Historical Representations and Truthfulness
Robert F. Berkhofer’s third chapter of his 1995 book Beyond the Great Story is a terrible chapter. Terribly dense, terribly convincing, terribly contrarian, (which I enjoyed) and thusly terrible for the “normal historian.” His complex encapsulation of the traditional historical approach and the (rather obvious once observed) identification of irreconcilable issues within such an approach is apt. Despite his wordiness, there is quite a bit of conceptual unpacking that is required which necessitates a dense and rich text to properly explain and expound these ideas.
First, he establishes the concepts of the “Great Story” and the “Great Past.” This falls under what Berkhofer calls a “Philosophy of Realism” (aka objectivism.) (p.47) This can be described as a belief in a Great Story/Past and a belief that history can accurately correspond to the real past. (p.48) After establishing this, he demonstrates that “acknowledged facts are not enough to guarantee a single best interpretation” with a constitutional analogy on authorial “original intent.” (p.48) This calls into question one of the foundations of history, by questioning the existence of a “Great Story/Past,” but he doesn’t stop there.
He proceeds to “shred” the value of the concept of a “single, right, or best interpretation.”
“Although a single fact can ‘disprove’ an interpretation, no number of facts can definitely ‘prove’ one.” (p.51) He continues to explain that facts create narrative and that narratives also create facts.
In realizing how little space I have left, it is clear to me that I cannot fully flesh out his ideas here, as much as I would enjoy. Suffice it to say, he says (if I may paraphrase) that historians are doing it all wrong, conceptually, from the get go. Not only does he convincingly make his argument but he offers an alternate framework with his focus on the role of Meta-understanding. In order to reconcile a conflict between “representation” and “referentiality,” he says that they need to exist in a larger context of a “meta-story, meta-narrative, or meta-text” on the one hand and a “meta-past, Ur-text, or meta-source.”
In addition to seeing things in a larger context, he offers the views of literary and rhetorical scholars on the function of history. They essentially see a historical text as a text while we historians see the text as a fetishized simulacrum of the past. (p.68) Furthermore, while historians see a “real world” outside of the text (aka the/a Great Story/Past,) “literary and rhetorical theorists see historians as constructing that real world through the forms they use to give their texts the appearance of history.” (p.71)
Demystification of the role of story is his solution. What all of this says to me is a call for the historian to take their minds out of the past for a moment and to deeply consider and acknowledge the present. A call for us to be mindful of the lies we tell ourselves in order to feel legitimized or credentialed. To be more than mindful of our rhetoric and our audience and to actively shine a light on where things are the shakiest. At the risk of falling into subjectivity, such an honesty would strengthen the discipline, Berkhofer believes, and I am inclined to agree.
The real question is how to pivot. How does a leviathan institution of knowledge, such as history, change its course? To continue this analogy, the only answer I can see is through micro changes in course inevitably having a larger effect over time. Baby steps.
Anthony Sosa
Historical Methods
HIST 5339.001
Dr. Christopher Morris
10/29/18
