At the end of 2023, a new delivery of the PISA Report on the evaluation of students’ training left Catalans in a state of shock. Its students were below the Spanish and European average in key subjects such as Mathematics, Language or Reading Comprehension. It caught me in the final stretch of reading Ignorància. A global history, by Peter Burke (London, 1937). And from its general pattern, it was easier for me to visualize a certain explanatory tailored suit.
The anecdote (worrying and profound) of education in Catalonia combines well with the itinerary through the human mind that, with mastery and humor, this British scholar proposes here. And, from the beginning, he warns us that the study of ignorance must go hand in hand with knowledge about knowledge and the connections that unite these two sides of the same coin. Here is a starting point that ends up effectively showing us how, often, on the path of ignorance we find the most revealing answers.
With a pleasant style and very funny sections, this text, which dialogues with the author’s previous works such as Social History of Knowledge (Planeta, 2017) or Seen and Unseen (Crítica, 2001), invites us to explore the tangled paths of lack of knowledge. From there, very skillfully, he immerses us in a deep reflection on ignorance, demystifying the idea that only knowledge is the protagonist of the story. His nemesis also has things to show us, more than we believe, also in this book that has become, in parts, a metaphorical mirror for any reader with a minimum of self-critical spirit.
So, lucky for the doses of relaxation with which the author seasoned the work, because it is sharp. Although we cannot claim that, regarding the content of what Burke X-rayed so well, we were not warned. In general, for much of what happens to us and, in particular, for much of what this historian specialized in social and cultural matters has already written before.
Burke, recognized as one of the great innovators of historiography for his application of a perspective that combines anthropology and sociology, has been sowing seeds of doubt about the traditional narrative of knowledge for some time. And even in his work Seen and Unseen he already ventured to propose how ignorance can be a creative force.
But this book is not just a route through the thoughts of this emeritus professor of Cultural History at the University of Cambridge. Voices from other reference authors are also intertwined in it. The work of Michel Foucault, in particular Discipline and Punish (21st Century), appears there, showing the relationship between knowledge, power and ignorance. And Umberto Eco’s ideas in The Name of the Rose (Lumen) are outlined in the discussion about the obsession with knowledge and the pitfalls of constant search.
Of course, the chapter that shines with its own light is Ignorance in politics. Burke unravels there the complexities of ignorance in a social area where misinformation and manipulation are protagonists. With irony, the author guides us through the ins and outs of political ignorance, revealing how it can be both a tool and an obstacle in decision-making. And he shows how there exists, partly the origin and partly the culmination, of an ignorance of the species whose origin would not come from the first stages of teaching, but from much further back.
Peter Burke Ignorance. A global history Translated by A. Pous Arcàdia 512 pages 29.95 euros
