Sometimes, when I am positively and overwhelmingly inspired, I tend to channel my mother's facial expressions, diction patterns and hand gestures. I can actually feel myself looking like her, which is sort of funny. I tend to speak in italics like she does and also I chop the air or the nearest horizontal surface with my hands, Jackie Chan-style. This little transformation happened recently when someone suggested to me that all history is a lie. One doesn't just SAY that to a history major without inciting some sort of personal riot; think of telling a math teacher that Newton really didn't know what he was talking about with all that calculus crap. It CAN'T be a lie, because it’s HISTORY. I can't base the next 7 years (and presumably hundreds of thousands of dollars) of my education on LIES...I might as well get an advanced degree in tooth fairy studies! After no small amount of chitchat, it was concluded that the language of history prohibits truth because the written word can never totally, accurately and truthfully represent the event, thus history is not the truth and nontruths are lies. I don't agree with this, simply because all language is rhetorical, and I think that especially with things that are produced as "historical fact" are assumed, in general, to be truth, when the people writing the given "factual" texts all have agendas to push. All of this was in relation to John Smith's chronicles of his adventures in the early colonial period, but can also be applied to this Marxist stuff we're studying here. Which is why liberal arts atmospheres are important. Thanks, Emmanuel.
The Marxist idea that a writer's social class (and subsequent "prevailing ideology") has a significant bearing on what is written by a member of said class (i.e., I could never really write anything about being fabulously rich until I am married to Donald Trump and espouse all the notions and lifestyle of those who are also terribly wealthy). These authors are not autonomous and inspired, but are chained by their class to a literary style and even a basic form rife with political overtones. If this is actually true, then our entire notion of the history of the world is written from perspectives directed at certain classes. Which also means that history is only "true" to those who share the same class as the author of the text studied, which makes history a "lie" to those who are beyond the pale. According to Marx (and the guy I was talking to on Monday) no literature (or written text, for that matter) is timeless, or represents constants in human nature. It all has context and overtones based on the experiences of the author, because the author can't escape his or her social placement. Liberal humanists believe in established truths and, based upon my understanding, Marxist readings "prove" that the only truths that exist spring from stratified social classes, and that the liberal humanist school participates wholeheartedly in this class-ridden literary ideal.
So maybe it's true, that history is a lie...
...Or maybe I'm not a Marxist.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I’d like to pick up where Marie left off. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels write: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Many years later, Fredric Jameson picks up this notion in a book called The Political Unconscious. For Jameson, all texts written under capitalism contain expressions of class struggle. Whatever the writer's politics, socio-economic station, world experience, etc., his or her text will necessarily include evidence of the class struggle that exists in, dare I say, the historical moment that gave rise to it. This is the truth of modern history.
the idea that the form is the function seems to be a heavy theme in marxism, which is one of the things that i really bristle at. it is also not just the truth of "modern" history, but all history in general. contemporaries of the chinese han are going to have a different perspective on the qing dynasty than the manchus who were zipping around on their ponies in the 1640s, or battles between roman forces and barbarians in the empire days, or watching fox news versus CNN coverage of the war in iraq. no history is without context, i just think marxism gets far too defensive about class struggles and tends to inject it into every aspect of life.
I suppose that in some sense you are right, Marie, all history contains elements of social inequality. But Marx was concerned with the effects of Capitalism on society. Consequently, it would be anachronistic to impose a Marxist reading of history on societies that predate the rise of Capitalism, hence, my reference to "modern history." When Capitalism began, however, is a different matter, and one that is worth thinking about in relation to the notions of history we have been discussing.
Post a Comment