Postmodernist History of Uni?
Earlier this week in class we were
discussing what a postmodernist history of Uni might look like. There wasn’t
really an answer, the closest we got was that there can’t truly be a
postmodernist history because that would have to involve every possible
narrative. History can be seen in so many different ways, it’s impossible to
know what narrative to tell (or if it even has to be in the form of a
narrative!). For Uni alone there are infinite possibilities of ways to tell its
history. We could focus on an overarching issue of budget or look at the
smaller student problems like pizza sales disappearing or the way that those
connect to each other. We could look at Uni’s history in statistics of grades/
test scores or athletic achievements or the art created here.
I think an interesting way of seeing the
history of Uni is to look at how history itself is taught at Uni. Of course we
all remember learning the flowcharts sophomore year, and I was thinking about
those and I think Mr. Butler’s flowcharts are a way to approach telling history
in an almost postmodernist way. They’re an interesting way to combine lots of
different narratives and show how they interconnect to lead to other things
that interconnect and lead to other things This is still a narrative itself and
of course doesn’t account for all the different viewpoints (literally nothing
can) but it is definitely a different way of teaching history that breaks from
the typical classroom. (In the 2012 Uni Yearbook flowcharts were used to “capture
the history of Uni High in a way unique to Uni” if you guys want to look at
that it’s pretty cool).
For the history of not just Uni, I liked
Xanthe’s suggestion in class of a giant Google Doc that everyone can edit to
document human history. If this existed, it probably wouldn’t stay factual to
true history but the way that people twist their stories could teach us about real
history. I feel like Mr. Leff has taught us to be healthily skeptical of
historical sources because if someone is lying or twisting the truth then their
motives for that could be revealing of their historical surrounding at the
time. At the beginning of the year Mr. Leff showed us two sources of the same
woman telling two very different stories about her experience as a slave to two
different people. The way that she told her stories based on who she was
speaking with was revealing of the racial dynamics in the South at the time she
was interviewed. Even though the stories might not have been completely true,
we were still able to understand the historical context, so maybe a Google Doc would
be a way to understand human history from many perspectives.
Do
you guys have any thoughts on how to tell a postmodernist history? Or how to
talk about Uni history in a postmodernist way?
This is an interesting way to approach Uni's history. It would be tough to tell the history of Uni in a truly postmodernist way, because, as you said, it is impossible for something to account for all of the different viewpoints that there possibly could be. I also like your point that Mr. Leff is teaching us to be skeptical of historical sources, because finding the reality of something that happened from something that someone else has written is basically impossible, as every source tells the story from their perspective including the things they find most important to their narrative (or not narrative).
ReplyDeleteThere are so many perspectives to view Uni's history from that it's hard to imagine where a postmodernist account would start. Perhaps like Doctorow it would show us how ultimately we're all connected far closer than we once thought?
ReplyDeleteI think that the certain topics that we brought up reflected the distinctive features of Uni. We were talking about the annal and how a lot of the dates were talking about agriculture and weather and that is a reflection of what was on their mind. I think the fact that we brought up the debt and pizza sales showed us that funding preoccupied our minds a lot. Of course Uni's financial issue is one part in history and has different narratives attached to it, but similarly to how we talk about industrialization during the early 1900s, I think that Uni's financial issues will stand out in its little history.
ReplyDeleteit would be really interesting to read a Ragtime type of book about Uni. I feel like a book like that would start out with a common view of outsiders about Uni (like it being a super nerdy school or something) and then delve deeper into both examples and exceptions to those rules. I think the best postmodernist history would be everyone at Uni turning in a paper with what they think happened at Uni and then compiling that into a book.
ReplyDeleteNice job! For me, I feel like history should cover the different perspectives. For example, we all know about the Civil War. However, in the south, some people still call it The War of Northern Aggression. Different people have different interactions and thought about the events that happen in history. No one perspective is completely correct, and I think that it is important to look at all the evidence before we come to a conclusion.
ReplyDeleteA postmodernist way to write Uni's history might be one that makes an attempt to present narratives from as many different perspectives as possible. Taking Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo as an example, it might seek to subvert the typical narrative about Uni- perhaps that it's a nerd school? Similarly to how Ragtime focuses on a variety of different groups and individuals, the history could take the perspective of subbies, seniors, admin, alumni, outsiders, anyone who's around and has an opinion. Still, it's ultimately impossible to create a history completely free of bias or a constructed narrative.
ReplyDelete(As an aside, I have to disagree that Mr. Butler is presenting history is a postmodern way. The construction of the flowcharts quite clearly follows a specific narrative, and aren't really objective.)
I think the Google Doc analogy is a great way of representing what a postmodern history of Uni might look like. Having all of those different perspectives combined into one document would be a way to safeguard against bias in telling that history. At the same time, having that Google Doc would be somewhat challenging to the postmodern idea of history, as that Google Doc, without organization, would be unorganized nonsense. You would have to organize that Google Doc in some way, and by doing so you would end up emphasizing some aspects of that Uni history over others and thus you would have created a narrative that others may challenge over postmodern grounds.
ReplyDeleteI think in a perfect world a postmodernist history would be a comprehensive recounting of everything that’s happened within the past 5 years. I agree with the idea of a paper from everybody present at the school during this time. However, I would only include the moderate to large narratives (stuff that is said more than once) to get a better understanding of it from a macro sense. Although everybody's idea should be treated the same, if you get enough of the same idea repeated over and over again I think the importance of that specific narrative to a larger group of people indicates that it's more important to the identity of the community as a whole.
ReplyDelete