Public History e Pedagogia di Comunità: sulla possibilità di una convergenza

Public history is a relationship, mediated by effective communication, between historical knowledge and the public dimension of action. Public history questions above all the places and times of production and the use of history in the polis.Today the question becomes of particular importance, since with the spread of the Internet, the need for history has begun to find satisfaction bypassing the professional historian. A story started from the bottom up, by associations, groups and individuals who have undertaken the design of processes to legitimize their convictions, claiming to base them on more or less effective historical reconstructions. The web amplifies a process of appropriation of history that began with the demands of the labor movement and feminism, which had underlined the need to tell the past from other points of view, since the alleged objectivity pursued by the professional historian often coincided with the reconstructions that legitimized the domination of the hegemonic classes over the subordinate classes. Public history deals with the problems of recognition and visibility, two themes of great interest for pedagogy. In recent years, the social sciences have emphasized the turning point of social struggles towards the claim of recognition, as if it had been understood that the fundamental question for the dominated groups is not only to have access to more economic resources, but to actually be in able to see the full dignity of their being and their actions. This ethical and political activation can lead to forcing historical truth. But this can be avoided if a culture of the historical method is spread, which requires a rigorous and honest comparison with the sources. In this way it will be possible to establish a less viscous comparison between the social actors and the recognition processes will be facilitated.