- Narrative has been viewed neither as theory nor as a method, but rather as a form of discourse
- "historical" narrative differs from "fictional" narrative on the basis of its content not form
- The content in historical narratives are real events that are "found" but they can also be "constructed"-- verbal fictions
- Historical narrative follow empirically validated facts, but also need imaginative filling
- Narrative will be a result of the application of a proper historical method.
- Dissertative discourse -- interpretation / Narrative discourse -- representation
- Annales school members like Braudel criticized narrative history
- Follows postmodernist debate that there is no truth in history
- History is literary artifacts - distinguishes between history and story
- Historical narrative -- medium not the message
the question of narrative in contemporary historical theory/ Hayden White
History in Practice/ Jordonova
Jordonova talks about the practice of history, rather than a theoretical approach. "What historians actually do, and how and why they do it"
- The most important work of a historian is writing.
- Practice of history - finding sources -- archives, oral history, engaging with the material, writing.
- However reliable, even in the hands of the most impartial historian, documents can never tell us what happened in the past objectively
- What do historians mean by "truth"? -- Mistaken claims to knowledge
- History is neither an art nor a science
- Primary and Secondary sources - subject both to unsparing irterrogation
- Public history: History has written and produced by salaried historians against what the public seems to think happened (collective memory) -- popular history
- Public history - deeply political
Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire / Pierre Nora
"Nora begins with a basic distinction: between memory and history. He suggests that we
have arrived at a juncture at which history - cold, distant, critical - is taking the place of, and
hence largely eradicating, collective memory."
Memory - Traditional, peasant, lived, vibrant, collective
History - Modern, cold, distilled, belongs to no one and everyone
"Nora argues that the form of memory prompted by and reflected in lieux de memoire is fundamentally different from ''traditional memory''. It is ''modem memory'', memory "seized by history." Where traditional memory is unmediated, unconscious, and passed down through unspoken traditions, modem memory has been transformed by history: it is deliberate, voluntary, and, most importantly, always indirect - mediated by self-consciousness and awareness of the distance of the past."
"Modern Memory is archival: Here Nora brings in the preoccupation with conservation and preservation. Archives, museums, data banks, oral history projects, even photo albums exemplify "modem memory'', since they have "become the deliberate and calculated secretion of lost memory. [They] add to life...a prothesis-memory .... Even as traditional memory disappears, we feel obliged. .. to collect remains, testimonies, documents, images, speeches, any visible signs of what has been. .. " (13) That is, we hold on to pieces of the past because we think they will enable us to remember or re-encounter that which we know to be irretrievably lost We have forgotten how to remember, so we keep everything. The things we keep become lieux de memoire.
have arrived at a juncture at which history - cold, distant, critical - is taking the place of, and
hence largely eradicating, collective memory."
Memory - Traditional, peasant, lived, vibrant, collective
History - Modern, cold, distilled, belongs to no one and everyone
"Nora argues that the form of memory prompted by and reflected in lieux de memoire is fundamentally different from ''traditional memory''. It is ''modem memory'', memory "seized by history." Where traditional memory is unmediated, unconscious, and passed down through unspoken traditions, modem memory has been transformed by history: it is deliberate, voluntary, and, most importantly, always indirect - mediated by self-consciousness and awareness of the distance of the past."
"Modern Memory is archival: Here Nora brings in the preoccupation with conservation and preservation. Archives, museums, data banks, oral history projects, even photo albums exemplify "modem memory'', since they have "become the deliberate and calculated secretion of lost memory. [They] add to life...a prothesis-memory .... Even as traditional memory disappears, we feel obliged. .. to collect remains, testimonies, documents, images, speeches, any visible signs of what has been. .. " (13) That is, we hold on to pieces of the past because we think they will enable us to remember or re-encounter that which we know to be irretrievably lost We have forgotten how to remember, so we keep everything. The things we keep become lieux de memoire.
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