‽istis looks on as history is
made… (weekending August 14th 2021)
This week – in between the ‘we are
witnessing history being made’ achievements of the two re-placed 2020 Olympics,
while liberating some books from moving box to new shelves, and whilst
witnessing ‘events beyond’ vicariously through essential reporting and
recording (not least in Afghanistan) - ‽istis ponders again ‘the past’ and the
present; processes of ‘making history’; histories lost and found…
‽
‘…they worship facts. And in return, the facts
hit them like hailstones. Life is just one damned fact
after another. They turn to collecting facts - laying them down -
making “Outlines” of every real and fancied fact in the universe, until “truth”
becomes an endless succession of stepping-stones that have a way of
disappearing into the bog as soon as they are passed over. . .’ (Max Plowman)[i]
… and from that extraordinary evolving
repository, Wikipedia (which seems highly appropriate to plunder cautiously for
these wonderings as a virtual place where ‘facts’ are edited, added to,
challenged, contested, settled albeit perhaps temporarily[ii] with perhaps a wider consensus than it
has ever been possible to achieve before; where information and facts are
linked and connected in hypertext warp and weft; and where what is considered a
matter of ‘history’ and ‘record’ is far from ended)[iii], the entry and links on ‘Philosophy of
History’[iv] bring just an introduction to other
perspectives and themes:
‽ the
philosophy of chronology: cyclical, linear, irreversible, progressive
narratives
‽ the
philosophy of causality: relationships between events, actions, entities and
phenomena:
· between communicative and other actions
· between singular and repeated ones
· between actions, structures of action or group and
institutional contexts and wider sets of conditions;
· exceptional and general;
· immediate, intermediate and distant causes;
· Lloyds’ four ‘general concepts of causation’:
o ‘metaphysical idealist concept’ -
the phenomena of the universe are products of or emanations from an omnipotent
being
o ‘the empiricist regularity
concept’ - the idea of causation being a matter of constant conjunctions of
events
o ‘the functional/teleological/consequential
concept’ - so that goals are causes
o ‘the realist, structurist and
dispositional approach’ - relational structures and internal dispositions as
the causes of phenomena… (edited from the Wikipedia entry[v])
…and ‽istis’
head is spinning!
‽
the philosophy of neutrality (or otherwise)… Is ‘history’ written by the
victors? Is it a roll call of judgement? Are value judgements on people,
organisations, nations, movements, prevailing ideologies the proper concern of
‘historians’?
‽
teleological approaches: hidden or revealed hands, plans and purposes; catching
or discerning or swept along with the zeitgeist; the stories of so-called
‘great men’; social evolutionism... and Hegel and Carlyle loom large
‽
contextual approaches – factors contributing to determine (more or less) the
course of history: economics, politics, race, beliefs, social strata and
structures, etc…
‽
narrative approaches: lived
experience, narrated in both fictional and non-fictional works with narrative
having a generously encompassing ability to 'grasp together' and integrate into
a complete story or stories the ‘composite representations’ of historical
experience[vi]
And ‽istis has a vision[vii] of a mosaic.
And so (drum roll, probably not...)
proposes ‘The ‽istis-wonders Mosaic Approach to Histories’.[i]
A mosaic or mosaics perhaps, possibly,
maybe made of many, many different and different types of tiles[viii]:
· event and experience, just happening –
a potential individual ‘tile’ for a mosaic, but lost, invisible,
‘histories’ untold, unvoiced, unremembered
· event and experience, recorded direct –
perhaps the clearest, most well-defined individual ‘tile’ for a mosaic (until
we remember that perhaps even the camera can lie?)
· event and experience, recorded with layers
or filters of edit, reflection, or with added layers of meaning or
interpretation or links made to other ‘things’[ix]; ‘story-fied’… a ‘tile’ for a
mosaic, shaped and coloured a particular hue
Then:
· ‘tiles’ formed[x] into a bigger mosaic picture (composite
representations…?)
· the picture, the mosaic, the number[xi] and arrangement of the tiles: fixed,
changeable or changing…?
And meanwhile, the airwaves and TV
channels fill with images of ‘history being made’, and with talk of ‘history
repeating itself’ (Saigon?, Russian withdrawal?, the British in 19th century
Afghanistan[xii]?), of ‘if history teaches us one thing…’,
of ‘learning or failing to learn the lessons’…
And, somewhat overwhelmed, ‽istis contemplates
gently trying to complete (with pencils of many, many shades) a printed pattern
from a mindfulness colouring book.
©
Pistis
NB: further
reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog
entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily
indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’:
@Pistis_wonders
[i] In 1932 a journal called “The Adelphi” published
“Keyserling’s Challenge” by Max Plowman (from: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/09/16/history/) and adapted, colourfully, by Alan Bennet in ‘The
History Boys’… in which there is also the line: ‘History is a commentary on the various and continuing
incapabilities of men. What is history? It's women following behind with a
bucket...’
[ii] From the header to the page, a
recognition of limitations and an invitation: ‘This article has
multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues
on the talk page.’
[iii] See, for example, ‘The End of
History?’ by Francis Fukuyama
[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_history
[v] Lloyd, C. (1993) Structures of History,
159.
[vi] See work by Paul Ricœur, Louis Mink,
W.B. Gallie, and Hayden White, for example, further refs in the Wikipedia
entry.
[vii] …and perhaps a dream of a Wikipedia
edit!
[viii] The mosaic and tiles idea and imagery
seems potentially helpful… but so, too/instead, might be the
image of a sand mandala: grains of sand painstakingly positioned… pre-planned,
geometric or spontaneous, random; preserved or ritually destroyed; created by
all or those allowed? For further consideration.
[ix] And, oh , what useful words ‘thing’ and
‘things’ are… if they didn’t exist, then how different speech and
writing might be?, we would have to make them up, perhaps…
[x] Whether this is considered to be forming
as if through some hidden hand, or being formed may be a crucial difference -
events and experiences selected, multiple ‘tiles’ with shape and significance
discerned or created) for further discussion?
[xi] …as other voices, other events and
experiences, other records, other histories are found, heard, allowed, prized,
perhaps?
[xii] when perhaps the map was apparently
colouring pink and the sun was possibly failing to set on anything but a Union
Jack, and maybe we were and are supposed to be proud of a world-beating (think
again about that verb, perhaps) Britain.
