History and the Historians – Parts of a Memoir
History and the Historians – Parts of a Memoir

Summary/Abstract: The moving finger may have written and, yes, any amount of piety and wit may have been dispensed, yet that which has happened cannot be undone. Or so Fitzgerald’s Khayyam would have us believe. I believed this too as a hedgehog. Now, in my vulpine identity, I see that the past is subject to constant reinterpretations, that history – the version of the past that we believe to be history – is hopelessly fluid and, ultimately, subjective. That fluidity deters no one. The problem is I suspect a broader one. The world, certainly in its European manifestation, evidently believes that there is one history, a single history, which is objective, definitive, attainable and may or may not have a message (the last depends on to whom you listen). Furthermore, a historical fact is just that, a fact, usually, when deployed in this form, an incontrovertible fact. A secondary, but nonetheless important aspect of this is the assertion that the historian is, by his or her training, uniquely fitted to establish the facts, the truth, the light and possibly to decide what the message is. If there is one. So, for me, historians are hopelessly hedgehogs fixated or just hedgehogs born. They think they know one big thing.

• Details
• Contents