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Daniel Friedrich
To cite this article: Daniel Friedrich (2010) Historical consciousness as a pedagogical device in
the production of the responsible citizen, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education,
31:5, 649-663, DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2010.516947
Department of Curriculum and Teaching, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York,
USA
One of the most relevant strategies that shapes the education of the citizenry can
be found in the formation of a historical consciousness. Yet the very idea of
historical consciousness as a skill to be taught cannot be taken for granted. In
order to disrupt the educational common sense, I will analyze the ways in which
historical consciousness has been translated from the philosophical-historical
field into pedagogical discourses since the 1970s. My analysis will reveal the
relations between historical consciousness and the constitution of a normative
citizenship. This process binds ‘responsible’ action and thought to the inclusion of
the self within a consensualized teachable historical narrative.
Keywords: historical consciousness; citizenship; governmentality; consensus;
policing
Introduction
The formation of the citizen has been at the heart of schooling’s concerns since the
emergence of institutionalized modern school systems at the end of the nineteenth
century. Language about the socialization and education of the inhabitants of a territory
according to particular principles that define the political project of a society can be
found in any one of the many founding documents around the Western world. This is
evident, for instance, in the Jules Ferry law for French schools of 1882, whose first article
puts ‘moral and civic instruction’ even before reading, writing and literature in terms of
national priorities (Osler & Starkey, 2001).
Central to the epistemological construction of the citizen of the nation was the
idea of historical consciousness. The notion of history as a way of ordering human
progress and its ‘telling’ through the sagas of the nation appeared and overlapped
with the invention of the modern nation. It also linked history to the child’s life
through notions of growth and development that could be planned through the
interventions of pedagogical thought. This assembly and connection of individuality
and collective belonging, through ‘historical consciousness’, has become part of the
commonsense of contemporary curriculum and a key element in modern govern-
mentality, to draw on Foucault’s (1997) important concept.
Throughout this article, I explore the notion of historical consciousness as it is
translated from the philosophical-historical field into pedagogical discourses since
the 1970s in North and South American and European texts related to curriculum
research and policy. The intent is to make visible the links between this notion and
*Email: danielsfriedrich@gmail.com
ISSN 0159-6306 print/ISSN 1469-3739 online
# 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2010.516947
http://www.informaworld.com
650 D. Friedrich
formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses, and reflections, the calculations and
tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which
has as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as
its essential technical means apparatuses of security. (1997, p. 219)
comprehend this translation or traveling between fields, let us first understand how
the notion of historical consciousness has been operating within the philosophical-
historical field.
The triad of Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Modernity had been available since the advent
of Humanism. But these have only fully come into use and have organized the whole of
history quite gradually since the second half of the seventeenth century. Since then, one
has lived in Modernity and been conscious of so doing. (2004, p. 12)
Yet it is not only the consciousness of the present as a break from the past that
characterizes modernity, continues Koselleck, but the consciousness of time inaugu-
rates a new future as well, a future ushered by ‘the citizen emancipated from absolutist
subjection and the tutelage of the Church’ (2004, p. 16). In other words, the shifts in the
perception of temporal relations are inseparable from a repositioning of the subject as
a citizen-agent that characterizes modernity.
Finally, in 1968 John Lukacs, a Hungarian-born American historian with
a background quite different from both Gadamer’s and Koselleck’s, published his
book Historical Consciousness: Or, the Remembered Past (1968). While most of this
work focuses on the period between the mid-1800s and the early-1900s in quite
a linear and traditional historiographical approach, the first chapter is more
‘theoretically’ oriented and in it, links to the other analyzed texts can be found.
Lukacs coincides with Koselleck in attributing an important role to humans’ self-
awareness of the fact that they are living within a new historical era. The author
states his main thesis quite simply:
I believe that the most important developments in our civilization during the last three or
four centuries include not only the applications of the scientific method but also the growth
of a historical consciousness; and that while we may have exaggerated the importance of
the former we have not yet understood sufficiently the implications of the latter.
How does this historical consciousness affect our thinking? Let me attempt to give
a simple initial answer: History, for us, has become a form of thought. (Lukacs, 1968, p. 5,
emphasis in the original)
(1) First and foremost, Gadamer, Koselleck and Lukacs would all coincide that
historical consciousness emerged within modernity and as an inherent part of
it, as a way of thinking and relating to past, present and future. The
historical consciousness which these authors are attempting to describe is
not a mere possibility. Instead, it is a constituting element of the modern
citizen/agent without which there would be no identity, no memory, no
movement.
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 655
In sum, behind the perhaps incommensurable gaps between Lukacs, Gadamer and
Koselleck in terms of their intellectual frameworks, some of the assumptions and
understandings regarding the notion of historical consciousness overlap. For them,
Émile, without having attended formal schooling, would still insert himself
necessarily within the corresponding national narrative. Rousseau’s student would
also be conscious of the historicity of his every practice and would found his
knowledge of the world on this principle, which would grant him a critical attitude
towards the self. What is certain is that for these three scholars, historical
consciousness is not a pedagogical notion, as it is not an option or a mere possibility
to be fulfilled by schooling, but a defining quality of the inhabitant of the modern world.
One of the goals of teaching history is the achievement of a rational and critical vision
of the past in order to explain the present or, as German pedagogues call it, the
formation of a historical consciousness, referring to the influence of the configuration
each person has of the past in her/his present attitudes and actions. (2000)3
and identity need to be seen as interlocked in order to understand their role in the
pedagogical discourses I am analyzing here.
If historical consciousness is to be understood, as has been shown above, as a skill
that students need to acquire in order to be able to position themselves within
a historical narrative, as products of the past and looking to a future in which lessons
from that past can and should be applied, then collective memory is the content of
that past in which the subjects position themselves. The teaching of history unfolds
itself, thus, into two different yet ultimately related tasks: providing students with
both the content (the collective past to be taught) and the attitude that allows them
to see themselves as part of that content (historical consciousness). Since the attitude
part has been already laid out in the previous sections, let us go deeper into the
content.
When history as a subject matter is considered to be mostly concerned with
a collective past as its substance, there is one main assumption that underlies this
thought: the idea that there is a collective that shares that past. And this is why:
(1) the conformation of identities functions not only as the desired endpoint but also
the starting precondition for formal education; and (2) the stability provided by
a consensualized history plays a key role in this process, as it appears to make
possible the sharing. As Schissler and Soysal explain:
Teaching history has thus been a priority for modern nation-states. It carried and
continues to carry the burden of identity-building of citizens. Crafting an account of the
nation’s origin, its past, and its evolvement has been of the utmost importance for the
nation and the state building process. Such an account would justify the nation-state’s
claim to authenticity and legitimacy as well as to its boundaries. It would provide
a rationale for the national parameters of society. (2005b, p. 2)
The ‘crafting’ that Schissler and Soysal mention in the context of the European
Union carries with it the struggles, contradictions and multiplicities that any process
of constructing such a national narrative does. Yet educators seem sometimes
determined to overcome these difficulties by arriving at a consensus on what should
be taught, how it should be taught and towards which goals it should be taught. For
instance, Rosa Rivero, a renowned intellectual working at the intersection of history,
psychology and education, argues that:
It is necessary to have shared ways of evoking happenings from a common past, those
that constitute us as an imagined ‘we’ to which we are affiliated to or want to affiliate
to . . . Ultimately, one should not forget that a future shared in peace is only possible
within the limits of a consensualized collective memory. Thus, it is essential to negotiate
the interpretations of the past starting from a will of reconciliation in the present. (2004,
p. 52, 69)4
As seen in this quote, the need for a consensus, for reaching a decision on which past
to teach, appears as both essential and as taken for granted. There is no argument
made about the ways in which the process of reaching that consensus work, and what
that implies for educating the subject. However, paraphrasing Schweber (2004), we
should not let the illusion of moral consensus around the need for consensus dampen
our debates over it.
Rosa Rivero, like Amézola (2000) and at some level Franco and Levin (2007) all
agree that there is a theoretical debate on the possibility of reaching a consensus
658 D. Friedrich
within the field of history, grounded, among others, on the issue of the possibility of
accessing a real truth about what happened. However, these authors claim, pedagogy
should leave this debate to historians and have a clear stance on what should be
taught and how, since:
Even though it is true that working with multiple perspectives from different actors . . . is
a necessary entry point todenaturalize stagnated versions, it is also true that one cannot
(and should not) leave the decision on which are the ‘right’ narratives to students.
(Franco & Levin, 2007, p. 5)5
much more than the reasonable idea and practice of settling political conflicts by forms
of negotiation and agreement, and by allotting to each party the best share compatible
with the interests of other parties. It is a means to get rid of politics by ousting the
surplus subjects and replacing them with real partners, social groups, identity groups,
and so on. Correspondingly, conflicts are turned into problems that have to be sorted
out by learned expertise and a negotiated adjustment of interests. (2004, p. 306)
Following Rancière’s line of thought, I would argue that the normative discourses
that claim the need to establish a consensus in regards to history, for it to be
teachable, are responding to a problem that goes far beyond the settling of
a historiographic dispute by means of negotiation and agreement. The problem
these pedagogues are dealing with relates to finding ways to govern the conduct of
the educated citizen by using the authority of history and historians in order to
legitimize a particular set of outcomes (those termed as ‘responsible’) while setting
the unruly, unexpected behaviours as those who are outside the progress of history
and thus do not belong in the field of citizenry.
An important issue to take into account here is that this is not a discussion of
teaching methods. In other words, the question is not about how ‘open’ textbooks’
versions should be, how much time one uses in class to debate controversial topics, or
what the ideal amount of teacher intervention is. My interest is to study how
particular rules and standards of thought and action are inscribed in the classroom,
and the role given to historical consciousness in that governing. The point is to make
visible the mechanisms through which the education of the citizen is turned into an
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 659
Thus, for most contemporary pedagogues, Émile or any subject situated outside the
tracks of a successful formal education could never identify with a particular historical
narrative, which would lead her/him to never fully reach the status of a citizen. Even if
that subject was knowledgeable of the happenings of the past, he/she would probably
lack the attitude necessary to extract the moral lessons from history and would
therefore not be able to act and think according to the standards of ‘responsibility’.
Lastly, a final remark: the study of the transformations of historical consciousness
as it gets translated from one field into another does not aim at pinpointing the origin
or essence of the concept that is later perverted or distorted by pedagogical discourses.
Gadamer did not invent historical consciousness, nor did he present the ‘pure’ version
of it. The goal of this study is to expose the ways in which the ‘same’ concept is
transformed as it gets inscribed into different rules and principles present in particular
sets of discourses. The problems that the notion of historical consciousness is
responding to as it emerges within philosophical-historical writings are different from
the ones that guide pedagogical thought, and therefore the interactions between this
notion and the rest of the field vary, giving historical consciousness a radically distinct
role. As historical consciousness is mobilized within these different sets of discourses,
one can also note the ways in which it navigates the tension, mentioned above,
between universal and pluralistic views, between a view that accepts the existence of
different values and rationalities as historically and geographically produced and
a view that forces different values and rationalities into convergences that mark the
path of progress. This tension, so characteristic of modernity, embeds historical
consciousness with an unavoidable, productive ambiguity that allows for this inter-
discourse traveling.
Notes
1. Discourses of citizenship can also be found in non-liberal modern governmentalities, yet
responding to different assemblies, in which notions of freedom and participation, for
example, assume different roles.
2. I use the notion of ‘pedagogical device’ to signal the production of an object within the
particular rules and ordering principles of the pedagogical discourses. Pedagogical devices
function in education as part of the regime of truth that dictates what is real and what is
not, what is true and what is false, in the process of the intentional transmission of sets of
values, knowledge and behaviors between subjects that is called education.
3. My translation.
4. My translation.
5. My translation.
References
Amézola, G. de. (2000). Problemas y dilemas en la enseñanza de la historia reciente.
Entrepasados. Revista de historia, 17.
662 D. Friedrich