History And Memory
History and Memory
Is there such a thing as "history"? For many years now there has been a strong debate, as regarding whether or not there is such a thing as history' that is more objective than memory. Due to memories completely subjective nature, history although also being somewhat subjective, it is a great deal more objective than memory. To discuss such a statement first one must define the terms history', objective' and memory'. 0The Macquarie Dictionary defines the term memory' as: "the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving impressions, or of recalling or recognizing previous experiences. A mental impression retained; a recollection." For the purpose of this essay assume history to be; the knowledge of what happened, the record or expression of what occurred." The term "objective" refers to being free from personal feelings or prejudice, unbiased. The idea of objectivity involves a belief in the reality of the past and the truth as correspondence to that reality.' In the light of such definitions memory is entirely subjective, with no elements of objective truth.
Laurel Holliday's book entitled Children's Wartime Diaries illustrates how memory is composed of and subjective to ones current emotions and circumstances. Caroline Baum in her article The Children's Ark and Mark Baker in his novel The Fiftieth Gate both use history and memory to reconstruct their parents past. Throughout their journey of discovering their parents' history both authors discern the subjective elements of memory and discern memories subjective characteristics. Such characteristics as personal recall, bias feelings, fragmentation, gaps, forgetfulness and emotions involved with memory add to its complete subjective nature. History although being more objective than memory, also has a number of subjective characteristics. David Irving's web site includes a document entitled Did Six Million Really Die?' This document illustrates how...
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