Heritage, History, Historiography ... and Hauntology

One of the most pernicious aspects of contemporary political discourse is the obsession with an imagined past which is defined in specific ways to support current prejudices. 

Along with outright xenophobia, nationalism (and in some cases a hefty sprinkling of neo-liberalism), the current wave of authoritarian populists play heavily on nostalgia, producing a weapons grade, moonshine version which they hope is powerful enough to strip away rational engagement and overwhelm scepticism. Sadly, for far too many it does.

Nostalgia for the individual can be comforting; a way of reflecting on good times with added sunshine. Yet just like the absurd idea that held good for far too long that the state should budget like a corner shop or a household, community level nostalgia is a dangerous notion that necessarily privileges one view of the past over all others. 

Worse, it is deliberately uncritical engagement. Things were so much better when - there were fewer people who didn't look or sound different, less frequent engagement with other cultures, a class based hierarchical society in which posh men in tweed knew what was what and in which there were fewer constraints on chauvinism and bigotry.  

Nostalgia is closely linked to the only slightly less pernicious notion of heritage. I utterly loathe the 'heritage industry' in its promotion of a single, sanctified view of the past which can be commodified and sold. It glories in pageantry, costume and tradition - all of it surface gloss on what was often a much more uncomfortable set of underpinnings reflecting wholesale exploitation and servitude. Our country houses owe much to the wealth produced by the slave trade and the sugar plantations as well as children working down coal mines and men and women losing limbs in badly regulated factories.

I spend a lot of time wandering around old buildings. I unashamedly love looking at the architecture and the fine arts on display. I may find them curious, sometimes ridiculous but often stunningly impressive. But they should be considered in their historical context: the product of extreme privilege and ostentatious luxury. 

We should engage with both: the historical context and the wonders of human ingenuity and creativity.

That's where history comes in. One can debate endlessly the precise methodological approach but, whatever else it is, the study of history should be warts and all; it should consider structural issues as well as individual genius. The mole hill only mattered  because posh people rode around on horses. 

We see far too much heritage and understand far too little history. 

However, if I could change one thing it would be to introduce a mandatory requirement for schools to teach historiography alongside history. 

Historiography in simple terms is why people thought the things that they did about the past and how those views have changed so much over time. Changed not just because of better evidence or a clearer understanding; but changed because the reasons why people wanted to believe certain things have altered.

We currently want to glorify the Second World War as a time when plucky Britain stood strong against overwhelming odds. One can believe that or one can also believe that alongside the undoubted heroism Britain only survived because Russia lost millions and millions of civilians and soldiers fighting one of the most horrific campaigns in history against Germany on the eastern front. We choose to talk about one. We don't generally choose to talk about the other. Certainly not when its inconvenient. 

We also choose not to talk about the way that British lawyers wrote much of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights which was then translated into the European Convention on Human Rights. Some of us might say that in fact this was one of the greatest legacies of the UK to the world and to a stable Europe determined not to repeat the horrors of the past.  

That brings us to hauntology, a difficult concept perhaps best considered as 'nostalgia for lost futures'. So whilst it is also about loss, unlike nostalgia it does not glory in a particular view of how things were; it reflects concern that we seem stuck at the end of history and haunted by its spectres. That we have no future.

Twenty-first century English culture is at risk of being more concerned with co-opting the past than embracing the future.

Hauntologists often like old analogue synths or vinyl. In musical terms the crackle and hiss on the analogue recording are valuable for the sense they convey that these artefacts were never pristine; they always contained the seeds of their own decay. 

We might beneficially ponder whether the wider sonic range of the analogue recording has merit as a better way to explore the full intentions of the composer and the performer whilst also reflecting that the modern obsession to smooth has lost not just that wider range - but also the interference and imperfections.

A clearer eyed view of the past gives us more chance of having a future which is informed by its failings rather than being in hock to its prejudices.