Reply to Jorma Kalela (@HistoryWO)

A reply to Jorma Kalela’s “What is History For” post on History Workshop online (which can be found here : http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/what-is-history-for/)

Whilst I agree with the general sentiments of this post, I find some of the concrete suggestions put forward questionable.

Firstly, I share your point that academics ought to be more aware of non-professional historical research conducted outside the discipline, but why should we stop here? There are a huge variety of historical practices, genres and other forms of cultural engagement with the “historical” that exist outside the academy and are not limited to the arenas of heritage or public history (as demonstrated in Jerome de Groot’s book, Consuming History (Routledge, 2009)). They indicate a wider cultural sphere, often in popular, entertainment-based and commodified forms, in which senses of the past circulate. Furthermore, they are often participatory themselves (re-enactment, living history, the role of web 2.0) and are often interactive and packaged in different mediums. Whatever one’s view of their utility, meaningfulness or authenticity, they do offer an indication of how a popular consciousness of history is structured; an understanding of which, I’d suggest, is vital for any progressive historical endeavour. I am also not sure I agree with your assertion that the way “thousands of people have transformed the everyday, casual habit of referring to the past into the purposeful creation of histories” is a 21^st Century phenomenon. What about the work of, for example, People’s Autobiography groups in Britain in the 1970s or the barefoot historians of Scandinavia and Germany in the 1980s?

Secondly, and more disturbing perhaps, is the way in which you posit a “democratized social division of labour in history-making” whilst at the same time making a separation between those qualified to ensure that knowledge produced is “sound and fair”, i.e. the professionals, and presumably those who are not (non-professionals?). In my view, this is an ultimately elitist and anti-egalitarian move, and one that ought to be avoided as I think it would undermine trust and mutual respect. The issue of epistemology is a thorny one, but I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “sound” (truth?), how soundness is to be judged (by the standards of the discipline?), and, as you suggest, if soundness and meaningfulness are inseparable, surely then any criterion decided upon should have the full collaborative backing of the participatory historical culture – and new social conventions would need to be established? Another issue here is power and the power of the discipline to determine what does and doesn’t constitute knowledge (incidentally, one of the most interesting arguments in de Groot’s book is how the democratisation of historical knowledge via new technological forms has encouraged the waning of the academic historian’s influence in the public sphere and a bypassing of such gatekeeping roles). As you mention, History Workshop stood for the democratising of historical practice, but in doing so it challenged academic hierarchies. I get the impression here that your proposal may only serve to reinforce them.

Finally, in seeking to build a participatory historical culture, I agree that “the ways laypeople use the past must be taken seriously” is a crucial step in gaining a deeper appreciation of the workings of history in contemporary culture as a way of giving potentially progressive or radical interventions more traction. Here, it might be useful to consider whether these cultural activities and practices have genuinely “democratising” and “enfranchising” effects (as de Groot argues) and whether they disrupt conventional ways of knowing and experiencing the past. It might also be profitable to explore how they are situated within the broader processes of consumption and commodification characteristic of consumer culture. In this respect, I also think we need to examine how non-academic practices are conditioned by particular forms of power and authority that help to reinforce “official” ideas of history as well as thinking about how spaces of dissent can be established in which these ideas can be contested or “unofficial” sources of knowledge produced. However, this is not a one-way street, and such an analysis could equally be directed at the culture of the historical discipline itself.

It seems to me that academic world needs to be critically explored as rigorously as the world outside it. This seems implicit in your proposal for a “collaborative, radical history”. I believe this would require a redefinition of the meaning of history and most importantly a critique of academic power and how it is embedded in the production of knowledge: in the routines of lectures, conferences and publications, plus the powerful influences of institutional processes like assessment exercises and funding awards, as well as the identities and intellectual preoccupations they help to foster. Such an approach might lead historians to rethink the usefulness of these disciplinary practices and how they may reinforce prevailing power structures, hindering the coming to fruition of radical openings in representing, performing or engaging the past.

If history is – in Samuel’s phrase – “a social form of knowledge; the work, in any given instance of a thousand different hands”, then professional historians are but one group among many in the academy, in the public sphere, and in popular culture and everyday life who are able to shift our historical vision towards an alternative past and a more humane future. This doesn’t mean abandoning the university, but it does suggest that outlets for creating new encounters between past and present that have capacities for dissent are more polymorphous and contingent than can be covered by the idea of research. I think a participatory historical culture ought to be capacious enough to involve many more aspects of the so-called “history boom” and be less willing to endorse the view that academic practices are inevitably superior in collaborative endeavours.

Welcome

Having been inspired by a recent workshop on ‘history blogging’, I’ve decided to take the plunge and set-up my own blog. I hope it will serve as a platform for my research (please visit my About page for more details), which takes as its main focus the theory and practice of ‘radical history’. At bottom, I consider this practice to necessarily imply two fairly straightforward propositions: 1) that history is inextricably tied to forms of political representation; and 2) that this relationship is determined by the prevailing historical conditions of the time, that is, the social and political context. So not only will this blog be a space to share my research ideas and interests, but one that will also be concerned with the nature of our current political juncture and how it shapes the sense of history or historical consciousness in contemporary culture. My ambition will be to explore what kind of representations of the past might contain political implications for, or gain traction in, the present.

Like my research, the blog is as much a personal and political endeavour as a professional one. I’d also like to use the blog as a more informal setting to record my own experiences, thoughts and feelings as I go about my research. The mechanism of writing is, I think, a very useful way of revealing and expressing the tensions, antagonisms and negotiations that arise between life and research, the personal and professional, the everyday and the academic.

If at any time you find my blog interesting (or objectionable!), please do get in touch or post a comment. Thanks.