Minding the gap: re-visiting texts I once thought I understood

 This semester I have taught a class on the use of history. Due to this being a first cycle course students studying , its texts have to be in Swedish. A consequence of this is that we often ends up with Swedish writers, were one is the writings of professor Klas-Göran Karlsson, whom I actually had as a professor in ancient times when I was a student. 

My previous department often discussed Karlssons texts and often takes his typology of uses of history as point of departure. In this regard it is basically often stated that Karlsson have identifiers four or five modes in how history is used. In this regard Karlsson for instance have identified the political use of history, where history is utilised as a way to legitimize claims of for instance how to arrange society or to create social coherence within a country. Other modes identified is the academic use, the commercial and the none use of history. 

Sometimes in academia this text is utilised to criticise those historians aiming to write history in general. Sometimes it is claimed that history does not hold any value, since it is often only made to fit into one of these models. Over the years, my reading of Karlssons text “historia som vapen” (history as a weapon) were defined as these arguments and in particular his modes of how history is used. When I started reading the text, it therefore came to little surprise when the introduction states that the aims of history is to through texts trying to recreate the past. Given that large part of history is lost, it becomes rather evident that a total recreation is not only a vain project, but also impossible. 

So far the text thus put forward the same implications that have come to become truths. But what also struck me is that Karlsson also defends this form of “trivia pursuit” forms of knowledge. This is largely due to that history is often misused in politics, which can lead to severe consequences such as opression of minoritities etcetera. The worst consequence of this have already happened with for instance the rich numbers of genocides we have seen for the past one hundred years. In this regard, it becomes the historians duty to defend some sort of historical accuracy. 

What is interesting here is that the text actually defends history, even though some in the same school often criticize historical writing as merely a form of use of history. This criticism might be seen as easily dismantled, but combined with the more post-modern notions of the none existence of objective knowledge it might do considerable damage were historians withdraws from public debate.

Washington crossing the Delaware - common 
depiction for American freedom 


So what sense does all this make? I personally think that we as educators should be aware that we sometimes discusses texts we read years ago without re-engaging with them. In the end I learned a lot about not only the use of history, but also how philosophical work sometimes gets oversimplified. This makes a return to my older entry possible, where historians should mind the gap when teaching this forms of theory. It is not enough to only teach part of grand theory, but instead it need to be taught as a whole.

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