7 - Contemporary Challenges to the Idea of History

Summary

The inclusion of cyclic time is not a characteristic of cultures which are historically stunted but an indication of historical complexity. this complexity is reflected in the perceptions of the past in pre-modern times, the premises of which were different from the writing of history today.

—Romila Thapar, Time as a Metaphor of History: Early India (1996, 44)

Historical consciousness finds itself in an impasse. Historical consciousness seeks its fulfillment in the future, but the internal logic of an economy of profit and growth, unlike a lifestyle of contentment and self-sufficiency, inherently obliges one to mortgage the future.

—Raimundo Panikkar, The Cosmotheandric Experience: Emerging Religious Consciousness (1998, 114)

Authenticity implies a relation with what is known that duplicates the two sides of historicity: it engages us both as actors and narrators. thus, authenticity cannot reside in attitudes towards a discrete past kept alive through narratives…even in relation to the past our authenticity resides in the struggles of our present. Only in that present can we be true or false to the past we choose to acknowledge.

—Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995, 151)

The Problem

In his inaugural address at the 61st session of the Indian History Congress at Calcutta, Amartya Sen develops and defends a view of history as an enterprise of knowledge. Sen takes issue with postmodern critiques of knowledge in general and historical knowledge in particular, and argues that though all of us have our own perspectives and points of view, yet it does not preclude the possibility of arriving at “an integrated and coherent picture” (Sen 2001, 86).