On Reading Historical Writing and Presentism

In my talk I would like to address the question of presentism in the reading practices of historical writing. Much attention has been paid so far to presentism in historical writing, and less to presentism in the consumption of historical writing.

More moderate voices have pointed out that practices of presentism are unavoidable in the work of historians. We conduct our research from a position that was not available to past actors - we can observe the continuities and consequences of the actions and processes in which they participated. We also apply to the evidence we study theories, methods and concepts that did not exist in the past. In a recent account of the history of theoretical debate on this topic, Georg Gangl calls these two presentisms interpretative and evidentiary anachronisms. He specifies another category of presentism - pragmatic - which includes the actions of historians in communicating with their audiences. The pragmatic practices of presentism are of little concern to Gangl because they generally do not fulfil the cognitive tasks that are the focus of his attention. Because of my interests, this group of presentisms is the most important here.

For some years now I have been interested in democratic historical writing. By democratic, I mean first and foremost egalitarian writing, that is, writing that seeks to avoid reproducing hierarchical relationships between authors, texts, readers, and past actors, as well as between academic disciplines and society.

In this talk, I take on the task of answering, at least in part, the question of the role of presentism in egalitarian communication between historians and their audiences. I also ask, what role should presentist reading have in the historical writing contract?

I analyse the reading practices of historical writing that I have observed in historians' autobiographical accounts of reading history books, in the literature on reading and fan practices, in the instructions that historians typically give to their audiences in the introductions to their books, in reviews of historical literature, and in articles on historical debates. I have also included contributions from history fans on goodreads.com - the world's largest social media platform dedicated to reading.

In the end of the presentation I offer suggestions regarding components of democratic historical contract. Every writing, including historical writing, has a reader's contract embedded in it, which suggests how it can be read and at the same time assigns certain positions to the author and reader. I propose some points of agreement with publics that take into account presentist readings of historiography.