Existence, Meaning & Transmission

"This preference for reducing all experience into a more powerful flow; the themes and patterns are few in number but their intensity and of meaning is thereby increased."

This line seems like a perfect destination to the long journey of the article. It sums up the importance of everything in the article. Since History is largely the interpretation of the past, I feel its true beauty is in it being imperfect, hazy, transmitted, retold and reinterpreted and unfolding into numerous forms, in the contemporary and relevant times. The attached meaning to the art, apart from its orignal intentions, tell their own beautiful history.
Be it the tool used, the form, the experience, the exagerations, together with different mindsets of historians, resistances to ideas, imagination etc make up History. The history of History.

" The visible portrait of the collective identity, whether tribe, class, or nation, comes into being. This self image reflected in things is a guide and a point of reference to the group for the future, and it eventually becomes the portrait given to posterity"
The 'material culture' throws light on all the above things and more. All materials used, expression, beliefs and challenges, all reflect and narrate a beautiful History without any words.
Since the author says that the beauty of the art is anyway incommunicable. Although it can be experienced, understood, empathised with and connected with. Thats where a Historian comes in where he is able to communicate the invisible.

"..,the single life contains an infinity of present instants, each with its innumerable open choices in violation and in action"
Although the author talks about the bifurcation system in the humans , he spoke about the funneling of experiences in the above quote. They seem to contradict to me at first. But what probably the author means is that the experinces which get filtered dont hold so much of our interests, signals of which could be carried down arranged in a sensible pattern.

"Prior to 3000B.C the texture of transmitted duration ........in all their meanings"
This instance reminds me of Cosmic Calendar where time is mapped. From birth of the universe till this second has been spread over one calendar year. The past few thousand years have just been a milisecond or something at 11:59 pm on 31st dec on the cosmic calendar. I think a Cosmic Calendar is a very good example of an astrologer and an historians work.

"This reciprocal relation of real surface and deep illusion is apparently inexhaustible"

"past is nothing but the memory of the past"

"Therefore, history begins where tradition and collective memory stops-but then history has to be reintegrated into the personal and collective memory. Historical and collective memory thus have a tendency to converge yet never become identical"

History records, history accentuates and history interprets. The medium is "memory".
Memory becomes History, memory which is transmitted and remembered, finds its relevance in History.
I personally feel, collective memory and Historical converge and become identical. They depend on the collective significance. A collective memory and a historical become prominent because of the cultural, emotional, personal, importance a relatively large amount of people hold with it. The statement the memory might have made or the collective impact on people.
At the same time I feel I cant relate to a lot of important events which may go down in history but i relate to and am emotional about little things I did with my family in my childhood. Memory is subconcious, it could be a fraction of history in time or could be History itself.
So in my conclusion I feel History is seen from a birds eye view, zoomed out into time, reinterpreted and retold through memories.
"The past is nothing but the memory of the past"
Memory is dynamic. Its impossible to retell and transmit without alteration. One reason which i see for this is perspective again. Since memory is dynamic, history on some level becomes dynamic.
Dynamism stems also from the several mediums through which memories are built and retold and thus becomes history. From old manusrcipts and stones to fabula and memories of historical, it all starts playing an important role to preserve, transmit and interpret History.

Perspective - Historian or a Designer!

This article questioned the birth and evolution of history itself. Historical views on History.

"Our answers, consciously or unconsciously, reflects our own position in time, and forms part of our answer to the broader question what view we take of the society in which we live."

Historians added character to what existed as facts, figures, some memories and research. By the end of the article we know that facts and historians have an unending equal relationship. What I find amazing in this article is that I find so many perspectives and in so many places.
The article itself is not just a single view on history but a well concluded, constructed and evolved one, with so many takes on history throughout our past. And now we are here giving our take to these views, which is yet another perspective and will become history.

"St Augustine looked at history from the point of view of the early christian......Each was the only one possible for the man who adopted it."(pg 20)

This also tells us a lot about having different perspective, the same fact being looked at from 10 different point views creates 10 different histories! And further 'validation' by other historians may build upon these perspective to create their own perspective in history.
The character and the life which a historian gives to his findings and readings are inevitable yet important. As the different perspective themselves tell us a lot about the historian, the era he wrote it in, what influenced his views, etc.
But sadly we have a very narrow view on history. I feel a gap between reading history and understanding that it is just one of 100 views of the same fact.
As kids, it came as information. We had to know how, when and why British came to invade and colonize, how many died, and what a devastating effect they must have had. No other perspective came our way. We were never bothered by who wrote it and who validated it.

Another thing which stands out in this article for me is the selection process.
"It never occurred to me to inquire by what accident or process of attritation that minute selection of facts, out of all ...............become the facts of history" (pg7)
To which I want to quote another view by Neitzsche (Pg 21)
".... The question is how far it is life furthering, life preserving, species preserving, perhaps species- creating"
One talks about the selection process.Who decided what is valid and relevent for the present and the future. And the other talks about purpose.
" Knowledge is knowledge with a purpose". Every historian, in my thinking has the right to chose his own pupose of writing and recording, and it is our purpose which makes us accept it or not. Time, events, nature and experience, all would determine whats important for the historian.

I constantly related these issues to the relevance it has in my life. I concluded that as a designer, persective, selection and purpose are as important as a historian.
A designers role is also of a historian's.

Vidhi Goel