/lit/ - Literature

Easy, you embrace and study the bias itself.

>>4052515
read: become a historiographer. beware you'll make plenty of enemies

well you read as much as you can from all perspectives. Read something that's biased one way, and then read about that same thing from another source biased in the completely opposite way. Then you can start to get an idea of what's really going on, and maybe present it yourself in a more neutral way.

>>4052524
I've been trying that way, but the problem is that most of the books in my area are limited to a highly pro-western view which I assume all western books are , which isn't to say the west is censroing or evil, it's just VERY biased.

>>4052511
read primary source documents until your eyes bleed

Whom do you trust more, the victors of history? Or the losers?
Example being the Native-American conflicts of the USA.
The Natives could be a more accurate version, but they tend to consistently bitch about how they lost, portraying themselves as the innocent victims devoid of faults. They focus more upon the evils of the warlike White Man while ignoring their own warrior cultures.
The USA on the other hand omits its own atrocities, making themselves the noble heroes.
It's a slippery slope, but their is a grain of truth by analyzing both sides of a coin.

>>4052554
But where can you find said source documents.

Also, do you mean written artefacts from way back, or books/masterpieces from the era?

Read it all. Then read what everyone else said after they read it all. Then go back and read it all again. Repeat.

Somewhere in there you get to call out others for not having read it all.

>>4052557
Thats alot like what this anon said >>4052524, and I really do approve of they idea, but I just don't know where to find the losers side of the story.

Partly because I like to focus more on ancient history, which has very little account of the losing side, and mostly because I'm a lazy fuck who needs to fix his work ethic

OP if you are being serious, which I think you are, the key to studying history lies in studying objectively. Everything you read must be held as worthless as the next set of texts you read.

For example, if you read a work about Mary Queen of Scots written by the English you would come to believe her as a bloodbathing lunatic. If you read a version by the Scottish you would understand her as a brilliant strategist and great leader.

From here you can slowly piece together a conclusion about what really happened. In her case, she was a great figurehead for the Scots and completely despised by the English for that.

That's just one example. History is harder to know the reality of the farther back you go. Modern history (the last century) is a lot easier because there is a wealth of texts available that just weren't available in times past as the majority of people were illiterate.

So I guess then it would depend on what exactly is your interest in the realm of history. It's impossible to be a 'general historian' as there is just far too much ground to cover in a reasonable, rational, and precise way.

tl;dr

Question everything you read.
Come up with a conclusion based on all the evidence you can possibly examine before drawing a conclusion about a particular event, idea, custom, or whatever it maybe you are looking into.

>>4052578
... Wow.
Thanks to all the anons for your help, this thread has been a real eye opener for me, and I think I realized the answer to me question.

I'm just going to have to read as many sources and views as I can about the particular subject until I come to the conclusion. It will be a lot of work, but its work I'll be more than happy to do.

Thanks anons, you're all truly based.

>>4052589

It IS a lot of work. Being a historian isn't done for making a ton of money or even getting recognized. You have to really love what you do but remember that in no way is anything you're doing unimportant. History is written by the winners but historians can uncover even the best kept secrets through enough studying and analysis.

I hope you stick with it and I wish you the best of luck. Who know's what things you're going to uncover that'll blow your mind completely?

Good luck OP.

>>4052511
Sounds like you need to read some historiography. Despite the age of it, I think E.H. Carr's What Is History? is a decent beginning, although you'll want to go beyond that.

>>4052553
Said. Orientalism.

>>4052511
Thompson. "Poverty of Theory"
Thompson. "Making of the English Working Class"
Whyte. anything on narrative.
Lukacs. "History and Class Consciousness"

History involves bias. All you can have is an aggressively self-reflective bias and the withering critique of your peers. To believe that you put the sources as they are first, but then be aware that your reading techniques must necessarily project into the text (Whyte on hermeneutics).

It is complex. Ask for advice from an academic for "historiography" texts in consultation hours in first year university.

>>4052553
>most of the books in my area are limited to a highly pro-western view
>which I assume all western books are
Wut. Which books are you talking about? A huge amount of western scholarship is left-wing and implicitly or explicitly criticises imperialism/capitalism/modern nation-states. This is what /pol/ trolls who come here are always complaining about (the ones who aren't just shouting edgy racism, anyway).

Also how are you confined to
>your area
when you have the internet?

>>4052667
>Ask for advice from an academic for "historiography" texts in consultation hours in first year university
Or just look up a decent university's reading list for Historiography 101.

>>4052689
Where I work Historiography is a 4th year course, taught by "absorption" and apprenticeship in undergraduate before 4th year.

Depends on what historiography you need. Now I'm here to sell you on Post-Thompsonian "from the documents" Marxism, with a little bit of hermeneutics to fuck with the popomomos.

(ps: Fuck the Po-lice.)

>>4052705
Ah, I'm not actually from the US, just adding that '101' to indicate 'introductory course'. In the UK I did a specific historiography course in the... first or second year. Shit was cash, except that by going roughly chronologically from the old certainties it ended up in a postmodern deconstructed emplotted mishmash which arguably wasn't very encouraging.

>>4052723
It doesn't help if your academics portray post-modernism as a "triumph" rather than a bourgeois attempt to disorganise social history.

As you can tell I have rather strong scholarly opinions on this topic.

I do love hermeneutics as a reading method, but you can get that from Theology and don't have to touch a Frenchman.

>>4052734
>and don't have to touch a Frenchman
I laffed.

>>4052589
The best tip is that when you don't know the first thing about history, there's no reason to have the idea in your head that you want to be a historian. You don't, you can't want to be one when you don't have the slightest idea what it means to study history. All your peers deciding their future professions while in highschool, just because there's a vague push via college app season, is just as silly and unrealistic as when you did it in the first grade. If you've discovered you like history, that's great, figure out what exactly it is you're enjoying, be it a certain period, or civilization, or maybe it's aspects of economy or war that you enjoy, then look that up on amazon and pick out some books. It's easy. Pro-tip: If it was pressed by a university, it's probably an academic text, if you want an idea of the dry scholarly work that's actually being consumed and produced by the relevant community.

>an absolute fuckload of "accurate textbooks" and "valid documents" are so fucking biased, It makes me want to puke.

How would you know that, when you're a senior in HS and 18 years old? I think that's what is actually making you want to puke.

>>4052872
Additional question: what the hell is a 'valid document'?

>>4052882
Given they're talking about "textbooks" instead of "books" or even "Monographs and journal articles" I think it indicates that they're a high schooler.

"Valid documents" seems to mean "accurately transmitted..." etc., what we'd consider as a basically acceptable primary source before engaging in an analysis of bias.

>>4052895
The OP actually says they're a high schooler. But actually it seems like Americans sometimes use 'textbooks' to mean 'any books assigned as reading', which confuses the hell out of me.

>>4052511
It can be pretty hard, but generally reading accounts from both perspectives and assuming it was somewhere in the middle is you're best bet. This shit pisses me off too because throughout high school I was told to believe The Crusades were based on pure aggression, and were only to conquer the Holy Land. After I've had time to read more about it I realized they were just scared as fuck of the Muslims spreading to the Balkans and were trying to help the Byzantines out. Until the Venetians douched it up at least.

>>4052942
>equivocation
>false moderation
You're going to go far with a reading technique like that. False moderation given you a big red circle "dubious?" or worse, "unargued."

>>4052947
I completely agree that the guy you linked to is guilty of false moderation, but his point about reading "both sides" especially when it comes to attacker vs. defender in wars and other shit is very important since they both lie about each other

>>4052947
>generally

I also just realized I spent more time raging over the Crusades than helping OP, oh well.

There are actually those who claimed that the vikings never raped when they pillaged and that the christian monks accounts were bullshit.
Sounds fishy because im sure most ancient soldiers raped but hey I dont count on medival christfags to be truthful either.

>>4052967
I'd be disappointed if they didn't

>>4052962
Your interpretation wasn't bad, but the arguments you used were.
>>4052956
Exactly, the desire to read _all_ available sources to come to a conclusion is a good one. Until you start learning that the context of one document is _every_ document. So then you need a plan to control contexts, and that's where hermeneutics comes in.

Then it gets messy. You realise that you need an argument to _pre-read_ the contexts to determine what contexts are relevant, because a non-argumentative reading plan will result in a waste of time, and worse, inappropriate contexts.

If I want to talk about the history of cats in New Zealand I don't start by reading on Vladivostok prostitution. But what _argument_ supports me in that?

Why should class be a useful account of the experience of the mass of people in capitalism?

etc.

You can't even _start reading_ without a bias. Even before you start reading biased documents.

This book would tickle your fancy, OP http://www.amazon.com/The-Killing-History-Theorists-Murdering/dp/1893554120

>>4053044
>http://www.amazon.com/The-Killing-History-Theorists-Murdering/dp/1893554120
>Windschuttle

Buying a book on Historiography from a guy who was kicked around town for fundamental failings in reading and interpretation by the entire Australian historiographical community.

Yeah sure.

Go back to >>>/pol/ Windschuttle.

bumping for interest