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Historian’s way opened new roads into the past

Greg Dening … was an inspiring teacher and passionate scholar.

GREG DENING was acknowledged by his peers as one of the most imaginative, original and reflective minds working in the fields of history and historiography.

Dening and his wife, Donna Merwick – a gifted historian in her own right – formed part of a group once known as the « Melbourne school of ethnographic history » that included Rhys Isaac and Inga Clendinnen, two other scholars of international repute, and Dening’s former colleagues at La Trobe University. Together, they pioneered in Australia the « anthropological turn » in the writing of social history that occurred globally in the 1970s.

Clifford Geertz, Marshall Sahlins and Bernard Cohn were among Dening’s intellectual partners and friends in his anthropological endeavours, but even in this galaxy of illustrious scholars, Dening stood out for the originality of his approach and for the intellectual risks he took.

Dening, who has died at 76, brought to his history writing not only erudition, scholarship and research that were always impeccable, but also a sense of wonderment about human existence – his own kind of existentialism, which shone through all that he wrote.

Greg Dening was born in Newcastle and moved with his family during his early childhood to Perth, where his father was posted by his employer. He attended the Jesuit school, St Louis, until his father was transferred to Melbourne, when he went to Xavier College.

He entered the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, in 1948, and followed the rigorous course of studies for novices and scholastics, earning a master of arts at Melbourne University, and later a PhD in anthropology from Harvard.

Dening, who left the Jesuits in the early 1970s, started out as an innovative historian of the Pacific and went on to contribute to historical thinking in general. In Islands And Beaches: Discourse On A Silent Land, Marquesas 1774-1880 (1980), he alternated between narrative and reflective chapters, which remained his hallmark throughout his life. Subsequent books included The Death Of William Gooch, History’s Anthropology; Mr Bligh’s Bad Language: Power, Passion And Theatre On The Bounty; and Performances.

He faced much criticism and opposition once; it was difficult for the historians’ guild to admit someone who broke with all that was routine in the writing of historical prose.

He took risks as a young scholar in a discipline that has always preferred to err on the side of caution. But he could not write otherwise.

As Dening said in his semi-autobiographical Beach Crossings: Voyaging Across Times, Cultures And Self (2004), in life as in work « the gamble is being yourself ».

Even that fragment of a sentence is very Dening. He believed in the gerund form over the plain noun, for life was in the living of it, not in the word « life ». Nouns froze things too much for his taste. History was always history making, caught up in human activity, of the past and the present. Later in life he would sometimes use the word « history-ing », which he appreciatively borrowed from a younger scholar, Katie Holmes, who was once his student in Melbourne.

The process of deciphering the past was always mysterious and full of human wonderment. Dening not only emphasised this point but shared, in his writing and teaching, that mystery with his readers and students. The histories he wrote, for that reason, were never shorn of poetry and philosophy, but never compromised on research and scholarship.

Dening was appointed to the Max Crawford professorship of history at Melbourne University in 1971, the year he married Donna Merwick, and retired from there in 1990. He was an adjunct professor at the Research School of Humanities at the Australian National University in Canberra for the past 12 years. Church Alive! Pilgrims In Faith, 1956-2006 was his last book.

He spent much of his last decade as a researcher, writer, speaker and engaged teacher of graduate students. The visiting scholars program he and his wife ran at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research (now merged into the Research School of the Humanities) at ANU drew students from across the country and overseas. Dening called these workshops « challenges to perform », aiming, with great success, to break down the thralldom of the routine of thesis-writing and to give students a sense of authorship and writerly freedom.

The Denings were a humane presence as scholars in our midst, always interested in others’ work, generous and encouraging in their criticism, inspiring with their ideas. Stan Katz, of Princeton University, recently described Dening as one of the last humanists of the 20th century.

Dening’s wife, Donna, survives him.

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Source : http://www.smh.com.au/news/obituaries/historians-way-opened-new-roads-into-the-past/2008/04/10/1207420583197.html

Lire aussi sa dernière lettre à la jeunesse marquisienne :

http://tahitinui.blog.lemonde.fr/2007/12/16/lettre-aux-jeunes-marquisiens/