Module 23: Collaborating to Construct the Past
Reading: McDavid, "Descendants, Decisions, and Power"
According to the McDavid article, what is the importance of critical theory in presenting the past?
•Recognizing one's own biases, interests, and limited knowledge—especially important in dealing with the history of groups other than your own.
•Recognizing that "by itself positivism produces an inadequate view of the world" (p. 118). Positivism is science, experimental science. Does this yield an "unbiased observation of the natural world?" Objectivity? This is the stereotype of science, but in fact, science is responsible for Morton's "proof" of European superiority. We will not see methodological flaws without criticism.
The reading for this time results in an argument for a different kind of history, a "both/and" rather than either/or, interpretation of a plantation site in South Texas. Instead of only focusing on the lives of the planter class—their homes, furniture and wealth—make history that is inclusive of both blacks and whites in the past and significant to both communities today. This may be especially appropriate to plantation communities where blacks and whites both lived.
To meet goals, had to
- Avoid being too painful, while acknowledging that the past was "wrong."
- Avoid polarization strategies.
Tell stories besides oppression, e.g., friendships between blacks and whites, courage of women in planter's family, the complexities of slavery: what people could and couldn't do, how they survived,, e.g., the shackle—at first, it seems only to speak to white oppression and black suffering. What else is there to say?
Additional questions:
How do people resist oppression? Without resistance, you wouldn't need shackles.
How were attitudes toward blacks responses to black resistance?
How might blacks have responded to the presence of a jail in their midst?
What were the roles of black overseers, drivers, and maybe jailers? [Like the Jewish community leaders who carried out orders from the Nazis, they may have been hoping to soften the impact of these policies].
How did the lives of people on the plantation overlap, combine, and change over time?
How were people in the past different from people now? How were they the same?
How does the community today show continuity with its past?
Is the "both/and" point of view a good idea?
Strengths? Lets all voices be heard, decreases resentment (p. 124); e.g., friendships. Weaknesses? Glossing over really bad things people did.
[For next year, develop a class exercise asking students to evaluate the Web as a means of bringing archaeology to the public, based on their exploring the Levi Jordan Plantation web site, www.webarchaeology.com.]