History, Narrative, and Time

Prof. Nisbet, a sociologist, used to hanging around the slum districts of history, makes the following observation:

On the whole, historiography has been built around this conception of time as unilinear flow, and narrative has been the means by which all the past’s multiplicities of circumstances and pluralities of sequence have been compressed into an apparently unitary perspective. But problems of selection and arrangement have been formidable. How are we to deal, for example, with the history of Europe as a unity when what we are actually given is not one but a whole congeries of local, institutional, and national histories, each with its own identity, each coming in uninterrupted fashion right down to the present day? The result has been to reify the concept of Europe, to give it an identity greater than the sum of its parts, and to convert some of the actual histories into mere life-phases of the conceptualized whole; hence, the familiar practice of treating Greece only in the early chapters of a book on Europe, chopping off its history arbitrarily when Rome forges into prominence, and doing the same with Rome when feudalism begins to appear in France.

All this is difficult enough on the scale of European civilization; it becomes absurdly impossible on the world scale unless one follows the Hegelian procedure of tracking a Zeitgeist through its different resting places on earth. But the difficulties of operating with narrative in a single time perspective are not really obviated by reducing the scope of the subject to the nation or even the local community. Always we are dealing with plurality that unilinear narrative cannot easily absorb.

Robert A Nisbet, “History and Sociology”, Tradition and Revolt: Historical and Sociological Essays (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 100.

Now this is all perfectly true. I think the solution is to deal with as many aspects of the various strands of history as anyone is interested in; but do not think you will pull every strand. Each strand of history, like bandwidth, is infinitely divisible. The matter becomes different when history becomes "my history". Then one can take as much of Greece, Rome, China, or Tibet, as serves his purposes. A Muslim or Buddhist living in America today will have a very different view of his roots and the origins of his traditions. If I find my interest in Palestine, or Troy, he may find his on the Ganges, or on the cobblestones of Mecca. Our narratives will be very different, but some of the narratives may be of more interest to potential readers than others, depending on their own traditions and worldviews. Each of us writes history for himself (unless he is that despicable thing: a hackwriter who produces history for pay): It is the reader who looks over my shoulder who decides whether or not it is for him.

On the local level, as Nisbet says, this is also true. No one can write the entire history of a community (assuming we can even decide exactly what a community is). It is impossible to exhaust the content of meaning from a single locality or group. It is always a work in progress. As the historian begins to examine his world he will find some strands that interest him more than others. To examine a part in abstraction falsifies the whole; but then to recognize that our conclusions are not absolutely true means that we can work to reintegrate this new understanding into the rest of the story. This is in fact the problem of all knowledge: everything we know is to a great extent unverifiable. We continue working until we become satisfied that the web we weave is true. Individual items are subject to correction, but the thing itself is a durable representation of reality — as we see it. A greater historian, one who has greater experience with that community, or greater access to its records, may be able to weave a truer and better tapestry. Every local knows enough about his community, whether truth or legend, to decide whether he agrees with the historian's view. He can always tell the stories his way, and that too is publication of history.

This is a thought in progress . . . but it is an

Archival Quality Communication

James Duvall, M. A.
Big Bone, Kentucky