Imprisoned By History Aspects Of Historicized Life Routledge Approaches To History 1st Edition Martin L Davies by Martin L. Davies 0-415-99520-5, 978-0-415-99520-7, 978-0-203-86310-7 instant download after payment.

Imprisoned by History: Aspects of Historicized Life
offers a controversial analysis, grounded both in philosophical
argument and empirical evidence, of what history does in contemporary
culture. It endorses and extends the argument that contemporary society
is, in historical terms, already historicized, shaped by history – and
thus history loses sight of the world, seeing it only as a reflection of
its own self-image. By focusing on history as a way of thinking about
the world, as a thought-style, this volume delivers a major, decisive,
thought-provoking critique of a crucial aspect contemporary culture and
the public sphere.

By illustrating the ways in which
history enforces socially coercive attitudes and forms of behaviour,
Martin Davies argues that history is therefore in itself ideological and
exists as an instrument of political power. Contending that this
ideological function is the "normal" function of professional academic
history, he repudiates entirely the conventional view that only biased
or "bad" history is ideological. By finding history projecting onto the
world and getting reflected back at it the exacting, history-focused
thinking and behaviour on which the discipline and the subject rely, he
concludes that history’s very "normality" and "objectivity" are
inherently compromised and that history works only in terms of its own
self-interest.