What History REALLY Is, or Why I am not an Essentialist

History today is a lot like a 40 year accountant who has just bought a motorbike - Comfortable in terms of money and position but ultimately not quite sure what he wants to do with his life. I mean, History is popular in terms of student numbers, books written, even TV programmes. However, if you ask most what is the point of history, what it actually does, a few might say there is something to be learnt, some grand historical law or invaluable lesson. The majority would reel out the usual line of 'history for its own sake'. A good number would not, I suspect, have given it a great deal of thought - the past is just 'there', another aspect of time and space to be looked at by someone so inclined.

In theory I am a big fan of doing things 'for their own sake'. I take a cue from Camus in his belief that on some level all life is just acting like that, that we must be delude ourselves that are tasks are in some way meaningful even though our transience and mortality deny them that status. However, for Camus this delusion is born from our freedom and choice. The capacity to wilfully deny the circumstances of our being. Yet, History is a grand, imposing beast of a thing that comes at us through school, through the State, through social interaction like a grey, discursive miasma. We, as historians, must actively seek to preserve our freedom, which is eroded every time the curiosity for discovery departs and our activities seem like burdensome chores.

At present I would argue that it is the aims that aren't quite up to scratch. For one thing the Past has become too commodified. A student goes to university, increasingly almost as an obligation, where he or she receives their fill of 'historical knowledge', then, suitably examined, they scuttle off to the world of work, the focus of three years of their life mostly forgotten save for the occasional pub quiz answer. So what do I propose instead?

Firstly, I think we should accept less and question more. I do not mean the sources or secondary texts but the very nature of the history we practise: Why this topic? Why this way? Why this period? Thus, History will be less passive absoption and regurgitation, but, instead, questioning the questions put to us; the very boundaries of things. I mean, given the financial burdens that courses place on us, are we not entitled to do this anyway? Professors are no longer dispensers of Truth whom we have the good fortune to listen to - they are as dependent on us as we on them, perhaps more so given the commerical nature of universities.

So what, then, is History for? The cynic might say it grounds what we say with an air of smug authority (well actually it happened this way...). I get no kick from that sort of thing, though, I must admit. Instead, I would say that identity, for the greater part, is the sine qua non of our subject: Who we are as people, as communities, as nations. The choice and of what and how something is studied is therefore paramount. Knowledge is not simply the accumulation of facts to be dispensed in appropriate situations: How we understand is as important as what we understand. These models of understanding affect the way we see the present world, how we see ourselves collectively and individually.

Old-school empiricism may have served the Western democracies well against the fictitious ravages of totalitarian regimes, but now, without such cultural markers we have the opportunity for a new and perhaps fairer version of history. No great threat lurches over us that we should mobilize against. We should look a bit closer to home and use our history to make our lives more enjoyable and engaging. This to me seems a very appealing prospect.