The Past in Question: History as Past and Present Problem-Spaces

Abstract

This article underscores the role that questions play in the production of historical knowledge. It stresses two points: (1) the questions arising from the demands of the present are the means by which historians elicit evidence from sources; (2) the questions that arose from the demands of the past are the ‘real past’ in which agents acted in search of answers. Further, by examining David Scott’s application of R.G. Collingwood’s logic of question and answer, the article points to the socio-political dangers of realist aspirations to offer definitive accounts of the past. The example indicates that the political present has much to gain from a critical historical practice attuned to the demands of past and present problem-spaces alike.