After reading this section it was as though my eyes slowly began to open up. Who really does decide what should and shouldn’t be considered history? According to Griel Marcus, the Sex Pistol’s were an important mark in history. Being a musician, this would certainly be to no surprise, because the Sex Pistol’s changed the music industry. Stating facts like this one really make history an open ended topic. If this were the case and history really went by what anyone wanted it to go by; would history classes still exist? I believe Nealon and Giroux make a good point by stating that history is like a narrative story. It has a point of view and the author has the ability to put down what he thought was significant. The only way we can understand what has happened in the past is by looking over what the author has written. And whose is to say that the author is including every important detail in his writing.
Many of these writings are written by individuals who have an educated background. This idea takes us back to the beginning of the semester stating that academia are the ones who run our lives. They choose what is right and wrong. What is history and what is just useless information. However, when it comes down to it this is a good thing. Imagine a world in which history was written by anyone. Would the history written be factual? With academia deciding what is history and what is not helps us to decide what we should learn and stay focused on. This information we should not only learn but we should learn from it and see why it is considered history from academia’s perspective. There is only so much information we can obtain and with history having margins, we are able to keep all of the information from getting to complex and open-ended.
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But how has the fact that history is determined by a small, wealthy group of white men possibly problematic? Do we think the alternative is simply a history written by anyone?
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