It has come to my attention that I misspelled Doctorow somewhere around four times in my last blog post. In the spirit of the passive-aggressiveness that has been pervading this course as of late, I would like to give my thanks to all who helped bring this to my attention.
As we moved through our interlude discussions of the links between history and fiction, I found myself incredibly thankful that I had the experience of reading a postmodern piece of historical fiction, Ragtime, under my belt. As they say, seeing is believing, and its much easier to conceive of these ideas when we have had an example of a work that is concerned with the same questions of the subjectivity of the past. So, I will be attempting to look at Ragtime as a work of history and of fiction in a sort of case study to test some of the ideas that we've been discussing in class over the past few days.
One point that White makes that is pretty easy to evaluate is that history needs to use narrativity to increase its appeal to the reader. Obviously, Doctorow weaves his story into narrative form, making his characters compelling in and of themselves, rather than solely as objects of historical study.
When I first began this exercise, it really threw me for a loop. It's hard to give the same amount of credence to Harry K. Thaw flashing Harry Houdini through a set of prison bars as to a history textbooks portrayal of Washington crossing the Delaware. But, from a surface reading of White, that's what he wants me to do. However, upon further elaboration, he does give us a sort of out -- we get some rules as to determine what we should believe. On page 20, he says that events can be considered real "not because they occurred but because, first, they were remembered and, second, they are capable of finding a place in a chronologically ordered sequence." The Thaw-Houdini incident fails both stipulations -- we're told that Houdini tells nobody, and it's pretty safe to assume that the lunatic Thaw doesn't either. So it's not remembered. The finding a place in a chronologically ordered sequence bit is more interesting. (Of course, this is a moot point, because the first stipulation has failed. But let's just go with it). I interpret that to be that it not only makes sense that they happened within the time -- that, for example, there wouldn't have been computerized security systems in the prison -- but also that they fit into a sequence that we care about. We care about the sit-in because they're representative of the larger event of the Civil Right's Movement, which we have deemed to be important. Perhaps I found it so difficult to give historical credence to this weird incident between Houdini and Thaw because I couldn't see the larger context that it fit into.
Additionally, there seems to be a little bit of disdain for the metanarrative in historical education. While thinking about what the "postmodern history" class might look like, it would be tempting to demand the abolition of metanarrative. But I actually think that metanarrative in my historical education has been extremely important in helping me develop a nuanced and critical view. The process of learning and unlearning one's broken ideas of history is a very postmodern exercise. Anyway, Doctorow's use of metanarrative enhances the postmodernism of the book -- his ironic treatment of traditionally accepted ideas about America at the turn of the century resonates with us because we have been educated in those ideas. If the metanarrative indoctrination aspect of history fades away, so will the appeal of Ragtime.
I have a comment related to historical education: I really liked the idea of teaching history backwards, starting with the present and working back. This may not be a strictly "postmodernist" way of doing it, but I believe that one of the only reasons to study history is to better understand the present-day, and predict how the future might play out. Thus, teaching history by directly and constantly correlating it to the present day will truly fulfill this purpose. The interesting thing about history+fiction is that we're actually using history to make a comment on the present day instead of memorizing a bunch of useless facts and agonizing over the minutia of what actually happened. Fictionalizing history doesn't mean that we're completely making shit up, it just means that we're finding ways to interpret history that make it more relevant to us today.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you and Elissa. One of the most common answers to the question of why we study history is that we use it to learn from past mistakes and prepare ourselves for the future. History always needs to be tied to the present in some way, or else it loses all meaning. I really liked how throughout our study of Ragtime we would stop and think about it in the context of when it was written, because Doctorow was also thinking of the present when he created it. History needs to be constantly taught and reassessed from as many perspectives as possible to provide the nuances necessary to give it purpose in the first place.
ReplyDeleteThat's very true, the appeal of Ragtime lies in the reader being introduced to the idea of a postmodern history, and then being able to follow the story with that kind of outlook. If middle school students were to read Ragtime, the significance of the plot and the relationship the characters have with each other would be lost on them.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I feel that throughout all my years of history classes, we have been taught many things about the past, but we rarely got to the part where we discuss the past's impact on the present. Reading Ragtime was a good exercise in thinking about how the past affects or should affect people, particularly at the time the book was written. In this way, White's point about events being real if they can fit into history makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteI agree! We need to walk before we can run, and that's why you have to learn a metanarrative before you unlearn it. I'm glad we put Ragtime under our collective belts before we moved into the insanity of Mumbo Jumbo; having Ragtime as a foothold was really useful when thinking about the line between history and fiction.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's even possible to be entirely free of metanarrative while assembling a historical narrative: would this mean having no coherent underlying set of values or concerns, just a completely detached, reportorial account of cause and effect with no value judgements? But isn't even a view that says we must eliminate metanarratives itself a metanarrative--an organizing logic within which a particular "story" about the nature of history is told?
ReplyDeleteThe key seems to be to understand metanarratives as provisional, projected, human constructions--rather than universal values or "the way things are." To try to see our own metanarratives for what they are, and not to assert their authority or priority over all others as "universal."