Gaps in the record: hidden internationalisms
Name
summers_2001.pdf
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87.45 KB
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Resource type
Journal article
Creator (person)
Summers, Anne
Date published
2001
Abstract
The true subtitle of this lecture is a question: why was George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion first produced in German, in Vienna? And the lecture as a whole is about a number of such questions that I can't answer. It is less about gaps in the material record - that is to say, the physical existence of documentation (though it touches on this issue) - than it is about an absence in historical writing: an absence of history, of narrative, that crosses barriers of nationality and language. It is a simple fact that historical subjects cross these barriers, but historical research, publication and teaching very often do not. I am particularly concerned with the second of these barriers, because in our day it seems to be much the most formidable; and I would even go so far as to suggest that in much research which is undertaken within language frontiers, it is possible to sustain an illusion of internationalism which cloaks a reality of largely domestic incident and inward-looking discussion.
Journal title
History Workshop Journal
Volume
52
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Place of publication
Oxford, UK
ISSN
1363-3554
eISSN
1477-4569
Official URL
Additional information
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in History Workshop Journal following peer review. The version of record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/2001.52.217