CPI columnist Dr Azly Rahman on Memo To Historians: Question all historical facts
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- Category: Dr Azly Rahman
- Posted by Dr Azly Rahman
20 April, 2009
Question all historical ‘facts’
“Man has no nature… what he has is history,??? writes the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gassett.
But whose history must man learn? Whose construction of history must we craft as official knowledge? What is the conception of human nature must we hold in writing about history? There are no historical ‘facts’. The term itself is an oxymoron and a contradiction. There are only selected memories we pursue out of our ideological biases. Underlying the selection process lie the act of historicising and the base and superstructure that shape the manner history is written. The modern state - the ‘necessary evil’- dictates the ideology of historicising; thus the maxim “winners write history, losers write poetry or study anthropology???.
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Zahid must be made to withdraw these irresponsible and provocative remarks which in the Malay papers and media will be seen as targeted mainly at the Chinese.