How to "read" this essay
I hope that readers approach this essay in several
ways, exploring the different ways that they might read about and
understand the past. Hans Gumbrecht's, In 1926, though
published as a book, guides his readers in his aptly titled
introduction, ``User's
Manual,''
Do not try 'to start
from
the beginning,' for this book has no beginning in the sense that
narratives or arguments have beginnings. ... Simply start with an
entry[of fifty-one] that particularly interests you. From each entry
a web of cross-references will take you to other related entries.
Read as far as your interest carries you. ... You'll thus
establish your individual reading path.
I could not have stated this any better. Gumbrecht's
work, thus
strikes me as an interesting move in how we practice history.
This essay is similar, but turns to the electronic medium as an
opportunity to
``write'' a non-linear history. It is an
amalgam of data, stories, and interpretation. The stories
provided here do not necessarily fit together; they are not consistent
and contradictions exist; moreover, occasionally, they lead to nowhere.
This is how change happens; it recalls Serres' notion of human
progress as a ``shuffle, like an invalid'' that includes those---
``small children, women, old people, the sick, the simpleminded, and
the poorest" ---whose experiences are too often deemed of lesser
historical significance.
There are four principal organizational forms
and three
entry points. Hypertext allows the presentation of history in
some of its elementary forms: conceptual framework, raw data
(chronicle), data patterns (redundancies), and histories. In a
printed essay, the first three would be integrated into the text of the
interpretive essay, the historical essay. I do hope that the
reader takes Gumbrecht's advice.
- Frames
- The interpretive apparati of a historical
narrative are located here. The essays in this
section provide the reader with the scholarly apparatus---my framing of
the issues and an
explanation of my choices. They include introduction,
conclusion, and theoretical discussion.
Annals - The heart of this
essay is an archives of events
that occurred in 1884. I have taken most of these events from
newspapers. The annals form is one of two modes of organizing this
archives; the other is Repetition. The annals organize the
archives linearly, by date, but there is usually little
connection between entries and indeed, they are not of similar
significance.
Repetition - Repetitive moments form groupings that are not necessarily the categories
that we
use today. In
both of these sections, the reader can click on any entry to bring up
text that describes the event, usually a paraphrase of a newspaper
article. From this entry, the reader can look for similar events,
for events
occurring around the same moment, or seek explanation in the section
called histories
- Histories
- The
interpretation
of these events, placing them
within the categories with which we are familiar as well as giving them
meaning (including removal), are in the essays here. There will be two levels of historical
interpretation: the interpretation that takes them from the repetitions
to the interpretive categories of history, and second, how these relate
to more common interpretations of transformation or
modernization. If readers choose to enter the essay here, they
can move to links to archival material, the data listed in Annals and Repetition. This is the more normative way of reading and
writing history, but if one pursued the links in the individual entries, one would quickly find oneself in other categories