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Bad History
Author(s) -
HARVIE CHRISTOPHER
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the political quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.373
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1467-923X
pISSN - 0032-3179
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-923x.2006.00816.x
Subject(s) - postmodernism , ethos , identity (music) , consumerism , sociology , popularity , state (computer science) , advertising , law , media studies , political science , aesthetics , business , art , computer science , literature , algorithm
If history is a sort of radar for the ship of state, then the machine has broken down, just at the point where Gordon Brown, trained as a historian, takes over control. Caught up in the best‐seller business, popularised on TV, it has come to reflect metropolitan commercial drives, the obsessions of The Hitler Channel or the ‘publish or be damned’ ethos of the Research Assessment Exercise. Fashionable discourses about identity and postmodern consumerism, and the palsied traditions of Fogeydomboth remote from the basic business of getting, spending and governing‐may offer a niche‐marketing future, but are more likely to speed the vessel towards the rocks.