On 4/12/02 11:30:00 AM, Erica Allen wrote:
>On 4/12/02 11:16:00 AM, Amy Hall
>wrote:
>Tompkins suggests that truth
>is
>in the eye of the beholder
>pretty much,
>leaving it all
>relative. I think
>her
>conclusion is a cop-out.
>Just
>because she couldn't find
>the
>truth does not mean that
>there
>wasn't one
>When she says that
>"any one
>fact is perspectival
>doesn't
>change its factual nature
>in
>the slightest. It merely
>reiterates
>it. (688)" I have
>to disagree. If three
>people
>see a car accident happen,
>each
>from an alternate point
>of view, every
>account will
>likely be different.
>Fair
>enough, every person is
>giving
>"their truth" but just
>because
>it is true to them does
>not
>make it true. There is really
>only
>one thing that has
>happened, even if it
>cannot be
>completely reached.
>Every
>person will doubt what the
>other
>has said, because they
>saw their side
>with their own
>eyes. Their
>perspectives
>distort the truth, but
>the
>truth is still there. Every
>person
>distorts it in their
>own way.
>Tompkins
>conclusion is
>relatively unclear to me,
>but
>I do believe that I disagree.

I
>totally agree that there is a solid
>truth but I think that Tompkins was
>trying to make that point (I thought was
>the point) that when reading texts, the
>author may have skewed the information
>in some way.


Solid truth? Even when it happened there was no concinsus on what happened. Nobody experiences an event outside of interpretation, so what really happened was that people had interpretations of reality. That is what history should be, the study of perspectives because, after all, that is all we have—or ever have had.