[ { THEATRES OF MEMORY[ THEATRES OF MEMORY ] BY SAMUEL, RAPHAEL ( AUTHOR )APR-16-1996 PAPERBACK } ] by Samuel, Raphael (AUTHOR) Apr-16-1996 [ Paperback ]

by Raphael Samuel

The idea that the past is a plaything of the present, or a "metafiction", is only now beginning to disturb the tranquility of professional historians, but for some 20 years it has been a commonplace of epistemological criticism, and a mainspring of experimental work in literature and the arts. Thus, in "magical realism" or "modern Gothic" the fairy tale can appear as the latest thing; while in the visual arts, futurist installations offer themselves as parodies of Old Masters. "Back to the Future" is also a Leitmotiv in commodity marketing and design - something discussed here under the heading of "Retrochic" - while in Britain, as in other advanced capitalist societies, conservation has been the cutting edge of the business recolonization of the inner city. According to critics of the heritage industry, the current obsession with the past signals not a return to tradition, but the exhaustion of history's grand narratives. The postmodern condition, so the argument runs, is one where the future has spectacularly parted company from the past. Nostalgia is the sigh of the historically orphaned, heritage a symptom of national decay. In this book - the first of a trilogy - the author takes issue with the heritage baiters. He offers an alternative genealogy of resurrectionism, relating it to the environmentalist movements of our time. He argues that we live in an expanding historical culture, one which is newly alert to the evidence of the visual, and which is reconnecting the study of landscape and townscape to that of the natural world. It is also, he argues, more democratic than earlier versions of the national past, and much more hospitable to hitherto stigmatized minorities. The volume is prefaced with a long essay on unofficial knowledge and has an afterword on "allegories of the real". Raphael Samuel is the founding editor of "History Workshop Journal".

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Historical, Cultural Studies

Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

Reviews

[Kristi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book fascinating. Samuel's broad conceptualization of "history" breaks down disciplinary boundaries to examine "history" more intuitively as a social process rather than a profession. In this fluid examination, popular and material culture take their place with archival research in illuminating the ways that the past is representational used in the living present, and how modes of use shift throughout time.

[Linhue]

Thx

[Ben Vos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I understood this book to be an argument that "proper" historians in academia and in print, should take more seriously the contributions to our knowledge and understanding and feelings about history common especially British history, from the creationists, archivists, family historians, collectors and other enthusiasts. The argument is most currently made in the afterword, where the supposedly neutrality and ideological purity of academic history is effectively question. Most of the book consists of a very detailed, comprehensive and fascinating (but probably partial) documentation of the growth of non-academic history since the turn of the twentieth century and focusing mostly on the post-war period. This is interesting in its own right.

[Anna Coopey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long read, and not one entirely relevant to my field of study, but a good one. I enjoy things that dismantle historiography as a single story, and this has really made me think about the imperial nature of historical narrative (and how authors can break out of that by supplying alternative pasts).
Particularly interesting chunks were: Bill Schwarz's Foreword, obviously; the Introduction; "Heritage-Baiting"; "Politics"; and "Hybrids".

[alcapote_]

Sobre presencia del pasado en la vida de la gente corriente.