how have different historians approached the question of of objectivity and evidence in historical practice

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  • how have different historical thinkers approached the question of 'objectivity' and 'evidence' in historical practice?
    • rocks < 3
      • a different way of approaching evidence
        • particularly important to recognise the interrelation between human and nonhuman things - Donna Haraway 42
      • peak document - that the utility from written research has ended - shows africanisation of hsitory bcos aDNA = learning about cultures with less doc, help illuminate undocumented areas of the world e.g. LiDAR and lookinig at teeth etc - JR McNeill pgs 5-8
        • "to reconstruct the past from rocks rather than written records" - 2 - "we are often told how technology will revolutionize the future. I wonder how it will revolutionize the past" - JR McNeill - 3
          • to learn about the more distant past: aDNA and an analysis on  where the black death originated, graves from the spanish civil war, archaelogists,  - JR McNeill - 9
            • "As we historians often point out, texts are likelier to offer the voices of the powerful than the powerless" - McNeill -11
    • ranke and 19th century thinkers
      • Bonnie G Smith - authenticity and rigidity 1150
        • an emphasis on methods - objective - seminars and fact collecting, investigating primary evidence
          • a focus on the archives and facts bcos science and want professionalisation - Bury - to distinguish history as its own discipline  - BURY
        • "scienticity was the hallmark of the modern and the authoritative" - Peter Novick - 21
      • "she is herself simply a science,, no less and no more" - Bury 42
        • he claims that no historians' primary aim was not to present an objective account of the past - Bury inaugral lecture - pg10 (no longer true?! - links to Hartman)
      • Ranke: a belief in a single verifiable version of the past, doesn't like narrative at the expense of facts (wk2 lecture notes)
        • "wie es eigentlich gewesen" - a strict reconstruction of the past through a critical examination of the facts without moral judgements - Georg G Iggers - 43. a strict presentation of the facts - but eurocentricism - 48
    • move beyond evidence and objectivity
      • saidiya hartman
        • counterfactual history to address gaps in the archives - Lose Your Mother - the 'Dead Book'
        • "to save the girl... from oblivion" pg9
      • isaiah berlin - history deals with facts but when deductive science not enough, need to be inductive - filling in the gaps "in the absence of concrete factual evidence" - 7
      • Alun Munslow pg63 -> “This means that history is always the end product of the historian’s selection of evidence and choice of appropriate sources” - inferences from evidence available - 66 (means an increasing recognition of the role of fact selection has)
    • INTRO: during the professionalisation of history as a discipline, emphasis on science for cudos etc - largely relying on documents and primary evidence to supposedly reach objective answers
      • however, no longer that simple - a recognition that objectivity and evidence - in the form of documents - not necessarily the best way to approach history. will firstly analyse 19th c focus on facts and evidence, then use of rocks etc, then a move beyond objectivity all together - seeing faults in the archives
      • objectivity at the expense of diversity and inclusivity? - and what kind of objectivity - from the archives - colonial and eurocentric

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