thanks,
victor,
for confirming what i have been arguing: that
past events do not write history, people do.
history is a rhetorical practice, as you say, and a collective enterprise
with many people making sense of each others' writing, adding
interpretations to interpretations, and allowing multiple views.
the only comment i wish to make -- a semantic one for sure but one with
epistemologically implications -- is on your saying that the conversation
among historians "tends to rectify inaccuracies (or questionable
interpretations)." "inaccuracy" has to do with insufficiently detailed and
faulty representations, in measurement theory, the occurrence of error in
the measure of something measured, in your case, questionable
interpretations of what happened. inaccuracy can only be asserted when the
events in question are accessible. by definition of history they have past.
without direct access to historical events, all that historians can do is
achieve COHERENCE of the surviving accounts, lack of contradictions.
coherence and lack of contradiction has nothing to do with truth. and it
would be better to say that the conversation among historians tends to sort
out perhaps even explain incoherences in documents pertaining to past
events.
two more points.
(1) from my perspective - and i don't want to get into another fandangle
with believers in single truths - whatever happened can only be described in
terms of human perceptions. most historical events have many participants.
even a volcanic eruption affects the lives of survivors differently. a war,
for example, involves victors and losers; and soldiers, officers,
politicians; women and children; designers of military hardware and its
users. all of them have experiences they witnessed. to understand a war in
history as well as what is going on in iraq right now means listening to
very many voices not one. there can be no single truth.
(2) you mentioned holocaust deniers. we have not only physical evidence of
the holocaust but also movies that were made before we couldn't manipulate
footage the way we can do it now. in the analysis of narratives, we
distinguish between first-person accounts of experiences by witnesses, which
are far more trustworthy than third-person accounts of writers on the
holocaust, whether they are deniers or historians who have not been there,
cannot and do not write about their experiences but construct "facts" from
such accounts. we often can distinguish between stories lived and stories
heard, and if one wants to know what happened, stories that are told as
lived are the only ones one can trust. historians with a background in
narrative theory know the difference between telling lived stories and
rearticulating told stories. a contemporary problem is to distinguish
between stories lived and stories heard in cases of child abuse by parents
who often tell their children what to say in court. holocaust deniers can
make their case only by ignoring the stories lived by victims, survivors,
and ss-guards -- which requires the acceptance of many stories. even the
holocaust, i would say, is not a singular event that can be affirmed or
denied, it resides the many stories of people that lived through it.
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: Victor Margolin [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2008 9:24 PM
To: Klaus Krippendorff
Subject: RE: language and fiction
Dear Klaus;
Thanks for your comments. In fact, writing history is a collective
experience, an activity engaged in by many historians, which does insure
that no single history will rule the roost. I am currently writing a world
history of design by myself in the tradition of Mumford Giedion Toynbee, the
Durants and others. It is clear that this will be one narrative rather than
the narrative. I think it is generally understood that history is a
rhetorical practice and that by having many historians writing an indirect
conversation emerges which, over time, tends to rectify inaccuracies or
questionable interpretations. While some would argue that the days of the
single individual writing a synthetic history are over, I would disagree
given the fact that the single author exposes the rhetorical nature of
history writing and provides much for other historians to comment on.
Best, Victor
>dear victor and others interested in this discussion
>
>(1) if you do not wish to regard history as fiction, as you say, then
>you use the word non-fiction the way it is commonly interpreted as
>"describing something purportedly happened." i would not deny you your
>preference, noting however the word "purportedly" in my definition --
>and if ken looks up whether this definition occurs in the dictionary, it is
my definition.
>to me the difference between fiction and non-fiction lies in claiming
>(representational) truth or coherence.
>
>to me the debate was not about fiction vs, non-fiction (to which ken
>reduced the argument) but about teena saying "WRITING IS FICTION" and
>my generalizing "IF FICTION IS CREATED BY SOMEONE (or something like
>that -- to which i like to add: composed, rearticulated, shaped,
>designed, made useful for someone, ...) THEN THE WORLD WE KNOW IS
>FICTION." it is important not to ignore the IF.... the historians i
>know are not cameras that record whatever marches in front of their
>eyes, historians work hard to make sense of what they read, creatively
>interpret the past to be read and appreciated by present colleagues and
>other readers. only technical devices can accurately record past events
>(save for some technical limitations) regardless of who looks at it and
whether anyone makes sense of its records.
>cameras cannot lie.
>
>(2) your question regarding the blind man experiencing the tale of an
>elephant by touch may seems so obvious that i suspect hides another
>question. let me answer both:
>
>(2a) the answer to your explicit question is NO, the blind man who
>touches the elephant's tail has an experience. by definition,
>experiences are not fictional, whether the individual is blind or not.
>
>(2b) i think your question is embedded in the "fable of the blind men
>and the elephant." those who don't know it can find a history of that
>story and several versions of it in:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Men_and_an_Elephant ;
>http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html. the story
>describes several blind men touching different parts of an elephant's
>body, each experiencing something different and are unable to agree on
>what they were confronted with. the supposed moral of the story is
>that people who foolishly argue over truths know only parts of it, not the
whole truth.
>
>the story dupes the readers into believing there is a single whole
>truth, as told by the storyteller from a disembodied god's eye
>perspective, demonstrating that all other perspectives are partial and
inferior.
>So, one who tells a story in third-person (objective) terms is to be
>believed whereas those who tell a story in first person terms are not
>-- the classical rhetorical device of scientific writing.
>
>i hope that answers your question.
>
>klaus
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Victor Margolin [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 8:59 PM
>To: Klaus Krippendorff
>Subject: RE: language and fiction
>
>Dear Klaus:
>I take your points about the different ways of conceptualizing language
>as you know far more about the field than I. However, I would not agree
>with your use of the term 'fiction' for historical writing. Would you
>say that the blind man who feels the elephant's tail and describes it
>is having a fictive experience? I would not. I think that when we begin
>conflating fiction with partial versions of complex phenomena we run
>into the problem of not giving credence to any narrative accounts as
>all seem equally unpersuasive.
>Best, Victor
>
>>Victor,
>>
>>I understand where you are coming from, but I wished you would
>>consider other, more socially informed conceptions of language than
>>the one you singly subscribe to.
>>
>>Taking language as a system and means of representation is what
>>Volosinov aptly describes as abstract/objectivist, others take as
>>positivist, and conceptualizing language that way carries an
>>epistemological baggage that leads you to conceptions of
>>representational truth, to a separation of experiences and language,
>>which is not born out by research about perception, ethnographic
>>methods, and the like.
>>
>>If you are interested in other conceptions of language, there is the
>>romantic notion of language as a medium of individual expression,
>>there is the dialogical notion of language as consisting of speech
>>acts and their acceptance by interlocutors, there is the
>>interpretivist notion of language that applies social criteria to the
>>acceptability of assertions. As a historian, you might be interested
>>in the latter, as most historians have not lived the stories they
>>rearticulate in lectures and in books, to be accepted or rejected by
>>other historians who have no access to the reality they describe
>>either, being able to decide only on the basis of consistency and
>>coherence (without being able to justify why consistency and coherence
>>is such a good criterion since all historical events are experienced
>>differently by different people whose voices we sort out). Moreover,
>>historical events, as they were, are by definition inaccessible and
>>historians are highly selective as to what these events left behind,
>>raising the question of fiction as the preferred story told.
>>
>>klaus
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
>>related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>>Behalf Of Victor Margolin
>>Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 6:02 PM
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: language and fiction
>>
>>dear colleagues:
>>At the risk of annoying some people and being taken to task for not
>>responding to each of the arguments in the discussion I would like to
>>offer the following statements
>>
>>1) Language is a form of representation; it is a system of signs
>>through which we seek to communicate experiences both actual and
>>imaginative
>>2) We can't say that anything is absolutely true but we can make
>>assumptions based on our own experience. I would use the term 'fiction'
>>to refer to acts of the imagination that do not purport to be actual
>>experiences. I would say otherwise that language may be more or less
>>persuasive in convincing us that something actually happened
>>3) Events that individuals experience are real, presuming that we
>>accept that sensory experience more often than not corresponds to the
>>real; linguistic representations of so called real events are more or
>>less persuasive; they can be verified by multiple accounts or refuted
>>by similar means; to the degree that we live through representations
>>we need to make judgements about what to accept as actual and what to
>>discount as fiction (something that is not actual)
>>4) linguistic representation is a form of mediation between
>>individuals; it can be critiqued in terms of its capacity (in a
>>particular instance) to accurately or fairly represent something that
>>happened.
>>I will stop here. This is simply my attempt to be reasonable. It is
>>crazy to deny experience. Holocaust deniers, for example, are not
>>credible. There is too much evidence to contradict their claims. We
>>develop our own capacities to judge the accuracy of linguistic
>>representation, i.e. to judge whether something said is likely to be
>>an
> >accurate representation. It also helps to use the term 'fiction'
>>for works that are self-consciously imaginative. To call history
>>writing, for example, fiction, is to suggest that there is no claim to
>>any degree of veracity. Of course some historians try to cover up the
>>truth and to the degree that they do, they depart from actuality and
> >present a work that is purely imaginative. To the degree that they
> try
>>to create a narrative based on events, they may be taken seriously as
>>historians. Of course, any work in the humanities is subject to
>>interpretation and that is what, in my opinion differentiates the
>>humanities from the sciences. They expose themselves as
>>representations and allow for interpretation and debate as legitimate
>>forms of response.
>>Enough.
>>Victor Margolin
>>--
>>Victor Margolin
>>Professor Emeritus of Design History
>>Department of Art History
>>University of Illinois at Chicago
>>935 W. Harrison St.
>>Chicago, IL 60607-7039
>>Tel. 1-312-583-0608
>>Fax 1-312-413-2460
>>website: www.uic.edu/~victor
>
>
>--
>Victor Margolin
>Professor Emeritus of Design History
>Department of Art History
>University of Illinois at Chicago
>935 W. Harrison St.
>Chicago, IL 60607-7039
>Tel. 1-312-583-0608
>Fax 1-312-413-2460
>website: www.uic.edu/~victor
--
Victor Margolin
Professor Emeritus of Design History
Department of Art History
University of Illinois at Chicago
935 W. Harrison St.
Chicago, IL 60607-7039
Tel. 1-312-583-0608
Fax 1-312-413-2460
website: www.uic.edu/~victor
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