2013, No. 1 (4), On Representation

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Izabela Skórzyńska
A Historian in the World of Past Performances

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Keywords: historian, witness of the past, vicarious witness, past performance, critical witness

Abstract:
In this article I ask the question about the place and role of the historian – a researcher of historical culture – in the world of past performance (the social pageant being one of the forms of this culture). This is an important question for several reasons: performances are an alternative to the letter and the text (though no less frequent in our culture) that they are different form of reactualised past in the present; performances restore the proper status of perception (there is no performance without an audience), the value of words, gestures, social ideas and the experiences emancipating them, from the domination of logocentric narration; as Bogumil Jewsiewicki writes, and again due to the form, performances privilege experiences and emotions (emotional memory); performances are social or broadly cultural facts involved in the past and therefore they are not selfless to the past; performances are the part of the historian’s work that he practically creates, where he vividly participates (in state ceremonies, theatrical spectacles, marches, parades, etc.) and tests them. Looking for a modus vivendi between the duty of a professional historian and member of the past performance community (the community of memory) there is a historian in a complex social role, on the one hand, of a distanced researcher and on the other as a vicarious witness. There is no better term for this ambiguous role of the historian so I call him a “critical witness”. A historian is a witness (also for cognitive purposes), because he exceeds the border of “foreign” performance and its community, and becomes a part of it (if not, the performance looks ineffective). A historian is critical, because he maintains a critical attitude to the place and role which he/she plays in the past performance, taking notice of its engaging power and trying to investigate what this power is. One of the possible and more operant strategies which the historian as a critical witness can (or could) use is to give a “voice” to his/her narration for three narrators of performance: the spirit of the past represented by contemporary actors/social actors, the actors/social actors being the witnesses or vicarious witnesses in a frame of performance; and for himself as the person who uses at the same time her/his own knowledge, experience and emotion, which give her/him a chance to play the role of a researcher, as well as a human being.

About Author:
SKÓRZYŃSKA IZABELA – Associate Professor in the Institute of History Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.