Representing history

THE REPRESENTATION of history is inevitably a difficult and political-with-a-small-p challenge

THE REPRESENTATION of history is inevitably a difficult and political-with-a-small-p challenge. For state-run museums, no less than teachers in schools, it requires a delicate balancing act between providing a coherent single narrative and reflecting conflicting perspectives on historical events that still play into contemporary politics. The ability to find that balance without straying into propaganda is the measure of a good curator and a fine teacher, and a responsibility perhaps best left to them.

And so the decision of DUP culture minister Nelson McCausland to lobby the trustees of the Ulster Museum over what he regards as the inadequate representation of the Orange Order in the “Plantation to Power Sharing” exhibition is at the very least highly problematic and ill-judged. Not least, it should be said, because any such improved representation would immediately pose the problem of precisely how its controversial role should be acknowledged – Mr McCausland might well then have cause to regret his initiative.

His call, however, for the museum to represent the different theories explaining the origin of the universe is more than just ill-judged. Although dressed in a veneer of respect for diversity, that longstanding DUP core value, it is in reality an attempt to get the museum to lend its authority to the idea that anti-Darwinian creationism and intelligent design theories deserve the status and equivalence of scientific truths. Their place in a museum is in an exhibition on the history of faith with, as Prof Richard Dawkins has suggested, an explanation on the Flat Earth theory of geography.

Mr McCausland’s letter echoes an attempt last year by colleague Mervyn Storey (MLA), in the name of Biblical truth, to remove signs at the Giants Causeway suggesting the rocks are about 550 million years old.

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And it reflects a reactionary fundamentalism all too familiar still in the US, most notably recently in Texas where conservatives have retaken control of the state school board. Having lost the battle on creationism, they are now rewriting the curriculum, including sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the “significant contributions” of pro-slavery Confederate leaders and insisting that “the right to keep and bear arms” is an important element of a democratic society. All in the name of respecting diversity.

As one Northern blogger puts it: “The ‘enlightenment’ is not over yet. It’s still a work in progress.”