现代大学英语(精读)4--lesson3.ppt

Conflict and Consensus Respectively Singly in the order designated or mentioned Questions for consideration 1) What is history? The whole human past? The recorded past? What historians write about the past? A record of class struggles in the past? A collective human memory? A mirror to the present? A collection of interesting and instructive stories? Propaganda? A totally timeless objective science like physics and mathematics? 2) What is a historian supposed to do? What would you say are the most important characteristics of a good historian? 3) Why do historians disagree? What controversies have excited Chinese historians concerning either ancient or recent history? Introduction to the Text This is a much condensed and adapted version of the preface to the book called Conflict and Consensus in Modern American History edited by Allen F. Davis and Harold D．Woodman，professors at Temple University and Purdue University respectively，who also wrote the introduction. Assumptions of New Historicism 1. that there is no transhistorical or universal human essence and that human subjectivity is constructed by cultural codes which position and limit all of us in various and divided ways ? Historians occupy subject positions that are socially and linguistically constructed, created by various discourses of a given culture ? Power relations show that society controls its members through constructing and defining what appear to be universal and natural truths ? Any universalizing or totalizing claims are questionable. We should focus rather on the specificities of a particular historical and cultural context. 2. that there is no objectivity, that we experience the world in language, and that all our representations of the world, our readings of texts and of the past, are informed by our own historical position, by the values and politics that are rooted in them ? emphasizing the necessity for self-awareness, we must be constantly aware of the difficulties of seeing t