History Astriction
The hot topic of History as Fiction seems to
be….history and fiction. What is the difference between them? On the first day
of class, I was like, what kind of question is that? Obviously, history happened
and fiction is made up. Then I realized we were talking about historical
accounts and fiction. That’s a little more complicated.
The prominent arguments are as follows: Historians all
have their own perspectives on an event and only selective information about
what occurred. For many years, historians (mainly rich and white and male) firmly
believed their records were pure fact. They tried to astrict their work to what
actually happened. However, even people who viewed the event firsthand only
know what they saw. Every writer has their own biases, experiences, and senses.
Perhaps then it is impossible to find a historical account that is
unquestionably accurate and captures the whole story. Does that make the works
of historians fiction? Where falls
the line?
Ragtime
is
a novel. However, as Mr. Mitchell said, who’s to say the events didn’t actually
happen? We have no proof they didn’t happen. I mean, we have some proof of some
things. Our Gang (the original The Little Rascals) was not created by Baron Ashkenazy unless the Baron
Ashkenazy happens to be Hal Roach. Mother and father and the other unspecified
characters could very well have existed, and probably did exist on some level
in Doctorow’s life. If those people did exist and they did things that could
have been interpreted from Doctorow’s perspective into scenes of the novel Ragtime, then are those scenes still a
work of fiction or are they a record of unknown history?
I wonder if the history as fiction argument has
exceptions. Is it possible for something to be strictly historical? For
example, the Nazi records of concentration camps. Statistics are pure history unless the numbers are botched for whatever reason. A description can be pure
history. History.com has a page about Auschwitz: “Located in southern Poland, Auschwitz initially served as a detention center for political prisoners. However, it evolved into a network of camps where Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state were exterminated, often in gas chambers, or used as slave labor.” That counts as history, right? Am I misinterpreting something?
Can you think of examples where there’s a distinct line between history and fiction? Is it possible for historians to be 100% accurate?
Maybe the debate of whether history is fiction only applies to straight historical stories. Alexander Hamilton sat down and began writing the federalist papers. That could be retold from another perspective along the lines of Alexander Hamilton poured himself a glass of wine and cracked open a scroll. Taking a satisfying sip from his glass, he smacked his lips and lowered himself precisely into his chair. With resignation towards the task before him, Alexander sighed and set down his glass before unscrewing a fresh inkpot. The tip of the feather pen was saturated, and the fateful meeting of words and paper began. That could have happened. We don’t know. Did people write with feathers back then? The point is, it could have happened. How close does a historical account have to be to “confirmable fact” to be considered history, and what if it’s a fact but we can’t actually confirm it?
I apologize that this blog post was mostly questions. I’m very confused, just, like, in general. If you’re still reading this, I wish you all the answers I don’t have.
Can you think of examples where there’s a distinct line between history and fiction? Is it possible for historians to be 100% accurate?
Maybe the debate of whether history is fiction only applies to straight historical stories. Alexander Hamilton sat down and began writing the federalist papers. That could be retold from another perspective along the lines of Alexander Hamilton poured himself a glass of wine and cracked open a scroll. Taking a satisfying sip from his glass, he smacked his lips and lowered himself precisely into his chair. With resignation towards the task before him, Alexander sighed and set down his glass before unscrewing a fresh inkpot. The tip of the feather pen was saturated, and the fateful meeting of words and paper began. That could have happened. We don’t know. Did people write with feathers back then? The point is, it could have happened. How close does a historical account have to be to “confirmable fact” to be considered history, and what if it’s a fact but we can’t actually confirm it?
I apologize that this blog post was mostly questions. I’m very confused, just, like, in general. If you’re still reading this, I wish you all the answers I don’t have.
Great post! I love the example you made with Hamilton at the end. I've been struggling with these same questions as well. It's difficult to say whether a historical account can truly be 100% accurate because, as you said, everything is written from a specific perspective and that perspective may not be universally shared. Of course, this bias is present in fictional writing as well. That being said, if a historian and a novelist both decided they wanted to represent a historical event/time period as accurately as possible, would there really be much of a difference in the truth between the two? I feel like it's possible for the novelist to be as accurate as the historian, given that they both have their own biases, and they're both aiming to be as historically accurate as possible.
ReplyDeleteI honestly am not a huge fan of getting bogged down in the details of what differentiates history and fiction. In the end, it's all ultimately up to the masses to decide how they want to view works claiming to be "history" or "fiction." Because as we've seen already, we can sketch out an entire history of what exactly history was. Everything in the end just ends up being political–the authors and historians all have their own ideas or biases on how things happen, and whether they mean to or not, those biases get expressed in their work. Everyone ends up telling a story in some way or another, the question just becomes what we can pull from that story and call "historical fact."
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ethan. I think all of this boils down to a certain level of personal bias and subjectivity. I think the difference between history and fiction lies in the eyes of the beholder.
DeleteOhhhhhh man this is some galaxy brain type shit right here. I'm not going to even try to get into most of it, but thank you for making my brain think really hard on what was a leisurely Saturday. Obviously you can never find an account that's 100% accurate --- think of how easily humans are influenced by other humans' opinions. Five people can witness the same event, but if some part of the event happens too quickly for everyone to see it, they'll have disagreeing opinions. If one of them is super persuasive, they'll convince the other four to believe a specific sequence of events. It's not on purpose and it's not malicious, it's just how the human brain works. You can even see it in yourself with personal memories. Has someone ever told you their memory of an event that you were at, but do not personally recall? As they've told the story, do you magically start to "remember" it? In theory, you could be summoning the memory you have of what actually happened from the back of your brain. But it's also likely that the memory is being created from the other person's account of what happened. In short, you may not even be able to trust your own brain when it comes to history. Memories get fuzzy. Who's to say your account of the past is accurate? It's probably not. Therefore, we have no account of history that is 100% accurate. We can't remember every detail, and most of the stuff we do remember may not even be correct.
ReplyDeleteThese are definitely difficult questions to grapple with, and I don't think there is a clear answer to any of them. History is, at the end of the day, a biased narrative, but its absolutely incredibly important from us to learn from our history. The key, I personally think, is to learn from as many different perspectives as possible and to critically analyze them. That was the problem with the old way we taught history and told it, through only the perspective of the white straight male, and how people of color and women "had no history". This problem still remains today, even in ways lots of people don't realize. The Holocaust is undeniable and a tragedy -- but its denied, not just by far-right radicals in the US who refute history classes, but in schools around the globe where its just not talked about (or if it is, very very briefly as almost a footnote) in the context of World War II. I was horrified when I learned about World War II in a Russian history class and the tragedy of lost Jewish lives was brushed over briefly and only vaguely talked about. Different narratives are still applied to the same historical events, and to different people, the truth varies, and I suspect that might not ever change.
ReplyDeleteNice post, it's got me thinking! I see some of these questions coming down to the philosophy of science as well. Because when we make a claim like "this pyramid was constructed in year ____" we can ask ourselves what does verification mean. We can find writings that are consistent, we can use instruments to date the stone, and find remnants of materials that are consistent with are theory. But what does it truly mean to verify? Maybe it doesn't exist. Maybe the closest we can get is falsifying bad theories and creating new ones.
ReplyDeleteI feel like we cannot draw a firm line between historical narrative and fictional narrative, but we can draw a line between historical event and fictional. We can't arrive at a single truth of narrative, but we can say whether or not we know something specific to have happened or not. Or we can most of the time, at least. And from there we have to decide. We have to decide what narratives to trust, which ones can tell us something about who we are and how to be better, and which ones are trying to convince us to be worse, which ones are trying to convince us to withdraw, to be looking out only for ourselves. And those narratives, they can be fictional, or they can be historical. They can claim to be one but be the other. But that's true of all narratives.
ReplyDeleteIn the example you cite, where facts about Auschwitz are presented seemingly without "bias" or subjectivity, we still see traces of *narrative* logic in the construction of those facts: the story arc where the camp originally served as detention for political prisoners, but then "evolved" into death camps (interesting use of evolution!). There's a *story* implied and reflected in this construction--and it is possible, if deeply offensive, to organize these facts into a *different* story. Even the use of "evolved" here is a little weird: we could imagine a Nazi-sympathizing commentator using such a formulation to imply the death camps developing along a positive arc (death camps as a more "evolved" form of political detention).
ReplyDelete