“Naked presence and disciplinary wording,” in S.C. Humphreys and R.G. Wagner, eds, Modernity’s Classics. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer-Verlag Berlin-Heidelberg, 2013, pp. 293-313 (original) (raw)

This paper approaches the question of whether, and how, the remote past can be made 'present' by analysing the roles of words and images in archaeological publication and teaching, asking whether modern culture has become so dominated by the idea of 'information' that even images are tailored to it. It seems especially paradoxical that archaeology students, who are at least partly attracted to the subject by the image of a 'hands-on', 'real' experience of pastness-"nose to nose," in Segalen's phrase-are nevertheless culturally conditioned to expect knowledge to be packaged in words. This tension between a longing for 'presence' and the distancing produced by disciplinary framing is central to the problems of current education in the Humanities.