ABSTRACT
This chapter begins to analyse the kinds of personal experience that historians often write about in their work. It does so in the spirit of ‘refusal,’ which does not dismiss or invalidate these powerful personal experiences, but refuses to leave them alone, as self-evident, with unexamined value. This refusal means butting up against the methodological conservatism of academic history, but also showing how historians have – often quite conventionally – deployed personal detail. This is in ‘paratextual’ places such as prefaces, forewords, afterwords and epilogues. This textual strategy and longstanding tradition protect personal disclosure from scrutiny. The chapter also analyses the emotional power of some of these deployments, which insulates them from critical commentary, and looks at some of the technical aspects of making writing seem ‘experiential’ – such as transcribing diary entries, or writing in italics. Refusal in this chapter is the beginning of a critical process, not its end.
