History Extension Notes revised PDF

Preview

Summary

Download History Extension Notes revised PDF

Description

HISTORY EXTENSION

NOTES

I OLSON

Constructing History – Key Questions Four key questions provide a framework for investigating the construction of history with a focus on historiography. Students engage in the complex and intellectually demanding study of History Extension by applying significant historiographical ideas and methodologies, which have evolved over time, to the investigation of these key questions: Who are historians? – the producers of history over time – from ancient times to the present day – the identity of historians: biographical details, personal values and beliefs, philosophy of history, approaches to the construction of history, bias – the context of historians: gender, class, ethnicity, time, place, social and economic structures/change, political constraints, official and unofficial status, academic background What are the purposes of history? – the aims and purposes of specific historical works and historians – changing interpretations and perspectives of the aims and purposes of history – changing interpretations and perspectives of the role of history – the use and misuse of history How has history been constructed, recorded and presented over time? – from ancient times to the present day – changing methods of historians – how historians work – forms of historical communication: written, oral, visual, audiovisual, multimedia, digital – types of history, eg political, social, economic, environmental, military, academic, popular, national, local, surveys, macrohistories, microhistories, biographies, psychohistories, historical fiction Why have approaches to history changed over time? – from ancient times to the present day – the availability of historical evidence – the contexts of historians – changing perspectives about approaches to the construction of history – changing philosophies of history – changing technology – changing audiences

II OLSON

Thesis Development 

The necessity to distinguish between the historical referent of a discourse and its constructed meaning. - Ideological, political, social, cultural - Can history exist beyond discourse?



Continuity and coherence are the necessary requisites of history. - History carries the burden of human progress and change, required to justify the essence of continuity. - History must make reference - Historians study change - Causation



History represents a conception of the past based upon all reasonable belief. - Methodology - Context - Aim & Purpose



Polemical inquiry surrounding the nature of history itself questions its existence as either an objective fact or a subjective representation of said objectivity. - Is history what happened or what historians tell us to happen? - Polyphony versus passivity in defining history truth. - Deterministic and counterfactual history

•

Foundation for reality in idealised thought - Perception of identity - Historical purpose dictates both representation and reception and hence, the meaning which accompanies.

III OLSON

Counterfactual history: - Speculation, challenging the facts - Seeks to explore history by extrapolating a timeline based on certain key historical events which did not happen or produced an outcome different to what was said. - Trace the limits of possibility - Ascertain a relative importance of an event, where the counterfactual hypothesis is negating. - Exploring the same sentiment in reception as construction – scepticism - Counterfactual history is built upon the belief that there exists a real history written on the basis of historical fact. - Incoherent constructions, one cannot be correct about the happenings without being correct about causality. - Any reassessment of the causal contingencies of history must include a reassessment of its narrative contingencies. - Reproduces determinism - Constructed in a ceteris paribus framework (all other things being equal) - Develops new insights into why some narrative gain hegemonic status, and how this can help us to understand the construction and function of historical consciousness. - Peter Read – ‘what is the Aborigines had never been assimilated?’ - Macintyre and Scalmer published ‘what if’ series in 2006 “raises the issue of realism is counterfactual history and does so on the level where historical events are reconstructed to represent the past events and their causality in the narrative validity.” “speculative and incoherent” Historicism: - Premise that two different histories are created over a single with inconsistent properties. - Constituted by later relations - Latent properties as either potential or relational - History as understood as the inevitable evolutionary outgrowth of other modes of thought, let alone as part of a broader evolution from primitive to more advanced culture. - Access to the content of historical representation depends upon the context in which it was created. - Epistemic access to an idea may change, even without the idea itself changing. (epistemic position influences perception) - Metaphysical historicism – significance of historical representation has the capacity to change overtime (reception) proposes meaning is indexed to a particular time.

IV OLSON

Leopold Von Ranke - Empiricism     

1795-1886 (Post-Enlightenment period) Professionalisation of history Foundational is developing the ‘reconstructionist’ approach to history ‘Scientific history’ – criticism of sources Institutionalised the study of history and imbued this with an empirical focus

Aim + Purpose: - To avoid using a ‘unifying theory’ to explain history - Argues historical periods/patterns as unique to themselves - The past must be judged on its own terms, not by present interests/theories. - Subverted the existing moralistic purpose of history – to interpret the past in terms of present situations and agendas, irrespective of accuracy. Context: - German academic (studied theology and ‘the classics’) - Dedicated protestant (Lutheran) - Liberal thought - Political change/unrest - Fall of monarchies and rise of democracies - Anti-enlightenment - Conservatism - Study of history was motivated by the rise of nationalism - Position as a school teacher motivated him to seek accuracy Construction + Recording: - Dedicated to objectivity - Analytical and cautious interrogation of the past (Not polemic, opinionated, speculative) - Objectively based on proof (past evident in sources, not the historians’ mind) - Central role of sources/evidence (primary) to reveal historical truth. - Focussed more on ‘major’ events than history from below. - Reconstructionist (dominant role of the past/evidence in shaping history) Works: - History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations, 1494-1514 – included an appendix entitled Critique of Modern Historical Writing which criticised traditional methods of studying history. Quotes “God’s omniscience revealed itself in the context of great historical events.” "I would maintain, on the contrary, that every epoch is immediate to God…” “story of universal history”

V OLSON

"But it is not for the past as a part of the present, but for the past as the past, that man is properly concerned" (Diaries, 1814) “[History] only seeks to show the past as it really was.” (History of the Latin and German Peoples, 1824) "I see the time coming when we will base modern history no longer on second-hand reports, or even contemporary historians, save where they had direct knowledge, and still less on works yet more distant from the period; but rather on eyewitness accounts and on the most genuine, the most immediate sources.” (History of Germany in the Reformation, 1839)

Svetlana Alexievich    

Devised a hybrid literary genre that evolved as “the closest possible approximation of real life”. Her work constituted as a ‘living history’ Polyphonic histories Counter-histories

Aim + Purpose: - To present the disappointments and complexities of the Post-Soviet history. - She sought to allow human voices speak for themselves about the events of the age. - To question the truth of the existing Soviet metanarrative Construction + Recording: -

Blended journalism and literature as a means to create ‘a history of human feelings’.

-

Oral histories (testimony)

Context: -

Cold war

-

Collapse of the Soviet Union (Post-Soviet culture)

-

Introduced freedom of expression

-

A million Soviet women served at the front but were absent from the official war narrative.

-

The Soviet grand-narrative was created by Stalin and reconstructed under Putin.

Methodology: -

Travelling to conduct first-hand interviews with ‘ordinary people’.

VI OLSON

-

Collect and collate stories.

Impact: -

Mainstream media sees her as a defector whose work degrade Russia.

-

Contestability

Works: -

‘Second-Hand Time’ (women’s wartime heroism)

-

The text offers a counter-history, its distinctive voices summon intimate and vast experiences: forced collectivisation, incarceration, terror. Quotes

“[her work] reflects the conscious of the nation” “Two truths lived in the same being. One’s own truth, driven underground, and the common one, filled with the spirit of the time.” “The book is a far more powerful testament to the extraordinary price paid by the Soviet people to defeat Nazi Germany.” “attention to the cadence of each voice and symphonic structure elevates accounts into another register.” “Transformation of life – everyday life – into literature”

E.H. Carr vs. G.R. Elton – standing of historical knowledge

Carr

Elton

Fundamental beliefs/ideas:

Fundamental beliefs/ideas:

-

-

Relativistic view of history (history exists relationally and therefore prevents objectivity) Believed the facts of the past only accessible through the present.

-

Empiricism

-

Believed that if an event can be known, that is all that is required to make it a ‘fact of history’.

VII OLSON

-

-

Subjective interpretation deriving from context. We do not ‘discover’ patterns in apparently contingent events because, instead, we unavoidably impose our own hierarchies of significance on them – meaning is not imminent to the event itself. Ideas surrounding causation (believes the search for causality in history is impossible without reference to values.)

Context:

-

Views the theory of ‘interpretations’ to discredit history, as rather a product of individuals.

-

Recognises an existing body of ‘agreed historical knowledge’ on which historians can work. He acknowledges that some evidence may be unclear and requires intervention therein.

-

Traditional, narrative history

-

Denies that a study of the historian is a necessary preliminary to historical inquiry.

Context:

-

1892-1982 (England)

-

1921-1994 (Germany & UK)

-

British political scientist and historian specialising in modern Russian history.

-

Political and constitutional historian, specialising in the Tudor period.

-

Conservative historian

Aim + Purpose: -

-

-

-

Questions how, if there are different views at different times, any of them can be considered correct, and from this, how one can be chosen as the truth. Witnessed the dialogue between ‘fact’ and the past, and the historian, contextualised in the present. Recognises the social influence of history (history is a dialogue between the individual and society) To avoid ‘total scepticism’ the ideas that historians reach should be organised around the idea of progress. This scepticism posits that the only discourses which exist are of the historian, and therefore, history is a construct of the mind.

Aim + Purpose: -

To deny the interpretative element in historical fact.

-

Not to show complete objectivity, but that a historian could remove themselves from their value system. What emerges would not be the whole truth, but a part of it.

VIII OLSON

Construction + Recording: -

-

Compares process of the historian to the process of the inductive method in science. (perception of history as a science) To interrogate and show due scepticism when looking at documents

Influence: -

Pre-empting the post-modern challenge to historical knowing. Created a new epistemological certitude Carr, unlike Postmodernists, was not prepared to reject the possibility of the historians’ objectivity. The Objective historian was he who could understand the pattern of historical development and project this into the future.

Works: -

‘A history of Soviet Russia’ (1950)

-

‘The New society’ (1951)

-

‘What is history?’ (1961)

Construction + Recording: -

‘Professionalisation’ of history

-

Historians should approach sources with a question, but not seek a particular answer, or distort it with the advantage of hindsight.

-

Sought the study of the past on its own terms.

Influence: -

Foregrounded the ability to combat the claims of Postmodernists.

-

Believed Carr’s relativism to deny the reality of historical knowledge.

Works: -

‘The Practice of History’ (1967)

Carr Quotes “The words which he uses [historians] have current connotations from which he cannot divorce them.” “The historian is engaged in a continuous process of moulding his facts to his interpretation and his interpretation to his facts. It is impossible to assign primacy to one over the other.” “The past is intelligible to us only in light of the present; and we can fully understand the present only in the light of the past.” IX OLSON

“When we call a historian objective, we mean I think two things. First of all, we mean that he has a capacity to rise above the limited vision of his own situation in society and history. Secondly, we mean that he has the capacity to project his vision into the future in such a way to give him a more profound and lasting insight into the past than can be attained by those historians whose outlook is entirely bounded by their own immediate situation.” “[the historian] is part of history, with a particular angle on the past.” “History is an unending dialogue between the past and the present.” Elton Quotes “For the historian is in the first place concerned with the people of the past – with their experiences, thoughts and actions – and not with the people of the present, least of all with himself.” “Since historical reconstruction is a rational process, only justified and indeed possible if it involves the human reason, what we call history is the mess we call life reduced to some order, pattern or possibly purpose.” “The future is dark, the present burdensome. Only the past, dead and buried, bears contemplation.” “History deals in events, not states; it investigates things that happen, not things that are.” “[History is] the process of 'educing consequences from disparate facts” “A philosophic concern with such problems as the reality of historical knowledge or the nature of historical thought only hinders the practice of history.” “[the historian] should ask no specific questions until he has absorbed what it says.” “Historians seek to explain the past.”

The History Wars Overview: - Public debate over the interpretation of Australia’s colonial settlement and the development of contemporary Australian society. - Politicisation of racial ideas - Debate regards the nature/classification of events. - Divisions in methodology (written records of settlers v oral traditions) - The ‘black armband’ view of our history reflects a belief that most Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other discrimination.

X OLSON

Influence: - Contests the practice and teaching of history - The problem with the social history orthodoxy is that it ahistorically re-writes modern political preoccupations into the past, thereby distorting history for current political purposes. - A problem with the history wars is that in presenting a perspective/argument, one ends up lacking historical context. (narrow/selective) - The impact of post-modernism has meant that triumphalist stories of national progress are no longer intellectually tenable. However, for a national history, the social history approach has serious drawbacks as the construction of grand-narratives lack widespread resonance. Perspectives: - Divisive in the sense that alternative narratives disrupt the grand-narratives which glorify Australian settlement. - Paul Keating / John Howard - Paul Keating Redfern park speech – representations of history and public debate concerning Aboriginal peoples.



Colonisation as: 1. A relatively minor conflict between European colonists and Indigenous Australians. (marked by ‘human intent’ and damage attributed to unintended factors. 2. An invasion marked by violent frontier conflict

*** Indigenous history is problematic in that there are gaps in evidence which allow for misrepresentation and fabrication. (oral history) – This forms the basis for the key area of debate.

Keith Windschuttle - Taking historical evidence from face value (Keith Windschuttle) - Believes modern historians to be tainted by ideology - Liberal/conservative - ‘The Fabrication of Aboriginal History’ – view that progressive historians have fabricated the history of Indigenous Australians in sympathetic terms. “lawful and morally justifiable” - A method of showing control - Genuine battle Henry Reynolds - Sense of what is likely in discerning what is considered historical fact. (Henry Reynolds) (questioning historical truths) - Leftist political ideology - Accused of fabricating ‘terra nullius’ in the sense that he imposed it on a historical record in which the term was never used. - Researched Australian history from an indigenous perspective. XI OLSON

“[history itself is] inescapably political” “a conscious policy of genocide” (Lyndall Ryan)

Popular History         

Social consequences of reception Contest between idealism and alienation Aims at wide readership Emphasises narrative, personality and vivid detail over scholarly analysis Popularisation of academic knowledge and malleability of historical truth. Shapes collective historical consciousness Social and cultural paradigms Consciousness affirms the idea that history itself is a retrospective process of informing the past through the present. Cyclical function of historical consciousness in that social realities inform historical truths as historical truths inform social realities.

“less of an individual character than a key piece of the popular image.” “people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them” “fictional discourses to induce effects of the truth.” (Michel Foucault) “when the legend becomes fact. You print the legend” “the distance from the past prized by professional historians takes second place to being present in the past.” (Jo Hawkins)

Postmodernism          

Omits the idea of truth as an absolute concept and substitutes a relative idea of truth. Critical response to assumptions allege...