The Future of the Past - When Will it Become History?

Abstract

When, in the ’sixties and ’seventies, the ‘deconstructionists’ were busy blowing up conceptual bridges, history neither escaped attention nor survived intact. So violent were the explosions that many of history’s fundamental concepts were uprooted and tossed sky-high. For some, this blew fresh air through a stagnant subject. Others, meanwhile, have been suffocated by the dust or crushed by the debris. The aftershock is still affecting history today, both by what is studied, and by how it is studied. I hope in this piece to address some issues raised by ‘deconstruction’. To what end? Briefly, I propose an amicable divorce of history from the present (the marriage is not destined to fail), and a settlement imposed on any continued dalliance of history with social prophesy.

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James, D., (2007) “The Future of the Past - When Will it Become History?”, Opticon1826 3.

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Douglas James (UCL)

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