Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/09/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I speak as no especial admirer of Sontag and as a reasonably well-regarded professional historian of some twenty years. Your criticism makes sense only if one assumes the most naive position of regarding the "past" as everything that chronologically precedes the 'now," which is patently not Sontag's meaning. We do "invent" the past in that it contains no implicit narrative--we construct narratives in our attempts to describe or interpret a body of evidence that is otherwise inchoate. The literature on this, across the broadest possible range of political ideologies, is vast, and it would mere pedantry to recite it here. Historians of American historians will provide numerous examples of misprision, misrepresentation, and outright falsehood that ought make us blush when we claim immunity from ideology--from Smith's invention of the Pocahontas episode in 1607--to the treatment of slavery in America, to such contemporary historical "biographies" as -Dutch-. Many on the LUG love to relate the use of their Leica gear as impromptu weapons in securing a favored position to document an event. Why, one might ask, if not to lay claim to an 'authorative' representation of the moment? If such a photo were to become emblematic, to appear, for instance, as an illustration in a college history textbook, would we dismiss the photographer's aggressive shaping of the image as inconsequential to its content? I doubt it. Chandos At 02:57 PM 9/8/2000 +0100, you wrote: >It sucks of 'psuedo speak', something which sounds profound but is in fact >merely a cleverly phrased set of superficial words. Chandos Michael Brown Assoc. Prof., History and American Studies College of William and Mary http://www.wm.edu/CAS/ASP/faculty/brown