History
Introduction
History is often portrayed as the description of what happened
in the past. In a post-modern world, it is understood that 'history'
is more correctly described as 'histories'. If what we see and do
is dependent upon our observations, then each person will have a
different view of a particular event, they will construct their
own history. Add to this the complexities of interpretation and
language and there is likely to be no chance of there being one
'true' history. History is contingent and dependent upon the circumstances
in which you find yourself, the image you want to portray and the
rights you have to present your turn of the events. History is often
described as the story of the winners!
What is at stake?
The issues at stake then are not just the accuracy of the textbooks,
but the actual power and influence that goes with being the person
or group that gets your story heard. It is the history of the dominant
group that gets to be told and it is their story that is often the
one that becomes normalised whilst the stories of others gets 'othered'
or ignored. Minority groups and outcasts in society don't get to
tell their story or their side of a story.
A classic example is being drawn out before us this year with the
opening up of the histories of the Stolen
Generations in Australia early last century. It's either hidden
or not an important part of European history in Australia and for
those to whom it happened, there was no forum in which to tell their
story. Only with the increasing pluralism in Australia and the development
of a climate that supported the telling of stories other than the
official line was it possible for members of the stolen generation
to speak and be heard by the media and therefore the general public.
It is interesting to see how the power has shifted slightly in the
discourse around the Stolen Generation in recent times.
How has people's perception of the Stolen Generation
changed over the last century?
Because the history is linked to culture and ultimately power,
it is important to be aware of the difficulties in developing appropriate
ways of using and managing resources when the stories make the owners
of those resources invisible. Whilst the Penan people of Borneo
are not recognised and are invisible in the forests there, it is
a legitimate activity to clear fell the forests and sell their timber
to first world nations. It is also legitimate to ensure that the
profits from such activity flow directly to the lumber companies
without any recognition for the prior ownership of the trees or
timber. As a resource manager, it is important to recognise the
contingent nature of histories and the ability to influence the
allocation and use of resources.
What is the status quo?
History: a hard core of facts
E H Carr's (1964) seminal text What is History? is still
important today. He inspects 'history' and finds from the 19th century
an empiricist tradition exists where 'commonsense' is found to underpin
(modernist) history and tells us that:
Facts, like sense-impressions, impinge on the observer from
outside and are independent of his consciousness. History consists
of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the
historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like on the fishmonger's
slab. The historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks
them in whatever style appeals to him (p8).
According to the commonsense view, there are certain basic
facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so
to speak, the backbone of history [and] ... These so-called
basic facts, which are the same for all historians, commonly belong
to the category of the raw materials of the historian rather than
history itself. The second observation is that the necessity to
establish these basic facts rests not on the any quality in the
facts themselves, but on an a apriori decision of the historian.The
facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who
decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or
context (p10 - 11).
Disputing the interpretation
Making further use of the food metaphor,
Carr took care to contrast the 'hard core of facts' in history with
the 'surrounding pulp of disputable interpretation - forgetting
perhaps that the pulpy part of the fruit is more rewarding than
the hard core'. Nevertheless, Carr teaches 'it is the historian
that selects the facts', and 'this element of interpretation enters
every fact of history' (p13) - the facts as based on 'evidence'.
He concludes:
The historian and the facts of history are necessary to one
another. The historian without his facts is rootless and futile;
the facts without their historian are dead and meaningless. My
first answer therefore to the question 'What is history?' is that
it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian
and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the
past (p30).
What are the alternatives?
History as discourse suggests an entirely different set of questions
for 'what really happened'. Barthes (1970) asks:
Is there in fact any specific difference between factual and
imaginary narrative, any linguistic feature by which we may distinguish
on the one hand the mode appropriate to the relation of historical
events - a matter traditionally subject, in our culture, to the
prescriptions of historical "science", to be judged only by the
criteria of conformity to "what really happened" and by the principles
of "rational" exposition - and on the other hand the mode appropriate
to the epic, novel or drama (p145)?
History writes itself?
There may be few differences between the narrator and the historian
however, as Barthes (1970) says 'the history seems to write itself'.
This is the so-called 'objective' mode of historical discourse,
'in which the historian never appears himself. What really happens
is that the author discards the human persona but replaces it by
an objective one, where objectivity turns out to be a particular
form of fiction, they had suppressed all traces of the I in their
text' (p149). In this account historical discourse is essentially
a product of ideology, or rather of imagination. It is for this
reason that the very notion of 'historical facts' has at various
times seemed suspect.
A universal history
The pursuit of a Universal History represented an attempt to find
a meaningful pattern in the overall development of human societies
generally. Universal History is not the same as a history of the
universe from the big bang on as discrete events. Rather the believers
saw history as a progressive revelation of the way the universe
was ordered, and one that provided an explanation of Man's origin
and purpose. It is the telling of a single story of human events,
a story that includes a (determined) future, the idea that 'human
nature remains the same'.
Winners write history
It is often said that history is the (ideological) story told by
the conquerors to justify their ascendancy. Losers don't get the
chance to be the tellers of history. This is maybe true only of
western history which is produced as deterministic narrative (this
happened which caused that to happen, which in turn caused something
else) as if the direction of history was pre-ordained. Foucault
(1969/1972) a famous 20th century French historian showed, in a
number of wide ranging studies, just how thin this linking, deterministic
thread of events really is.
However, history could always have been different. Whenever a history
is told, it creates another side of the story, so the question of
who gets a chance to speak - the politics of representation - is
crucial to our understanding of history.
Instead of the belief of a single story embracing the ensemble
of human events, we now believe not only that there are many stories
about different events, but even different stories about the same
event.
What happens when different knowledge systems
speak to each other?
When different knowledge system speak to each other about histories,
there is an understanding of the contingent nature of knowledge
and historical discourse. If people are able to talk about histories,
then they are opening up to negotiation and contestation on what
is normal, right and true. What flows on from that is a shift in
power relations and therefore opportunity for negotiation on the
ownership and use of resources. The recent history of Australia
post-Mabo and post-Wik is a clear instance of the need to shift
(albeit often unwillingly on the part of the government of the day)
to accommodate alternative readings of history.
The obvious consequences of this are the changes to legislation
that have recognised prior Indigenous ownership of land and Native
Title. This comes at a cost to the Australian government and industry
in a loss of unquestioned access to resource rights, because mining
companies and pastoralists now have to recognise the ownership of
land by Indigenous people and involve them in the process of developing
and using resources. The broader community is willing to begin entertaining
the idea that there are histories that exist in the country that
are other than their own.
Resources
These readings will provide you with a starting point for looking
at the contestation of knowledge in history.
Reading 5.6
Carr, E. H. 1964 What is History? Penguin, London.
Other references
Barthes, R. 1970 'Historical Discourse' in M. Lane (ed) Structuralism:
A reader, Jonathon Cape, New York.
Foucault, M. 1969/1972 The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans.
A.M. Sheridan Smith, Tavistock Publications Limited, London.
Kuhn, T. S. 1970 'Introduction: a Role for History' in The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago University Press, Chicago.
Mink, L. O. 1987 Historical Understanding, Cornell University
Press, New York.
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