In his concluding chapter to Time and Narrative, Paul Ricoeur observes that, behind the use of the term history as a singular noun lies the presupposition: one time, one humanity, one history (vol.3, p. 238).
The other night I was reminded of this quote twice. One was a phrase in an announcement for a post-Holocaust Symposium, Under Glass: Museums and the Display of History: “…the masses of migrants who do not necessarily share the culture and history nor partake in the privileges of citizenship?”* The other was a reference in an H-France newsletter to an article by historian Shannon L. Fogg “They Are Undesirables”: Local and National Responses to Gypsies during World War II. **
Idly listening to music on the radio early the following morning, I was struck by how over the past millennia, the Romani people or gypsies have contributed – almost silently – to music in Europe. Yet, some would vehemently deny that, in the words of the announcement above, they “share the culture and history nor partake in the privileges of citizenship” of Europe. Dani Karavan’s elegantly simple and haunting monument to the Porajmos, that took place concurrently with the Shoah attests, albeit tragically, that they are very much part of European history.
As are the generous individuals in far-off countries, including foreign diplomats from other continents, who helped Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe, and all those men and women of non-European ancestry who joined the Allied armies and fought in North Africa, Italy and German-occupied Europe and Japanese occupied Asia and the Pacific against the Axis powers.
Some of these individuals could easily be the very ancestors of those human beings from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa seeking refuge in Europe, North America and Australia today. If we were to reflect on the concept of humanity, and its development, and how we got to be the human beings we are today, we may wonder and imagine how our history would have been different, if our ancestors since time immemorial had not found refuge elsewhere in times of trouble. Would humanity even exist today? (See e.g. a general history of human migration and that of early human migrations).
Historians, according to Ricoeur, undertake the historiographical operation of enquiring into events, understanding and explaining them, and writing about them (Memory, History, Forgetting, pp. 136-138). This we can do only in relation to their context. Both in terms of other contemporaneous events and of those that occurred earlier or later in history. This presupposes our acceptance of “…a permanent foundation in human nature and in human society…” in the words of Marc Bloch (The Historian’s Craft,p.42) as mentioned in my previous blog post.
Thus, to gain a meaningful understanding of who we are as historical beings requires us to accept our common humanity.
Notes: *The entire sentence reads as follows: “Does the generally stated purpose to carry the “lesson of history” and be relevant to contemporary human tragedies that resonate with those of the Nazi-Fascist past, still hold its meaning in relation to the masses of migrants who do not necessarily share the culture and history nor partake in the privileges of citizenship?”
**Special Edition of French Historical Studies on War, Society, and Culture. 31:2 (Spring 2008): 327-358.
craftinghistoryblog 