Student Essay on How Has the Postmodern Discipline Changed the Way History Has Been Told?

How has the postmodern discipline changed the way history has been told"

Postmodernism, a term that, by its own definition, is difficult to define, is a line of thought that goes against the established theories of modernism. Postmodernism was brought to the fore during the second half of the twentieth century and still remains the discipline of choice of many historians today. It is best known, and equally best hated, for its scepticism. Some of the principle 'sceptical' postmodern writers include the historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, who examines the relationship between power and knowledge, and how governments control the mind as a means of social control. Deconstructionist Jacques Derrida examines language itself and how the author has no control over what they are writing. Roland Barthes takes this further with his 'death of the author' theories. These 'sceptics' have created the backbone of postmodern thinking for the previous forty years.

Postmodern theories themselves have altered significantly the way history is told, altered the way in which history has been read, altered the way history has been shown and altered history itself. These alterations have not changed the known truths of history, but have changed the way these truths have been interpreted and the reasoning behind them. Postmodernists see history as a construction. One of the aspects of postmodernism incorporates outside disciplines, for example psychology and genealogy, in order to help the historian to gain a full picture of their area of study. Indeed, postmodernism encourages different perspectives on a given area, even going as far to say that anyone's personal perspective of a work is just a valid as the perspective of, say, the author themself.

Before we get as far as the way history has been told, postmodernism examines the way history is. For instance, R.G. Collingwood constantly states in 'The Idea of History' that history is the 'history of thought.' Postmodernism looks at this statement, extends it and criticises aspects of it. If all history is the history of thought, than the physical process of writing about a historical period is thought about thought. All decisions that have occurred in history have come as a result of thought. Now thought is used to analyse this decision, the historian then tries to piece together the different thoughts of the person who made the original decision, in order to explain the decision itself. The criticism of this statement would be that what of those things of history that took no thought at all? Take, for instance, the disappearance of Harold Holt . No history of Australia would be incomplete without a mentioning of this event. What thought went into his disappearance? There will always be room for presumption but there is no known thought that resulted in his disappearance. What about natural disasters? What thought went into the destruction of Pompeii? Contradiction is settled firmly in postmodernism. Postmodernism does not follow any rules but if a 'postmodernist' does not follow defined conventions, it will not be deemed postmodern. Another contradiction embedded in postmodernism is that postmodernism welcomes different opinions and perspectives. Moreover, postmodernism also rejects modernist thought, saying that modernism is too rigid.

Postmodernism brings in the question of context and the historians upbringing. The theories state that everything that is written is a product of its time; the author has no control over what is being written ('death of the author'), and the author's upbringing, social level, and political opinions will be evident, as will personal bias. In a book by Sir Alan Gardiner, he claims that the female Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut 'usurped the throne' . There is no physical evidence suggesting that Hatshepsut usurped the throne, and there is evidence that her reign was very peaceful, which is evident in its length of more than twenty years. Gardiner's bias against female Pharaoh's in his books is clear, and Gardiner's context is the cause of this. He was writing in the fifties and sixties, a time when the thought of a female ruler was unthinkable. It's not that Gardiner had a bias against females. In his context it was simply the assumption, that a country can only be ruled by males. Due to this looking back at a history with postmodern theories, it has been necessary to re-examine almost all history books, taking into account the author's context, and see how this has affected the telling of history.

This re-examining of history books has prompted the next logical step; the re-examining of previously accepted truths in history. I don't mean revising, but looking at universally accepted 'facts' of history. Through this postmodern analysis, new conclusions are formed not regarding the events themselves, but the thought and theory behind these events. Perhaps one of the better examples of this is Michel Foucault's examination of the National Socialism, Nazism, and the theories behind acts such as the holocaust. Unlike David Irving, who through various historical books, such as 'Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich' denies the existence of the holocaust, Foucault does not say that these heinous acts did not occur. He states that the reasoning behind it is considerably different than the accepted norm. Foucault challenges the 'established school of thought.'

The generally accepted thoughts behind the 'final solution ' is that, in the Nazi's eyes, the Jewish people were corrupt and inferior to the 'master' Aryan race, and thus needed to be exterminated. Once postmodern thought, and to some extent logic itself, is brought in to analyse the events themselves, it becomes clear that the reasoning behind the events is considerably different. Foucault says that, as a form of government, the State had to demonstrate three different aspects in order to control the population. It needed to be a racist State. This is best exemplified by the discrimination of the Jewish people, and acts such as Kristallnacht and the establishment of the Judengasse . It needed to be a murderous State. This is shown clearly by the establishment of the Schutzstaffel and the Sicherheitsdienst RFSS . These organisations were given the right to kill civilians, giving the excuse of the civilians being physically or mentally unfit, therefore 'inferior' to the 'Master Race'. And the State needed to be a suicidal State. This is best represented by Hitler's orders towards the end of World War II to destroy the German people's own living conditions.

Through these three 'aspects' of the Nazi State, it was able to demonstrate to the people the complete and total power they had. Due to this, and even now, many people still support the Nazi Regime. These three aspects of the State all culminated in the 'final solution', the mass extermination of the Jewish people. According to Foucault, the Nazi's had to demonstrate that the State was willing to kill in order for its power to remain stable. 'Ultimately, everyone in the Nazi State had the power of life and death over his or her neighbour, if only because of the practice of informing ... ' In regards to explaining the holocaust, and the racist tendencies of Nazism, Foucault says: 'The objective of the Nazi regime was therefore not really the destruction of other races. [This] ... was one aspect of the project, the other being to expose its own race to the absolute and universal threat of death.' This claim, perhaps more so than any of Foucault's other statements regarding the holocaust, makes the biggest statement. It is saying that the Nazi Regime did not attempt to destruct the Jewish race. However, this is the core of postmodernist 'reanalyses' of history. The accepted 'facts', in this case that the Nazi's attempted complete genocide, is questioned by postmodern principles. It then brings out the new 'facts', I use that term vary loosely, behind the Nazi Regime. Whether these facts are the truth, or whether they are completely incorrect, is largely irrelevant at this point. The fact is that postmodernism looked at established 'facts' and changed them around to make the thoughts and actions of people seem more plausible, and attempts to bring reasoning into the picture.

Foucault goes on explaining that the objectives of Nazism's policies culminated in the entire population being exposed to death. 'Exposing the entire population to universal death was the only way it could truly constitute itself as a superior race and bring about its definitive regeneration once other races had been either exterminated or enslaved forever. ' This also brings in a reoccurring criticism of postmodernism, the fact that it looks so deeply into everything. It tries to take into account everything, and then tries to give reasons, sometimes where reasons do not exist. Postmodernism looks for reasons behind all aspects of history, a search which is futile on many occasions.

A new focus in history seems to be the concept of 'revisionist history'. A new history that looks at historical events, looks at the reasoning behind events, looks at the way in which the public perceives these events, and then attempts to rectify all misconceptions regarding the event; or rather, removes the 'gloss' from history. This new 'form' of history is not necessarily done by postmodern historians, nor is this 'new' history postmodern in nature. The postmodern element in this history is simply due to the revision. It is said that each generation writes its own history, placing upon it the context of the period it is written in. This revisionist history is, by nature, different to history being rewritten. This 'revisionist historian' attempts to correct incorrect histories from many generations previous. One of the focuses of revisionist history, at the moment at least, is the Vietnam War. There have been many books written which incorrectly portray the events of the war. Most of the books are from the American perspective, and they distort the truth of the events. Recently, many books have been written which attempt to correct these misconceptions. These new books show the Vietnam War in its 'true' light, and attempts to show the public how the war really was. However, who's to say in years to come that these books about the Vietnam War are incorrect? The revisionist historian attempts to avoid this situation by attempting to present the correct version of events. Postmodernism relates to revisionist history in the sense that the postmodern movement has caused these historians to realize the incorrect nature of the portrayal of events, and has allowed the historian to change this.

However, with revisionist history, as with all other 'histories', the pitfalls of the author themselves will still be obvious. The work will always be tainted with the context, personal bias, and social and political allegiances of the author. This is an element of postmodern theories that relates, to some extent, to all forms of history and is one of the things that the historian cannot even attempt to avoid. It is built into the general nature of history, maybe even all written texts. Criticise postmodernism, but it will become obvious, that on the point of context at least, postmodernism is correct.

All the different disciplines that are brought in by postmodernists that help to shape the history also shapes, and even changes, the medium of production of the way the history will be told. In current times, and no doubt due to postmodernism, is the increasing popularity of 'historical stories'. These are novels that, although generally fictitious, have a fair basis in historical events. These novels are written by historians who have some flair in their writing style, and this allows them to tell a 'historical story'. Focusing on many things, these novels generally centre on conspiracies and periods of debate in history. These authors, and in essence they should now be considered authors rather than historians, use many assumptions in order to keep the actual narrative of the novel flowing. Many times, these authors 'make up' events in order to fill in the blank spaces in the historical evidence. These novels however are incredibly well researched. The historian is not wrong in making assumptions, but they should at least comment on the different theories regarding the assumptions that are made.

Another currently popular medium of production of history is historical television programs; not documentaries as such, but 'historical stories'. These 'stories' attempt to show one character, almost always from a middle or lower-class background, and their progression through a couple of years of their life. These stories show the situation the character lives in, and little things about their life, such as their job, their opinion of their ruler, the military in the time period, etcetera. These programs not only use massive generalisation, but also make many assumptions, especially regarding the thought of the character.

The different production methods of portraying history relates directly to how history has been told. Due to postmodernism, the way in which history has been told has altered. Although most historians still write books about their area of specialty, these other forms of production are becoming increasingly popular. Perhaps this is due to the concept of globalisation, or perhaps it is due to the fact that a much higher percentage of the global population are literate compared with one hundred years ago, and this literate audience wants to be educated on these historical events in the easiest possible way. In a way, society has created a need for postmodern theories. Being told a narrative is simply not enough.

Postmodernism has altered significantly the different perceptions of history, as well as the context of the historian, the nature of facts and the 'truth', and the revision of history. All the different perspectives, the social and political standings of the historian, the way in which truth is changed and distorted, and the act of revising history alters and shapes the way history has been told. And the way it will be told in the future. The question of the background of the historian will now forever remain part of historical theory, regardless if some other discipline comes along and takes over from where postmodernism ends, when and wherever that may be. Other postmodernist theories, such as the incredibly pessimistic outlook of postmodern historians such as Michel Foucault, as well as the 'over-analyses' of historical events, also shape dramatically the way in which history has been told.

Like it or not, postmodern theories will remain a part of historical discourse, much like modernist psychoanalysis is an integral aspect of postmodernism. Postmodernism has rooted itself into history, and has become one of the fundamental principles in the historian's views. Postmodernism has seriously affected the way in which history has been told. It also changed how history is perceived by the public, as well as how historical events have been portrayed. Postmodernism has even changed history itself. What the next step from postmodernism will be is anyone's guess. Extreme postmodernism that states that there is no history? Regardless of where postmodernism progresses from where it is right now, it will always change the way history has been told, and how history will be told.