Povjesničar E.P. Thompson o nastojanju za spašavanjem “zastarjelog” tkalca od silne arogancije potomaka
Imajući u vidu priču iz prethodne obavijesti o posljednjim zagrebačkim klobučarima, u nastavku donosimo poznati uvodni odlomak knjizi “Stvaranje engleske radničke klase” važnog povjesničara Thompsona o izumirućim zanatima i ljudima koji su ih činili.
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E.P. Thompson
The Making of the English Working Class
1963
PREFACE
[…]
My quarrel with the third is that it reads history in the light of subsequent preoccupations, and not as in fact it occurred. Only the successful (in the sense of those whose aspirations anticipated subsequent evolution) are remembered. The blind alleys, the lost causes, and the losers themselves are forgotten.
I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and, if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned in their own lives, as casualties.
[…] (pp. 12-13)
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George G. Iggers, Istorijska nauka u 20. veku, Beograd 2014, str. 76:
“Istovremeno, Tompson posmatra život svake jedinke kao istorijski vredan i prigovara protiv shvatanja da se “istorija interpretira u svetlu potonjih interesa a ne onako kako se ona stvarno dogodila”. Umesto toga, piše Tompson, “pokušavam da spasim siromašnu pletilju čarapa, ludističkog suknara, ‘zastarelog’ ručnog tkača, ‘utopijskog’ zanatliju kao i zaslepljenog pristalicu Džoane Sautkot, od silne arogancije potomaka” iako je “njihovo neprijateljstvo prema novom industrijalizmu možda bilo nazadno”.”
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U navedenoj knjizi Iggers razmjerno mnogo piše o Thompsonu. Više o Iggersovoj knjizi:
Mihaela Marić – prikaz knjige – George G. Iggers, “Istorijska nauka u 20. veku”, 2014.