Plain Talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
I must confess I suffer from what you might call history mania. Of late I have been reading history books -- any history book I can lay my hands on will do. If my wide-ranging readings, whether in Egyptian or world history, have demonstrated anything, it is the multiplicity of interpretations of the past, and the impossibility of saying anything definitive about it.
Until recently history in the school curricula was, to translate the Arabic phrase literally, "a failure subject". What this phrase means is that if you fail in history you can still be regarded as successful and consequently move on to the following form. No wonder most young Egyptians know little about their history, let alone world history.
These thoughts went through my mind when I read an article in the London Observer Review entitled "The Future's in the Past" by Stephen Fry. The article is the text of a speech he gave at the launch of a new campaign to promote the study of history where he called for using "the gripping narratives of the past to make sense of the world today".
Fry begins by asking "Why does history matter?" He then gives a number of contradictory answers. How can we understand our present or glimpse our future if we cannot understand our past? How can we know who we are if we don't know who we were? On the other hand, there are those who believe that history is a bunk, possibly bunkum. History, he suggests, is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel. History is written by the victors.
Fry then goes on to pose a question which supports my previous point. Is there such a thing as history or are there only histories? We can follow the development of science which eventually leads to some inventions that prove its value. But can we test the value of history in the same way?
There are no longer historian grandees like Burke, Gibbon or Trevelyan. Historians now are simply journalists "writing about celebrities who haven't got the grace to be alive any more." There are those who wonder if the whole of history is now valuable only as a politically correct lesson in the stupidity and cruelty of monarchs, aristocrats, industrialists and generals.
There is no doubt, Fry claims, that there is an exponential growth in the public appetite for history. Historians are having their heyday. History has become the subject of many books and broadcasts. One of the most successful programmes on Radio 4 is by Melvyn Brady which has a wide range of listeners.
In conclusion, Fry offers, "history is all about imagination rather than facts. History is not the story of strangers, aliens from another realm". It is our story had we been born a little earlier. History is memory, not abstraction; it is the enemy of abstraction.
Together with this campaign to promote the study of history, there is a project by an organisation called "History Matters." Using the slogan "Take Part It's Your Heritage," the organisation has started a campaign "to raise public awareness of the huge contribution that history, heritage and the built environment make to our quality of life."
Such a campaign recognises that history is essential to the recognition of one's civilisation and culture. It acts as a reminder to people who concentrate on the present and look hopefully to the future that, as the title of the article puts it, "The Future's in the Past." Is there any hope that we will some day launch a similar campaign in Egypt, so that history will no longer be viewed as "a failure subject"?
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/804/cu3.htm