Anachronisms in History and Civism school books (1940-1960)

Abstract

This work shows the anachronisms in Mexican school books of History and Civism between 1940 and 1960, based on the category of “simultaneity of the anachronistic” (Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen) by Reinhart Koselleck. The anachronisms in modern historiography are cuts from different historical stages rationally linked to create a common political horizon with universal claims, which allows us to forecast an expected future, creating possibilities. When comparing this horizon with other times, peoples, and cultures, differences are generated with qualitative evaluations. Javier Fernández Sebastián also identifies the cognitive, methodological and axiological anachronism in 20th century historiography. Thus, anachronism is a category for investigating how the past is constructed in modern historiography. With the educational reform of 1946 and the policy of national unity, some writers of history and school citizenship projected the emergence of a Mexican democracy with a background in pre-Hispanic and colonial democratic practices; in this way, they offered a democratic tradition with a Mexican identity that made the influence of “foreign doctrines”, such as socialism, unnecessary. In these books structures, categories, and concepts of different times are superimposed to that of their enunciation, resorting to methodological and cognitive anachronisms. Furthermore, they provided a horizon of expectation for national democracy with universal claims. In current free history and civic education textbooks, anachronism is a practice that has been diminished by advances in historiographic methodology. The simultaneity of the anachronistic has its limits when conceptual relationships between historical periods are recognized, so the text suggests complementing it with Koselleck’s synchronous and diachronic method.