 |
Is
History Fiction?
Ann Curthoys & John Docker
331pp. UNSW Press, Sydney, 2010 |
Available from HTANSW:
Standard
price $39.00 + postage (GST inclusive).
HTA NSW member price $30.00 + postage
(GST inclusive)
The
first edition of this book was reviewed in an earlier
issue of Teaching History, where it was highly recommended
as an Extension History reference. (See below for a copy
of that review) The second edition is largely unchanged
but for the significant addition of a new chapter, ‘Is
a History of Humanity Possible?’.
The new chapter
notes the divisiveness of postmodernism in the 1980s and
1990s and the various history wars in the 1990s and 2000s
and then suggests that one of the more recent trends has
been a shift to ‘supra-national’ or grand
scale histories: world, global, ‘Big’ and
environmental history. While the authors acknowledge earlier
precedents, they also point out that this history is a
product of the time in which it has been written. Humanity
is ‘at a crossroads’ – there is great
concern about the environment, there has been a loss of
faith in the western progress narrative and there is a
search for a global perspective.
The authors
acknowledge that we will still need national histories,
that bigger histories cannot escape being positioned and
that the bigger the history the more the historian is
reliant upon the secondary works of others. Nevertheless,
they present a compelling case for the validity of histories
that are not obsessively focused on the primary documents
associated with a small aspect of the past. They also
present the view of Janet Abu-Lughod that such histories
will be better if written by those who are ‘inspired
by eccentricity, ideology and idiosyncrasy’.
As with the
rest of the book, the new chapter is dense, in the best
sense, with summary and insight. It surveys the work of
numerous historians, has lots of great quotes and provides
a broad framework for understanding some of the more recent
trends in historiography. Once again, this book is very
highly recommended as a reference for anyone teaching
Extension History.
Paul Kiem
HTA
FIRST
EDITION REVIEW:
The title of this book immediately appealed to me because
it is generally the first question I pose when we start
Extension History classes. Like the authors, I believe
that it is a question that well and truly predates any
challenge to traditional history from postmodernism. Indeed,
as this book demonstrates, it is a question on which the
entire historiography component of the Extension course
can turn. Not surprisingly, the authors organise their
discussion under chapter headings that will sound like
a familiar chronology to experienced Extension teachers
– we start with Herodotus and move to the History
Wars via Thucydides, Ranke etc.
However,
the approach is fresh and up to date, the writing is engaging
and, in pursuing a detailed response to the question posed
in the title, the authors present many stimulating insights.
Herodotus, it would appear, was not only the father of
history but an ancient postmodernist. Women were not so
much absent from history writing until recent times but
confined to work in historical genres that have gained
more credibility with the challenge to academic/scientific
history. On the result of the Evans-Irving trial, which
I like to present to students as a triumph for truth and
traditional history, there is the observation: ‘A
legal decision, after all, resolves a dispute as best
it can; it is not necessarily a guarantee of truth’.
Not that this is meant to provide any comfort for David
Irving. Far from it, the Holocaust was a real event that
did occur. But, it is an event that might benefit from
being freed from the constraints of narrative history
and re-examined with a postmodernist (Herodotean?) approach!
I began this book with a highlighter, hoping to pick up
some ideas for Extension classes. Much of it is now coloured
in. I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone who is teaching
or planning to teach Extension history. It provides both
a wonderful overview, from an interesting perspective,
and a detailed reference. While I would not suggest that
it is always accessible reading for average secondary
students, our best students should expect to find it in
their school libraries.
Paul Kiem, Trinity Catholic College, Auburn
Click
here for order details
