Historiography

Just as every person has their own perspective on a particular issue or event, historians do too. Driven by their own curiosity and molded by their own contexts, historians have  their own convictions and points of view which, in turn, go some way towards shaping their scholarly research and publications.  

How can we deal with the past in the face  of the multiple narratives put forth by different historians? How do these multiple historical perspectives contribute to a broader understanding of the past?  

Objectives:

• Understand the importance of including multiple perspectives when dealing with contested history, i.e. the Civil War in Lebanon (1975-1990)
• Identify historians’ perspective (and therefore subjectivities) in their written analysis

Warm-up (10 minutes): 

We remind participants of the quote by Kamal Salibi from the first session, which is posted on the wall.

We explain that to understand the history of the Civil War in Lebanon (1975-1990), one approach is to read about the way historians, scholars, or intellectuals explain it.

We remind participants of the questions addressed in the session entitled The Contested History of the Civil War in Lebanon (1975-1990), and we think together whether historians also may have different responses to such questions or if there is some form of unified consensus among historians.

We inform participants that they will engage in a historiographical exercise that involves comparing how book reviews of two prominent Lebanese scholars reveal the different views and perspective of each writer: Fawwaz Trabulsi and Farid El-Khazen.

Group Work (40 minutes): 

We divide participants into 4 groups. We distribute Handout 14: Historiography (Farid El-Khazen and Fawwaz Trabulsi) to participants. 2 groups read the book review of El-Khazen and 2 groups read the book review of Trabulsi. 

Each group prepares a presentation based on the questions in the handout. 

Group Presentations (20 minutes):

Each group posts their findings on the wall. We give participants a few minutes to read through them and then ask each group to briefly present the main points outlined above.  

Plenary Discussion (20 minutes):

We point out how these different understandings or explanations of the Civil War in Lebanon (1975-1990) are examples of how this history is contested even among historians, scholars, and authors and also how history is constantly changing, as is our understanding of it, with the addition of new findings and perspectives. 

We ask participants to think back  to the questions  they asked their friends/family about the war (from the History and Historical Thinking session) and reflect on how the two historians Trabulsi and El-Khazen, as well as the two reviewers (Irani, Haugbolle) might answer these same questions.

• The main idea here is that historians also disagree on how to interpret history, and in this case specifically the history of the Civil War in Lebanon (1975-1990).
• Historiography is based on multiperspectivity in historical analysis. When an historian publishes a  book, other experts give their opinion on the publication. This is referred to as “book review” – it describes the main arguments presented by the historian and how the book contributes to the historical understanding of the past.
• This session relates to The Contested History of the Civil War in Lebanon (1975-1990), History and Historical Thinking.