Cubitt, Geoffrey. History and Memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. eBook Comprehensive Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed February 2, 2015).

I was extremely intrigued by Unsworth’s differentiation between memory and history, which is in essence the differentiation between professional and public history.  This divide has been placed on a public platform because of the digital age.  Cubitt has some interesting things to say about the nature of the relationship between history and memory.  His argument is more plainly stated than Wolff’s.

The title of chapter 1 for instance is “History and Memory:  An Imagined Relationship”.  He discusses the ways in which people have tried to relate memory and history and suggests that they can be reconciled only by understanding that they are different beings and have separate roles to play in the social and academic experiences.  Cubitt’s discussion of the profession is extremely powerful and I think contributes to our debate on what makes a historian, and perhaps refutes Madsen-Brooks’ argument that everyone is a historian (“I too, am a historian”).

For instance Cubitt cites Collingwood’s argument about the separation between memory and history which can also be seen in the case study about African American Confederates in the Madson-Brooks article.

“This imagination, Collingwood implies, is
concerned with conceptual issues (ones of causation, for example or of social structure, or of long-term continuity and change) that derive from the realm of historical thought rather than from remembered experience. The essential achievement of historical reasoning is to rescue us from a slavish dependence on memory’s limited and subjective form of consciousness.”

This book lends new insight onto the historical process and why it is so important to preserve the academic rigor that marks our profession. It also helps the reader to have a greater understanding of the relationship between history and memory which is part of this ongoing debate about the digital humanities.