The Challenge of a Postmodernist History

My favorite part of Postmodernism is it’s capacity for multiplicity. Diversity is actively sought after as a discussion point. Different points of view are suddenly backed by a cultural movement. The idea that someone might have experienced a different truth within the same set of facts is now “possible.”

A historical record, like one found in your classic elementary school textbook, often shows just one interpretation of a set of facts. Even if a history book is authored by many people, they usually come to a consensus to how to explain this event or that event. But as we have discussed on many occasions in class, it is simply impossible to recount an event in its entirety, taking into account everyone and everything. Although Mr. Mitchell has expressed that this fact seems a little overwhelming, I actually find it more of a challenge. Like I am staring academia in the face, saying “bring it on!” I know full well that simply logically one could never have the capacity to know the entirety of a single moment in time, but there is certainly much we can do.

Drawing upon its embrace of many realities, I propose that a Postmodernism history would try and tackle events from as many sides as it can. For example, to cover the period of the civil war-- it is extremely important to hear it from different points of view for the purposes of understanding the cultural impacts and realities that can’t be glorified in the textbooks.  First hand accounts from white civilians in the North and South, members and leaders of both armies, free blacks persons, and enslaved persons would give a drastically more complete picture of simply what was happening inter-personally and on larger scales.

Doctorow puts this together nicely as he features characters in Ragtime that see the same phenomena occurring, and yet have such different experiences and interpretations. The photojournalist that is exploring the tenements gives a technical and “official” history of the urban New York City slums, but by lingering with the family a moment after he leaves, Doctorow reminds us that the official history is only one piece to a completed puzzle. Both photographer and resident look at the same state of affairs, but I can guarantee that different emotions and thoughts are speeding through the different pairs of eyes.  Had the family written down their experience with the photojournalist and passed it on, it could be paired with the photojournalist’s article to join in our Postmodernist history of the New York City tenement slums on that day in our history.