Journalists Writing Australian Political History

There has been a considerable increase in the number of political histories written by journalists since the 1960s. Three types of journalistic political histories have emerged in this period: the quickie, the longer history and the investigative work, and the works of Warren Denning, Alan Reid and Paul Kelly have been particularly influential in the development of the genre's present characteristics and concerns. This article finds that the genre's increase is the result of a combination of factors: the expansion of a tertiary-educated readership; the introduction of university training for journalists; increasing economic pressures faced by publishers, and the rise of celebrity culture.     

Scholars and Radicals: Writing and Re-thinking Class Structure in Australian History

We wrote Class Structure in Australian History in a period of heightened social struggle. It grew out of collaborative research projects at Sydney's Free U in the late 1960s. The book was distinctive in both emphasising the socialist tradition of class analysis and trying to find new paths for it. Its first edition was ignored by mass media, and often mis-interpreted in professional journals. Nevertheless it circulated widely and has continued to be a point of reference for progressive scholarship. Its method tried to carry forward the Free U project of democratic knowledge making, linking documents with analysis and inviting shared interpretation. Its theory emphasised the reality of classes as historical formations, and the importance of understanding class structure as a whole, on both points reacting against influential frameworks of the time. Looking back, CSAH appears uncertain in its approach to race and gender, and inadequate in its handling of coloniality; it was written in isolation from similar projects in other parts of the postcolonial world. Yet its approach still has value in understanding the changing dynamics of class on a world scale, the class relations of the neoliberal era in Australia, and the current configuration of power in Australia.     

The Minefield of Australian Military History

Between 2014 and 2018 Australia, like many other nations, is commemorating the centenary of the First World War. This article explores the difficulties that many academics have in traversing the divide between academic and popular history, and suggests why the public reaction to academic military history is often so hostile. It points to the role of national ideals that are underpinned by the Anzac mythology surrounding egalitarianism, mateship and martial courage, and to the role performed by conservative commentators. However, the article also argues that the popularity of military history in Australia, and growing signs of openness to challenging interpretations from some organisations, present opportunities for academic and professional historians, who in turn must rise to the challenge as part of their responsibilities as public intellectuals.     

The Predicament of Writing Political History: The Challenge of the Tacit

Political histories composed by contemporaries (or near contemporaries) are affected by the predicament of confronting the tacit in a past. Three case studies of famous writers of histories of politics in their own times are used to suggest an additional epistemology for political history which relies rather less on representations than has been common since the “Linguistic Turn” privileged the propositional thrall of discourses. My extra element attends to the tacit in human lives: affects and effects in context of the lived‐in and lived‐around of politics. My three case studies suggest that histories of politics and policies by contemporaries and near‐contemporaries do not simply amount to a re‐representation (broadly defined) of past representations (broadly defined). A wide angle is adopted; three case studies treat renowned political historians, ancient, mediæval and modern: Procopius in the mid‐sixth, Commynes in the late‐fifteenth, and A.J.P. Taylor in the mid‐twentieth centuries. Each of these “great” historians of politics was driven to discount the lived‐out‐loud of politics they narrated in, or close to, their own times. The predicament and the response is more general, I believe: all historians of politics have to try to situate and narrate things once taken‐for‐granted. That predicament prompted each of my three — and still prompts historians — to have to transcend “representationalism”. The three cases show how and why history writing about politics also needs to attend to the habitual and tacit in a past, the ubiquitous things seldom represented. A controversial foundation for such an “extra” epistemology is then suggested: Dasein, the being‐of‐being, a key concept of Martin Heidegger's. The writing of political history by contemporaries (or near‐contemporaries) is then conceived as also a (ethnography‐like) study of past life‐worlds‐in‐being. This extra foundation for (very‐old and still current!) writing practices about power and politics emphasises metonyms over metaphors. Surprises discerned from contexts are emphasised over propositions peddled in representations. The metonyms disclosed by my three case studies, which I think apply in most writing about politics by contemporaries or near contemporaries, had to be inferred from contexts, rather than read as discourses. The tacit is elicited by contemporaries from (1) records and recollects of predicaments and situations, and from (2) reading actions as texts. Histories of politics are really about things people once felt and did, more than what they said, in their there‐and‐then.     

The Rise of the Insider: Memoirs and Diaries in Recent Australian Political History

The memoirs and diaries composed by politicians represent an increasingly important form of history. This article provides a comprehensive survey of such writings in Australia. It suggests that they have become more popular, diffuse, confessional, immediate, ambitious, interventionist and cynical over recent decades. The significance of these developments is considered and some tentative explanations advanced.