This book explores how societies put the past to use and how, in
the process, they represented it: in short, their historical
culture. It brings together anthropologists, historians, and
literary scholars to address the means by which societies, groups,
and individuals have engaged with the past and expressed their
understanding of it. The utility of the past has proven almost as
infinitely variable as the modes of its representation. It might be
a matter of learning lessons from experience, or about the
legitimacy of a cause or regime, or the reputation of an
individual. Rival versions and interpretations reflected, but also
helped to create and sustain, divergent communities and world
views. With so much at stake, manipulations, distortions, and myths
proliferated. But given also that evidence of past societies was
fragmentary, fragile, and fraught with difficulties for those who
sought to make sense of it, imaginative leaps and creativity
necessarily came into the equation. Paradoxically, the very idea
that the past was indeed useful was generally bound up with an
image of history as inherently truthful. But then notions of truth
proved malleable, even within one society, culture, or period.
Concerned with what engagements with the past can reveal about the
wider intellectual and cultural frameworks they took place within,
this book is of relevance to anyone interested in how societies,
communities, and individuals have acted on their historical
consciousness.
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