Marx’s famous claim that it is history that molds consciousnessrnrather than the other wa’ around lies at the heart of it. ThernBritish Marxist historian E.H. Carr, who died in 1982, exemplifiedrnthe doctrine all his working life, and his book What Is History?rn(1961) is a classic statement of that view. The openingrnchapter, “The Historian and His Facts,” makes the implausiblernassumption that facts in their nature are certain and interpretationsrnno more than personal, though the years Carr spent writingrna historv of the Bolshevik Party should have taught him thatrnmanv of the facts of history arc hotly contested, some interpretationsrnwhollv certain, and that it can be difficult, even impossiblernon occasion, to distinguish one from another. It is a questionrnof fact, for example, whether Stalin believed in Hitler’srnfriendship when he signed an alliance with him in August 1939,rnand a much contested one; a matter of interpretation whetherrnthe pact that made Nazism and Communism allies was justifiedrnor not, and one nowadass hardly contested at all. Literarvrnstudies, too, are rich in such counterinstances. Homeric scholars,rnfor example, differ as to whether the Iliad was written byrnone man or bv more than one, which is a c]uestion of fact; notrnat all about whether it is a great poem, which is a cjuestion ofrnalue. The assumption that facts are distinguished by beingrnagreed, then, and judgments of value by being contested, isrnsimph’ nonsense.rnCarr then shifts his argument from nonsense to contradiction.rn”We can view the past, and achieve our understanding ofrnthe past, only through the eyes of the present,” he writes;rnnonetheless, he goes on, the function of the historian is torn”master and understand” the past as “the key to the understandingrnof the present.” But if the past can only be understoodrnthrough the eyes of the present, what is the implied contrastrnhere? Presumablv b’ understanding the past through the eyesrnof the past, which (it is perhaps implied) would be better eyes:rnat least that is the most natural sense to put on the word “only”rnhere. So Carr seems to be implying that all historical understandingrnis misunderstanding, since the historian, he says, canrnnex’cr see v’ith the eyes of the past; in which case he can onlyrnmisunderstand. But if the historian can only misunderstand,rnhow can he reasonably be asked to understand past or present atrnall? The multiculturalist ease is that we are all imprisoned, ofrnnecessity, in a social framework not of our own making. But ifrnwe are all imprisoned, then we should try to respect some historians,rnat least, who write out of the prison cell of their conditioning.rnPresumabh’ Carr would concede that some historiansrnsometimes get something right; presumablv he believes that hernhimself, for instance, is sometimes getting it right. It is hardlyrnpossible even to imagine a subject where all the conclusions arernwrong.rnBut ho\’ tight, in that ease, is the prison? It is a notable factrnabout ethnicity that not everybody, whether black, brown, orrnwhite, admits to being locked in, and that some want to seernthemscK’cs free and others immured. Edward Said, for example,rnin Orientalism, thinks the West stereotypes the East andrnpatronizes it, but as a Palestinian living in New York he writesrnwith a confidence that suggests that he, at least, is getting itrnright. So not everybody is doing time in the prison of earlv conditioning.rnHow, in that case, does one tell those who are insidernfrom those who are not? It is here that the multiculturalist easernbegins to look partisan. It is right for nonwhitcs to stereotypernwhite views, apparendv, as Said does, but wrong the other wayrnaround. It is right for nonwhite politicians to tell nonwhite votersrnto support nonwhite candidates, but wrong for white politiciansrnto tell white voters to vote white. It is right to praise jazzrnas an expression of black culture, but wrong to praise Shakespearernas an expression of English culture. And so on.rnThere is a way out of the multiculturalist maze, however, andrna black writer may be chosen to show us what it is. In a recentrnlecture, Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright, novelist, andrnNobel Prize winner, has justly derided the multiculturalist case.rnAs a boy in colonial Nigeria, he has told, he read Sophocles inrnan English version to his lasting delight, and felt himself nornmore remote from the worid of ancient Greece than an Etonianrnschoolbov would have felt. Which is right. What presumptionrnis there, after all, that the Athens of the fifth century B.C. isrnmore like 20th-century Europe than 20th-ecnturv West Africa?rnOr that, to speak generalK, you hae to be white to alue whiternauthors, or black to value black? The hidden racism of the multiculturalistrnease has often been remarked. What it now needs,rnas refutation, is a sign like Soyinka’s that humanism is not a fantasyrnof Dead White European Males but a living faith thatrnworks. crnThe Dolphin Hotel and Epcot Centerrnby Frederick TurnerrnVhchael Graves creates and DisnevworldrnAbsorbs the immense insult without scar.rnThe force of evolution is unfurled:rnConsciousness stammers, awed, touched, jocular.rnO lights of ancient pylons across water!rnO all the coarse simplicity of how”rnThe past renews itself upon the altarrnWe made the present be, the dead dry now,rnO shaking artificial lights against the lake,rnO music breathing perfect from the arbors,rnO Paris, Casablanca! O how fakernThe real thing becomes, its lights, its harbors;rnO guardians of the future, one in three:rnO Mickey, Donald, Goofy, sing to me.rnSEPTEMBER 1996/17rnrnrn