|
|
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book to Remember, April 12, 2000
Historical societies and preservation organizations have proliferated in recent decades. This undoubtedly arises from a humanly-shared experiential depth, a depth that Robert Archibald, examines in this brooding look at the deeply interconnected relation between personal experience and community, time, and place.The narrative is framed around Archibald's return to his boyhood home of Ishpeming, Michigan where he revisits once familiar places: a store run by a 96 year-old woman, a nearby cemetery, an abandoned family camphouse, the shore of Lake Michigan, and others. These had helped to form him, and each represented a different insight into time and community. Professionally trained as an historian, his career has primarily been devoted to public history, in effect working with the public experience of history. This perspective forced him to question "the mantle of objective distance" that was demanded by his academic training. Reading widely he came to recognize the importance of memory in that "[t]o be human is to struggle to make sense of our own pasts as a means of establishing identity and forming relationships with the world we inhabit." (p. 30) He returned to his home town to reflect upon the processes of his memory and the way in which his life had been formed by the events, people, and places that made up the world of his childhood. From this emerged his understanding that "[t]he community we create is founded in shared remembrance and grounded in place, especially those places that are conducive to the casual associations necessary for emergence of shared memory, common ground, and commitment to the common good." (p. 24) Consequently, he decries our failure to see history and place as formative, in that past experience is "the only guide we have" (p. 113), therefore, "[t]he point to the past will be lost and humanity imperiled if in our relativistic timidity we refuse to draw conclusions from the past and if we persist in the belief that the tens of thousands of years of human life on the crust of this planet have no guideposts to offer us." (pp. 120-121) Archibald proposes four "core values" as organizing principles for public history: memory, transcendence, sustainability, and mutual obligation. All of these warrant considerable discussion, which is unfortunately beyond the scope of this review. In the vast forest of publications, this book stands out; it is simultaneously wise, compassionate, prophetic, and a good read. It is a must for those involved in public history, historic preservation, and cultural resource management.
|
by Dolores Hayden
by Robert R. Archibald
by Lynn D. Dierking
by Professor Roy Rosenzweig
