Historical Truth Essay -- essays papers

Historical TruthHistorical Truth?As a child sits through history class in the first grade, he or she learns ofthe relationship between Christopher Columbus and the Indians. This history lesson tells the children of the dependence each group had on each other. just as the children mature, the relations between the both groups began to change with their age. So the story that the teenagers are told is a gruesome one of savage killings and lying. When the teenagers learn of this, they themselves might want to do research on this outcome to find out the truth. But as one searches, one finds the inconsistency between the research books. So the question is, who is telling the truth? Mary Louise Pratt and Jane Tompkins examine these difficulties of the reading and writing of history, specifically at the problems of bias and contemplative historic accounts. In Art of the Contact Zone, Pratt explores the issue of whose version of history gets favored and whose gets exceptional by analy zing the circumstances surrounding Guaman Pomas and de la Vegas letter to the King of Spain. In Indians Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History, Tompkins investigates how history is shaped in accordance to individual(prenominal) biases and cultural conditions of historians by questioning different writings about Native Americans. Each author comes to the conclusion between history andsubjectivity, meaning that history is problematic. The historical accounts pondered by Pratt and Tompkins through historical text allows them to realize that every account that a historian calls a fact is really a perspective. Pratts concepts of nexus zone, autoethnography, and ethnography are supported by the historical ideas in Tompkins essay. The c... ...from reading both essays one would find this to be true. For example, the historical documents encountered by both authors piece some conflicting ideas. Comparing the two authors strategies to read history, Pratt does a complete job. A complete job means reading primary sources from both the inferior and superior cultures. This way she could get the full picture of the actual accounts of the contact zone. On the other hand, Tompkins does not read both types of texts, only ethnographic texts and comes to her conclusion. But the basis of Pratts and Tompkins essay is of the essays they read. Therefore each author is biased in their own nature. There biases come from their culture, which affects the way one sees or understands, and writes history. So whose view is right? It is oneself who ultimately decides on which historical point is true based on ones biases.