Fiction vs History?

[Otto]

> >
> >At 5:45 PM -0700 10/22/04, aleach67 at mac.com wrote:
> > >>Historians themselves -- good ones -- since the mid-nineteenth century
> >have recognised that the line between history and fiction is blurred.
> >
> >Just because the line between black and white is blurred by a whole lot
of
> >grey does not mean there is no black or white.  Eliminating defined
> >distinctions is regressing to pre-cognition not moving toward
> >metacognition.
>

A nice example of logocentrism. Nice binary oppositions.

history vs fiction
black vs white
pre-cognition vs metacognition

And of course white is better than black.

> This really is the whole point of this discussion.  This is why calling
> history nothing more than fiction is pernicious.
>
> Ghetta
>

Is it really? Isn't it more just challenging the claim that History makes,
that it is able to state a defining "Truth" -- as if there couldn't be
contexts/times in which a stated and widely accepted truth turns into a lie?
I don't think that "history [is] nothing more than fiction," but to forget
the implications that it inevitably includes a certain amount of
fictionality* too is in every case pernicious. Because having the power to
define the last truth is a way to inquisition. That's pernicious.

*Rob has called it correctly "select, arrange and interpret textual data."

History is the propaganda of the winners. But things can change. Moreover,
they *will* change.

Otto