This article considers historical facts and investigates the particular relationship between a factual and a valuative dimension within them. The operation is an autopsy of a particular historical fact, which works as an example. On this basis, the article will elucidate the similarities and the differences between historical facts and natural facts, with an emphasis on the observation that the former are more subject to the influence of interpretation than the latter. This feature of historical facts explains why social and (...) political struggles for recognition arise with respect to historical events. (shrink)

In what follows I explore the question of fictionality in history writing. First, I venture into the unfamiliar genre of ego-histoire and make my own professional training in the tenets of positivist or realist historiography an object of theoretical reflection and critical analysis. Then as a way of dealing with the literary dimension of written history, I make a canonical work in history of education an object of rhetorical analysis. Finally, as another way of coming to terms with the “fictions (...) of historiography,” I revisit one of my own productions and make it an object of metacritical consideration. My central theme is that historiographical realism alone will not suffice, that historians are as dependant upon literary invention as upon documents, that history cannot be written without the aid of the “fictions of historiography,” and that the difference between the historian and the novelist is narrower than we may have been accustomed to think. I further argue that attention to the literary or rhetorical dimension of history is long overdue in history of education, where it flourishes unacknowledged. I conclude that historical writing is not just a literary pastime and the issue remains: how to come to grips with fictionalizing and the truth claims of historiography. (shrink)

La contribución específica de Hans Kellner a la Nueva Filosofía de la Historia se dirige a dar cuenta del revival de la narrativa a partir de los 80 en términos de un revival de la retórica. Sus relecturas de los textos históricos, metahistóricos, literarios y filosóficos nos invitan a apreciar las estrategias retóricas implicadas en ellos, desplegando aquello que habilitan o imposibilitan decir acerca del pasado. Kellner invita a eludir el planteo fundacionista que se ciñe a la cuestión de la (...) validez epistémica del texto, sin caer por ello en la actitud determinista lingüística que fija las estrategias discursivas en tanto estructuras artificiosas y distorsivas de la realidad. Kellner nos desafía a abandonar la metáfora de la distorsión para caracterizar la relación entre representación y realidad. Si en cuanto filósofxs de la historia nos interesa trazar líneas de continuidad y comunidad en la indagación historiográfica, debemos enfocar en sus fuentes retóricas más que en la evidencia documental o la experiencia del pasado cuyo rasgo manifiesto es la fragmentariedad. Su propuesta promueve que nos focalicemos, por un lado, en las innumerables elecciones tomadas entre las diversas modalidades de conocimiento disponibles. Por el otro, nos advierte de la ansiedad provocada por dicha elección en contra de otras opciones descartadas que podrían habernos hecho pensar las cosas de otra manera. ARK: ark:/s18537960/xdxtang:n. (shrink)