I just reread this in Pandey's book, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History in India, and thought I'd share it as it has been instrumental in my understanding of contemporary historical theory and method.
“The discipline of history still proceeds on the assumption of a fixed subject – society, nation, state, community, locality, whatever it might be – and a largely pre-determined course of human development or transformation. However, the agent and locus of history is hardly pre-designated. Rather, accounts of history, of shared experiences in the past, serve to constitute these, their extent and their boundaries” - Gyanendra Pandey
Amazing.
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3 comments:
Fantastic quote. Just finished my MA dissertation on nationalism (albeit Baltic nationalism), and I think I should check out Pandey.
Found your blog on peacecorpsjournals, and am also practicing patience while I wait for more information on PC placement... thought I'd say hello :)
Glad you liked/appreciated it! Studying Baltic nationalism would be exceedingly fascinating. I'm hopefully doing a masters in Middle Eastern Studies either this upcoming fall (if peace corps decides to turn me down) or when I return. And DEFINITELY check out Pandey, one of the more challenging books on Partition, but totally groundbreaking.
If you're interested you should check out Memory and History in East and Southeast Asia (Gerrit W. Wong, ed) - just finished it, and I found it to be a great read. Talks about the functions of "remembering" and "forgetting" history in nationalist politics, security orientation etc.
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