History, Fiction, and Human Time

By
David Carr
Philosophy
Emory
Theory should not be constrained or intimidated by common sense. If the
scientists of the early modern period had not challenged the common-
sense basis of Aristotelian physics and astronomy, the scientific revolution
would never have occcured. By now, perhaps because of this shining
example, it is considered the mark of intellectual respectability in many
disciplines, especially in the humanities, that common sense deserves eo
ipso to be regarded with skepticism and subected to challenge. !learly,
however, this otherwise laudable attitude can be carried to extremes
where overturning common sense, and enoying the shock that comes
with it, can become an end in itself.
!onsider the distinction between history and fiction. As literary genres,
these are conventionally considered mutually exclusive" history relates
events that really happened in the past, fiction portrays imaginary events,
that is, things that never happened at all. But this distinction has lately
been challenged by some literary theorists and philosophers of history.
#ne can see why the distinction might begin to blur if we look first at
works considered fictional. $ecently some novelists %&.'. (octorow
in Ragtime is a good example) have taken to attributing fictional activities
to real historical characters. But even in *uite traditional fiction the
imaginary events of novels %and plays and films) are often set in real
places and against the background of real historical events. Thus many
works classified as fiction in fact contain elements of history. This is an
uncontroversial observation with which few, including the novelists
themselves, would disagree.
But it is much more controversial to claim, on the other side, that history
unavoidably contains elements of fiction. +ith this most historians would
not agree. Is this a ustifiable, or an exaggerated, assault on common
sense, This is the *uestion I want to take up in what follows. If true this
assertion might lead to the conclusion that the distinction between history
and fiction must be abandoned. I think this would be a mistake. After
examining this claim about history and fiction and placing it in its proper
context, I want to show that while it is understandable, it rests on a
number of confusions and is, in the end, untenable.
I. QUETI!"I"# THE DITI"CTI!" BET$EE" HIT!%& '"D
FICTI!"
The view I want to examine is usually associated with -rench
poststructuralism, and is tied in with skeptical views about the capacity of
language to refer beyond itself to the real world. But the relevant claims
about history and fiction are in fact most fully expressed in recent work of
.ayden +hite %who is not -rench) and /aul $icoeur %who is not a
poststructuralist). Its origins can be traced to certain theorists of the
0123s, and could be said to follow upon the discovery, or rediscovery, that
history is indeed a literary genre.
In an essay on 4.istorical (iscourse4506 $oland Barthes, one of the fathers
of poststructuralism, evokes the conventional contrast between fictional
and historical narrative, and asks" 4is there in fact any specific difference
between factual and imaginary narrative, any linguistic feature by which
we may distinguish on the one hand the mode appropriate to the relation
of historical events . . . and on the other hand the mode appropriate to
the epic, novel or drama,4 %p. 078) .e expresses his negative conclusion
when he says that 4by its structures alone, without recourse to its content,
historical discourse is essentially a product of ideology, or rather of
imagination.4 %089)
'ouis #. :ink, an American theorist of the same period whose work has
influenced both .ayden +hite and /aul $icoeur, came to similar
conclusions. 4;arrative form in history, as in fiction, is an artifice, the
product of individual imagination.4 As such it 4cannot defend its claim to
truth by any accepted procedure of argument or
authentication.45<6 .ayden +hite, asking after 4The =alue of ;arrativity in
the $epresentation of $eality4596 comes to the conclusion that its value
4arises out of a desire to have real events display the coherence, integrity,
fullness and closure of an image of life that can only be imaginary4 %<7).
/aul $icoeur, in Time and Narrative576, though he does not try to break
down the distinction between history and fiction, speaks of their
4intersection4 %entrecroisement) in the sense that each 4avails itself4 %se
sert) of the other. >nder the heading of the 4fictionali?ation of history,4 he
argues that history draws on fiction to 4refigure4 or 4restructure4 time by
introducing narrative contours into the non-narrative time of nature
%III,<28). It is the act of imagining %se figurer que. . .) which effects the
4reinscription of lived time %time with a present) into purely successive
time %time without present)4 %III,<2@) ;arrative opens us to the 4realm of
the Aas ifA4 % I,030) through the 4mediating role of the imaginary4
%III,<21). This is the fictional element in history.
Besides fiction itself, the two other key concepts in these passages
are narrative and imagination %or the imaginary). If we are to evaluate
these views about the relation between history and fiction it will be
necessary to examine these concepts and their combination as they figure
in the theories in *uestion. It is clear that they stem in some way from an
awareness of what we may call, in the broadest sense, the 4literary4
aspects of historical discourse.
Before we can appreciate the significance of this, however, we must begin
by considering the background of these discussions in the philosophy of
history. These authors are reacting to a positivistic conception of history
that grew up in the 01th century and has persisted, in spite of many
attacks, well into the <3th. /rior to the late enlightenment period history
was generally conceived as a literary genre more valued for the moral and
practical lessons it could derive from past events than for its accuracy in
portraying them. #nly in the 01th century, first in Bermany, did it ac*uire
the dignity and trappings of an academic discipline
orWissenschaft, complete with critical methods for evaluating sources and
ustifying its assertions. The great 'eopold von $anke was explicitly
repudiating the old topos of historia magistra vitae when he claimed that
the task of history was simply to render the past wie es eigentlich
gewesen -- as it really was.586
-rom the time it was firmly established in the academy, history has striven
to maintain its respectability as a 4scientific4 discipline %at least in the
Berman sense of Wissenschaft) and played down the literary features of
its discourse. +ith the rise of the so-called social sciences in the <3th
century %sociology, anthropolgy, economics, 4political science4) many
historians have coveted a place among them, borrowing *uantitative
methods and applying them to the past. .ere the Annales school in -rance
led the way, beginning the the 0193As. :eanwhile, in philosophy,
neopositivism in the form of the 4unity of science4 movement tried to
incorporate history by showing that its mode of explanation is -- or rather
could and therefore should be -- assimilable to that of the natural
sciences.526
But this attempt to make history into a science has never been very
convincing. .istory has never in practice achieved the kind of 4obectivity4
and agreement which non-scientists attribute to and envy in the natural
sciences. ;or is it completely assimilable to the social sciences, which
themselves, in any case, have never *uite lived up to their own scientific
pretensions. Three interrelated features of historical discourse have been
noted by those who disagree with the attempt to integrate history with the
sciences" first, history is concerned with individual events and courses of
events for their own sake, not in order to derive general laws from them
%it is 4ideographic4 rather than 4nomothetic4)C second, to account for
historical events is often to understand the subective thoughts, feelings
and intentions of the persons involved rather than to relate external
events to their external causes %4understanding4 versus 4explanation4)C
and third, to relate se*uences of events in this way, with reference to the
intentions of the persons involved, is to place them in narrative form, i.e.,
to tell stories about them.
-or the positivists it is precisely these features which history should
suppress or overcome if it is to become genuinely scientific. And to some
degree the Annales historians and their followers have tried to meet this
demand" by shifting their focus from persons and their actions to deep-
structure economic forces and long-term social changes they produce a
discourse which seems far removed from traditional history. But narrative
history has never disappeared, and those who counter the positivist view
claim that if social and economic history can dispense with traditional
story-telling they still need to be complemented by narrative accounts of
conscious agents. Against the demand that history be assimilated to the
social or even the natural sciences, many have argued that the narrative
discourse of history is a cognitive form in its own right and a mode of
explanation perfectly appropriate to our understanding of the human past.
Indeed, beginning with (ilthey and the ;eo-Dantians at the end of the last
century, a strong countercurrent to positivism has refused to accept
natural science as the model for disciplines dealing with human events and
actions, including even the social sciences, and has insisted on the
autonomy and respectbility in its own right of knowledge based on an
understanding of conscious human agents which presents its results in
narrative form.
.ow do Barthes, :ink, +hite and $icoeur fit into this picture, They arrive
on the scene when the narrative form in general, and its role in history in
particular, are being intensively discussed. It is this feature of history
which is the primary focus of their attention, and +hite and $icoeur, at
least, believe that history is always essentially narrative even when it tries
to divest itself of its story-telling features.5E6 At the same time they still
think of history as asserting its capacity to 4represent4 the past 4as it
really was,4 i.e. as claiming 4scientific4 status for its results. Their view is
that this latter claim cannot be upheld in view of the narrative character of
historical discourse. +hy,
The passages *uoted above indicate that for these writers, narrative, as
the act of story-telling, is not appropriate to the rendering of real events.
A story weaves together human acts and experiences into a coherent
whole with %as Aristotle said) a beginning, a middle and an end. Its
criteria are aesthetic, not scientific. It is an imaginative act of creation, not
the representation of something already given. Thus narrative is properly
at home in fiction, which makes no pretense of portraying the real world.
+hen narrative is employed in a discipline which purports to depict the
real, it comes under suspicion. If, like history, it deals with a reality which
is no longer available -- the past -- it is doubly suspect. It is suspected of
representing things not as they really happened but as they ought to have
happened -- according to what is thought to make a good story.
+orse still, history may be obeying not aesthetic but political or ideological
rules. +e all know the uses to which history has been put by authoritarian
regimes. In our society, even where it still speaks in the traditional
narrative voice, history often clothes itself in the authority of an academic
discipline claiming to tell us the truth about the past, to be not fiction but
fact. But as narrative, acording to these authors, it can no longer uphold
this claim. .istory must, at the very least, be recogni?ed as a mixture of
fiction and fact. Indeed, it seems that the whole distinction between fiction
and non-fiction must be *uestioned.
II. ' %EP!"E
+e have outlined the challenge to the distinction between history and
fiction. It is time to respond to it.
The first thing to be noted about this challenge is that it places its
advocates, perhaps unwittingly, in league with the positivists. Barthes,
:ink, et al., emphasi?e those features of historical discourse which
differentiate it from scientific explanation, but instead of defending history
as a legitimate cognitive enterprise in its own right, they challenge its
cognitive pretensions. -or the positivists, history could become a
respectable form of knowledge only if it cast off its 4literary4 garb and
replaced story-telling with causal explanations. -or the authors we are
examining, too, it is the literary form of history which seems to prevent it
from making claims to knowledge.
Agreeing with the positivists is not necessarily wrong, as if a theory could
be proven guilty by association. The fact is, however, that this agreement
derives from some tacit assumptions that these theories share -- again,
unwittingly -- with the positivists, assumptions which can be shown to be
dubious at best. These assumptions concern the three basic concepts we
found combined in the challenge to the distincion between history and
fiction, namely narrative, imagination, and fiction itself. They could also be
described as assumptions about reality, about knowledge, and about what
fiction is.
The first assumption concerns the alleged contrast between narrative and
the reality it is supposed to depict. Ftories portray events which are
framed by beginning, middle and end, which exhibit plot-structures,
intentions and unintended conse*uences, reversals of fortune, happy or
unhappy endings, and a general coherence in which everything has a
place. $eality, we are told, is not like that. In the real world things ust
happen, one after the other, in ways which may seem random to us but
are in fact strictly determined by causal laws. #f course such a reality
bears no resemblance to narrative form, and so narrative seems
completely inappropriate to it. Ftory-telling seems to impose on reality a
totally alien form. !onceived in this way, purely in terms of its stucture,
narrative seems necessarily to distort reality.
The second tacit assumption of this view, it seems to me, involves a
strong opposition between knowledge and imagination. Dnowledge is a
passive mirroring of reality. Imagination, by contrast, is active and
creative, and if imagination gets involved in the process of knowing, and
actively creates something in the process, then the result can no longer
*ualify as knowledge.
The third assumption is that there is really no difference between fiction
and falsehood or falsification. +hat history, and other humanities too, are
being accused of doing is wittingly or unwittingly presenting a false rather
than a true picture of the world. This is what is meant by calling them
fictional or claiming that they contain fictional elements.
I propose now to examine these three assumptions now in reverse order.
0. -iction and -alsehood
-irst, the use of the term fiction to mean falsehood creates a conceptual
confusion which needs to be straightened out before we can decide
whether a valid point is being made here. -alsehood can occur as the
deliberate assertion of untruth -- lying -- or simply as error. -iction, as we
usually use that term, is neither, since it makes no claim to represent
reality. ;ovels, plays and films principally portray persons that never
existed and actions and events that never occured. +hat is more, this is
understood by author and audience alike. +hat is truly remarkable is that
in spite of this knowledge we can get emotionally caught up in the lives of
ficticious persons. But no untruth is being told here, at least not in the
sense that someone is making a mistake, deceiving or being deceived. In
a sense, in fiction the *uestion of truth or falsity simply doesnAt arise.
#f course the *uestion of truth in fiction can be raised on other levels"
fiction can be more or less true-to-life, i.e., life-like or plausible. If fiction
is true in this sense we mean that it portrays things as they might have
been, even though we know %or assume) that they were not so. At a
higher level fiction can be truthful in the sense that it conveys -- perhaps
indirectly -- truths about the human condition in general. And if fiction can
be true in both of these senses, it can be false as well. But neither of
these senses of truth and falsity concerns the reality of the persons and
events portrayed.
:ust we not say that fictional statements are literally false,
Fome statements in fiction, as already noted, are not. %&.g.,4'ondon is
usually foggy in the late fall.4) But even an explicitly fictional statement --
e.g. 4#n a -riday afternoon in the late fall of 0@@E a tall man crossed
'ondon bridge, deeply immersed in his own thoughts4 -- could, by
coincidence, be true. The statement, in that context, would still be
fictional. +hy, .ow do we distinguish between fiction and non-fiction,
+riting on 4The 'ogical Ftatus of -ictional (iscourse,45@6 Gohn Fearle,
after comparing a ournalistAs account with a novel, concludes that 4there
is no textual property, syntactical or semantic, that will identify a text as a
work of fiction.4 %28) Instead, the identifying criterion 4must of necessity
lie in the illocutionary intentions of the author,4 that is, in what the author
is trying to do by writing this text. These intentions are usually indicated
outside the text, e.g. by labeling it 4a novel,4 as opposed, for example, to
a memoir, an autobiography or a history. These terms tell the reader how
to take the statements made in the text -- including whether the *uestion
of their truth should arise or not. FearleAs point should be compared with
that of $oland Barthes, cited on p.9 above" +hen he asks whether there is
any 4linguistic4 feature distinguishing historical from fictional discourse, he
is referring to what Fearle calls its 4syntactic or semantic4 properties.
Fearle agrees with him that there is none. But in typically structuralist
fashion, Barthes overlooks those extra-textual features, such as the
authorAs intentions and the whole conventional setting of the text, which
for Fearle constitute the difference.
The criterion for distinguishing fiction from non-fiction is thus not that the
former consists largely of statements that are untrueC rather, it is that
these statements are intended by the author not to be true, and not to
be taken as true, and are in fact not so taken by the audience as well. If
the character in a novel resembles an actual person, and is even portrayed
as doing some things that person did, we might say the novel was 4based
on a true story,4 or even that the resemblance was an ama?ing
coincidence.
But we wouldnAt reclassify it as non-fiction. To take a contrasting case" In
a recent historical account of the &mpress .su Tsi of !hina,516 the author
describes previous accounts of his subect as getting things so wrong,
even to the point of attributing to the &mpress the actions of another
person altogether, that we would have to conclude that there was no one
person at all who did the things described. +ould we then move it to the
fiction section of the library, #f course not" it remains history even if it is
extremely bad history.
+hen the claim is made that history contains fiction, or elements of
fiction, or more broadly that it calls into *uesiton the boundary between
history and fiction, surely this does not mean that historians are making
statements they and their audience know to be about things that never
happened, or whose truth or falsity are not important. .istorians certainly
intend and claim to speak of real persons and events and to tell us true
things about them. If the first assumption is even to make sense, the
point must be that, knowingly or unknowingly, historians are doing
something like what fiction writers do -- imagining things as they might
have been, perhaps, rather than representing them as they were -- and
that because of this the truth of what they say is somehow *uestionable.
The claim is not ust that their results are untrue -- something that would
have to be shown in each case -- but that they must be untrue or that
their truth or falsity is in principle undecidable, apparently because of
whatever the historian shares with the novelist.
<. Dnowledge and Imagination
And what is that, /resumably the capacity to imagine. Thus if our
interpretation of the first assumption is correct, it makes sense only if the
second assumption is true. The capacity to imagine is opposed to
knowledge as if they were mutually exclusive. Dnowledge as
4representation4 is thought to be the passive reflection of the real, simply
registering or reporting what is there. But this is a naive and simplistic
conception of knowledge which ignores some of the best insights of
modern philosophy. Fince Dant we have recogni?ed that knowledge is
anything but passive, its result not merely a copy of external reality.
$ather, it is an activity which calls into play many 4faculties,4 including
sense, udgment, reason, and, very importantly, the capacity to conceive
of things being other than they actually are. It may be thought that
anything that is the obect of the imagination must be imaginary in the
sense of non-existent. But this is only part of what we mean by
imagination. In the broadest sense, imagination is best described as the
capacity to envision what is not diectly present to the senses. In this
sense we can imagine things thatwere, or will be, or exist elsewhere, as
well as things that donAt exist at all.5036
Is fiction a product of the imagination, It certainly is. But so, it could be
said, is physicsC and so is history -- though none of these is a product of
the imagination only. If the historian draws on the imagination, it is in
order to speak about how things were, not to conure up something
imaginary. The difference between knowledge and fiction is not that the
one uses imagination and the other doesnAt. It is rather that in one case
imagination, in combination with other capacities, is marshalled in the
service of producing assertions, theories, predictions, and in some cases
narratives, about how the world really is, or will be, or wasC and in the
other case it is used to produce stories about characters, events, actions
and even worlds that never were.
Thus the second assumption, like the first, dissolves upon closer
examination. .istorians use their imagination -- along with other
capacities, of course, like sense, udgment and reason -- not to produce
fiction but to make claims about the real world -- in particular, to produce
narrative accounts of how things really happened. Fo what is it about
these accounts that renders them 4fictional,4 in the sense of untrue, i.e.
that prevents them from counting as genuine knowledge, This brings us
to the third assumption, which is that narrative can never give is an
acount of how things really happened, because 4the way things really
happen4 is utterly at odds with the narrative form.
9. ;arrative and $eality
This view seems to me an expression of the one of the deepest
assumptions our authors share with the positivists. This is the idea that in
order to *ualify as real the world must be utterly devoid of those
intentional, meaningful and narrative features we attribute to it when we
tell stories about it. $eality must be a meaningless se*uence of external
events, and time must be nothing but a series of nows, and anything else
we attribute to it is at best mere fantasy or or wishful thinking, at worst
imposition or distortion. +hat is somehow forgotten is that history is not
about the physical but about the human world. That is, it is principally
about persons -- and groups of persons -- and about their actions. But if
these are to be understood they must be related to the intentions, hopes,
fears, expectations, plans, successes and failures of those who act.
It can be argued %and I have argued at length elsewhere5006) that the
human world manifests a concrete version of the narrative form in the
very structure of action itself. The means-end structure of action is a
protoytpe of the beginning-middle-end structure of narrative, and it can
be said that human beings live their lives by formulating and acting out
stories that they implicitly tell both to themselves and to others. Indeed,
in this realm time itself is human, narratively shaped by beings who live
their lives, not from moment to moment, but by remembering what was
and proecting what will be. Although it is assuredly embedded in the
physical world and is datable, human time is not that of the numbered
se*uence %t0, t<, etc.) or even the time of before and after, earlier and
later, but the time of past and future as experienced from the vantage
point of the present by conscious, intentional agents.
If this is so then the narrative form inheres not only in the telling of
history but also in what is told about. Those who argue against this view
often point out that life is often messy and disorgani?ed, that it does not
have the 4coherence, integrity, fullness and closure4 %.ayden +hite) of
fictional stories" things go wrong, randomness intrudes, actions have
unintended conse*uences, etc. But they overlook two things" one is that
this is the very reality the best fictional stories are aboutC only the worst
detective stories and .arle*uin romances have the kind of boringly
predictable 4closure4 +hite has in mind. Fecond, life can be messy and
disorgani?ed because we live it according to plans, proects and 4stories4
that often go wrong -- that is, because it has, overall, the narrative and
temporal structure I have tried to describe.
But the real opposition to the view I have outlined stems, I believe, from
the belief that the only true 4reality4 is physical reality. This is, as I have
said, the basis of positivist metaphysics, but it is also one of the deeply
rooted preudices of our age. Fomehow the world of physical obects in
space and time, the world of what is externally observable, describable
and explainable in terms of mechanical pushes and pulls, and predictable
by means of general laws, counts as reality in the primary sense.
&verything else -- human experience, social relations, cultural and
aesthetic entities -- is secondary, epiphenomenal, and 4merely
subectiveC4 and the only true explanation of it is going to trace it back to
the physical world.
;ow there may be a good metaphysical argument for the primacy of
physical reality and even for the primacy of physical explanation -- though
I have never seen either. But such arguments would not be relevant to the
point I am trying to make. As conscious human beings acting in the world,
the intentions, meanings, cultural structures and values, not only of
ourselves but also of others, are as real as anything we know. They are
real in a sense that can never be touched by metaphyscial speculations"
that is, they matter. &ven the physical world enters into this picture, but
not as a merely obective realm. It is the constant background and theater
of operations for human actions, and it comes laden with economic,
cultural and aesthetic value for the persons and communities that live in
it. This is nature not 4in itself,4 but nature as experienced, inhabited,
cultivated, explored and exploited by human beings and societies.
+hether it is real or unreal, more real or less real in some abstract
metaphysical sense, it is this humanly real world that history, and other
forms of truth-telling or non-fictional narrative, like biography and
autobiography, are about. ;arrative is appropriate to it because the
structures of narrative are already inherent in human reality. The historian
does not have to 4reinscribe4 lived time into natural time by the act of
narration, as $icoeur saysC lived time is already there before the historian
comes along. To tell stories about the human past is not to impose an
alien structure on it but is continuous with the the very activity that makes
up the human past.
This is not to say that every historical narrative is true, or that some
narratives are not better than others. It is simply to deny that narratives
are incapable of being true ust because they are narratives. 'ikewise,
when we spoke of the role of imagination, we were not claiming that every
use of the imagination in history is legitimateC only that not everything
produced by the imagination need be merely imaginary. I do not intend to
get into the *uestion of how we evaluate narrative accounts in history and
how we distinguish the better from the worse. Fuffice it to say that it may
involve more than ust checking sources.
III. '" E(')P*E
It may be helpful at this point to test some of the things we have been
saying by considering an example of historical discourse. I choose *uite
deliberately a passage that some historians may regard as an extreme
case. In his recently published !andscape and "emory, Fimon Fchama
describes Fir +alter $alegh planning his Buianna expedition in (urham
.ouse, 'ondon"
-rom his lofty vantage point on the north bank, where the Thames made a
snaking, southern bend, $alegh could survey the progress of empire" the
dipping oars of the *ueenAs state barge as it made its way from Breenwich
to FheenC bunched masts of pinnaces and carracks swaying at their
berthsC broad-sterned (utch fly boats bouncing on the dock-tideC wherries
taking passengers to the Fouthwark theatersC the whole humming
business of the black river. But through the miry soup of refuse that
slapped at his walls, $alegh could see the waters of the #rinoco, as
seductively nacreous as the pearl he wore on his ear.50<6
There are several things we must note about this passage" the first is that
it is obviously not fictional in any conventional sense of the word. It is
presented as part of a historical account which is clearly marked as such
in all the conventional ways. +hat this indicates to us is that the author
intends in this particular passage to portray something that really
happened, not some imaginary scene.
Fecond, there are core features of this passage that can obviously be
backed up by historical evidence" $aleghAs presence in (urham .ouse
during the planning of his expeditionC the view of the Thames available
from that placeC the boats that could be seen on the Thames at that time,
together with their descriptionsC even the pearl in $aleghAs ear. %I have no
idea whether there actually is evidence for any of these things, or for that
matter against themC it is ust that they are susceptible of confirmation by
reference to sources.)
Third, the imagination of the author is clearly at work here, not in
producing an imaginary scene, but in bringing together these various
elements to portray something real. Fchama doesnAt even say
$alegh did but only that he could survey the 4whole humming business of
the black river4 visible from his vantage point. #f course, as a sailor
$alegh would hardly have overlooked it. Fchama goes further, though,
when he says that what $alegh could see in this busy scene was 4the
progress of empire.4 At the very least this tells us that the actual
scene did symboli?e the progress of empire, whether $alegh saw it that
way or not.
#f course, Fchama is suggesting that he did see it that wayC and further,
in the climax of the passage, that $alegh not only could but did see,
4through the miry soup4 of the Thames before him, the waters of the
#rinoco. +hat has Fchama done here, .e has described $aleghAs view of
things, his state of mind, as it may have been during a particular time.
&arlier we described 4true to life4 fiction as portraying events as they
might have been. Is Fchama not doing something close to that, /erhaps,
but again FchamaAs intention as a historian is to portray the realC and
what is more, the whole passage coud be seen as building a casefor
saying $alegh actually did see things this way. It is not a conclusive case,
needless to say, but it does give us reasons for accepting FchamaAs
descriptions as veridical. It provides a form of evidence, if you will --
different from reference to sources, but evidence still -- for believing his
account.
#f course, the persuasiveness of this passage has another source, and
that is the larger narrative of which it is a part. The passage itself
describes only $aleghAs activity at (urham .ouse. But what he is doing
there is planning an expedition, so it is understandable that his thoughts
should be on his goal. .ere $alegh is presented as a human being in the
human world. .is physical surroundings are not ust impinging on him
causallyC they have significance for him, a significance which is derived
from their relation to a long-term proect in which he is engaged. In this
sense they are embedded in a story which $alegh is proecting before
himself and which he will proceed to act out. This is the primary narrative
which shapes the human time of $aleghAs own past, present and future. It
is this first-order narrative that FchamaAs second-order narrative is about.
I+. C!"C*UI!"
I hope the foregoing reflections support the conclusion that the distinction
between fiction and history, in its commonsense form, is a valid one and
must be maintained. I have tried to show that current attempts to fudge
this distinction rest on a number of confusions and untenable tacit
assumptions concerning the nature of fiction, the role of imagination in
knowledge, and the relation between narrative and historical reality. These
confusions and assumptions derive, we have seen, from a consideration of
the 4literary4 character of historical discourse and from certain dubious
metaphysical doctrines, ultimately derived from or shared with positivism,
about the nature of reality.
#f course history is a literary genre, and as such it shares many features
with fiction, notably the narrative form. -urthermore, like writers of
fiction, historians use their imagination. But it does not follow from this
that history merges with fiction or that these elements eo ipso introduce
falsehood into historical knowledge or make it impossible to distinguish
the true from the false. .istorians avail themselves of these elements
precisely in order to tell the truth about human events in the past.
+hether they actually succeed in doing so in any particular case is
another matter, to be decided by appeal to evidence, to considerations of
coherence, to psychological insight or theory, and many other things. But
their capacity for success cannot be ruled out simply on the grounds that
their in*uiry makes use of imagination and narrative form. -ar from
standing in the way of historical truth, these are appropriate means for
achieving it. The reason for this, I have tried to argue here, is that they
derive from the very structure of historical reality and from the nature of
human time.