There were two interesting aspects of ‘presentism’ in ‘Local History news’; the magazine of the British Local History Association.
One was a person who could not understand how a 17th century bible (said to have belonged to Charles I) could have been printed without the aid of a typewriter, and was unable to comprehend the concept of typesetting.
The other was a person who could not understand how people had lived in a house which had only recently become a museum. ‘You mean people actually lived here? It wasn’t built as a museum? They had furniture and things?’ And when told that it was the furniture in the room, ‘that’s amazing’.
Anne
From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James Bugslag
Sent: 30 July 2016 19:14
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [M-R] Presentism
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From an art historical perspective, I tend to see "presentism" in terms of the dreg-ends of an out-moded modernism. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Italian Futurists wanted to burn down all the museums to start afresh. But although on a theoretical level, I believe that sort of radical idealism has been discredited, it appears to have sunk into broad social and institutional strata. The problem is: how does one teach to students imbued with such an ideology that something that happened hundreds of years ago (or before yesterday, for that matter) is still both interesting and relevant. It seems curious, as well, that students who can cast virulent scorn on the European Middle Ages can also get enthusiastic about Islamic or east Asian traditions, as if other people's pasts are okay, but not their own.
Jim
From: medieval-religion - Scholarly discussions of medieval religious culture [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Sue Ridyard [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: July 30, 2016 11:13 AM
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Subject: Re: [M-R] Readable version of Augustine's confessions
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture I'm a little puzzled by the fact that this sub-thread seems to have started with a quotation from my note describing the significance of "presentist" to someone who asked.
My original post explained as follows: It's pretty well-established. Carries the implication that whoever is being "presentist" sees the world from an almost solely contemporary perspective -- I encounter it often, for instance, in reading the Rule of St Benedict and seeing students outraged over the fact that Benedict can think it perfectly reasonable to beat boys who fail in some respect, something that would never enter my head as someone raised in the 70s. Also of course in teaching women's history one endlessly encounters outrage at the limited choices and power available to women. The theme is always: what we do now is the best, and if it hasn't always been this way it should have been. For a Brit teaching in the US, presentist attitudes are complicated by the "what America does is best" syndrome.
What I meant by the last sentence is the tendency I see among my students to add the belief that "what WE do is best" to the presentist "what we do NOW is best". I didn't think I needed to include further explanation, but I was referring to the ingrained nature of ideas such as "separation of church and state is best" (unshakable even after a whole semester studying religion and power in the pre-modern world) or, of course, only democracy is a "good" political system. I hasten to add that I don't teach using concepts of "good," "bad" etc.; these are simply ingrained attitudes that I've encountered over a 20+ teaching career in the US and which complicate especially the study of the pre-modern world.
Sue
On Jul 30, 2016, at 9:30 AM, Greeley, Prof. June-Ann T. wrote: