In class on Wednesday, the distinction between history and historiography was brought up. This was a really interesting part of our discussion for me personally, mostly because my idea of “history” has always been the written out chapters in textbooks, the stories told by others, and the memorization of dates, names, and events. The topic of historiography versus history made me think about history as more of an abstract idea, a concept of the past and it’s purpose. This realization led to me thinking of historiography, the ‘writing down of history,’ or the choosing of what is important and noteworthy, as our way of applying history to our lives. Lately in class, we have been discussing how the media (television shows, magazines, etc.) are designed to give us what we want to see, read, and hear. Well, I think this is largely what every social and cultural construct is designed to do. This is what literature can do, and this is what history seems to be able to do as well. The difference is that written works from the past can be revisited, and we can determine from them what must have been important or new at a given time. It is argued that these works cannot capture history fully, because they were written by biased individuals who had opinions about what was important, and because these individuals cannot have possibly included everything in their work. I agree, I think that this history cannot in fact be written down, because it is abstract. We cannot make something abstract become concrete, simply because not all nouns represent something physical. How could a person paint a picture of love? They could paint their idea of love in the form of two people embracing, or of a mother holding her child. But at the end of the day neither of these things epitomize love. This is why historiography, and what we generally think of when we hear ‘history,’ is an art of its own, and it should be appreciated as such. When a work of art is critiqued, the critic may say ‘I think that the artist should have incorporated this’ or ‘I think that the piece lacks that,’ in an effort to improve or expand a work, to help it become more complete. This is how written accounts of history should be viewed and discussed, not with cynicism or even with mere doubt, but with concern for the validity and verisimilitude of it.
History isn’t written by the victors. It isn’t written by anyone.
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