida, ele instruiu seu advogado a ameaçar dar início a uma ação legal contra Polonsky, Service e vários meios que tinham publicado conjecturas de historiadores. Não tardou muito para que as ameaças legais revelassem a suposta autoria dos comentários: a esposa de Fige, a advogada Stephanie Palmer, admitiu que tinha publicado ela mesma as resenhas. Um Figes aparentemente horrorizado emitiu um comunicado indicando que “tinha acabado de descobriu tal fato”.
Mas a explicação também não durou muito. No dia 23 de abril de 2010, Figes publicou uma nova declaração assumindo “total responsabilidade” pelas resenhas e pedindo desculpas a todos que ele tinha ameaçado com ações legais. Mais tarde, ele concordou em pagar indenização e cobrir os custos incorridos por Polonsky e Service em questões legais.
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ANONYMITY IN SCHOLARSHIP SHOULD BE AN EXCEPTION
Katie Engelhart’s interesting discussion of the negative anonymous reviews of Rachel Polonsky’s and Robert Service’s works by their colleague Orlando Figes takes a curious turn at the end. Service, she writes, noted that Figes’s attitude reminded him of the Soviet practice of personal attacks. Engelhart, though, shrewdly remarks that Figes had the right to publish anonymous reviews, and she rejects Service’s view with the following argument: “Service surely understands that anonymous criticism has, in history, had its rightful place.” This argument is historically and morally untenable.
Anonymous criticism certainly had a rightful place in history—as a weapon of the weak. When in times past, graffiti and anonymous pamphlets defied the aberrations of power, they were given credit. This is hardly the case here. Figes was not the weaker party: his works are praised as much as those of Polonsky and Service. Anonymity did not serve to shield him from the vengeance of academic power; rather, it was an instrument to improperly hit his professional rivals. From a historical angle, the argument is misplaced.
Figes had the right to publish anonymous reviews, but as a citizen, not as a professional or as a scholar. As a professional, that is as a publicist, he had no good reason to remain anonymous. Journalism and anonymity go together only in the one widely recognized case of secrecy regarding a source that gives information in confidence. Figes did not protect such a source, he protected himself. As a scholar, that is as a historian, his position is even weaker. Scholarship and secrecy are each other’s enemies. Scholars have to strive for maximal transparency and accountability. Disclosure is the rule, confidentiality the exception. Peer review, if it wants to be anonymous, needs strong justification. In the Figes affair, no such justification was available, and the anonymity was in violation of scholarly deontology. Engelhart’s argument is correct at the level of citizenship only, but if the duties of professionalism and scholarship are taken into account—and they should, as the affair centers on publication and scholarly rivalry—it founders.
Ironically, in apologizing and redressing the wrongs caused by his action, Figes seemed to accept the above reasoning more than Engelhart does.
Antoon De Baets
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Did RJ Ellory learn nothing from Figes? Another author caught out for trashing colleagues and glorifying his own work on Amazon – http://goo.gl/gP0we