I find this language wanting. I would choose other words to more aptly describe what an historian does, he she 'legal' or other. \\ ith consrructi\'ist historians, 1 prefer to speak of histor\' as an image of the past, as a translation or representation of the past in the present. W'e cannot do more than represent in new words what we want the reader to understand as the past. The termtranslation suggests constraint by language. Reality is onl\- as accessible as the language available to conceptualise and anah se it. I'his implies an interpretatixe freedomin dealing with past realit\ which is irreconcilable with anv notion of scientific objectit itx’. Such an approach emphasises that a history written is a histor\' constructed. We would therefore more aptly speak of a historx’ 'invented' than ofOne 'discovered'. Bo Strath, who makes such a distinction, is careful to remind the reader that this does not mean that events as such are invented. "Rather," he says, "the tacts are constructed by reflection upon the documents that attest to the occurrence of the events," thereby suggesting a distinction between fact and ev ent.' It is important to stress that mv preference for this kind of descriptive language stems from strict consequentialist considerations. It is not that I find a higher degree of truth embedded in a constructivist description but that I find the consecjuences of using constructiv ist language to be preferable, d he writing (vf history ought not to be spoken of as a discovery of a past 'out there' but as a construction inev itablv dependent upon the conte.xt of the present. It is my coinaction that an historian who speaks of her work as one of construction and of interpretative freedom, rends to somehow also communicate a corresponding sense of openness to the reader, of a sense of historv' opening up, leaving the field open to further speculation and investigation. This professional humility on the side of the academic I find more honest and may also result in a sense of 19
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