Paul,
When I think "history" I think of the various "texts" that one had to read
in school. As I'm sure you'd acknowledge those are very ideological tools.
If I'm incorrect let me know, but I take you coming from a Marxist
historical framework which of course gives a strong(er) truth value to
history.
I've always enjoyed Bruner's comment "historians construct history its a
lame excuse to say children can't do it". This was in reference to debates /
discussion Bruner had til 5 in the morning with Russian friends about how
now should history be approached in Russia. He asks why we don't have those
discussians in the states and of course the answer is we won.
Maybe a better seperation would be history and histography - but here I
think its essential to acknowledge that there is an ideological mediation.
Yet, a seperation to a certain extent is essential - certain events did
happen - cargo cults, holocaust, slavery that had a profound impact on
various activity systems.
In reading the intro, this debate was in my mind and I wondered how an
activity outlook could allow us to think differently - if at all. In
particular rather than history (human) encompassing culture (Papua New
Guinea)or the other way around - trying to look at it as two activity
systems intermingleing. One contemporary (last 30 years) issue is that in
New Guinea there were hundreds of local languages, but with the cargo cult
came pig latin (slave language)which was somewhat universal.
Personally, to say that history is a text preserves its ideological
character which I believe is central to remember. One can read Capital or
any of the other historical texts as claiming some sort of objective truth
or as ideological master pieces - I prefer the latter.
Nate
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul H.Dillon [mailto:illonph@pacbell.net]
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 4:03 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: history-text relations
Kevin,
One thing is certainly clear from your quite self-assured comment: for you,
as apparently for Dianne and Martin, there is nothing but text and you feel
no need to ground this further. (of course the notion of grounding is
antithetical to the purposes of deconstruction which is rather to dissolve).
I suppose it is impossible, and probably pointless, to discuss it , since
the discussion becomes one of: "Yes it is" "No it isn't" "yes it is" etc.
even if one party is attempting to provide more complete responses. I
won't go there, and in each of my preceding posts I have presented quite
specific positions that you find convenient to overlook.
Nevertheless, allow me to point out that in my several posts in this thread,
I certainly have indicated an entire range of processes, structures, and
perpsectives to indicate why history shouldn't be considered as text any
more than gravity should, and that to reduce my position to being something
about the events I used in one of the first posts on the topic to dramatize
a point, is not deconstruction, it is decontextualization.
Paul H. Dillon
----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Rocap <krocap@csulb.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 11:31 AM
Subject: Re: history-text relations
> Dear Martin, Diane and Paul,
>
> And any history we can write or talk about is certainly "text;" to
> deconstruct "history" one must be very, very quiet.
>
> And my sense is that Paul is evoking the primal experiences of being
> shot or bombed or colonised, the "what happens to us" or to others when
> we are not talking or writing about it, which perhaps you (Diane and
> Martin) are right is not-history.
>
> In Peace,
> K.
>
>
>
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