Who owns history?

Over the holiday my wife and I were travelling Great Britain. As a swede I am sometimes not super fond of the idea that UK is a very nice tourist destination and so forth, but this time I gave it an honest chance. I also actually visited a museum whilst on holiday for the first time in years, the imperial war museum.



This visit actually worked very thought triggering for me and I especially liked the exhibition about caricatures of Winston Churchill as well as the other on the psychology of war. But what I came to think about, and returning to a previous entry I have made in Klas-Göran Karlssons history as a weapon, it became evident that this is a usage of history in which several aspects of powers is at play. And perhaps this more or less loose reflections, but here we go.

According to Karlssons historians use a very specific approach the history, the so called scientific approach. Thereby, we acknowledge this form of history as a more truthful claim than others. In the case of the caricature collection, this struk me as intristicallg bound to process of power. This is due to the exhibition being produced by several well respected scholars, which gave it legitimacy. What I however came to think about is the sources they use.

I myself those not have a recollection of this period, but I have spoken to quite a number of scholars about the cultural turn in history. This meant that the subject went from being overly focused on certain domains and, often, quantitative studies towards including popular culture in the research field. With this historians also came to engage in new formats and new voices. This was rather evident in the exhibition on Churchill, were those opposing him were heard as well as does that were pro his policy. 

As I left the exhibition I had learned to things. The first was that portraits of Churchill in media were varied to a great extent. But also that the cultural turn had hit one of the most prestigious institutions fully. Despite my critique of fields which deals with more ethnographic history, this forms of exhibitions will probably be useful for histography, the history of history-writing, as a way to learn how paradigm shifts manifested in engagement with the public.

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