This blog post serves
two purposes. First, as a reminder that the call for papers deadline
for our next event (on 'Narratives' at Durham University on 8 May) is
tomorrow. What better way to spend a Sunday than writing a short
abstract? Second, we thought it might be an idea to use the blog to
start thinking about the theme of 'Narratives' in historical research
before the event itself.
A long standing friend
of History Lab (Northumbria University's Peter O'Connor) recently
drew my attention to this Guardian article about truth in historical
fiction. This is a somewhat
different issue to that experienced by us researchers as though we
may deal with narratives in various ways we're unlikely to pursue a
particular narrative in our own research at the expense of academic
integrity. That said, when discussing 'truth' in historical
narratives the references to the ambiguity of 'historical fact' are
of pertinence to us all.
As researchers dealing
with various historical contexts - about which 'the facts' may be
unclear - the appeal of a narrative to help us comprehend the events
and processes we engage with is clear. However certain facts are
often at odds with the broad narratives that historians have long
used to situate and make sense of historical developments. In every
whiggish account of teleological progress there are reactionary or
conservative moments; Marxists conceptions are often complicated by
actions that counteract economic processes; and, in my own research,
the Saidian narrative of East versus West is undermined by the huge
variables within these overly simplistic categories. Sometimes the
nuance or complexity of historical events means that the facts don't
lend themselves to a coherent narrative.
So how do historians
reconcile the 'facts' (if they do indeed exist) with broader
historical narratives? Come to our Durham event to find out!
Stan Neal
(History Lab North East, Northumbria Rep)
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