Fiction vs History?

[Otto]

>
> >From: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>
> >
> > > >
> > > >At 5:45 PM -0700 10/22/04, aleach67 at mac.com wrote:
> > > >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
>
> You are so intent on seeing binary opposition that you ignore what is
being
> said.

Well, looking for the binary oppositions in every logocentric statement is
the technique.

>
> She recognized the greys, but wanted to point out that black & white
> still exist:

If there's black & white somewhere "out there" you should be able to tell me
where, but you're not, because colours, as we all know, are just in your
head, generated by your nerves. It's just light in different wavelengths.

>
>History does not equal fiction.
>

Structurally it does. Both are mostly put down in books.

> > > 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.
>
> "Truth" is in the realm of God.  And it is the strawman that you
constantly
> prop up.
>

Sorry to tell you but GOD is the biggest strawman of 'em all. Truth,
History, God -- these are the entities that you cannot rely on anymore. I
don't use strawmen in arguments against other people -- I've noted the high
frequency of the term "strawman" in posts on this list when people have no
arguments.

> One could say that "History" is static, but that accounts of it are not.
> That's pretty obvious.  And calling these accounts fiction is a disservice
> to what are the goals of history.  Some might want conciously to skew
> history to their ends, but there are historians who have a higher goal
than
> that.  Of course the same is true for journalism, as I pointed out
earlier.
> In fact I'd say history is much closer to journalism than it is to
fiction.
>
> Ghetta
>

The trouble is that before you can refute a concept like postmodernism
successfully you need to have understood the concept first.

ROLAND BARTHES THE DISCOURSE OF HISTORY
History's refusal to assume the real as signified (or again, to detach the
referent from its mere assertion) led it, as we understand, at the
privileged point when it attempted to form itself into a genre in the
nineteenth century, to see in the 'pure and simple' relation of the facts
the best proof of those facts, and to institute narration as the privileged
signifier of the real. Augustin Thierry became the theoretician of this
narrative style of history, which draws its 'truth' from the careful
attention to narration, the architecture of articulations and the abundance
of expanded elements (known, in this case, as 'concrete details').(15) So
the circle of paradox is complete. Narrative structure, which was originally
developed within the cauldron of fiction (in myths and the first epics)
becomes at once the sign and the proof of reality. In this connection, we
can also understand how the relative lack of prominence (if not complete
disappearance) of narration in the historical science of the present day,
which seeks to talk of structures and not of chronologies, implies much more
than a mere change in schools of thought. Historical narration is dying
because the sign of History from now on is no longer the real, but the
intelligible.
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/barthes.htm