“The word history is a household word for the Westernized scholar. It is used every day in the most serious written works, lectures, discussions, and debates with little or no critical examination of what the term means. In general, let us define history, for the moment, as organized knowledge of any and all past time/space events based on the point of view of a body of authorities whose individual members or membership arrange those accumulated events within the context of some kind of systematic whole based on their beliefs about the future. Out of this context, then, history is supposed to answer questions about human action in the past, present, and future.” “Historiography (according to recent use of the term) means the study of historical study or the study of history itself. It asks what, who, and why questions. Thus, the historiographer is mainly concerned with what historians write about and why, or whom historians write about and why. At the core of the historiographer’s interests is: 1) the examination of the very root assumptions of why history is written and for whom and 2) the attempt to determine how historians interpret reality and the generalizations they formulate from those interpretations. An ironic aspect of the historiographer’s work, hidden to the lay person, is the examination of what the writers of history had in mind for the future. In sum, historiography refers to a grand and systematic history of history itself, ensconced within a particular view of the future.” “Consequently, the development of a historiography is the most all-encompassing and most binding decision a people can make in measuring their place in world events in reference to the past, present, and future. History, its complement, is the ideological tool a people may use for the assessment of their past, the evaluation of their present conditions, and the charting of a course for their collective destiny. Although history appears to focus primarily on the past, its essential concern is the future. All history is written with an eye toward the future!” Anderson Thompson Article “Developing an African Historiography” Book “African World History Project: The Preliminary Challenge” The Djehuty Project: African-Centered Think Tank and Research Institution 1996 Edited by Jacob H. Carruthers and Leon C. Harris Page 16
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 15:12:35 +0000
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