In this set of materials, the reading passage elucidates the definition of revisonism in history and its roles and an example. On the other hand, in the listening section, the professor points out the potential jeopardy that lies in the revisionism with his example.
According to the reading section, many historical events need to be re-examined because there can be biased point of view due to an imbalance caused by historical narratives who favored some elite groups. Because of the skewed perspectives, it leads to the biased historical writing. For example, although Columbus did find America for the first time, because of the discovery stemmed from Europeans' point of view, they ignored the fact that many native Americans had lived long before Columbus arrived in America. Likewise, revisionism can modify one specific event depending on the changes of social context and new information through re-examination of the historical facts
However, according to the lecture, the professor argues that that kind of revisionism can lead to midunderstanding owing to the lack of knowledge of overall context of the historical event, or simply another biased idealism of narratives. Sometimes, poor research and manipulated facts can contributue to delivery of inaccurate information to the public who are not specializing in history. For example, from 1930s to mid 1940s, Nazi fraction killed many jewish people. However, some 'holocust denials' insisted that the holocust done by Nazi had been exaggerated by previous studies. Although the historical event is evident, they deny the 'holocust' in order to support their perspectives in the form of revisionsim without substantial evidence to back up their argument or with only poorly researched historical facts, resulting in another severe imbalnce of the historical viewpoint. Nontheless, if the informed researchers are well aware of the loopholes in their history studies, revisionism can and should continue because it can correct mistakes done by previous researchers. |