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News: Globalisation & social justice
Modernity bucks at the post03 October 2002
Who's afraid of historical truth? Catherine Keenan reports.
In the right corner ...By Catherine KeenanThe two teams took to the stage for more than just another debate. This was the latest battle in a turf war that has been going on for years. It was about the central issue in history studies today, though a high-profile court case and a bankrupt Holocaust denier proved it is not just an academic problem. This is because what is at stake is nothing less than truth itself: what it is, and how we might (or might not) get access to it. As the chair wryly told the hundreds of assembled spectators at The Great Debate About History, held at the University of NSW in August, this was going to be a fight between the forces of good and evil.
But which side was good and which was evil? That depends on your point of view. With admirable succinctness, the debate neatly articulated the two principal positions in this ongoing stoush that continues to cause ructions around the world. In the blue corner were the objective historians, the conservatives. Their position is easy to understand, for they believe the seemingly commonsense proposition that history aims to uncover the truth about the past. That's what historians have tried to do for more than 2000 years, and that's what this team tries to do now. They don't always succeed, of course, but they keep on trying: studiously, dispassionately, pedantically. The blue team were all men, they were all authoritatively aged, and they all wore jackets and ties. In the red corner were the postmodernists, generally thought of as the lefties. They were younger, they had a woman on their side, and they wore polo necks. They are a far hipper, more slippery bunch, and they argue that things are not as simple as the objective historians would like to think. They say there is no such thing as the objective truth. While they will usually concede that we can know certain facts about the past, they argue that as soon as we weave those facts into a story, into a history, we enter the realm of subjectivity. That's because everyone chooses their facts differently. It's a complicated argument, but think of a couple going through a divorce. Ask them to describe their marriage, and each one will paint a radically different picture. According to the objective historians, we should be able to decide between the two competing versions by weighing up the evidence, and to a certain extent we can. But that doesn't mean we can always get to the point of saying that one version is wholly right while the other is wholly wrong. Postmodernists argue that because the way we see the past depends on our point of view in the present, both the husband and the wife are telling their own form of the truth. Historical truth is not singular: there are always multiple, subjective, and equally valid ways of looking at the past. But this leads to a kind of moral relativism, an unforgivable "anything goes" attitude, according to the blue team. They kicked off the debate by sending in their most impressive speaker. Professor Richard J. Evans is objective history's heavyweight champion of the world. He is a don at Cambridge University, an expert on modern Germany, and the author of In Defence of History, a well-received book about the importance of maintaining the criterion of objectivity. He also helped drag this debate about history out of the academy and into the courtroom, when he was appointed the expert witness in the David Irving libel trial. The fascist historian David Irving has long been known as an anti-Semite (he has been refused an Australian visa four times). But in her book on Holocaust deniers, historian Deborah Lipstadt accused him of systematically manipulating the historical evidence about the Holocaust to make the Nazis look better. Irving sued her for libel, and so began one of the more celebrated British trials in recent years. Lipstadt's publisher, Penguin Books, hired Evans to prove their claims, because he is, in the words of one observer at the trial, "the pedant's pedant". There is a bulldog-like aspect to him, and it was with a bulldog's tenacity that he checked Irving's sources, double-checked his quotes, and dug out those bits of evidence he had overlooked. He compiled a meticulous 740-page report, which the judge ruled did indeed prove that Irving was an active Holocaust denier. Irving had previously enjoyed a modicum of respect as a historian, but Evans demolished him, leaving him academically and, later, financially bankrupt. Evans was in bulldog mode again for this debate. He is an agile, sophisticated thinker, and he brought out all his best moves, pointing out first the logical inconsistencies in the opposition's argument. For instance, how can they say there is no such thing as the objective truth: doesn't that statement itself purport to be an objective truth? Similarly, how can one say that all truth is relative: isn't that a non-relative statement?
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