Peter Seixas, ed., Theorizing Historical Consciousness.

Frank, David

Peter Seixas, ed., Theorizing Historical Consciousness (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2004)

THE TITLE may be intimidating enough to stop the casual reader, so you might try entering by way of the small cover illustration of a locomotive. There is a clue somewhere late in the book that this may be the locomotive of history. Indeed one of the problematics addressed in the book at least implicitly is whether that train is stalled on the track or still moving. The volume itself is a collection of papers from a conference held in August 2001 under the title "Canadian Historical Consciousness in International Context: Theoretical Perspectives." The contributors include American, Australian, British, Canadian, and European scholars, and the book is introduced by Peter Seixas, director of the Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness at the University of British Columbia. From our vantage point out here on the embankment, peering up into the coach windows of this impressive train, the reader is apt to see answers looming in and out of focus, much as often happens at historical conferences.

About half the chapters address explicit theoretical concerns. One of the underlying anxieties about the production and consumption of history is stated by Chris Lorenz in terms of the growing influence of "non-professional forms of historical representation," and he suggests professional historians give more attention to the more extreme domains of the human experience that popularizers often address. At a more general level, he also offers a classificatory schema for historical consciousness based on spatial and temporal markers. The appetite for classification is amplified by James Wertsch in an argument for the appreciation of historical narrative as a response to "schematic narrative templates" in which known events are regularly "emplotted" in historical determined interpretive contexts. Mark Salber Phillips makes a case for the virtues of microhistory and argues that the vaunted objectivity of the historian actually involves distinctions between what he calls formal, affective, ideological, and cognitive distances. The particular value of oral history is well theorized by Roger Simon, who points out the several functions, both ethical and pedagogical, of remembrance as a form of historical reckoning. Meanwhile, Jorn Rosen argues (while proposing another typology of his own) that there remains a connection between historical consciousness and the moral function of history: "Historical consciousness should be conceptualized as an operation of human intellection rendering present actuality intelligible while fashioning its future perspectives." (67)

These approaches are complemented by the chapters that address the problem at the level of practical challenges facing classroom educators. One useful study is a revised and translated version of a paper by Jocelyn Letourneau and Sabrina Moisan on the historical knowledge of young Quebec francophones; they point out that educators do not control the historical consciousness of students but work within a social and cultural context where knowledge is acquired from varied sources. Similarly, Peter Lee examines the challenges of equipping students (in England in this case) to consider competing historical narratives about their own country, with a view to acquiring the intellectual skills to live their own history in the present. Tony Taylor reports on the politics of school history in Australia, although a more direct comparison between Canadian and Australian experiences in this debate would still be helpful. Christian Laville contributes an astute essay on the origins of "historical consciousness" studies themselves as a response to the alleged destabilization of knowledge in recent decades. In considering the growing preoccupation with heritage and memory, he warns against the rise of a prescriptive historical agenda that undermines the traditional strengths of historical thinking. John Torpey concludes on a more skeptical note, suggesting that the forward march of history has been stalled by the absence of alternative social visions at the end of the century. In their absence we have "an avalanche of history" that, to mix a famous metaphor, "weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living."

Of course, Canadian historians explored this territory in a preliminary way several years ago with the debate over Jack Granatstein's Who Killed Canadian History? (unfortunately referred to in this volume as The Killing of Canadian History). There have been numerous critiques of that polemic, although no publisher has come forward with a companion volume of responses, which is itself a comment on the relatively poor elaboration of the debate in the public realm. The present volume is something else, for it drives the discussion into the high-end suburbs of intellectual discourse where even the vocabularies are still under construction. A reviewer in this journal cannot fail to note that the frames of reference here are for the most part those of empire, state, nation, and war and that categories such as class and gender are rarely mentioned on this journey. It is unclear if this is an accidental feature or a more general failure in contemporary historical discourse. As for the big questions, by the time we have inspected the illuminated windows of this train, the relationship between historical information and historical understanding, sometimes parsed for us as the tension between heritage and history, remains nicely illustrated but unresolved. Conference collections serve a purpose, but they probably need to be read selectively and strategically. The editor has helped with a series of short introductions to the sections. In my own case, one thoughtful colleague suggested, I might have found it easier to read the book from back to front. We might add as well that one's perception of a train depends on where you are sitting.

David Frank

University of New Brunswick