what is history
I'm reading "Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniards in Yucatan 1517-1570" by Inga Clendinnen. As I finish up the book I was wondering just why am I reading this? Of course, the common response is "we read history so we are not condemned to repeat the past." But what is history? I think I read history to understand the history of human being--but what is it that I'm really "understanding"?
Clendinnen states, "Historians, unready to stretch their inferences too far, and properly suspicious of freewheeling speculation, prefer to stay close to the rational, the calculated, in their efforts to explain conduct--the conduct of people in the past (Like the rest of us, they find such notions of little help when it comes to explaining the behavior of people around them, or for that matter, their own)", p. 126
First, I love the way Clendinnen uses language. One reason I stuck with this book is the sentence structure with its embedded clauses and its thoughtful reflection. I like the way the language is used, as if C is discovering her or his (don't know if the name is male or female) own ideas as he/she is writing. Rather then emphatically declaring events or causes.
Second, do historians stay calculated and rational? Should they? C is very careful to qualify all his statements so that the reader never thinks he is telling the truth but is rather attempting to disclose what is known of that time and also to speculate, at times, at what that knowledge might mean. But much of history seems to be telling a story, and the momentum and mood of the story are perhaps predominant over the calculation and rationality. Does it matter? Well, doesn't that depend on what history is?
Third, can history help us understand anyone's behavior (or human being itself?), should it? If we read so that we can get a broader perspective on how humans "be" and through that process develop
and increase our own tolerance and understanding and compassion through seeing the whole range of human behavior, motivation and frailty, does it matter if any of that reading is actually "true?" (many
critics, not the least of these Nabakov, I believe, argue strenuously against reading to get a lesson about people or ourselves, but I can't see exactly what else we would be doing it for? As Springsteen says, "I don't write songs about recording contracts". We don't read difficult, complex books for entertainment, do we?)
C spends a considerable amount of time exploring the motivations of a Franciscan, Landa, who comes to the Yucatan and begins converting the Indians, making great strides with them and showing, at least in his writings, a respect for their achievements even as he hopes to make them civilized and Christian. Years into his stay he finds out they have been worshiping idols and even, perhaps, making human sacrifices, he seems to go berserk. Torturing and even killing in his quest to get the "badness" out of the Mayan. C is careful not to suggest he knows L's motives but as you read his description of the time, it starts to seem that what is bothering L most is the fact that he believed he had converted these heathens and was feeling really good about his own skills. They betrayed him (not God) and he did not want to face what that might mean about his conversion or the way he spent his time. Now, all of this or none of this may actually be true (C's information comes largely from public records and a book that Landa wrote himself, so we do not know the reliability of the source and know from experience personal narratives are not always the most truthful) but seeing and interpreting Landa's behavior still allows us to understand how human minds and emotions work. It made me think of another book, Faulkner's Light in August, and how so often our motives are so tied to our idea of who we are and not having that idea disturbed, even when that idea leads us to hate ourself.
Which then led me to the question are (is?) our history of ourselves, the story we tell ourselves about our own lives (our narratives) just like big histories? Filled with omissions, lies, badly remembered stories, motives and intentions that in essence "force" us to develop a sense of ourselves that is completely fabricated? If that were more fully recognized would we be more inclined to hold that in
our minds at the same time we are thinking, acting judging and find ourselves more tolerant and flexible because so tenuous? Or would our fear of such a "reality" be so compelling that we would need to hang on even tighter to our narrative as "truth"? This seems to be what many politicians do--fight to the death to preserve their perspective of their self, ultimately, but in the name of the party or the political agenda.
There is a scene in Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon and Robin Williams are explaining a proof to another math professor and the look on the professors face as he realizes how wrong he is and how right he thought he was (for a long time) that captures, for me, this feeling of coming face to face with our own tenuous narrative structure. But what if we always accepted the structure as tenuous, then wouldn't those moments disappear and we could just accept?
There is an excellent few pages of discussion on the problems of ehtnographic research and
"upstreaming" (extrapolating from behavior in the present to impute behavior in the past) on pp. 131-133
Clendinnen states, "Historians, unready to stretch their inferences too far, and properly suspicious of freewheeling speculation, prefer to stay close to the rational, the calculated, in their efforts to explain conduct--the conduct of people in the past (Like the rest of us, they find such notions of little help when it comes to explaining the behavior of people around them, or for that matter, their own)", p. 126
First, I love the way Clendinnen uses language. One reason I stuck with this book is the sentence structure with its embedded clauses and its thoughtful reflection. I like the way the language is used, as if C is discovering her or his (don't know if the name is male or female) own ideas as he/she is writing. Rather then emphatically declaring events or causes.
Second, do historians stay calculated and rational? Should they? C is very careful to qualify all his statements so that the reader never thinks he is telling the truth but is rather attempting to disclose what is known of that time and also to speculate, at times, at what that knowledge might mean. But much of history seems to be telling a story, and the momentum and mood of the story are perhaps predominant over the calculation and rationality. Does it matter? Well, doesn't that depend on what history is?
Third, can history help us understand anyone's behavior (or human being itself?), should it? If we read so that we can get a broader perspective on how humans "be" and through that process develop
and increase our own tolerance and understanding and compassion through seeing the whole range of human behavior, motivation and frailty, does it matter if any of that reading is actually "true?" (many
critics, not the least of these Nabakov, I believe, argue strenuously against reading to get a lesson about people or ourselves, but I can't see exactly what else we would be doing it for? As Springsteen says, "I don't write songs about recording contracts". We don't read difficult, complex books for entertainment, do we?)
C spends a considerable amount of time exploring the motivations of a Franciscan, Landa, who comes to the Yucatan and begins converting the Indians, making great strides with them and showing, at least in his writings, a respect for their achievements even as he hopes to make them civilized and Christian. Years into his stay he finds out they have been worshiping idols and even, perhaps, making human sacrifices, he seems to go berserk. Torturing and even killing in his quest to get the "badness" out of the Mayan. C is careful not to suggest he knows L's motives but as you read his description of the time, it starts to seem that what is bothering L most is the fact that he believed he had converted these heathens and was feeling really good about his own skills. They betrayed him (not God) and he did not want to face what that might mean about his conversion or the way he spent his time. Now, all of this or none of this may actually be true (C's information comes largely from public records and a book that Landa wrote himself, so we do not know the reliability of the source and know from experience personal narratives are not always the most truthful) but seeing and interpreting Landa's behavior still allows us to understand how human minds and emotions work. It made me think of another book, Faulkner's Light in August, and how so often our motives are so tied to our idea of who we are and not having that idea disturbed, even when that idea leads us to hate ourself.
Which then led me to the question are (is?) our history of ourselves, the story we tell ourselves about our own lives (our narratives) just like big histories? Filled with omissions, lies, badly remembered stories, motives and intentions that in essence "force" us to develop a sense of ourselves that is completely fabricated? If that were more fully recognized would we be more inclined to hold that in
our minds at the same time we are thinking, acting judging and find ourselves more tolerant and flexible because so tenuous? Or would our fear of such a "reality" be so compelling that we would need to hang on even tighter to our narrative as "truth"? This seems to be what many politicians do--fight to the death to preserve their perspective of their self, ultimately, but in the name of the party or the political agenda.
There is a scene in Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon and Robin Williams are explaining a proof to another math professor and the look on the professors face as he realizes how wrong he is and how right he thought he was (for a long time) that captures, for me, this feeling of coming face to face with our own tenuous narrative structure. But what if we always accepted the structure as tenuous, then wouldn't those moments disappear and we could just accept?
There is an excellent few pages of discussion on the problems of ehtnographic research and
"upstreaming" (extrapolating from behavior in the present to impute behavior in the past) on pp. 131-133
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