The in-between: On Arendt's metaphor go visiting and empathy-in-history in students' meaning making in history education

Abstract

History education is built on a tension. Should the past be understood from its own premises as a cognitive historical thinking act, or should we embrace aspects of students' feelings and reactions in the present when interpreting the past? The aim of the article is to explore and deepen the understanding of the concept of historical empathy by using the metaphor go visiting from Hannah Arendt, and with historical feature film as the educational arena. The article has a theoretically exploratory approach with focus on students' meaning making in history education. The method of abduction is used to explore and reinterpret the concept of historical empathy through students' experiences of historical feature films, and with help from the concept of in-between and the visiting metaphor in Arendt's political philosophy. A conclusion is that personal experiences in students' life worlds need to have their place in historical meaning making and need to be in balance with the understanding of history that is required from a curriculum perspective. The point is not to dismiss these personal reactions and the historical meaning making they entail. Arendt's visiting metaphor makes it possible to embrace and nurture the inevitable dilemma of history education - how to handle the relation between past and present.