Managing History Readings for September 21, 2009

I am intrigued by a question in this week's texts. “How does an individual use history to define one's self?”

According to the readings, individuals do not seek out history to understand someone else's life; they do so to understand their own. Moreover, they view the historical fact or object or story through their own cultural lenses and interpret it with personal senses of self. While there is an emotional response, the ultimate result is personal validation, or an “existential” authenticity.

Authenticity is a term historians use – are guilty of over using – when validating the representation of a time, person, or place. I will admit to having cavalierly bandied about the term, most often in reference to the (proper) representation of a time period through (appropriate) use of external props that are justified by documented knowledge. However, the survey and sociological survey studied suggest that authenticity is internal, not external; that the use of a 1930 teacup isn't emotionally satisfying because its use places us in another period of time, but because our internalizations of that period of time is one more layer in our definition of who we are, how we fit, where we come from, and what we want to be.

Perhaps the next logical question to be asked by public historians requires flipping the observation of an exhibit or object from,“What does this object say of the past” to “How can this object help define someone's future?”

Texts referenced include: Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) and Hyounggon Kim and Tazin Jamal, "Touristic Quest for Existential Authenticity" in Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 181-201, 2007.