Why History?
Extracted from a symposium in Australian Book Review, Dec 1995.
Greg Denning
Giving the dead a voice, letting their signatures on life be witnessed,
is reason enough for my history. The voices of the dead in such a history
are hard to hear, and the distinctiveness of their signatures hard to respect.
Such a history takes much inquiry, even more imagination, and a deep sense
of humility about what an historian can know and has the right to say.
The living need history, too. Not to be made to feel guilty for a past they
are not responsible for or cannot change. The living need a history disturbing
enough to change the present. I do not mean disturbing in the sense of
destructive
anxiety or alienation, but disturbing in the sense of awakening a consciousness
that brings resolve to change. It is the present made by our past that we
are responsible for. It is our own banality that needs to be disturbed,
our presumption that we are disempowered by the very structures and systems
which we make ourselves and sustain with our moral lethargy. If my history,
by story and reflection, shows that things can be otherwise, then I think
it fulfils a need.
Greg Denning is the author of Mr Bligh's Bad Language,
Cambridge University Press.
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