Sunday, April 24, 2011
History is what you make it!
I talked with Tam today over the phone (because we really didn't have time to meet) and we discussed major quotes in the text to see what sense we can make out of it. Tam and I both agree that historians would disagree with this quote according to Fasolt. They would mainly disagree because Historians mostly record history with evidence. So no one can make history without proper evidence. Tam and I discussed how Fasolt disagrees with this phenomenon. We found a quote on p. 68 of the text which states "But history is not the study of reality, much less the study of the reality of time. History is the study of evidence... and evidence is not reality". I found this quote to be very powerful because it brings up a major issue in our society. We tried to break it down and comprehend the last part of it where it states that history is the study of evidence and evidence is not reality. We finally came to a conclusion that because historians only study history based on evidence, there is a lot of history left out. It is left out because there is no proper evidence to legitimate it. This view makes history seem kind of crooked because the history that is being taught to us in the textbooks may not necessarily be true according to Loewen in "watching big brother," which also connects to Fasolt's point of view. Tom brought up a great point in which she said that history is just facts that are based on evidence which means there is no analyzing; people don't stop, think, and analyze what their being taught, they just store the facts in their mind. We also discussed an issue that may not be relevant to the text in which we said that history is very biased. For example, if you learn about the Iraq war, Vietnam war, or even WWI, I guarantee it would be different than if you would learn it overseas. Every country teaches history from its point of view, which is why some history gets lost along the way. We came to an agreement that history is the written evidence that historians find and present it to the general public. Towards the end, there was a powerful quote in the "solution" section where it says "Expecting history to reach the reality of the past is to allow oneself to be seduced by a mirage arising not from the past but from a historical imagination run amok" p. 82. Now this quote is pretty loaded and is difficult to comprehend. what I understood from it however that no one will ever learn history as it happened in reality.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I liked that you two broke down this quote cause I found it very interesting yet was not sure to what it EXACTLY meant ha. I agree that it must have to do with how so much history is left out. Which brings back when we had the argument from Hegel that no history happened in Africa. Yet this is not reality, even though I have not read history on Africa I know that there is a lot of history there, which is why Fasolt made a great point when he says to test your truths and learn history from many sources.
ReplyDeletelol, yeah the part with no history about Africa is ridiculous.... I mean Egypt has 5000 years worth of history; just not taught in the US...Civilizations were born in Africa, I can hardly say that Africa has no history.
ReplyDeleteI'd have to say History is supported by evidence and the more evidence the better. But then again I do agree that there can be history that's been written down and doesn't highlight the entire point of view. Which I'm sure has happened that's why the more digging you do the more undocumented theories and stories you might uncover. Which I'm sure is the case for many historians! As time passes they found the missing pieces to the puzzle.
ReplyDelete