Performances
Master historian Greg Dening invites readers to reflect upon their own participation in the 'performance' of history.
Awards
Shortlisted for the National Book Council 'Banjo' Awards 1997
Opinion
'Greg Dening is the most brilliant ethno-historian writing today. His work combines rigor; intellectual intensity, and a unique personal presence. Performances is a wonderful sampling of his profound reflections on the mythic structures we call 'history.''--Stephen Greenblatt, University of California, Berkeley
'This work is erudite, entertaining, and aesthetically satisfying. Dening's prose is often lyrical and frequently startling either by its humour or its sudden insightfulness. His reflexive historiographic style all hangs our wonderfully and coherently.'--Marshall Sahlins, author of How 'Natives' Think
About this Title
'. . . history is my passion. Writing it, teaching it, reading it fills the days and years of my life. In all passions, there is pain and pleasure.' Greg Dening
In this collection of writings--some new, some previously published--Greg Dening reflects on his experiences both as a historian and a participant in history. Performances brings together the personal and the scholarly, demonstrating how our lives are saturated with history, how we can only understand our present through our consciousness of the past and how in thinking about the past we mirror the time and place of our own living.
Each of these essays can be enjoyed on its own, yet throughout them all run the common themes of the intricate relationships between past and present, the personal and the political, historical research and the imagination. Dening writes with elegance and candour, inviting readers to reflect upon their own participation in the 'performance' of history.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; Notes to the Reader; PRELUDE: Ethnography on My Mind; MAKING A PRESENT OUT OF THE PAST: HISTORY'S ANTHROPOLOGY: A Poetic for Histories; Sharks that Walk on the Land; the Face of Battle: Valparaiso, 1814; PRESENTING THE PAST: HISTORY'S THEATRE: The Theatricality of History Making and the Paradoxes of Acting; Possessing Tahiti; Hollywood Makes History; Inventing Others; RETURNING TO THE PAST ITS OWN PRESENT; HISTORY'S EMPOWERING FORCE: Songlines and Seaways; Anzac Day; School at War; POSTLUDE: Soliloquy in San Giacomo; References; Glossary; Index
About the Author
Greg Dening is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Melbourne. His previous works include Islands and Beaches, The Death of William Gooch and the prize-winning Mr Bligh's Bad Language.
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