Tag: sources

Posted on

Bodies of Lenin

Alexei Yurchak’s article on Lenin’s body was extremely interesting. The authors main argument was that the Soviet Union used Vladimir Lenin’s body as a representation of the political values that were present during that time, and as the country developed and changed, so did the supposedly ideologies that had been put forth by Lenin while he was alive. Yurchak refers to Lenin as the “immortal body of the sovereign” (page 147), meaning that in the nations eyes, they saw Lenin to be the figure of Sovereign power, and therefore the ongoing practice of constructing, reconstructing and manipulating Lenin’s body was linked to political regime, with certain aspects of the body being hidden from the public- much like how his real  letters and thoughts towards leaders in the party were hidden from them.

“This secret approach allowed the truth of “Leninism” to appear to be the source rather than the produce of the party’s actions and policies. It also made it possible to present every new version of “Leninism” as the same, unchanging, consistent teaching of a genius, and to represent the party, to itself and others, as its unwavering implementer- not its arbitrary creator.” (Page 147)

This quote summarized the whole article for me, that his body was used as a source of power, and the context around it dictated how people reacted. While reading this piece, it made me think of Trouillot’s article on “Silencing the Past”, where sources of history are often hidden or manipulated in order to fit into a certain perspective or belief. As for Lenin, his history was being rewritten in correspondence to the political regimes in place at the time, and his true beliefs and opinions were silenced through erasing the documents of his past. I found this article extremely interesting, and it made question how I interpret every source I have access to. All information given to us is based on the context around it, which forces to interpret it in a certain way.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.