How Good an Historian Shall I Be? by Marnie Hughes-Warrington

Author:Marnie Hughes-Warrington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, education, Collingwood, idealist, philosophy, scholarship, biography, study of history, GCSE, national curriculum, sympathy, empathy, re-enactment, wittgenstein, mind, language
ISBN: 9781845403683
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

The Form of the Content: A Metareflection

Thus far, our account follows the contours sketched out by Abrams, Cocking, Engell, Kearney, Egan and Alan White. [440] These writers narrate a linear account of the rise and fall of the humanist self and imagination, or the near circular movement from imagination as mirror then lamp then hall of mirrors. Whether they are linear or near circular, though, their accounts are all suggestive of an evolutionary continuum: that is, the transformation from Platonic mimesis to Derridean deconstruction involves continuous change within a coherent lineage. Such continuous history ought to attract the criticism of Foucauldians, who favour epistêmic ruptures. But it should also attract the wrath of Derrideans, not only because of its tidy linearity - and thus privileging of the singular over the multivalent - but also because it is very easy to slip into seeing a line as a point of origin to which other notions of imagination must connect and even refer back. This has important consequences for usages of ‘imagination’ preceded by adjectives. For instance, this arrangement of materials suggests that the historical imagination is ancillary or even a ‘sub’ concept. This might explain why nothing is said about usages with preceding adjectives in the accounts of imagination cited above. But are such usages peripheral, second order or ‘branches’ to the main ‘trunk’? Do all notions of the historical imagination always refer back to imagination? Might the meanings of imagination have been coloured by those of ‘historical imagination’? Might some writers see the historical imagination as the imagination?

There are many other possibilities available for the arrangement of this conceptual history. There might be more than one ‘trunk’ or no solid ‘trunk’ at all. There may be just branches connected by a single ‘essence’ or point. More radically, usages may be connected only by a network of overlapping similarities and valued equally. There must be some relation between the activities of the imagination or the historical imagination for them to be given the conceptual label. That relation, though, does not have to be one of a chronological framework. The time has thus come for us to think about both the content and the form of the imagination. We could retrace our steps and arrange our account of the imagination according to another organising principle. As no extensive account of the historical imagination has been offered to date, however, we have here the opportunity to cast a new account according to a new form.

If we depart from the linear chronological approach favoured by writers on the imagination, what might we discover? Can such a departure be made and historical differences still be respected? It can, as was demonstrated first by the Chinese historian Sima Qian over two thousand years ago. Qian’s history of China and its neighbouring lands from the reign of the legendary Yellow Emperor (c.2697 BCE ) to his own times is organised into five sections which look at dynastic houses, chronological tables, topic essays, the histories of prominent families and notable individuals respectively.

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