Monday, January 24, 2011
Imperialism
As I was reading the article about imperialism and decolonization I thought a lot about was it means to be "history." First, I thought the point about feminism breaking the word down to his-tory was intriguing but it seemed like kind of a stretch to me. I think the fact that the word can be deconstructed that way is more a coincidence than anything. It's true that women have been treated poorly and misrepresented throughout history but so have a bunch of other people - basically every minority in every conflict. Don't they always say the winner writes history? This sort of transitions into the next thing I wanted to talk about. Can we really trust "history?" What is history? Is it the Monday night special on the History Channel? The textbook they assign for History 4A? The story of your family that your grandfather or grandmother tells you as a child? It seems like there are so many things in our culture that we take to be history, but when we examine it closely, how can we be sure that they are accurate? History is something that we exalt, especially in the United States, so one would think that it would be critical for such a powerful thing to be accurate. We base moral lessons and even future actions off of previous historical events and when we do so I feel like we're assuming that the retelling of the event is true. I think these questions regarding the characteristics and quality of history have an important setting in this class because one of the largest themes, decolonization, fits right into the issue of what is history. Back to "the winner writes the history", I think that very valid statement should make us consider the source of indigenous history. Because if it's indigenous history written by the "winner" (Western culture), can it ever really be genuine/accurate?
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I had some similar questions while reading my History 4A book. I think, and this is strictly my personal view, that the theory of a "tainted history"is only partly true. Yes, the majority of it was probably recorded by the oppressor rather than the oppressed, or as you said, "the winner"; however, I think contemporary historians really strive to avoid this problem. For example, and this has nothing to do with NAS 5, my history book's description about the Roman Empire and the invasion of the "barbarians" challenges the misconception that these early barbarians were savage, ruthless animals. In other words, maybe our history has improved with the growth of human knowledge and willingness to accept different points of view. Nevertheless, there definitely are some bad textbooks out there (especially in high school), so maybe I'm wrong.
ReplyDeleteI agree that history is mostly written by the dominant society and yeah recently texts have changed and try to be more neutral, but it's because we are having more indegenous writers/scholars write history as well, such as professor Victor Montejo.
ReplyDeleteWe are finally able to hear their side and just like the western society they too can be scholars and tell history from their point of view.
Like some one said in class "history is written by the powerful by the rulers". I believe that history is recorded by only one person's point of view. How trust worthy are people? The truth is that we only know the history that others want us to know. No matter how many history books anyone reads there will never be an accurate telling of any part of the past. I believe that history can be broken down into his-story. But this does not mean that only a man can write about the past it just means that history is nothing more that some ones summary of what happened in the past. And of course every writer can write at his or hers own discretion. This just means that every one can write about the past but every one has some sort of biased in their writing and can we truly trust our neighbor to retell everything that happened in the lives of a whole population or even their own life?
ReplyDeleteReally valid points addressed in this blog. Each one of you add to the conversation. This concept of 're'writing history, for me, is not about getting the one 'true' or 'real' version of history but, rather, to stand back and allow the poligensis of histories to emerge. To each group, person, culture there are multi 'real' histories and it is important that they all be on the same level. Godd job guys!
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