‘The History That Has Made You’. Ego-Histoire, Autobiography and Postcolonial History

ABSTRACT

This article takes inspiration from the methodology of ego-historie, where political or intellectual history, institutional affiliations and research trajectories are interwoven with personal reflection, to make connections between context and content. In his essay on ego-histoire (2014) John Docker writes of the ‘marrano-like’ figure, the stranger as evoked by Georg Simmel, both inside and outside a group, disturbing it by a kind of abstraction, a freedom to question what others in the group take as given. Here I employ my insider/outsider status as a British migrant and a ‘naturalised’ Australian to reflect on the ambivalent at best and deliberately ignorant, at worst, relationship between contemporary Britain and postcolonial Australia. As the child of immigrants to Australia, who has returned to the ‘mother-country’ as an adult, I use aspects of my autobiography to reconsider the dynamics of colonialism and post-colonialism in these two countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Ego-histoire
• colonial
• postcolonial
• Britain and Australia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Anna Cole has a PhD in History from the University of Technology, Sydney and has worked as a Project Historian on cross-cultural history with the NSW Cultural Heritage Division, Australia; at the University of London, Goldsmiths College and the University of Brighton. She was consultant historian and co-writer of the documentary film, Dancing with the Prime Minister, shortlisted for a UN Media Peace Award and was part of the European/Australian research group ‘Researching the other/Transfers of self: Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia’. She is co-editor, with Vanessa Castejon, Oliver Haag and Karen Hughes of Ngapartji, Ngapartji. ‘In turn, In turn’. Europe, Indigenous Australia and Ego-Histoire (Australian National University Press, 2014). Anna currently works on a Heritage Funded oral history of women’s community activism, University of Portsmouth, and publishes in the area of family, gender and colonial history including articles in Women’s History Review, Aboriginal History, The History Workshop Journal and Social Semiotics.