In this remarkably wide-ranging book Professor Lowenthal analyses the ever-changing role of the past in shaping our lives. A heritage at once nurturing and burdensome, the past allows us to make sense of the present whilst imposing powerful constraints upon the way that present develops. Some aspects of the past are celebrated, others expunged, as each generation reshapes its legacy in line with current needs. Drawing on all the arts, the humanities and the social sciences, the author uses sources as diverse as science fiction and psychoanalysis to examine how rebellion against inherited tradition has given rise to the modern cult of preservation and pervasive nostalgia. Profusely illustrated, The Past is a Foreign Country shows that although the past has ceased to be a sanction for inherited power or privilege, as a focus of personal and national identity and as a bulwark against massive and distressing change it remains as potent a force as ever in human affairs.
David Lowenthal is Emeritus Professor of Geography and Honorary Research Fellow at University College London. He is a gold medallist of the Royal Geographical, the Royal Scottish Geographical and the American Geographical Societies, a Fellow of the British Academy and honorary D.Litt. Memorial University of Newfoundland. In 2010 he was awarded the Forbes Lecture Prize by the In...
- "as chapter 2 showed, we need a stable past to validate tradition, to confirm out own identity, and to make sense of the present."
- "showing off the past is the common result of identifying it. Labeling a relic affirms its historical significance; displaying it enhances its appeal."
- "...the more interpretation becomes available, the more people rely on it; they prefer to imbibe history in comfort in heritage centers and are seldom conscious of, or worried about, the alterations of the past that interpretation implies."
- "The proper way to treat a relic was to leave it alone."
- "moving reminders of the past has vital consequences, above all, for national and cultural identity. Removal becomes desecration if a national symbol is at stake."
- "The residues of bygone lives and locales affect, enrich, and inhibit our own in myraid ways. Awareness of things past comes less from information apprehended than from an appreciation of time's impact on all our words, all our deeds, all our relics. To know that we are simply ephemeral lessees of ag"
- "To be is to have been, and to project our messy, malleable past into our unknown future."
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Networks of Faith and Profit
Parfit's Ethics
Negotiating Mughal Law
The History of the Arthaśāstra
A History of the Roman Equestrian Order
Jurist in Context