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Methodological and Substantive Remarks on Myth, Memory and History in the Construction of a European Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Bo Stråth

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Over the last decades, a shift has occurred in the methodology of academic historiography, from an earlier focus on the quality of the sources towards the narrative framework of the history. The point in the new approach is that the sources are interpreted and put together into a narration. In the earlier approach, there was a kind of myopic source criticism, which stopped at the sources and never really questioned the way in which they were put together into a narration. The way in which this composition is made is as biased as the sources on which the narration is based. For this reason, critical scrutiny must move one step forward, instead of halting at the sources. The path-breaking Metahistory by Hayden White in 1973 demonstrated, in a provocative way, the bias in narrative structures. He moved the focus from the sources as such, towards the manner in which they were employed. When the book was published, it was generally rejected and marginalized by the historians’ craft. Today, it is no exaggeration to say that, even if it is not generally recognized, at least it is widely accepted. Metahistory alluded, of course, to metaphysics. White's conclusion was that history is basically ideology. History is not the past per se, nor, as Ranke argued, is it wie es eigentlich gewesen, but a reflection on the past from the present. This methodological shift does not deny the continued importance of a critical approach to the sources and does not reject the existence of events and facts. Methodological rules of how to evaluate sources critically are still valid. The events and the facts based on the events can be documented. No serious historian founding his or her work on sources would deny the fact that, for instance, the Holocaust really did occur.

Type
Articles: Special Issue: Confronting Memories – Reflecting History
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 2: Article: Special Issue - Confronting Memories: European „Bitter Experiences“ and the Constitutionalization Process , 01 February 2005 , pp. 255 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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4 Pierre Nora holds that each nation has its canonical memories and myths that bind the community together and create social identities. Myth and memory give the community a narrative through which it can continue to forge its identity. The act of remembering is related to the repository of images and ideals that constitute the social ties of a community. Pierre Nora, Realms of memory: Rethinking the French Past vol 1-3, vol. 1 xv-xxiv (Lawrence D. Kritzman, ed., translated by Arthur Goldhammer, 1996) (French original Les lieux de mémoire 1-3, 1984-1986).Google Scholar

5 The idea of “scientific history” as formulated by Leopold von Ranke was based on the study of new source materials. It was assumed that close textual criticism of the hitherto undisclosed records buried in state archives would once and for all establish the facts of political history. The idea of Ranke became a dogma during the period from the 1870s to the 1930s through the professionalization of academic history writing under development of precise rules for the source criticism. Ranke's statement about wie es eigentlich gewesen has often been misunderstood, and Ranke has been attributed with a rather naïve viewpoint on the historian's task. However, in the preface of the history of the Romance and Germanic peoples Ranke demonstrates, as opposed to what is argued about him, that he was well aware of the bias in history writing. He reflected on the connection between intention, subject-matter and form of his book. The intention of a historian is dependent on his opinion and perspective (“Ansicht“). Out of intention and subject-matter emerges the form. History is thus not free evolution but creative ordering of the past, or, in the language of today, construction. History has been given the task to judge the past in order to teach for the future. However, so great tasks were beyond Ranke's ambition with his book in 1824. He just wanted to show wie es eigentlich gewesen. Leopold von Ranke wrote his famous formulation about history as it really was in the preface of his Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514 (1824) (VII in the edition published by Duncker und Humblot 1874).Google Scholar

6 Bottici, Chiara, A Philosophy of Political Myth Ph.D. Thesis, European University Institute (2004).Google Scholar

7 Cf., Georg Iggers, Historiography and the Challenge of Post-modernism, in: The Post-modern Challenge. Perspectives East and West 281 (Bo Stråth / Nina Witoszek, Eds., 1999).Google Scholar

8 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning (1978).Google Scholar

9 Roland Barthes, Mythologies 124-125 (1957). Cf., Bo Stråth, Introduction. Myth, Memory and History in the Construction of Community, in: Myth and Memory in the Construction of Community. Historical patterns in Europe and Beyond 19 (Bo Stråth, Ed., 2000).Google Scholar

10 States of Memory. Continuities, Conflicts and Transformations in National Retrospection (Jeffrey K. Olick, ed., 2003). See, also, Carsten Humlebaek, Rethinking Spain: Continuities and ruptures in national discourse after Franco Ph.D. Thesis, European University Institute (2004).Google Scholar

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13 For a development of this argument, see Koselleck (note 2).Google Scholar

14 Niethammer, Lutz, A European Identity?, in: Europe and the Other and Europe as the Other 87 (Bo Stråth, Ed., 2000).Google Scholar

15 Orluc, Katiana, The Transformation of European Consciousness after The First World War, in: Stråth (note 14), 157.Google Scholar

16 For a development of this argument, see Bo Stråth, From the Werner Plan to the EMU, in: After Full Employment. European Discourses on Work and Flexibility (Bo Stråth, Ed., 2000).Google Scholar

17 Stråth, Bo, Multiple Europes: Integration, Identity and Demarcation to the Other, in: Stråth (note 14), 385.Google Scholar

18 Cf., Milward, Alan S., The European Rescue of the Nation State (1994).Google Scholar

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20 Orluc (note 15). See, also, Lutz Niethammer (note 14).Google Scholar

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22 Cf., Figures d'Europe/Images and Myths of Europe (Luisa Passerini, Ed., 2003). Cf., also, Bottici (note 6), 258-259.Google Scholar

23 Bottici (note 6), 259.Google Scholar

24 Sverker Gustavsson, 4 Tiden (Stockholm) (2004).Google Scholar

25 Id.Google Scholar