Fiction vs History?

[Ghetta Life]

>From: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>
> >
> > >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.
> > > 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.

I suggest that your technique is getting in the way of understanding and 
communication, not enhancing it.

> > 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.

Wait a minute. Are they just in my head, or is it lightwaves?  BTW, my 
nerves don't generate anything, but they do register stimuli.  Also, haven't 
you just made a logocentric binary opposition?  "Out there" vs "In my head?" 
  A very ancient binary.  I know which side of that scale I tend toward.

I any case, there are differences in the quality of different light waves, 
thus some appear white and some appear black.  They're not all equal.  Some 
are good to read by.  Others are required for your psychidelic posters to 
glow.  Take it from THIS psychidelic poster!  :)

>>History does not equal fiction.
>
>Structurally it does. Both are mostly put down in books.

That's a structure created by you.  It's not necesarily a very useful one.  
In fact it's rather blunt and without nuance.  No matter how many times you 
say it you cannot reduce the cosmos to text.  And even then texts have 
different porposes and different validities.

> > "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.

I don't know if you are even TRYING to understand what I'm saying above.  
I'm not arguing in favor of GOD.  What I'm saying is that "T"ruth is beyond 
human reach (something I'm sure you agree with), and it is a strawman 
because you keep insisting that I am arguing for history as "T"ruth,  which 
I am not.  All we can do is reach approximations of that something called 
Truth.  But cognition is not enhanced by blurring or eliminating 
distinctions, as bekah was saying.

>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

OK, but who is to judge what is "intelligible?"

Ghetta

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