A huge thanks to Claire Holliss for her thorough and careful critique of an earlier draft of this post. This draft is certainly fuller, and better, for her thoughts! It is also very long – if you would prefer to download it as a PDF and read offline, a copy can be accessed here.
As the feminist slogan goes, “the personal is political”.
This strikes me as doubly true when thinking of representation in History
teaching.
Firstly, our personal decision, as teachers, about who we give
representation to in our teaching grants certain groups and individuals from the
past the power and right to be seen and heard. This is of course not only
political in a sense of abstract interpersonal power relations, but also in
that it has become highly politicised, by groups and campaigns today who
actively contest over which people should be included in the History curriculum.
Secondly, and more directly relevant here, when we select individuals
to represent a wider group from the past in our History lessons, we grant those
individuals remarkable power. Think about it for a moment: almost always
posthumously, and certainly without their knowledge, these individuals in
effect are authorised to speak, and even act as proxy, for others whose
experiences we consider similar to theirs.
This means that we need to talk about representation. Beyond
just which groups we encounter in History teaching (which is certainly
important), whom we empower as representatives of those groups by giving weight
and voice to their life stories and identities really matters. (What I mean by
“representation” and “identity” is explained in a short post-script at the
bottom of this blog post.)
For this reason, I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the prominence of one individual in our course textbooks.
