Tag: bias

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Everyone is a critic

Benjamin’s argues in the exert from his book “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” that throughout history, each sources gives us a different perspective of the event that occurred and enables the viewer to interpret the past from the eyes of the creator.

“For example, in photography, process reproduction can bring out those aspects of the original that are unattainable to the naked eye yet accessible to the lens, which is adjustable and chooses its angle at will. And photographic reproduction, with the aid of certain processes, such as enlargement or slow motion, can capture images which escape natural vision.” (Benjamin, 220)

However, although technological advancements such as cameras allowed people to truly depict a scene of what happened in the past, each source is again subject to how the viewer wishes to perceive it. I believe this reading neatly connects to Halbwach’s argument that our immediate environments have the ability to influence and manipulate our memories. Our social context control, too, the ways in which we perceive an event to have happened and to draw conclusions from different sources such as paintings, photographs, and visual performances. Each source is subject to some form of bias, either from the creator themselves, or those who are viewing them. With the multitude of sources that are available for us to narrate the past, the beholder now become a ‘critic’, where he/or she is able to create a narrative from which they believe is what was occurring in a specific source. We hand the responsibly of maintaining history away from those who actually experienced it themselves, to instead every person in the modern era, allowing them to critique and analyse the sources as they will, creating their own conclusions.

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Pondering the Past

Trouillot raises the interesting problem of how history is produced, and he argues that any historical narrative is a particular “bundle of silences”. The four silences involved in history are: the sources (the moment of fact creation), the archives (the moment of fact assembly), the narratives (the moment of fact retrieval), and the history (the moment of retrospective significance). All of these aspects of historical narratives demonstrate the relationship between power and history, and that power does not enter a story once and for all, but instead it comes in at different times and different angles to each historical narrative. Each ‘silence’ shows the multitude of ways where elements of history are forgotten or dismissed in favour of promoting a certain image of a time or place.

I found this reading very applicable to the education system I have received growing up. In history classes, we were always taught by focusing on literature and documentation that was produced by predominantly white males with some form of authority. This makes me question my own understanding of history and what truly happened in the past. Is there ever a way to fully understand what event have occurred? Each narrative of a certain historical issues has a different perspective. All that historians can do is try to find as many perspectives on the one event and attempt to piece together both sides of the argument in hope that they can present enough facts to describe the actions that occurred. What is taught in the classrooms is never the fully story, but is there even a real way in which we can understand history? Every narrative is subject to bias in some shape or form. Trouillot’s words have pushed me to further question my perceptions around historical readings, and to ponder what arguments truly reflect the events that took place.