When I think about historians, I imagine a group of miners. They are just like your usual miners, wearing their helmets with headlights that send straight beams of light far into the darkness. This light cuts through the cave of the past, snatching tiny bits of history here and there. It also illuminates the way, so to say, retrospectively. Shows us how we came where we are.
I know it all sounds very cliche but this image helps me understand the broader picture, and I think it would be a good analogy to help students imagine the role of the historian. It is handy in outlining the limitations of history writing: no single historian can paint the whole picture with his lonely headlight in the vast and endless darkness. In that respect, every historian is like the blind man from the ancient story about the blind men and the elephant. Only a concerted effort among a group of like-minded scholars can reconstruct the past in a cohesive and meaningful way, but even then it is not guaranteed. Historians might end up as the proverbial blind men if they try too hard to define the whole elephant as one of its parts: its trunk, tail, or ears.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий