Dove Chocolate

Kate, Paige and I decided to meet at Panera today to discuss Fasolt’s book The Limits of History. We started by all agreeing that this has been one of our favorites reading so far. It was not only interesting but it really made you think about what you believe history, the past, the present and the future really are. We then moved to what our thoughts on what history was after reading Fasolt. The quote that we found at the end of our discussion really encompassed the answer to that question for me, page 32 “It never occurs to us that no one can possibly know where they came from, much less where they are going, unless they know already where they are. “ While that seems like a quote that would be on the inside of a Dove chocolate wrapper we also thought of it as meaning that everyone has their own view or idea on what history is, or where it came from. Depending on your culture, your lifestyle, your upbringing, religion, and many other factors history is going to differ from each person. Someone here in the US is not going to have the same view or story of history as someone who lives on the other side of the world.

The next major idea that we discussed was the line that is drawn to separate the present from the past. When was the past? Was it a second ago? Or was it 100 years ago? And when does the past become history? Those were all questions that were floating around in our heads. After our conversation I realized that before we read Fasolt I thought of history as something that happened hundreds of years ago, and the past was something that happened within my lifetime. Now I know that history can be something that happened yesterday, and the past is always changing. That is one of the differences between the past and history. I now think of history as something that is set and stone something that doesn’t really constantly change like the past does. As Fasolt says “change in the present must surely change the past in ways that we may very well not understand only because we never stop to ponder them” (10). To me this says that the past is constantly changing since events in present time can affect the way we look at the past. But in my mind history is still the same it is wie es eigentlich gewesen.

The last quote that we pondered was on page 16 “..cut the past in two: one documented, known, and dead; the other undocumented, unknown, and undead”. This one really threw me through a loop and when we discussed it in the group we brought it back to the discussion we had on the very first day of class, we asked the question: how long does someone/something have to be dead in order for it to be history? Or for it to be written about? Now that I am sitting here writing this, another thought has come to mind. If some parts of the past aren’t dead then that means they are alive, and to me if something is alive then it is still in the present time. So there really is no clear-cut line between the past and the present since some of the past still lives in the present.

This article has thrown my mind through a loop…to say the least.