Historical Narratives and Understanding

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-44
Author(s):  
Stefan Petkov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The Past ◽  
Epistemic Criteria

This paper defends the view that narratives that bring understanding of the past need not be exhaustively analyzable as explanatory inferences, nor as causal narratives. Instead of treating historical narrative as explanations, I argue that understanding of history can be analyzed by the general epistemic criteria of understanding. I explore one such criterion, which is of chief importance for good historical narratives: potential inferential power. As a corollary, I dispute one of the distinctive features of narratives described by some philosophers: the non-aggregativity of narrative histories. Instead, I propose that historical narratives modestly aggregate and this aggregation depends on the success of the colligatory concepts they offer.

History Repeating Itself. The function of turning points and continuity in three historical narratives on operetta

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 102
Author(s):  
Mikael Strömberg
Keyword(s):  
Turning Points ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Narrative Strategy ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The article’s primary aim is to discuss the function of turning points and continuity within historiography. That a historical narrative, produced at a certain time and place, influence the way the historian shapes and develops the argument is problematized by an emphasis on the complex relationship between turning points and continuity as colligatory concepts within an argumentative framework. Aided by a number of examples from three historical narratives on operetta, the article stresses the importance of creating new narratives about the past. Two specific examples from the history of operetta, the birth of the genre and the role of music, are used to illustrate the need to revise not only the use of source material and the narrative strategy used, but also how the argument proposed by the historian gathers strength. The interpretation of turning points and continuity as colligatory concepts illustrate the need to revise earlier historical narratives when trying to counteract the repetitiveness of history.

Mink’s Riddle of Narrative Truth

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-370
Author(s):  
Chiel van den Akker
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Clear Distinction ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
Narrative Truth ◽  
As If

Abstract The problem how to ascertain the truth about the past is as old as history itself. But until the work of Louis Mink, no clear distinction was made between questions concerning the truth of statements on the past and questions concerning the truth of historical narratives as a whole. A narrative, Mink argues, is not simply a conjunction of statements on the past. Therefore its truth cannot be a function of the truth of its individual statements. The problem of narrative truth is according to him thus: although each statement (or set of statements) asserting a relation between events is subject to confirmation and disconfirmation, the combination of interrelations as established by the historical narrative is not, even though such combination of interrelations represents a real combination in past reality and is claimed to be true. As if to further complicate the problem, Mink maintains that history shares its form with fiction. Three and a half decades after Mink formulated the problem of narrative truth, it has not been dealt with in a satisfying manner. Mink does not solve nor dissolve the problem he posed. That task is taken up in this essay. It will move us away from the vocabulary of literary theory towards a pragmatist account of narrative truth.

scholarly journals Características Enunciativas Presentes em Textos Históricos de Divulgação Científica e Possíveis Contribuições ao Ensino

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 103-123
Author(s):  
Filipe Silva de Oliveira ◽  
Edson José Wartha
Keyword(s):  
Science Teaching ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Teaching History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Brazilian Science

ResumoHistória da Ciência e Ensino de Ciências são áreas do conhecimento com possibilidades de interface anunciadas e investigadas na atualidade, desse modo, produzindo conhecimento a comunidade de pesquisa interessada em encontrar caminhos didáticos para a sala de aula. Por meio de Narrativas Históricas (NHs), Estudo de Caso e sistematicamente Sequências Didáticas, essa interface tem sido desenvolvida. O estudo de textos históricos de divulgação científica auxilia a compreender a divulgação do conhecimento científico para o público comum no passado, acredita-se ser possível o uso desses textos na construção de materiais didáticos como Narrativas Históricas (NHs) e Estudo de Caso. Neste artigo discutimos características enunciadas em textos de divulgação científica escritos por um divulgador da ciência brasileiro, relacionando essas características na construção de Narrativas Históricas que venham a utilizar os textos desse divulgador. As características são conteúdo temático, composição do enunciado e estilo verbal. Essas características auxiliam na compreensão dos textos desse divulgador no processo de construção das Narrativas Históricas.Palavras-chave: Ensino de Ciências. História da Ciência. Divulgação Científica. Narrativa Histórica. AbstractHistory of Science and Science Teaching are areas of knowledge with possibilities of interface announced and investigated today, thus, producing knowledge to the research community interested in finding didactic paths for the classroom.  Through Historical Narratives (NHs) Case Study and systematically Instructional Sequences, this interface been developed. The study of historical texts of scientific popularization assist to understand the popularization scientific knowledge to the common public in the past, it is believed that the use of these is possible in the construction of instruction materials such as Historical Narratives (NHs) and Case Study. In this paper we discuss characteristics stated in scientific popularization texts written by a Brazilian science disseminator, relating these characteristics in the construction of Historical Narratives that come to use the texts of disseminator. Features are thematic content, statement composition and verbal style. These characteristics assist in the understand of the texts of this disseminator in the process of construction the Historical Narratives.Keywords: Science Teaching. History of Science. Scientific Popularization. Historical Narrative.

scholarly journals Combining time and space: An organizing concept for narratives in history teaching

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikael Berg
Keyword(s):  
Time Perspective ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
The Past ◽  
Teaching Content ◽  
Subject Specific

Abstract To construct a historical narrative in teaching content, teachers need subject-specific tools. This article explores how, in a history course taught in Sweden, different combi­nations of time and what can be called ‘space’ can operate as one such subject-specific tool. To collect data on how this might be done, semi-structured interviews were con­ducted with teachers who described the content of a history course they taught. Their statements in interviews, alongside examples of their teaching materials, were used to identify six different ways of combining time and space in history teaching. These combinations were then grouped into three categories: one, when time runs from the past to the present and where there is a strong emphasis on periodization and geo­graphical location; two, when time runs from the past to the present but there is less emphasis on periodization and geographical location and a greater emphasis on issues or themes across long periods of time; and three, when the time perspective is directed either forward or back in time and focuses on different aspects of the notion of ‘space’. The overall conclusion is that time and space categories can help to structure teaching content, mainly because they organize in specific ways the historical narrative on which that teaching content is based. The choice of time and space in teaching content can, therefore, shape the way history is taught as a subject. The results of this study contribute to a discussion of the subject-specific tools that are available for teachers when they construct narratives in their teaching of history. Keywords: history education, historical narratives, time and space, disciplinary concepts, subject-specific tool   Att kombinera tid och rum: Tidrum som ett organiserande tankebegrepp för narrativ i historieundervisning Sammandrag I syfte att konstruera historiska narrativ i ett undervisningsinnehåll behöver lärare tillgång till tankebegrepp. I den här artikeln undersöks, i en svensk historiekurs för gymnasiet, hur olika kombinationer av tid och rum, benämnda tidrum, kan utgöra sådana tankebegrepp. Artikeln bygger på semistrukturerade intervjuer med lärare som beskriver innehållet i en kurs de genomförde innevarande läsår för intervjuerna. I lärarnas utsagor från intervjuerna, tillsammans med lärarnas undervisningsmaterial, har sex olika sätt att kombinera tid och rum identifierats i deras historieundervisning. De tidrum som identifierats kunde sedan delas in i tre olika kategorier. En första kategori där tiden rör sig från det förflutna till nutid med en tydlig indelning i tidsperioder och geografisk anknytning. En andra kategori med betoning på långa linjer i historien där olika frågor följs. Här läggs mindre betoning på periodisering och geografisk anknyt­ning. Slutligen ett tidrum med tidsperspektiv som växlande rör sig mellan nutid och dåtid med fokus på olika historiska frågor. Den övergripande slutsatsen som dras, är att de tidrum som identifierats på ett genomgripande sätt bidrar till att forma de historiska narrativ som väljs för undervisningen. Urvalet av tidrum i ett undervisningsinnehåll har därför potential att forma så väl historieämnets innehåll som syfte. På så sätt bidrar den här artikeln till en diskussion om vilka tankebegrepp som finns tillgängliga för lärare när de formulerar innehållet i skolans historiekurser. Nyckelord: historieundervisning, historiska narrativ, tidrum, disciplinära begrepp, tankebegrepp

Framing the Qin collapse: redaction and authorship of the Shiji 史記

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chun Fung Tong
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sima Qian ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Authorial Voice

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between the Shiji’s authors and their sources by examining how they constructed the historical narrative of the fall of the Qin Empire. While Sima Qian and his father Sima Tan have been traditionally credited as the authors of the Shiji, their authorial voice was recently challenged by scholars. In response to the revisionist view, this paper discerns that the Shiji maintains a consistent narrative of the Qin collapse, which is generated through rigorous source redactions whereby Sima Qian and/or Sima Tan were able to incorporate their ideological agenda and personal opinions in subtle ways that are almost invisible to the reader. With such anonymity, the historiographers succeeded in establishing the authority of their historical narratives. Rather than simply juxtaposing the narratives of their sources, the Simas indeed authored their “patterned past” of the Qin collapse. However, the past constructed in the Shiji comprises various independent narratives whose plausibility is contingent upon the respective epistemic quality of their evidence rather than a harmonious discourse.

Models of Integration of Ukrainian Migrants in Poland in the Context of the Conflict of Historical Narratives

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-168
Author(s):  
Oxana Golovashina
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Host Community ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Internet Resources ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Close Contacts

The paper studies the integration models used by Ukrainian migrants living in Poland and the resulting problems associated with the rivalry between historical narratives of the Ukrainians and the host community. The author’s work is based on the concept of cultural memory (Maurice Halbwachs, Aleida Assman) and the idea of the dynamic character of images of the past (Jeffrey K. Olik). The data for the study was collected during 30 in-depth interviews with the Ukrainian migrants and also from social networks, forums and open Internet resources. The study has revealed that the majority of the Ukrainian migrants seek to avoid the rivalry between historical narratives, arguing that they personally are not involved in it and events of the past are no longer actual in modern life. Close contacts with representatives of the host community contribute to the assimilation of the Ukrainians. Only a few of the interviewed respondents choose the Ukrainian historical narrative, however they are not going to throw their lot in with Poland. The paper also thoroughly discussed the factors contributing to the choice of one or another position

The Special Responsibility of Public Spaces to Dismantle White Supremacist Historical Narratives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen L. B. Burgard ◽  
Michael L. Boucher
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Additive Models ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
Special Responsibility

Public historical spaces hold a powerful role in the teaching of a regional and national heritage curriculum. Those public sites, markers, museums, and monuments provide the narrative from which citizens conceptualize the past and they comprise a curriculum of American history. However, the calculated and intentional omission of the histories and identities of marginalized and oppressed people creates an unequal, ahistorical void that is filled by the hegemonic normality of the White supremacist narrative, creating a curriculum of White supremacy. Using research of historical understanding, racialized historical understanding, historical understanding in museums and public spaces, and the concept of erasure in history, this chapter investigates the important role public spaces play in presenting a holistic and complete historical narrative that goes beyond the additive models of multiculturalism and preserves the culture and heritage of all peoples.

scholarly journals The Unpredictable Lightness of History in Nicolas Cavaillès’ Novellas on the Mauritius Islands

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Fevronia Novac
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Western History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Mauritius Island

Nicolas Cavaillès ponders on a philosophy of history mixed with humour and irony in his historical narratives of remote islands in the Indian Ocean in two of his novellas: Life of Mr. Legaut (the story of a Huguenot who is forced to leave his native France and travels to these islands) and The Dead on the Donkey, where the wanderings of un unfortunate donkey across the Mauritius Island allow the narrator to relate the history of the island and its tragic trajectory to modernity. The idea of Western history as progressive evolution is rolled upside down with irony in Cavaillès's philosophical reflection on the circumstances leading to colonial expeditions in Life of Mr. Leguat (2013) and in the successive destruction of the Mauritius Island in the novella The Dead on the Donkey (2018). If Cavaillès builds his books hermeneutically, he also defies hermeneutics by denying all forms of possible understanding of the events described. The actions of his protagonists, human or animal, are the result of circumstances that are well known, but so absurd that they cannot form a historical narrative. If they did, this narrative would look like a hybrid of Beckett's absurd and Cioran's despair. Anti-Hegelian, since history here does not lead to individual freedom, Cavaillès's conception of history equally challenges Nietzsche's representation of unhistorical temporality in an attempt to solve humanity’s relation to the past for enacting a more desirable future. In far away Edenic islands, colonized by powerful states and inhabited by human and animal slaves, no philosophy could make sense of history.

scholarly journals Contesting the Past: Narratives of Trinidad & Tobago history

2008 ◽  
Vol 81 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 169-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Brereton
Keyword(s):  
Trinidad And Tobago ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Public History ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
The Past

Discusses the national narratives developed historically in Trinidad and Tobago. Author describes how the past has been interpreted differently, for different purposes, and by different ethnic groups. She first pays attention to 2 hegemonic historical narratives during the colonial era: the British imperial historical narrative and the French Creole one, associated with political and/or planter elites. Next, she discusses how since the mid-20th c. the anticolonial, nationalist movement responded to this, including academics, resulting in the Eric Williams-led Afro-Creole narrative, dominant in the decades since the 1961 independence, connecting Trinidad as a nation with African-descended Creoles. Further, she highlights challenges to the dominant Afro-Creole narrative, mainly since the 1970s, emerging partly in the domain of "public history", and mostly ethnicity-based. She discusses the politics of (Amerindian) indigeneity in Trinidad, the Tobago narrative, related to its distinct history, the Afrocentric narrative, and the Indocentric narrative, the latter including a more recent extreme Hinducentric narrative. Author points out that the Afro-Creole master narrative, and subsequent (ethnic) counternarratives eclipsed (at least academically) increasing class-based, or gendered historical narratives.

scholarly journals Сreating the Narrative on the Cossacks’ History of the Civil War Era in the South of Russia in the System of the Soviet Ideology of the 1920s – 1930s

2019 ◽  
pp. 135-147
Author(s):  
Vasilina Klopikhina
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of

Introduction. The article is devoted to the problem of forming the narrative on the history of the Don, Kuban and Terek Cossacks during the Civil war in the system of Istparts (Commissions on the history of the October revolution and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)) of the North Caucasus. The experts had not only the task to write a “different” history of modern times, but also to form a historical narrative, which was to reflect the interpretation of events permitted by the authorities as the basis for a new model of historical memory. Creating the narrative in the operation system of Istparts determined the principles of selecting material and formulating key research issues. Methods and materials. The study is based on the methodology of “new local history”. The author analyzes local historical narratives as images of the past created by Istparts of the North Caucasus with the help of discursive analysis. Analysis. The paper analyzes the interpretation of the Cossacks’ history in the period of the socio-political crisis. It was found that in the 1920s the attention of researchers was focused on the search for class differentiation and struggle in the Cossacks’ history. As a result, local historical narratives present an original interpretation of the Cossack stratification, which demonstrates the authors’ desire to present the history of the Cossacks in accordance with the methodological instructions of the Commission on the history of the October Revolution and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). At the same time, they reflect judgments that are not limited to the ideological paradigm. This is due to the fact that in local historical narratives it was not always possible to combine the peculiarities of the historical process in the region with the proposed scheme and settings of the center. In the 1930s, there was a change in substantial aspects of constructing a new model of historical memory and historical narrative as its basis associated with the assertion of Stalin’s sole power. Published works were publicly criticized and banned. The authors of such works were repressed in the era of the Great terror. At this time there appeared new ideological interpretations of the Cossacks’ history. Since 1936, the political campaign “for the Soviet Cossacks” had been reflecting in creating the narrative in the system of Istparts. Results. Scientific analysis of sources and coverage of complexity and ambiguity of the historical process in the region were replaced by simple but “correct” ideological statements. With the help of interpreting the past focusing research attention on class stratification and explanation of the Cossacks’ place in the history of the Civil war a new image of the Cossacks was formed in public consciousness.

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