Dr Philip SA Cummins, author of
Clio's Scroll, gave a great talk about post-modernism at this year's HTA Senior History HSC Study Day, essentially encapsulating the
What is History? module of the Extension Course within his own philosophy in the space of just an hour.
The title of the session 'Post-post-modernism' sounds intimidating but - mercifully - the lecture was only partially focused on this, and instead students were given an overview of historiography in the broader sense. Dr Cummins made it clear from the outset that Extension History is less about 'doing' history and more about being an historian - which is to say that, as Extension History teachers, we require fresh thinking from our students about history.
One of the big questions that often comes up with Extension History is; Is there such a thing as absolute truth? The historian EH Carr summarised history as being about things that happened in the past, and our attempts to record those events. It's a process rather than an absolute truth. We can work towards this truth, but getting there is perhaps irrelevant due to its impossibility.
Dr Cummins goes a little further in specifying that historians more or less ask questions about three things:
- Agency - how things happen and who does them?
- Causation - why things happen and to what effect?
- Relative merit (significance) - how important are things in determining agency and causation?
And in order to get there, historians explore the following:
- Can we escape our contexts?
- Can we capture the past accurately?
- Can we express an individual truth or interpretation?
- Can we find ourselves in the past?
- Can we exist free of our past and present?
- Can we express our own views?
- Can we impose an individual mark on history?
- Can we discover our heroes in the past?
- Can our heroes help us to be heroes?
- Can we be heroes ourselves?
- Can we capture the truth about past events?
- Can we determine any meaning from these events?
- Can we tell the story of the past in order to communicate this meaning?
So using this as his jumping-off point, Dr Cummins segmented his story of history into four broad areas, and I've used his lecture and framework to discuss his ideas in my own words below (mainly for my own Extension History students - hi guys!).
1. The Enlightenment - the Empirical and Liberal traditions
The Enlightenment period began in the latter half of the 18th Century. In most understandings of the term, it's considered to be a Western/European tradition (although there are dissenting voices who make strong arguments for the emergence of the Enlightenment in other parts of the world, such as Japan) and for the intents and purposes of high school Extension History it's best to consider it in tandem with all the Eurocentric -isms that we tackle in Modern History. Meaning that the Enlightenment is easiest understood within the context of the rise of the West as the pre-eminent power of the modern world - emerging alongside (or just prior to) industrialisation, liberalism, nationalism, Eurocentrism, and imperialism.
In terms of History, the Enlightenment prompted the 'celebration, categorisation and recording of orthodoxies'. It was a movement of intellectuals who came to prominence in the context of the same environment that produced the French Revolution; challenging the old feudal Church-run order in which information remained clandestine and elitist, and bringing education to the masses by applying structures to knowledge in previously-unparalleled detail. As part of this vanguard, historians such as Edward Gibbon brought to bear a more rigorous kind of inquiry to retell the past in narrative form for everyday people.
This is what is known as the
empirical tradition - a primary source-based approach that dominates historical method from the 18th Century onwards. History was seen a truthful depiction of the past, and this led to the famous 19th Century historian Leopold Von Ranke and his assertion that
history is a science - one in which the historian utilises a scientific methodology to locate and use primary sources to tell history 'as it essentially was'. That is, Ranke believed that it was entirely possible to present history
objectively.
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| French Revolution |
During this time, empiricism became the 'gold standard' for historical work. Historians adopted Ranke's model and attitude in elevating primary sources to centre-stage and asking the following generic questions to bring the past to the present: What do primary sources say? What happened? When did it happen? How did it happen? Why was it done?
2. Modernism - the Relativist Challenge
The rise of modernism as an intellectual movement is sometimes misunderstood and misinterpreted as something that exists only in relation to what came after it; post-modernism. It is, nonetheless, worth examining on its own terms as a set of ideas that developed across the turn of the 20th Century within the framework of the Fin de siecle, a period characterised by the relative peace and optimism that prompted European growth between the 1890s and the breakout of war in 1914.
This was a time of social progression and celebration, and although WWI interrupted it in a rather brutal fashion, the revisionist and anti-traditionalist ideas that influenced the art and literature and historiography of the period continued unabated into the 1920s and 1930s. This can be seen in concepts as diverse as psychology, art deco, fascism and early feminism. There was a new focus on subjectivity (IE. The self). Intellectuals asked, what are the real structures of our society once we do away with notions of imperialism and Western superiority? If each person is a product of their social, economic and cultural upbringing, then how can an objective vision of the past be presented?
The relativists of the modern age, represented so memorably by the anti-empiricist journalist and historian EH Carr, said that the past only exists in one form or another because it's what we agree happened. What we know is relative, and is not the same as what someone else knows. Therefore, facts exists because we want them to exist. Facts are subjective because they have been selected by the historian.
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| EH Carr |
We can see the edge of post-modernism here. For those of us with the hindsight of 21st Century historical thinking, it's not much of a leap of thought to say that facts are selected not just by historians but by those in power.
In his lecture, Dr Cummins presented this quote by Carr, "When we attempt to answer the question 'what is history?' our answer, consciously or unconsciously, reflects our own position in time, and forms part of our answer to the broader question of what view we take of the society in which we live". This drives home the idea that caused so many to break from Ranke's view of history as a science - history can only be understood in relation to ourselves.
Therefore, the modern relativist historians ask: Who is the author? What is the motive of the author? How reliable is the text? How do we relate to the text? How can we manage our understanding of the author's and our own biases to create a use for the text?
Dr Philip SA Cummins said that he uses this as an opportunity to remind history students that bias is not the 'bad' thing they've grown up thinking it is. In his words, and I paraphrase here, "Bias is good because it helps us identify the debates that fuel the approach to history an author has taken".
3. Post-modernism - Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction and the Voice of the 'Other'
Ah yes, post-modernism. To hyphenate or not to hyphenate? I'm going to drop the hyphen from this point on because, well, in the framework of postmodernism there's no right or wrong way to present it in terms of grammar.
See what I did there?
A goodly amount of students (and adults) become incredibly discombobulated at the mention of postmodernism and, I have to say, as much as I probably see myself as a postmodernist, it doesn't matter how many times I hear people define it - I always feel like it I would be quite happy to hear someone else talk about it. There's always more for me to learn about it. Or perhaps it's just that it's still yet to truly be defined, and never will be.
All that Extension History students need to know about postmodernism is that it was the wholesale rejection of truth and objectivity that followed the emergence of relativism. It is relativism taken to its extreme; an identification of the power relationships that gave birth to each version of history that we're presented with. And the recognition that history is always a version of events, and that there is no possibly truthful way to present the past.
Postmodernism exists as a criticism of the middle class/capitalist rule of the world, and as a celebration of 'the other' in the latter half of the 20th Century - the 'other' being those marginalised by the dichotomies of the Cold War, and those brought to the fore by the process of decolonisation that rapidly changed the political landscape of the undeveloped and developing worlds of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The postmodernist historian wants to deconstruct historical narratives to de-centre the powerful elites that these narratives reinforce. Postmodernist histories represent ethnic minorities, women, lower social classes, non-binary sexualities... all those who have been disadvantaged or discriminated against by the mainstream elements of Western society.
Under this model, history is therefore seen as a political text, and a discourse of social construction and personal perspective, in response to which we should ask: cui bono, which translates as: for whose benefit was the text prepared? History is no longer a search for truth, it's a dismantling of lies. The postmodernist historian should therefore also ask: How does this deconstruction help us to understand the relationship of the historical text to the power structures that created and authorised it? To what extend are we bound to accept the perspective of the author? Is there a better way f looking at the past? Have we made sure that we have noticed the 'other'?
So if postmodernism makes it impossible for us to ascertain the truth of the past then what's the point of it? Well, Dr Cummins joyfully asserted that, whilst he is the first to concede that postmodernism is hard to read, it is still incredibly valuable as a tool within the context of analysing history and its historians. Things that Dr Cummins wants us to consider in regards to why postmodernism should be important to us:
- We can recognise the influence of "narrative, metanarrative and myth" - people want to write stories and usually these conform to conventional story structures and cultural icons, myths and legends.
- We can understand that these stories are often if not always framed around ideas and structures of power.
- We can acknowledge that histories are written for someone's benefit, and that this is usually the person who authorised and supported the production of the history, as opposed to the 'other'.
- We can recognise that a historian's method and training can inherently privilege one or more perspectives from within the cycle of these power relations.
- We can use tools of analysis to deconstruct the work of other historians, and;
- We are reminded of the voice of the 'other'.
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| Jacob de Wit's 1754 painting depicts a naked Truth keeping a watchful eye over those who write history. |
A way to separate these three approaches to history is to think of them in these terms:
- Empirical - there is a truth. Fact plus opinion will equal a history, and a definitive history is entirely possible. "History is the servant of the past".
- Modernism - there is a struggle between truth and the bias of the historian. "History is the servant of the present".
- Postmodernism - there is no truth. Ever. "History is the servant of an idea".
4. Post-Post-Postmodernism
And that brings us to a contemporary perspective. What comes after postmodernism? The answer isn't a movement but an opportunity; the 21st Century presents the historian with an opportunity to remove old ideologies and political theories and instead map out and claim a genuine historical methodology that is integrated with other disciplines and concepts. There are still critical arguments about whether a historian can achieve authenticity or determine the truthful nature of things. Are there any absolutes? Where role does the post-Cold War, post-9/11 rise of fundamentalism play? Is relativism morally bankrupt? Can pluralism (political and cultural diversity) replace the 20th century Eurocentric model of historical understanding?
Dr Cummins took the opportunity to highlight a whole range of debates and issues that have arisen in this new arena of "intense social and technological change":
- What is the impact of technology, social networking, complexty, ubiquity, globalisation, and supermodernity?
- What of the supposed 'end' of history and triumph of the West vs. the rise of China, Islam and global decolonisation?
- Neo-conservatism vs. the 'third' way? (A reference to the ongoing search for a more socialist vision that doesn't go down the path that communism went down in the 20th Century)
- And what of the seemingly inescapable victory of democratic power structures and improvements in living conditions vs. the entrenched inequities of wealth, capital and international corporate power?
- Or the history wars that play out ongoing battles between orthodoxy, revisionism and counter-revisionism?
- How do we embed the voice of 'the other' within traditional history?
The questions that post-post-modernists find themselves asking are: Can we tell an authentic and valid story about the past?What philosophies of history should inform our perspectives? How can we free ourselves from thinking politically and imposing ideology on history?Are there patterns or are historical contexts unique? Can we represent the authentic voice of history? How do we do it whilst entertaining and holding today's audience's attention?
The lecture finishes with Dr Cummins sharing some philosophies of post-postmodernist historians. Here are two that I found interesting:
- Bernard Bailyn says that historians are just trying to get as close to an accurate representation of the past as possible. The result is less important than the process.
- John Lewis Gaddis says (and I really love this) that history is like drawing a map. The most accurate map is a 1:1 map, but we need to shrink it down to make it practical. History is like this too - we have to be careful about selecting the features of it while we 'shrink it down' so that it looks the same as what it was.
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| Dr Philip SA Cummins, founded of CIRCLE |
Dr Philip SA Cummins' Recommended Reading List
Marc Bloch,
The Historian's Craft
EH Carr,
What is History?
Richard J Evans,
In Defence of History
Geoffrey Elton,
The Practice of History
John Lewis Gaddis,
The Landscape of History
Berverly C Southgate,
What is History For?
Barbara Tuchmann,
Practicing History
John Vincent,
An Intelligent Person's Guide to History
Karen Armstrong,
A Short History of Myth
Mark Buchanan,
Ubiquity
Jared Diamond,
Guns, Germs and Steel
Ian Morris,
Why the West Rules... For Now
