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The Public Life of History

An issue of: Public Culture

The Public Life of History
Journal Issue Pages: 188 Volume 20, Number 1 Published: 2008 An issue of Public Culture
Special Issue Editor(s): Claudio Lomnitz, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Bain Attwood
This special issue of Public Culture explores the tension and the challenges raised by the interaction of history with the domains of public life, including politics, the law, and the media. It focuses specifically on situations where a social compact has been reshaped based on the revaluation of historical wounds such as those inflicted in South African apartheid and in the Holocaust. The politics of recognition has challenged historical research to serve public ends, invoking the past as the site of the original slight and calling for redress in the present.

Gathering scholars involved in prominent debates regarding the shifting expectations of the rule of history, this special issue is a sustained engagement with historical experience, public discussion, and historical truth in a variety of global sites. One article considers what happens to the ideal of truth telling when truth commissions attempt to authenticate a complex mix of history and memory that is not always historically verifiable. Another article asks if history can continue to play an adjudicatory role in contemporary democracies when matters relating to the past are disputed in public life, as they are in India where the claims of scientific history are pitted against the culture-based history of Hindus. Still another contributor delves into the concept of “stolen generations” to explore the way indigenous people in Australia have laid claims in the present based on a historical wound.

Contributors
Bain Attwood
Neeladri Bhattacharya
Dipesh Chakrabarty
George Chauncey
Miranda Johnson
Claudio Lomnitz
Deborah Posel

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Table of Contents Back to Top

1. Editors’ Letter: The Public Life of History–Bain Attwood, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Claudio Lomnitz

2. Passages to Freedom: The Politics of Racial Reconciliation in South Africa–

Achille Mbembe

3. Red Mosque–Faisal Devji

4. How History Mattered: Sodomy Law and Marriage Reform in the United States–George Chauncey

5. Narrating the Neoliberal Moment: History, Journalism, Historicity–Claudio Lomnitz

6. Predicaments of Secular Histories–Neeladri Bhattacharya

7. In the Age of Testimony: The Stolen Generations Narrative, “Distance,” and Public History–Bain Attwood

8. Making History Public: Indigenous Claims to Settler States–Miranda Johnson

9. History as Confession: The Case of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission–Deborah Posel

10. The Public Life of History: An Argument out of India–Dipesh Chakrabarty

11. Books Received

12. Contributors

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ISBN Paperback: 978-0-8223-6687-4
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