“Historiography (i.e. “history” and “writing”) carries, inscribed in its very name, the paradox-and the quasi-oxymoron-of the interrelating of two antinomous terms: the real and the discourse. Historiography’s task is to articulate these two terms and, where such an articulation cannot be formulated, to operate as if it had articulated them” (De Certeau, 1975, 5 quoted in Logan, 1980, 4)
The cause of this paradox is that no matter how we try to portray the ‘real’, we are bound to see it and to narrate it through a discourse. Although the story expresses parts of the past, which Nietzsche argued every person or nation must have knowledge of (Neitzsche, 2005, 22), the narrative is simply part of the present. We write our stories as we remember them and we remember them as part of who we are and how we view ourselves, our interests and our power now.
But the real does exist. No matter how the narratives on war, plague and famine are moulded to portray progress/decline, victory or victimization and/or to carve an individual or group identity, they did happen. People suffered and died as a result of these incidents and continue to suffer and die. Our understanding that history is part of a discourse, is written by the victorious only after the war has ended and is a reflection of a consciousness formed by the powerful should not preclude trials to write different stories and to tell a different truth. On the contrary, it is this particular realization that makes history essential to any change. It is this realization that makes history a right, a duty and a weapon. It is the right of everyone to have a story, to tell it and to be listened to. It is the duty of those who know to let others know, to let the ‘secrets’ out and to open all the closets and the coffins and let our demons roam in the open. It is the duty of those who cannot stand by as others are being robbed of their stories and of their suffering and joy. It is a weapon for any attempt to change. That is because changing who we are is at the core of changing how we live and it is only through knowing that there is no fixed ‘we’ and no permanent ‘us’ or ‘them’ that we can embrace our chance and fight for our future.
Then, why do we write history? Well, first because it satisfies our desire for storytelling and storyhearing and our search for memories (however constructed or invented they may be). Second, because it tells us something about ourselves; not only through the stories themselves but also through the way we tell them. Third, because we ought to; we owe it to ourselves to try to tell the truth and to deconstruct the bases and the foundations of how we see ourselves and how we see others.
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