Progress, Presence and Historical Consciousness: Confronting Past, Present And Future In Postmodern Time

Abstract

It is possible to long for the past: we long for something that once was present but is no longer – nostalgia. We hope for something that has never been present but might be in the future – dreams: this is the core of progress in the modernist project. What can “longing for the present” mean? We desire a situation that we already have? We long to be what we already are? The phrase is both intellectually provocative and emotionally evocative. It is an invitation for speculative and theoretical rumination. My attempt to shine a light on this misty and shrouded terrain begins with a survey of the idea of progress. The idea of progress sets up a particular relationship between past, present and future, and provided a key intellectual underpinning for the project of modernity. This sets the context for a second exploration: the relationship between past and present in our own historical moment, early in the twenty-first century. Challenges to the idea of progress currently exist on at least two levels. Ontologically, the links among science, technological progress and human welfare – the essential progressive nexus – are under threat from the escalating destruction of the global environment: the doomsayer's “the end is near” is rationally plausible. At the same time, epistemologically, the capacity of any historian to make judgements about progress (or decline) embedded in a grand narrative of human development is viewed, at best, with critical scepticism. In the third part of the article, using empirical data from research with young people, I sketch some implications for history education in these times.