ABSTRACT
The philosopher R.G.Collingwood once observed that the past as past was wholly unknowable. What was knowable was something different: the elements of the past which had been residually preserved in the present. 1 In other words, what we take to be knowledge of past reality derives in fact from those texts, artefacts, buildings, belief systems, memories and traditions which have somehow survived and are amenable to investigation—and interpretation. History can only be written from the standpoint of present reality and can never encompass either the totality of events or the fullness of meaning. The historical consciousness inevitably selects and orders its material in accordance with contemporary concerns which consciously or unconsciously determine the frame of reference of its operations. However, while the being of the past may be unknowable in an absolute sense its effects remain relentlessly present; its traces surround us and form the theatre of our actions; it is through our relation to history (personal, family, collective) that we acquire an individual identity within culture. The activity of the individual self is inscribed within groups and cultures, themselves historically constructed, and these in turn legitimise certain forms of social relations. Unknowable the past may be, but the discourse on the past possesses a truth value in so far as it acts as a principle of legitimation, sanctioning political power, justifying social hierarchies, determining rights and responsibilities. The past, retrospectively reconstructed as history, functions as a source of authority, overtly in the shape of jurisprudence and covertly in the form of the ways of feeling, the attitudes of mind, the norms of behaviour which are transmitted to future generations and are internalised by them through the process of socialisation.
