Hayden White once taught that history is a collection of stories told through narrative structures that encode political ideologies regardless of any given historian’s methodological objectivity. Because history can never be raw data, it must be organized by tropological grammars, and therefore is open to the interpretations of literacy criticism. This is now something of a commonsense claim for literary critics and historians alike (whatever differences exist concerning its epistemological implications), but its seeming obviousness can belie the totalizing force of the concept of narrative exercises in White’s and subsequent works of historiography. Is narrative all that is communicated when one reads history or experiences it in another medium? Were positivist historians so blind to the effects of form on their productions? Are there no fault lines within the material objects of history that communicate counternarratives to overt ideologies of nationalism and progress? Recent studies by Rebecca Mark, Jude M....
Skip Nav Destination
Ersatz America: Hidden Traces, Graphic Texts, and the Mending of Democracy
Article navigation
Book Review|
June 01 2016
Ersatz America: Hidden Traces, Graphic Texts, and the Mending of Democracy
America Writes Its History, 1650–1850: The Formation of a National Narrative
Relativism, Alternate History, and the Forgetful Reader: Reading Science Fiction and Historiography
Ersatz America: Hidden Traces, Graphic Texts, and the Mending of Democracy
. By Mark, Rebecca. Charlottesville
: Univ. of Virginia Press
. 2014
. xiii, 300 pp. Cloth
, $65.00; paper, $29.50.America Writes Its History, 1650–1850: The Formation of a National Narrative
. By Pfister, Jude M.. Jefferson, NC
: McFarland
. 2014
. x, 205 pp. Paper
, $35.00; e-book available.Relativism, Alternate History, and the Forgetful Reader: Reading Science Fiction and Historiography
. By Thiess, Derek J.. New York
: Lexington Books
. 2015
. vii, 175 pp. Cloth
, $80.00; e-book, $79.99.
Kevin Modestino
Kevin Modestino
Kevin Modestino is a lecturer of English at Howard University. He is currently at work on his first book, The Aesthetics of History: Envisioning National Progress and Slave Revolution, 1830–1934, and his work has previously appeared in Studies in American Naturalism. He received his PhD from Duke University in 2014.
Search for other works by this author on:
American Literature (2016) 88 (2): 426–429.
Citation
Kevin Modestino; Ersatz America: Hidden Traces, Graphic Texts, and the Mending of Democracy
America Writes Its History, 1650–1850: The Formation of a National Narrative
Relativism, Alternate History, and the Forgetful Reader: Reading Science Fiction and Historiography. American Literature 1 June 2016; 88 (2): 426–429. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-3533470
Download citation file:
Advertisement
51
Views