On Friday 21 August 2009 11:16 AM, Aadisht Khanna wrote: > The only thing I had to complain about in that book was not bias but that > the attempt to cover four thousand years of history in a paperback made the > book a quick skim through facts and slightly short on analysis/ narrative. > That actually strips out bias.
I'm not sure I'd agree with that. Analysis alone doesn't make for
subjectivity and bias in history-writing, but selection of facts as
well. As E.H. Carr famously pointed out (and I'm sure a many others
before him did too): selection of "historical" facts are in themselves a
form of subjectivity.
From a Time Magazine review:
> Professor Carr deftly disposes of the "common-sense view of history" as an
> assemblage of facts like so many fish, stone-cold dead in a fish store ("The
> historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in
> whatever style appeals to him"). Instead, Carr demonstrates, facts are more
> "like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and
> what the historian catches will depend partly on chance, but mainly on what
> part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to
> use—these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he
> wants to catch."
And a link to an excerpt from the "Historians and Their Facts" chapter
of "What is History?":
<http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/carr-edward_historians-and-their-facts.html>
Cheers,
Pranesh
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