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| I confess, I am a maker too. |
Historians are writers. Some interpret the job as storytellers, others as philosopher/theorists who dwell in the platonic world of ideas, others as proficient technicians who only follow the rule of good academia. Common terrain for everyone is the land of words. Sieged by armies of modern archeologists, collectors, and amateurs of vintage technology or folk art, historians need to find their niche and focus on doing what is their job: to write books.
Public historians are dismissed as half-historians perhaps for this precise reason, because to write books is not their goal. It could be, but in the interaction with the public that crowns the flag of public history writing books loses the monopoly of their attention.
What about Material Culture? Again the problem lies in the different nature of objects and words. Surely any word in any book is the result of the interaction among objects, from the relatively simple ink and pen to the sophisticated laser printers now in any office. Yet the middle-realm of words, half concept, half object, allows the historian to indulge only on the first part, relegating the past to a virtual world of ideas.
However, the world is concrete, and despite our theorization of it, real objects, the ones that you and me touch and use, are the actual heritage from the past. The historian often does not deal with this past at all, and even when it happens, the result is a book, and again the theory.
Reading David Pye and his analysis on the workmanship of risk and workmanship of certainty (human-made and machine-made in a nutshell) and Morozov’s article in the New Yorker on the Maker Movement the question on the connection between historians and the making process pops out clearly in my mind.
Public historians are dismissed as half-historians perhaps for this precise reason, because to write books is not their goal. It could be, but in the interaction with the public that crowns the flag of public history writing books loses the monopoly of their attention.
What about Material Culture? Again the problem lies in the different nature of objects and words. Surely any word in any book is the result of the interaction among objects, from the relatively simple ink and pen to the sophisticated laser printers now in any office. Yet the middle-realm of words, half concept, half object, allows the historian to indulge only on the first part, relegating the past to a virtual world of ideas.
However, the world is concrete, and despite our theorization of it, real objects, the ones that you and me touch and use, are the actual heritage from the past. The historian often does not deal with this past at all, and even when it happens, the result is a book, and again the theory.
Reading David Pye and his analysis on the workmanship of risk and workmanship of certainty (human-made and machine-made in a nutshell) and Morozov’s article in the New Yorker on the Maker Movement the question on the connection between historians and the making process pops out clearly in my mind.
What is the meaning of life? Can I surf the gravitational waves? (sorry, not related, but I like Monty Python)
Or better:
Do the historians understand how the objects are made? If not, would it change the perspective that they choose in writing about the past?
Do the historians understand how the objects are made? If not, would it change the perspective that they choose in writing about the past?
Yes. Because I say so.
And because to understand how an object was made gives evidence on how the object was imagined, projected and the ideas that led to the object itself. There is a very good documentary on Gutenberg and the invention of the printing press with Stephen Fry .
Yes. Because I say so.
And because to understand how an object was made gives evidence on how the object was imagined, projected and the ideas that led to the object itself. There is a very good documentary on Gutenberg and the invention of the printing press with Stephen Fry .
(HERE, highly
suggested).
There is obviously no footnote, no index and shame of shames, no bibliography, yet you see the making of the press, you understand the difficulties, the different steps that led from the idea to the printing of the first books, the environment that seeded in Gutenberg the project for the object that definitely changed the world.
Talking about printing, how was my dear newspaper of 1916 made? Words, surely, but also paper, inks (it is colored!), and machinery. Will I be able to find out? I am almost as interested in this answer as to solution of what is the meaning of life.
Talking about printing, how was my dear newspaper of 1916 made? Words, surely, but also paper, inks (it is colored!), and machinery. Will I be able to find out? I am almost as interested in this answer as to solution of what is the meaning of life.
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David Pye, “The Workmanship of
Certainty and the Workmanship of Risk,” in The Nature and Art of Workmanship
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).
Evgeny Morozov, “Making It: Pick Up
a Spot Welder and Join the Revolution,” The New Yorker (January 13, 2014)
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