Deciphering Historical Texts

Posted On September 25, 2007

The reading by Hans Kellner was difficult to understand at first, but once some of the concepts were absorbed it seemed slightly easier to comprehend. The main point seemed to be that history can be interpreted much deeper than a series of events in a chronological timeline. Kellner says that instead of getting the story straight, the reader should get it “crooked”.

The idea of getting a story “crooked” is not easy to understand at first. What I interpreted it to mean was that while reading a historical narrative, a reader should think about the sources for the historical narrative and what their motives could have been in writing the historical accounts. Kellner says, “[historians] will assert that the guarantee of adequacy in the historical account is found in the sources. If the sources are available, scrupulously and comprehensively examined according to the rules of evidence and compiled in good faith by a reasonably mature professional, the resulting work will most likely ‘image’ reality.” This approach can be very helpful because there are many accounts of history that are never heard because the opposing side is never heard.

There is a cliché that is often used when describing historical events: “history is written by the victor.” This applies very well to the ideas that Kellner presents. When reading secondary sources, or even primary sources of historical events, the reader must understand that there is going to be some kind of bias in the writing. In our American newspapers, we describe the war in Iraq in terms of casualties of American soldiers and Iraqi infidels but the people and the newspapers in Iraq probably paint a much different picture. We Americans see ourselves as liberators but Iraqis probably see us as the people who bombed their cities and kill their friends and families. Sometimes it is not easy to see the other perspective because it is hard to think that the other side could be right about a certain issue in a historical context. It will be interesting in a few years to see what the next generation’s textbooks say about a war like the one we have today and see what kinds of biases are in place.

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