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Historiography

"History Doesn't Repeat Itself. But It Rhymes."

In a nutshell, historiography is the history of history. Rather than subjecting actual events - say, Hitler's annexation of Austria - to historical analysis, the subject of historiography is the history of the history of the event: the way it has been written, the sometimes conflicting objectives pursued by those writing on it over time, and the way in which such factors shape our understanding of the actual event at stake, and of the nature of history itself.

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Questions of historiography include the following:

  • who writes history, with what agenda in mind, and towards what ends?

  • how accurate can a historian ever hope to be, analyzing past events from the vantage point of the historian's present?

  • does the historian's own perspective, impacted as it undoubtedly is by gender, age, national and ideological affiliation, etc., contribute to an "agenda" that the historian's work is playing into, unwittingly or consciously?

  • what about the types of sources, both primary and secondary, an historian chooses to base his or her work upon? Do they too contribute to the above-mentioned "agenda"?

  • does the very selection of sources (and, by extension, the decision to exclude certain other sources) prejudice the outcome of the historian's work in certain ways? et cetera.

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From: Writing on History: CUNY: https://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/writing/history/critical/historiography.html

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