Fiction vs History?

[Joel Katz]

what a load of crud this thread has become.  how the fuck can you equate 
terms like 'truth, history, and god'--as if the concept of truth doesn't 
have a history that includes the concept of god?

and what is this bullshit about truth being out of reach? i see people on 
this list constantly referring proudly to materialism--then all of a sudden, 
we're back on acid.  there is absolutely nothing abstracto-mystico about 
truth.  there is the rationality of interested parties who use deception, 
which is a form of currency like anything else, as a practical measure to 
further their ends--and the irrationality of those who are deceived.  
'rational' and 'irrational' have no meaning in and of themselves, but not 
only are they historically determined--their relation IS history.  there is 
nothing abstract about a society compelled to be militaristically aggressive 
because of its irrational need for unsustainable growth; there is nothing 
abstract about a mainstream news media that is increasingly subject to the 
same market forces that objectively presents itself as their one true 
subject.  what are they going to do:  attempt a national self-indictment?

conflicting motives or interetations do not mean truth is 'grey'; it means 
the source of the conflict has not been identified--or, if it has, has not 
been acknowledged.

'the world gets more and more rational every day; this is why its 
irrationality becomes more conspicous ever day'

-karl kraus





>>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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