“This historical novel can no longer set out to represent
the historical past it can only ‘represent’ our ideas and stereotypes about
that past (which thereby at once becomes ‘pop history’)." (417)
Frederic
Jameson posits two separate versions of history: the historical past, and “pop
history.” Comparatively, the historical past is meant as the exact replication
of history that harbors no agenda except the truth of the past, whereas “pop
history” is meant to represent history through the popular ideas and
stereotypes of the past. Working in opposition, pop history and the historical
past consequently represent the rift that the loss of the referent has created.
Rather than a concrete history that holds true to when that history was the
present, Jameson argues that every retelling of history is selective and
therefore, heavily biased.
“Cultural production is thereby driven back inside a mental
space which is no longer that of the old monadic subject, but rather that of
some degraded collective ‘objective spirit’: it can no longer gaze directly on
some putative real world, at some reconstruction of past history which was once
itself a present; rather, as in Plato’s Cave, it must trace our mental images
of that past upon its confining walls.” (417)
To further this comparison of the
historical past and pop history, Jameson cites Plato’s cave. Plato’s cave
explains the relationship between the enlightened and the unenlightened, in
addition to how these two will understand and retell what they’ve seen
differently. Drawing from Plato’s cave, Jameson finds we “must trace our mental
images of that past upon its confining walls” in order to remember the
historical past. However, in doing so, we acknowledge that the history is
retold from the perspective of the individual retelling it. Thus, it is
virtually impossible to retell history from an unbiased, all-inclusive and
accurate perspective. Meaning historical pasts are accounted for with some sort
of political or ideological stance that sways the event. From this popular view
of the historical past, society’s created a “pop history” that lacks referent
and neutrality with the historical past.
My
experience in AP U.S. History in high school is exemplary of our biased
relationship with history because it is history offered through the lens of the
United States. Subsequently, catastrophes like the bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, and the Vietnam war, are retold from the perspective of the U.S. My
teacher refused to acknowledge the Vietnam war as a loss or even a tie for the
American people. Moreover, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are depicted
as unavoidable and what had to be done to win the war. This style of teaching
leaves students at a disadvantage because it is biased history, which in turn blurs
the student’s relationship with the historical past to a point of no return.
“If there is any realism left here, therefore, it is a
‘realism’ which is meant to derive from the shock of grasping that confinement,
and of slowly becoming aware of a new and original historical situation in
which we are condemned to seek History by way of our own pop images and
simulacra of that history, which itself remains forever our of reach.” (417)
In summation, Frederic Jameson believes that any realism
left over from the pop history phenomenon will be in accordance with the
realization that society has confined itself to mere “pop images” and “simulacra”
of the past. Therefore, Jameson concludes that there will be a “crisis in
reality” once society realizes the historical past in its genuine form is lost
forever and all that is left is the popular ideas and representations of the past.
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