Abstract
Our understanding of the past shapes our sense of the present and the future: this is historical consciousness. While academic history, public history, and the study of collective memory are thriving enterprises, there has been only sparse investigation of historical consciousness itself, in a way that relates it to the policy questions it raises in the present. With Theorizing Historical Consciousness, Peter Seixas has brought together a diverse group of international scholars to address the problem of historical consciousness from the disciplinary perspectives of history, historiography, philosophy, collective memory, psychology, and history education.
Historical consciousness has serious implications for international relations, reparations claims, fiscal initiatives, immigration, and indeed, almost every contentious arena of public policy, collective identity, and personal experience. Current policy debates are laced with mutually incompatible historical analogies, and identity politics generate conflicting historical accounts. Never has the idea of a straightforward 'one history that fits all' been less workable. Theorizing Historical Consciousness sets various theoretical approaches to the study of historical consciousness side-by-side, enabling us to chart the future study of how people understand the past.
Table of contents
Historiographies and Historical Consciousness
21
Specific Narratives and Schematic Narrative Templates
49
Narrative Structure Moral Function
63
and Ontogenetic Development 63
78
The Pedagogical Insistence of Public Memory
183
A Dialogue on Narrative and Historical Consciousness
202
The Politics of Historical Consciousness
217
A Polemical Perspective
240
Copyright
Historical consciousness has serious implications for international relations, reparations claims, fiscal initiatives, immigration, and indeed, almost every contentious arena of public policy, collective identity, and personal experience. Current policy debates are laced with mutually incompatible historical analogies, and identity politics generate conflicting historical accounts. Never has the idea of a straightforward 'one history that fits all' been less workable. Theorizing Historical Consciousness sets various theoretical approaches to the study of historical consciousness side-by-side, enabling us to chart the future study of how people understand the past.
Table of contents
Historiographies and Historical Consciousness
21
Specific Narratives and Schematic Narrative Templates
49
Narrative Structure Moral Function
63
and Ontogenetic Development 63
78
The Pedagogical Insistence of Public Memory
183
A Dialogue on Narrative and Historical Consciousness
202
The Politics of Historical Consciousness
217
A Polemical Perspective
240
Copyright