scholarly journals FORUM: CLOSENESS AND DISTANCE IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT INTRODUCTION

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 603-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN BREWER ◽  
SILVIA SEBASTIANI
Keyword(s):  
Historical Writing ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Michel De Certeau ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

According to Michel de Certeau, distance is the indispensable prerequisite for historical knowledge and the very characteristic of modern historiography. The historian speaks, in the present, about the absent, the dead, as Certeau labels the past, thus emphasizing the performative dimension of historical writing: “the function of language is to introduce through saying what can no longer be done.” As a consequence, the heterogeneity of two non-communicating temporalities becomes the challenge to be faced: the present of the historian, as a moment du savoir, is radically separated from the past, which exists only as an objet de savoir, the meaning of which can be restored by an operation of distantiation and contextualization. In Evidence de l’histoire: Ce que voient les historiens, François Hartog takes up the question of history writing and what is visible, or more precisely the modalities historians have employed to narrate the past, opening up the way to a reflection on the boundaries between the visible and the invisible: the mechanisms that have contributed to establish these boundaries over time, and the questions that have legitimized the survey of what has been seen or not seen. But, as Mark Phillips points out, it is the very ubiquity of the trope of distance in historical writings that has paradoxically rendered it almost invisible to historians, so that “it has become difficult to distinguish between the concept of historical distance and the idea of history itself.”

INFORMING HISTORICAL RESEARCH IN ACCOUNTING AND MANAGEMENT: TRADITIONS, PHILOSOPHIES, AND OPPORTUNITIES

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee D. Parker
Keyword(s):  
Historical Research ◽  
Business History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
Field Of Inquiry ◽  
Historical Thought ◽  
The Way

Historical research in accounting and management, hitherto largely neglected as a field of inquiry by many management and accounting researchers, has experienced a resurgence of interest and activity in research conferences and journals over the past decade. The potential lessons of the past for contemporary issues have been rediscovered, but the way forward is littered with antiquarian narratives, methodologically naive analyses, ideologically driven interpretation and ignorance of the traditions, schools and philosophy of the craft by accounting and management researchers as well as traditional and critical historians themselves. This paper offers an introduction to contributions made to the philosophies and methods of history by significant historians in the past, a review of some of the influential schools of historical thought, insights into philosophies of historical knowledge and explanation and a brief introduction to oral and business history. On this basis the case is made for the philosophically and methodologically informed approach to the investigation of our past heritage in accounting and management

Arab Historical Writing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youssef M. Choueiri
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Arabic World

This chapter traces the principal historiographical developments in the Arab world since 1945. It is divided into two major parts. The first part deals with the period extending from 1945 to 1970. During this period the discourse of either socialism or nationalism permeated most historical writings. The second part presents the various attempts made to decolonize, rewrite, or theorize history throughout the Arab world. The chapter then shows how in the various states of the Arabic world—some but not all of which have become fundamentalist Islamic regimes—Western models continued to be followed, though often with a more explicitly socialist approach than would be the case in America or Western Europe. By the 1970s, well before the shake-up of radical Islamicization that has dominated the past quarter-century, the entire Arabic world began to push hard against the dominance of residual Western colonial history.

What is a Classic in History?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Jaume Aurell
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Historical Criticism ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
Narrative Language

Abstract What is the classic in history? What is a classic in historical writing? Very few historians and critics have addressed these questions, and when they have done so, it has been only in a cursory manner. These are queries that require some explanation regarding historical texts because of their peculiar ambivalence between science and art, content and form, sources and imagination, scientific and narrative language. Based on some examples of the Western historiographical tradition, I discuss in this article to what extent historians should engage the concept of the classic – as has been done for literary texts. If one assumes that the historical text is not only a referential account but also a narrative analogous to literary texts, then the concept of the classic becomes one of the keys for understanding the historical text – and may improve our understanding not only of historiography, but of history itself. I will argue in this article that it is possible to identify a category of the classic text in some historical writings, precisely because of the literarity they possess without losing their specific historical condition. Because of their narrative condition, historical texts share some of the features assigned to literary texts – that is, endurance, timelessness, universal meaningfulness, resistance to historical criticism, susceptibility to multiple interpretations, and ability to function as models. Yet, since historical texts do not construct imaginary worlds but reflect external realities, they also have to achieve some specific features according to this referential content – that is, surplus of meaning, historical use of metaphors, effect of contemporaneity without damaging the pastness of the past, and a certain appropriation of literariness. Without seeking to be normative or systematic, this article focuses on some specific features of the historical classic, offering a series of reflections to open rather than try to close a debate on this complex topic.

Present-Centred History and the Problem of Historical Knowledge

1988 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. G. Ashplant ◽  
Adrian Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Religious History ◽  
Previous Article ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
Common Parlance ◽  
The Common ◽  
Original Domain

In a previous article, we examined Herbert Butterfield's identification of a certain pattern of anachronism in historical writing, in his classic book The whig interpretation of history (1931). In the decades since that book was originally published, Butterfield's designation has been extended far beyond its original domain of political and religious history. The terms ‘whig history’ and ‘whiggish history’ have passed into the common parlance of historians. This very success, however, has masked a failure to define the nature of such anachronistic writing, its causes and remedies. Such definition is all the more necessary since Butterfield's own attempts were clearly inadequate. Building upon and amending certain tentative formulations of Butterfield's, we defined the root of the anachronistic error as present-centredness: that is, that the historian, in seeking to study, reconstruct and write about the past, is constrained by necessarily starting from the perceptual and conceptual categories of the present.

From biography to history: writing the modern British monarchy

2004 ◽  
Vol 77 (197) ◽  
pp. 289-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cannadine
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Royal Family ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
History Of

Abstract This article traces the development of biographical and historical writing about the British monarchy from the ‘golden age’ of Elizabeth I to the House of Windsor. It examines the differences in approach over the past two centuries, in particular, from the uncritical biographies of the Victorian period to the current unregulated flood of material, authorized and unauthorized. Such an analysis goes beyond the history of dynasties and individuals and becomes a history of society as reflected in the changing experiences of the British royal family.

scholarly journals When “Mixing Memory and Desire”: Imaginative Revisions and the Productive Power of Nostalgia in Rebecca Brown’s Oughtabiographies

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 23-43
Author(s):  
Lies Xhonneux
Keyword(s):  
Personal History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Narrative Truth ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way

English:This essay focuses on the “oughtabiographies” of the contemporary lesbian writer Rebecca Brown, which function as imaginative vehicles with which the author (re)writes her own past the way it should have been. Thus her work will be seen to extend the realm of longing – usually reserved for the future – into the past, thereby highlighting the role of desire and the value of “narrative truth” in personal history writing. Moreover, Brown’s active reworkings of her personal past allow for a critical reappraisal of the concept of nostalgia, which is usually dismissed as conservative or passive.Dutch:Dit essay bespreekt de “oughtabiographies” van de hedendaagse lesbische schrijfster Rebecca Brown, waarin deze auteur haar eigen verleden herschrijft tot wat het had moeten zijn. Zo toont Browns werk de invloed van verlangens – die normaal gezien tot het domein van de toekomst behoren – op (het denken over) het verleden, en benadrukt het het belang van “narrative truth” in de context van persoonlijke geschiedschrijving. Bovendien laat Browns actieve herwerking van haar verleden een kritische herwaardering toe van het concept nostalgie, dat vaak als conservatief of passief wordt afgeschilderd.

La responsabilità morale dello storico

2009 ◽  
pp. 116-126
Author(s):  
Bronislaw Baczko
Keyword(s):  
Historical Research ◽  
Social Awareness ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Individual Action ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
Principle Of Relativity ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Over Time

- Historical knowledge is tied in a thousand ways to the anxieties, conflicts, to antinomies and to the demands of our era. It is in the name of our present that interrogates the past. It possesses a degree of expressive character: voicing the present where one is born and lives. So, therefore the historian is not an impartial and static observer of the past and the ever-dominate present. He must remain in the perspective of the present-day and the historical moment in which he lives. But no «present» is ever really finished. One might think that no moral code is consistent with the principle of relativity of knowledge, that the researcher is inevitably partial and runs the risk of deformation and ideological sublimation. It may also be that history has taken a far too long function of magistra vitae in social awareness. It does not seem to arouse any distrust towards our time. In fact, the disproportion between the anonymous «fate» on one side - the decisions bearing on the existence of humanity and its future destiny - and, on the other hand, the possibility of individual action is today such that history seems pointless for the rationalization of the present. The attitude towards historical knowledge is also influenced by the fact that it is a subject far too easy to exploit and manipulate by power and propaganda, penalizing values often variable and contradictory. The historical-humanist has often been reduced to the role of technical - propagandist. In his research, he cannot make «partial» choices between true and false. The awareness of the relativity of values and of their variability over time, does not change anything in the absolute moral character of historical research. The total moral responsibility of the historian cannot be relieved by anyone. An historian, precisely, must explore the past to get to the truth; he is morally obligated and has no right to falsify.Key words: present, pass, historical knowledge, "to be a historian", responsibility, relativism, moral code.Parole chiave: presente, passato, conoscenza storica, "essere uno storico", responsabilità, relativismo, codice morale.

Revolution and the art of history in France: Daniel Auber’s Gustave III (1833)

2011 ◽  
Vol 52 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 393-418
Author(s):  
Mark Pottinger
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Personal Perspective ◽  
French History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Cultural Importance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jules Michelet ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Grand Opera

Following the July Revolution of 1830, French history writing began to reflect a new personal perspective that allowed many to identify with the earlier revolution of 1789. This immediate association with the past allowed individuals to connect with history in ways that reflected themselves as well as the new political and cultural horizon. French grand opéra represented this desire for historical knowledge by displaying a dramatic narrative akin to the writings of French academic historian Jules Michelet (1798–1874). Through the analysis of the music and libretto of Daniel Auber’s Gustave III (1833) it is shown that the historical narrative found within this so-called’ opéra historique’ embraces the same historiographic narrative of revolution as found in the writings of Michelet. Such an investigation highlights the aesthetic and cultural importance of grand opéra in France as well as the genre’s relationship to national identity in the first half of the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals TRADITIONAL NORTHERN SELKUP TOY

2021 ◽  
pp. 158-173
Author(s):  
Ольга Борисовна Степанова
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Current State ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

Традиционная игрушка северных селькупов, сегодня ими почти забытая, до сих пор никем не исследовалась. Между тем, она представляет собой яркий фрагмент традиционной селькупской культуры. Исследование ставило своей задачей вернуть селькупскому народу этот элемент его культуры в форме научного описания. На основе главным образом музейных материалов и отчасти полевых материалов автора были выявлены и рассмотрены пять типов игрушки северных селькупов, включая шесть видов куклы. Из-за нехватки селькупского материала в исследовании активно использовался метод научной реконструкции. Описания зафиксированных у селькупов типов и видов игрушки воссоздавались по материалам игрушки соседних народов. Попутно устанавливалось, какие традиции — западносибирские и восточносибирские — оказывали влияние на формирование облика того или иного типа/вида игрушки у селькупов. Был рассмотрен вопрос о связи североселькупской игрушки — вещи утилитарного значения — с сакральным или, иными словами, вопрос ее символических смыслов. Автор пришла к выводу, что все типы и виды селькупской игрушки в прошлом были сакральными обрядовыми предметами, и что в семиотическом статусе игрушки соотношение «знакового» и «вещного» со временем сдвинулось в сторону «вещного». Завершенный вид исследованию придали включенные в него материалы по современному состоянию традиционной североселькупской игрушки. The traditional toy of the northern Selkups, today almost forgotten by them, has not yet been studied by anyone. Meanwhile, it is a vivid fragment of the traditional Selkup culture. The research aimed to return this element of their culture to the Selkup people in the form of a scientific description. Based mainly on museum materials and partly from the author's field materials, five types of toys of the northern Selkups were identified and considered, including six types of dolls. Due to the lack of Selkup material, the method of scientific reconstruction was actively used in the study. Descriptions of the types and types of toys recorded by the Selkups were recreated based on the materials of toys of neighboring peoples. Along the way, it was established which traditions — West Siberian and East Siberian — influenced the formation of the appearance of a particular type / type of toy among the Selkups. The question of the connection between the North Selkup toy — a thing of utilitarian meaning — with the sacred, or, in other words, the question of its symbolic meanings, was considered. The author came to the conclusion that all types and types of Selkup toys in the past were sacred ritual objects, and that in the semiotic status of a toy, the ratio of “sign” and “thing” over time shifted towards the “thing”. The study was completed by the materials included in it on the current state of the traditional North Selkup toy.

Tocqueville, Napoleon, and History-Writing in a Democratic Age

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-55
Author(s):  
David A. Bell
Keyword(s):  
Historical Writing ◽  
Great Weight ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Napoleon Bonaparte ◽  
Democratic Equality ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
The Way

In Democracy in America, Tocqueville posited a contrast between the way history is written in “aristocratic” and “democratic” ages. In the former, historians tend to assign great weight to the actions of individuals; in the latter, they privilege great impersonal forces that act upon the mass. The essay examines Tocqueville’s views of Napoleon Bonaparte in light of these reflections. It concludes that despite his occasional vulnerability to the lure of Napoleonic grandeur, and despite his own desire, as an aristocrat writing in a democratic age, to effect a synthesis of the two modes of historical writing, in the end he fundamentally viewed Napoleon’s actions as determined by the forces of democratic equality and revolution.

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