Fiction vs History?

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2004-10-24 at 12:31, Otto wrote:
> > >
> > >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.

May we get on with it.

> 
> > 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"

Sounds like it's dogmatists and fundamentalists who need challenging,
not historians. 

>  -- as if there couldn't be
> contexts/times in which a stated and widely accepted truth turns into a lie?

There's nothing the least bit daunting about a statement being true in
one context but not in another. It's the way things are. Context is all.
I'm not talking about "relativism" either. Relativism would be like
saying that slavery is an evil for the slaves but a good for the
masters.

> 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.

A process can be imperfect without being pernicious. If history were
entirely imaginary or substantially imaginary it would be a bad thing.
But that situation isn't likely to arise in the modern context. With the
Internet the news would surely get around.


>  Because having the power to
> define the last truth is a way to inquisition.

Who has such power? You are beating a dead horse.

>  That's pernicious.
> 
> *Rob has called it correctly "select, arrange and interpret textual data."

Nothing awfully pernicious about that.
> 
> History is the propaganda of the winners.

Today even the losers can compile histories.  A few will be able to slip
through and get to their computers. 

>  But things can change. Moreover,
> they *will* change.

What can and will change?

Historians will henceforth be lined up and shot?

Historians will try even harder to tell the truth?

Conflict will cease and there will be no more winners and losers.