According
to the Oxford English Dictionary, “a history is a work in which each movement,
action, or chain of events is dealt with as a whole and pursued to its natural
termination or to a convenient stopping place, as distinct from annals, in
which events are simply recorded in divisions of a year or other limited
period, or a chronicle, in which events are presented as a straightforward
continuous narrative.” This is clearly a good description of how one goes about
writing a history; in order to understand and learn from history, one has to
group together and analyze a long series of events, determine some sort of
general link between them, and formulate an argument from a certain
perspective. If we were simply to treat our history as a set of disjoint events
without any causal link, we would learn nothing of significance or
practicality. Indeed, one of the main reasons we study history is to understand
what led to success and what led to failure, and to try to apply that to our
current situation. If we are completely objective and consider only historical “facts”
(ignoring that it can be argued whether such historical facts exist in the
first place), we can’t apply anything we learn to our present.
In
light of our recent class discussions, however, it seems that as soon as we
leave the realm of fact and impose our own narrative upon the data we are
attempting to understand, we are taking our first step away from true history
and toward fiction. Because of the inescapable bias inherent in human nature,
as well as the daunting volume of historical events that one must sift through,
our understanding becomes flawed, and our arguments do not take into account
the full picture. If we look back at the OED’s definition of history from a
post-modernist perspective, for instance, we see that it is surprisingly vague
and subjective. “Each (…) chain of events is (…) pursued to its natural termination or to
a convenient stopping place.” This notion of a chain of events having a
natural, inherent termination or stopping place seems ridiculous. I don’t go
about my life until I decide I have reached a convenient stopping place and
then lie down and die. Leaving this aside, who decides where this stopping
place is? Is it the people living at the time? This seems crazy as well; consider
the 2016 election – we have been talking about it non-stop, it’s inconceivable
that we will just stop as soon as 2017 rolls around. Is it the historian, then,
who decides when to stop? Possibly, but even this seems odd. If the
consequences of some event continue on for a long time, a historian can’t
simply ignore any consequence that occurs after a certain moment in time – this
would lead to a biased and incomplete history. On the other hand, the amount of
history one must analyze to understand every perspective is far too vast for
any one person to fully absorb, so one must stop somewhere. Is it really the
case, then, as the OED claims, that there exists some “natural stopping point?” Is there some moment inherent and pre-defined
in our history that we can point to, where the chain of causation ends, and man
simply moves on from the series of events we are studying? To me, this seems
like the most ridiculous claim of all.
The
problem, in my opinion, with the OED’s definition of a history is that it
narrows it down to a single argument from a single person. Our understanding of
history is not limited to this person’s perspective; it is the conglomeration
of everyone’s understanding with each time period, perspective, and bias represented.
One can only glean a true picture of our history by understanding how all the
arguments fit together, and how each perspective compliments each other.
Your argument makes a lot of sense. I think the core point you're getting at is that history is only truly understood as a perpetually-in-flux narrative of human existence; to even cut this narrative into manageable chunks (although necessary) must leave some of these details out and place intentional or unintentional bias into the story. I suppose this presents an unsolvable problem for humanity. When does the past stop? Where can we step back and learn from our mistakes, and where are the mistakes themselves still affecting our interpretation?
ReplyDeleteI think that definition from the OED is in fact correct for "A history". "A history" is as you said a single argument by a single person. The problem comes from the fact that our history is comprised of several different histories composed together. Histories that may or may not work together, which then forces us to select which are true and which are false.
ReplyDeleteThere are some interesting points here, especially about how evaluation of historical events doesn't have an ending point. This is true to a degree, obviously analysts will continue talking about the 2016 election well after the results come out, and it will likely be a major talking point for a few subsequent elections (depending on the impact of the election). On the other hand, there does seem to be a stopping place where the most individuals stop considering the impact of the election. Sure, there may be more facets or details to delve into, but to many, the history is closed.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jack on this one in that what we typically refer to as "history" is actually a combination of many histories or accounts of history (as the OED refers to). In my opinions a single person's account of history is nothing more than a narrative and it's extremely hard, nigh impossible to achieve "true history".
ReplyDeleteThe truth is that we will never know what the "true" history is, that is a completely objective and omniscient one. The only "person" capable of knowing a true history would have to be a higher power, which to some degree is why I feel that religion came into existence. People felt a need to put their lives and their "history" into a bigger picture, to feel that there was some purpose to their lives and their experiences. And to some degree that need for a justification of their lives, included shaping history into one that was more beneficial for them.
ReplyDeleteThe OED's definition reflects the historical narrative White tells--basically, "history" has a *story*, or is "narrativized," rather than the more detached and seemingly objective annal or chronicle.
ReplyDeleteI like the OED's slippery hedge with the phrase, "A convenient stopping place" (although it does allow that certain events have a "natural termination"). It reflects the extent to which the "end" of any historical narrative is artificial--a point Doctorow gets at implicitly at the end of his novel, with the line about "the era of Ragtime had run out." But the idea that there would be a "natural" or built-in stopping point reflects how much we tend to imagine these narratives as "out there" in the world ("speaking itself") rather than artificially constructed by the one telling the story. The "sense of a good ending" here isn't inherent to the events themselves, but to our conventional ideas about what makes a good (or "convenient") ending to a story.
The idea of attaining a 'true' history by weaving together a collection of all the different perspectives is an intriguing idea, because there is the dilemma: what if all of the various viewpoints don't overlap? That is, if people saw or interpreted a given situation in different ways, how are we to know which version is actually correct?
ReplyDelete