The history vs fiction question that we’ve been
talking about in class recently is still pretty perplexing to me, but after
doing the Hayden White readings, and reading Ragtime I had some new thoughts
regarding it. On the first day of class when I answered the “What is the
difference between history and fiction prompt” I mainly talked about how
history drew from fact and fiction was made up, and how history was consumed as
being “true” while fiction was not.
After
reading “The Fictions of Factual Representation”, in class we revisited the
differences between history and fiction. White focused on the power of the
narrative as how both history and fiction combine coherence with content. While
history is supposedly made up of facts, and is “true”, in order to shape these
facts into a form that people can read it has to be turned into a story, and
when this happens the author can’t avoid putting some of their perspective into
it. In some sense this is exactly what a novel does. Even the most unrealistic
novel has some amount of “facts” in it—even just really basic things like the
fact that people need to breathe in order to survive. The difference that I see
here between history and fiction is the difference in ratio between objective
fact and subjective narrative. A novel could be 5% fact and 95% narrative,
while history could be 95% fact and 5% narrative. Does that make them
fundamentally the same or completely different?
I’ve
also been considering what a postmodern history would look like. The first
thing I thought of as being postmodern history was a dystopian novel. During
the first couple days of class we looked through examples of postmodernist art,
one of which was a jeans ad that closely resembled The Last Supper painting.
The same thing could be done with history—taking events or structures of events
from history and reimagining them into a futuristic context. Not only does warn
people against repeating historical mistakes by showing them those mistakes in
the future, but history as dystopian fiction follows a lot of postmodernist
elements. It breaks the rules of what history “should” be by collaging
historical events together with a futuristic setting.
If
you’ve gotten this far I know that was a bit of a ramble but let me know what
you guys think! How are history and fiction similar/different? Could dystopian
fiction be postmodern history?
In 8th period, we have spent entire periods arguing about what truly separates "fact" and "narrative" and still I honestly have no idea. Nonetheless, I like the idea that books like Ragtime (and I assume eventually Mumbo Jumbo) remove that clear 5% vs. 95% and instead twist facts and narrative together into something which is neither entirely true nor false.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of dystopian fiction as a model for "postmodernist history"--an extension of McHale's suggestion that science fiction is the popular genre that's most reflective of postmodernism and "ontological" concerns, but with the more specific context of a fiction deliberately drawn to "warn" a reader about dangerous tendencies in the contemporary world and in history. I wonder whether it's pessimistic to only cite dystopian fiction, though--would *utopian* fiction work as postmodernist history? An imagining of a world unlike our own because it has "solved" various problems that plague us? Could such an imagined future comment on the present and past in the same kind of way?
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of the dystopian novel as a kind of postmodernist history. I had never thought of anything like that. It's breaking the rules of history, as it's telling a story about the future, and it's kind of away from the norm. So it fits right into the post modernist characteristics we hit on. What I was thinking for a post-modernist history was just an annal. I know that's weird, but it's like not using a typical narrative. To me, that's postmodern. But maybe anything that's weird can be postmodern. I like your idea better. Awesome post!
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I think that fiction, like history, is always made up of facts. These facts include obvious things that connect to our world (like people breathing air), but also facts which the author establishes (maybe something like an alternate history like in Orwell's 1984). I feel like a history could also be told as 5% fact and 95% narrative, while a fiction could be told as 5% narrative and 95% fact. In that way, I'd say they are closer to fundamentally the same than fundamentally different. Also, your analogy between dystopian and postmodern fiction is so awesome.
ReplyDeleteIt’s interesting to think of postmodernist fiction as dystopian, as they actually closely resemble each other. If we took something like the Divergent, we can see that it built upon the idea of the surge of scientific research and built upon our notions of science today. It also builds on our current concept of Chicago. It is an asssumption of the future, building on our current perception and shaping it into a possible outcome.
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