Drawing Blood from a Stone
-a phrase meaning that you can't extract something that never was there
But don't we try to do this all the time? In North America, we have lots of "historical", heritage places, which we treat as though they were the site of the battle of Trafalgar or the coronation site of ancient kings. We call them museums. We boast of owning things of great historical importance and we claim to have a long and tumultuous history. Or at least, so it would seem from the way we teach them in schools, during the mandatory history class.
But, are we trying to draw blood from a stone? Are we trying to draw history out of a place that is too young?
When a land is young, historians are not necessary because the history of the land is still considered current events. Eventually, when these events fade out of memory, we require professional and amateur historians to remember. But there must of some gap between being a current event and being history. Is today's news tomorrow's history? Well, let me ask you this, is 3-day old bread a historical artifact of how life was 3 days ago?
It's a bit of a ridiculous idea, but it does give some insight as to what is considered history and what isn't. Events and things enter into the realm of history at the changing of an era. If you lived at the onset of the plague in Elizabethan England, I'm sure your 3-day old bread would be a historical artifact of stupendous importance. But, to bring things here to Waterloo, is a 90-year old farmhouse a historical place?
90 years is not very old; people and turtles can outlive that farmhouse. After all, Stonehenge and the Parthenon are eons old. Can we justify classifying all these relatively modern objects as historical objects, such as a 90-year old farmhouse? Or are we just lowering our standards to fulfill our subconscious requirement of historical depth? Are we so bored with our short history that we're drawing blood from stone to create more?
The point is, history is written by victors, but more importantly it is written. It is written after victories, conflicts and other clashes of interests. By Marx's philosophy, this is the same as saying that history is written after the changing of an era. Although the books that says this regrettably gave birth to less pleasant philosophies, it still gives us a basis for classifying history. And recognizing when we are drawing blood from stone.
But don't we try to do this all the time? In North America, we have lots of "historical", heritage places, which we treat as though they were the site of the battle of Trafalgar or the coronation site of ancient kings. We call them museums. We boast of owning things of great historical importance and we claim to have a long and tumultuous history. Or at least, so it would seem from the way we teach them in schools, during the mandatory history class.
But, are we trying to draw blood from a stone? Are we trying to draw history out of a place that is too young?
When a land is young, historians are not necessary because the history of the land is still considered current events. Eventually, when these events fade out of memory, we require professional and amateur historians to remember. But there must of some gap between being a current event and being history. Is today's news tomorrow's history? Well, let me ask you this, is 3-day old bread a historical artifact of how life was 3 days ago?
It's a bit of a ridiculous idea, but it does give some insight as to what is considered history and what isn't. Events and things enter into the realm of history at the changing of an era. If you lived at the onset of the plague in Elizabethan England, I'm sure your 3-day old bread would be a historical artifact of stupendous importance. But, to bring things here to Waterloo, is a 90-year old farmhouse a historical place?
90 years is not very old; people and turtles can outlive that farmhouse. After all, Stonehenge and the Parthenon are eons old. Can we justify classifying all these relatively modern objects as historical objects, such as a 90-year old farmhouse? Or are we just lowering our standards to fulfill our subconscious requirement of historical depth? Are we so bored with our short history that we're drawing blood from stone to create more?
The point is, history is written by victors, but more importantly it is written. It is written after victories, conflicts and other clashes of interests. By Marx's philosophy, this is the same as saying that history is written after the changing of an era. Although the books that says this regrettably gave birth to less pleasant philosophies, it still gives us a basis for classifying history. And recognizing when we are drawing blood from stone.
posted by Kay at 12:28 PM
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