Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg i. Br.
HS “Revisionist Histories in American and Canadian Literature “
Semester: 07

Relativity in Historical Discourse

von: Christopher Golz

Table of Content

1. Introduction p. 2

2. Philosophical relativity: Nietzsche’s perspective p. 4

3. Scientific relativity p. 7

3.1 Physical relativity p. 7
3.2 Linguistic relativity p. 8

3.2.1 General remarks p. 9
3.2.2 Development of a language based principle of relativity p. 9
3.2.3. Consequences p. 10

4. Relativity in present discourse p. 12

5. Conclusion p. 15

6. Bibliography p. 16

1. Introduction

When Hernán Cortés invaded the Aztec empire in 1519, he was thought to be the returned god Quetzalcontl. The emperor Montezuma II. was blinded by his people’s prophecy and thus did not realize the danger crawling along with the Spaniards towards the capital Tenochtitlán and his entire kingdom. The genocide started with the imprisonment of Montezuma and ended in 1522.

This brief summary is one version of the happenings in the Mexican area around 1520. Others may focus on Cortés’ loyalty to Charles V., king of Spain, or his deep belief in being a soldier of God, sent on his mission to Christianize the heathens in the New World. One could also stress the cleverness of Montezuma pretending the return of a god to uphold his status as a ruler all the while knowing about Aztec’s inferiority to this new enemy and the impossibility of resistance or even victory. The first paragraph comes up with some words that manipulate the reader’s attitude1 but obviously revise the Spanish-Aztec war “wie es eigentlich gewesen ist”2. Although there are several other aspects involved, some are mentioned above, this text mediates facts about the Spanish invasion. But are those facts true? What is a reader supposed to believe when he wants to acquire specific knowledge about this historical period?

In general, he has two options. First he may consult an encyclopedia to gather factual knowledge. Second he can read further literature on this topic, for instance Barthelme’s story Cortés and Montezuma3. The latter also deals with these historic events although in a rather fictive way. At a certain point, the reader runs into trouble. Are these texts topically equivalent and if they are not, how are they to be judged? Which text provides reliable true historical facts? This debatable issue is a somewhat clash of ideologies. For the present discussion, Kress and Hodge’s definition of ideology is adopted being “a systematic body of ideas, organized from a particular point of view”4 and their added remark, that “ideology involves a systematically organized presentation of reality”5. The reader has the choice to believe one of two options. He can adopt the position of the figure of Professor Binns who rejects the existence of a mystical chamber in Hogwarts Castle and rather returns to the main topic of his subject ‘History of Magic’: “[…] to history, to solid, believable, verifiable fact!”6 Or the reader may follow McIlvoy’s position: by writing anything it can simply awarded to be proper history – “Dammit, now it is history”7. These rather ironical statements shall polarize the reader’s attitude. Either he believes in a scientific methodology mediated by a historian who deals with empirical facts and thus only collects real data in order to present it objectively to the reader, or he considers a wide range of information to be historical, without any necessary and sufficient parameters to decide on its truth. This work favors the latter viewpoint and will try to show the impossibility of the former. The general question whether historical discourse can be differentiated from fictional narratives has to be reformulated: being human, is it possible to reach an objective or superindividual position to mediate truth? That statement shall be used as a starting point for discussion. History does not mirror anything realistically but is to be understood as pure subjective interpretation. Historical discourse is product of one or several individual authors who use language to mediate information they primarily perceive on the base of attention, background knowledge, time and reality.

The second chapter is meant to familiarize the reader with the philosophical basement of Friedrich Nietzsche, providing substantial information about the principle of relativity that is implicitly mentioned. Nietzsche propagates a philosophical point of view that is similar not only to physical facts proven by Max Planck and Albert Einstein but also to linguistic and anthropological theories from Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. These similarities are briefly outlined in the third chapter that doubts fundamental principles of human organized life. Chapter four will try to find support for this point of view and exemplify the idea of relativity in literature. Finally, a conclusive fifth chapter summarizes the main aspects and their evidence in a hopefully coherent way.

2. Philosophical relativity: Nietzsche’s perspective

[...]

1 i.e. blinded, crawling danger, genocide.

2 quoted from Nipperdey, Thomas (1988), “Zum Problem der Objektivität bei Ranke,“ Leopold von Ranke und die moderne Geschichtswissenschaft, p. 215.

3 Barthelme, Donald (1981), “Cortés and Montezuma,“ Sixty Stories, pp. 328-336.

4 Kress, Gunter, Hodge, Robert (1993), Language as Ideology, p. 6.

5 ibid., p. 15.

6 Rowling, Joanne K. (2000), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, p. 152.

7 McIlvoy, Kevin (1989), “The Complete History of New Mexico,“ Tierra: Contemporary Short Fiction of New Mexico, p. 83.