In class we've been grappling with the idea that history might just be a collection of arbitrary events that are magically strung together by historians to form compelling stories. I certainly don't think it's a very intuitive way of thinking about the historical record. Chronology and cause-and-effect tend to be our primary concerns and it's the burden of proof that keeps historians from making random connections between seemingly unrelated events. Still though, the physical evidence more often than not only sheds light on one potential story, when something entirely different may have happened. All throughout Ragtime, Doctorow presents a whole number of improbable situations but the book nonetheless remains historically grounded, and nothing in it can be definitively pointed out to not have happened. It's very frustrating just how open to interpretation and possibility the historical record is.
Rarely, it seems, are the historical events themselves disputed. Its the unrecorded encounters and unclear relations between these events that enable historians to create a variety of stories from different perspectives, some disputed and others not so much. To me, a historian has always been someone who analyzes primary sources, tangible evidence, the works of other historians, and formulates their own uniquely-positioned narrative equally subject to analysis and criticism. Not all historical events are created equal, and it's up to the historian to determine which ones make for an interesting perspective or important connection. In this way, all histories leave out information and offer interpretation of the evidence they present, or else they would be entirely worthless.
Postmodernism teaches us that there is no one true historical perspective or narrative from which to view events past. This is extremely important, highlighting the key idea that history is a discussion. New narratives are constantly being presented, differing perspectives being emphasized and illustrated. Nobody should sit in a history class and mindlessly treat the subject matter as gospel, because the mere recounting of undisputed historical events is inherently demonstrating bias in some way or another. Stories (and flowcharts) need to be constantly challenged and tested, their purposes and positions made transparent. As is repeatedly demonstrated throughout Ragtime and the articles we've been studying, we can never have all the facts about history or understand every intimate cause-and-effect. It is unproductive at best and malicious at worst to pretend like we do.
For me I've always considered history to be very important yet also prone to being biased. Even though I've also been aware of postmodernist ideas (before I knew that they could be categorized as postmodern), I feel as though I haven't realized the lack of a "true history" as concretely as I do now. You point out in this post that history is always changing as new narratives are being added, and this is really true since each new day creates new narratives and also constantly adds new parts to existing narratives. So many things are happening in the world that no interpretation of it can be definitive, and this applies to the concept of history. Now when I read something historical I'll think even more about what's not being told about its narrative or what no one knows because every aspect can't be recorded.
ReplyDeleteI think that many people at Uni would agree that there is no one correct interpretation of history. History before all technological advances was documented differently and at times limited to being told through a single perspective. It is interesting to think about whether social media has made the documentation of multiple perspectives of an event in history more postmodern. Social media is virtually accessible to anyone with Wifi and an electronic device that supports some sort of we browser, so I think it's a lot easier to find multiple differing individual thoughts/stories on events using social media outlets (rather than relying on sources from people in power.) Yet, these stories are still told with human bias, so maybe social media isn't effective in making the recording and discussion of history more postmodern?
ReplyDeleteUni in general seems to have this postmodern perspective, whether it be on history or other subjects. History is interesting in having these changeable characteristics, which form stark contrasts with many other subjects; 2+2 will always (I think?) equal 4, hydrogen will always be an element no matter which way one looks at it, etc. This makes in some ways a historian's job easier it seems. Without such cut and dry standards on correct interpretations of history, there's simply more room to do their job.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if the postmodern perspective on history makes it "easier" to write, but I kind of get what you mean--it's like saying that there's so much that could potentially come into play in any narrative, that there's a good deal more flexibility w/r/t the kinds of stories a historian might choose to tell. But since so much of postmodernist history is concerned with bringing in perspectives that have been previously ignored, there are new challenges for what can be used as primary material: where a traditional history might have relied on sources like newspapers and government documents to reconstruct a narrative from the "official" point of view, it's sometimes harder to know how to access the voices that have been excluded from these sources. Slavery is a dramatic case in point: since most slaves were (by law) kept illiterate, there are very few accounts of slavery from a slave's perspective. There are a handful of crucial slave narratives, but in terms of trying to reproduce the living conditions and social lives of the people who lived under this regime, which varied quite a bit from region to region and plantation to plantation, historians must engage creatively with the limited documentation available, to try and reconstruct actual lived experience from records of sales, births, marriages, deaths, harvest data, legal disputes, etc.
ReplyDelete(I meant this as a direct reply to Danny's ("Person") comment, although it's indirectly a reply to Andy's general post as well.)
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