Here are my current thoughts on history and fiction. I don't pretend like I have anything figured out yet, but I wanted to get some ideas written out because these questions have been annoying me since the beginning of this class. Especially annoying is that history is what I want to study in college, so I would like to figure out what these things mean because they have actual application to my future (scary, right?).
I may or may not come back to this later in the semester... We'll see if any of my thoughts change... I just wanted a place to write and figure out exactly where I stand with respect to this new postmodernist weirdness.
If you bother to read this, I'm interested to hear any thoughts you might have on these questions.
Why do people want a line between historical fiction and historical "fact"? Why am I so reluctant to let go of the idea that history is reliable fact and fiction is not?
People don't like to be told that what they believe is wrong, and it's even worse when someone tells you that what you believe could be right but most likely isn't. I felt challenged by the first couple of days in this class where we were coming to the conclusion that the area between history and fiction is not so black and white. I couldn't let go of my belief that history had some factual importance, and that it isn't the mere speculation and fictional narration as postmodernists like to believe. When reading Hayden White and E.L. Doctorow comment on history vs historical fiction, I found myself itching to defend the historian's point of view, but as I read on I found my own defenses and opinions slipping.
What is the goal of historical research anyways? Is this any different from the goals of a historical novel?
I believe that the reason why historians do what they do is because they are fascinated by the uncertainty of history itself. Why else would anyone want to research a topic that someone has already written about? There are countless books written on WWII, Elvis, Napoleon, Ancient Rome, the list could go on and on. The reason why they can still write books about these subjects is because no one interpretation is perfect, and historians just love to prove each other wrong. I find it funny every time I'm in history class and the teacher always has a counter argument to a common theory, or when I'm reading a history book that attempts to redefine a previous idea in a new way. It's like we're all bickering with each other on the playground over the most recent class rumor.
That said, I think that the goal of historical research isn't necessarily to find the right answer, but instead to take what sources we do have and constantly interpret and reinterpret them. (The only problem is, some historians get big heads and think that they do have the power to find the right answer. Which, is understandable, considering that they might have spent years researching their topics. But that doesn't change the fact that history, by nature, is ambiguous.) Historians take primary sources and create a story out of them so that the casual history buff can easily get the information they need. The trick is understanding that a historian's job is to interpret, and not necessarily give you a final answer. This gives the reader a chance to apply their own interpretations to the past. Using the interpretations of people who have studied the subject, readers can have a more well rounded view of what could have happened in the past.
Historical fiction is more of a creative outlet for history. I think that the authors of historical fiction are granted more freedom when they write because people assign fiction with something that doesn't necessarily have to be real. Therefore, if an author mixes things up a bit to prove a point, or lets his opinionated narrator take control of the story, then it can give an interesting commentary on the history without threatening the readers' beliefs of history too much. Then again, lots of historical fiction is written with the purpose of challenging the readers with new ideas and interpretations about historical events, and in that sense the goals of writing historical fiction and historical non-fiction blur together.
It seems that many postmodernists think that most of what writing means is all relative to how the readers interpret it. If that's so, then perhaps historical fiction isn't and will never be the same thing as historical "non-fiction," because people will constantly interpret things as "true" or "false" based solely on the genre of the writing. If the audience interprets them as polar opposites anyways, then perhaps it doesn't matter if the lines between historical fiction and history are blurry.
Is it even possible to present a history in a completely accurate way (accuracy being defined by postmodernists)?
Short answer: No. If by completely accurate you mean without bias or angle on a certain story/event, then it is not possible to ever give an indisputable account of history.
To give a completely accurate indisputable account of history I think postmodernists would have us gather up every single piece of primary source on the topic--everything. Nothing could be left out because picking and choosing primary sources would mean that there was some bias from the author. Then, the historian would have to present all of the primary sources without any personal narration at all, and without any story line or opinion. Basically they'd leave it up to the reader to figure out what the huge amount of primary sources mean. In the end, this is an inefficient and silly way to write history because a) no casual reader would want to wade through hundreds of primary sources and b) the actual history would be boring without an overarching story to give it relevance and meaning to the readers.
Does history lose its importance if it can never be fully and accurately understood?
As someone who plans on studying history further, I really want to say that history could never lose it's importance. How could it? If it did, then the next four years of college would be more meaningless to me than four years of advanced calculus...math...yuck...
I think I'll stand by that answer, though. History will always be important to me, and I think it should always be important to us too. Our accepted history, even with its flaws, is what defines who we are in the present and gives us a path of action for the future. Everyone has heard the over-repeated saying "Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it," but there is at least some truth in that matter. There's also truth in the fact that, whether we like it or not, we repeat history anyways (the cycle of revolutions, anyone?). Still, we learn from our mistakes. The bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki both had an effect on the extreme avoidance of using nuclear weapons for combat during the cold war. After seeing the destruction that such a bomb could create, no one wanted a full scale nuclear war.
A common history gives us at least some feelings of nationalistic pride, and when we can be proud in what we've accomplished it gives us further motivation to create more. Our country isn't without our mistakes, but I think we can still be proud of where we are today vs. where we were 100 years ago. The same goes for other countries, too.
A common history gives us a common identity as a collective group of people. This common identity then gives us a common culture to stand by (or define ourselves against)--culture being defined as a set of values and traditions that we believe to be important to who we are as a people.
Is a historian's job completely pointless in light of postmodern arguments? Can they still speak truths through their interpretations and writing even though nothing in history is certain?
Historical narratives, as Hayden White likes to call them, can speak just as much truth as historical fiction because the truths written in the text aren't solely from the author, but instead come from the reader. People will interpret historical articles differently, just as they will find different meanings in the metaphorical historical fictions. It's the significance that we, as readers, assign to these texts that give them their truth (or their falseness). It's also the bias and worldview that we have before reading any text that will influence the value we place on it. There is also much truth that can be found in primary sources. Since the invention of the camera and the tape recorder, primary source information has been more reliable than ever.
Also, how would historical fiction writers write their novels if they didn't have accessible information about their topics? Who do you think catalogs, tags, and summarizes that information? That's right. Historians and archivists. Besides, the historian's failure as a novelist means that historical fiction writers have a job.
How do we view our past and respect our culture and history when we don't know what's true or false?
I think that we have to discuss these ideas realizing that there are different interpretations of history. We should develop an opinion after thinking about multiple sides of an issue instead of blindly accepting one historian's ideas as fact. If you don't challenge your own beliefs then how do you expect to be able to defend those ideas that you do stand by. You can't persuasively defend any opinion if you haven't thought about and dissected what the opposite opinion argues.
We should also avoid plastering our current beliefs and cultural values onto the historical civilizations we study, because this can lead to a judgmental view of other cultures' histories and that won't get us anywhere. The saying of stepping into another person's shoes is relevant here. To understand and interpret primary sources better, we have to attempt to get rid of our current worldviews and temporarily speculate about how people in the past thought about things.
It's like the pirate code in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie--history is more what you'd call a guideline than an actual rule. History can be a wonderful tool for understanding the world around us today, but historical interpretation should always be taken with a grain of salt. No one can know exactly what happened, and there is no way for us to go back in time and read the minds of all the famous people of history. Instead, we can accept what we don't know and think critically about what we do know. It's the fascination with the mystery of the holes in history that motivates historians to write and research new ideas about the past. These new ideas and discoveries then have the potential to help us understand how we got to be who we are today.
How do we teach history with the knowledge that 95% of what we teach is bound to be interpretation anyway? Is historical fiction a reliable way to teach history to children?
...You know, they say that about 70% of statistics are made up on the spot...
...You know, they say that about 70% of statistics are made up on the spot...
I was home-schooled until fourth grade with a program that assigned historical fiction for us to read based on what we were learning in history at that time. I learned almost all of my history from historical fiction. We would read a book and then my mother would teach us about how the characters lived and what this had to do with the time period and events we were studying. It made history more fun, and more interesting than learning a bunch of facts and dates. This method developed our reading skills in general, too.
History was always boring in elementary/middle school. I remember my fifth grade textbook and I cringe when I learn about other history textbook failures. The textbooks I encountered always gave a really, really broad overview of history from one perspective, and stated that perspective as fact without giving the kids a chance to think about all of the different interpretations that there could be. The primary sources that are given, then, were usually tiny snippets of quotes cut from speeches or journals, or pictures. From my experience, it wasn't until high school that I realized how ambiguous history is. Much of what we teach children in elementary school is history that has been tweaked and cherry-picked for morals and definable heroes and villains (so, in a sense, it's kind of historical fiction anyways?).
So I think it's completely possible to teach history through historical fiction, but I think that you can't use historical fiction as the only teaching material. I think it would be an interesting experiment to teach kids history through historical fiction, while also then providing them with some examples of primary sources that go along with that work. That way the kids can read and sympathize personally with characters in a fictional context, and then connect what we know about the past with what we speculate about the past. By reading historical novels they could learn just how many interpretations there are for the primary sources that we do have. But they can only do that if they are given the chance to see some primary sources.
Maybe we should teach history in a way that as kids age the historical fiction they read gets gradually more complex, and as they go through school they interact with more and more primary sources. This way, they aren't overwhelmed and confused as first graders, and they aren't clueless seniors in high school. History wouldn't be blind memorization anymore, but instead constant interpretation and interaction with historical ideas.
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Your anecdote about getting excited about history early in your education via historical fiction strongly suggests that acknowledging the "fictional" qualities of historical narrative doesn't diminish the importance of history itself. (Again, "fictional" here doesn't necessarily mean "made up" or "false," but refers to certain formal qualities of the writing, the way the information is given shape by an interpretive intelligence.) So it's not so much that postmodernism seeks to devalue history, or debunk its claims to truth, but rather to say that there's no good reason to observe a rigid line between these two forms of discourse--to *work with* the ways they overlap. As a teacher of fiction, I've always asserted that fiction conveys truth, and the truths it conveys are of crucial importance. So for me, one big point of all this is not to degrade history but to *elevate* fiction, to see it as more important than mere "diversion" or "entertainment." (Doctorow gets at something like this in his "False Documents" essay.)
ReplyDeleteSure, we could go into a panic--"The past is fundamentally unknowable! All the history I've learned might be nothing more than propaganda and manipulation! There is no 'truth' out there for us to access and faithfully reconstruct!" But in my view, these insights have the opposite effect: history is *more* important once we see it as a field of contention. The student is no longer a passive recipient of a singular narrative but a critical thinker who must analyze and sort through competing narratives, to challenge "mythological" metanarratives that shape the history we've been given. History is of urgent importance once we know how badly it can be abused, in other words. The burden shifts to us as readers and students. (And to writers, to take this contingency into account.)