Historical Narratives: Constructable, Evaluable, Inevitable

This book explains some of the psychological processes that go into narrative construction and why it is that we have so much variability of historical accounts about a single historical event. A central focus of this book is how historians go from having unconnected units of data to having a coherent, structured, and organized flow of experiences. The author argues that the way these connections are established responds to certain Gestalt psychological principles that allow us to understand not only how histories are constructed but also how this construction can be rather different depending on how these principles are applied. To illustrate how these principles are present in histories, the author analyzes classic historical writers such as Burckhardt, Huizinga, Vico, and Marx.As well as an explanation of why historical multiplicity happens, the book also offers a way to evaluate different historical narratives about the same historical event. To illustrate how the evaluative framework is at play, the author analyzes two views about the so-called discovery of America. The first one explains what happens in 1492 by using the term "discovery." The second one uses the notion of "invention" to talk about the same set of circumstances. The book provides an important epistemic tool to evaluate these different accounts—one that can be applied not only to this case but also others.This book appeals to scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduate students of history and philosophy. In addition, the book may also attract intellectuals, generally considered, who are interested in how philosophy can inform and question historical practice.

About the Author

Mariana Imaz-Sheinbaum is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Philosophical Research at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). She obtained her PhD in philosophy at UC Santa Cruz in 2021. Mariana is interested in the field of philosophy of history and social sciences. She is particularly concerned with detailing the epistemic value of narratives and how they enhance our understanding of the world. Her research focuses on questions such as: Why can we have many interpretations of a single historical event? What type of meaning-making activity is history? How can we evaluate historical discourses? Which normative criteria that apply to historiography have features in common with science or art? How does narrative allow us to understand our own identity?

Some of her latest publications include: Principles of Narrative Reason (2021) , Beyond Truth: an epistemic normativity for historiography (2022), and Rethinking Historical Aspects (2023).