Answer:
How to make history more than just anecdotal of facts that allow us to interpret our past?
Explanation:
The term history designates historical events and events, while historiography refers to the writings of historians. From these theoretical considerations it follows that the events of the past cannot be modified, they are incontrovertible, there are data that cannot be submitted to the light of the opinion. For example, it is undeniable what was the result of the referendum of the autonomous initiative of 28 - F; We can discuss when we perform an interpretation of it, and that is when we will be generating historiography. In these two planes the historian moves, that of making the data known, the objective (the search for truth), and that of its interpretation, at which time we are determined by belonging to some historiographic current. A third level would consist of the ethical evaluation of the event, which no longer corresponds to the work of the historian, but that does not mean that he cannot carry it out, it is more, in my opinion, this task is sometimes essential.
This theoretical reflection must be taken into account when dealing with some current events, because we should not get used, as Hobsbawm said, to "the systematic distortion of history for irrational purposes." One of the cases that prove it has been the sentence handed down last week by an Austrian court against the alleged historian David Irving, sentenced to three years in jail because in 1989, during conferences, he had denied the existence of the holocaust. The prosecutor described him as a "falsifier of history" and the court did not take into account Irving's statements that he had modified those "opinions" of years ago. The condemnation has given rise to a debate about freedom of expression and opinion, although I understand that the fact that the problem lies in the fact that there are certain events that cannot be placed within the scope of the opposites has not been sufficiently highlighted. We can comment on why the holocaust occurred, but never about its existence.
Although there are those who dedicate themselves to the falsification of history and those who feel upset with the task of rebuilding our most recent past, historians, or at least some of them, will continue to try to make our discipline more than just anecdotal of facts and that the present allows us to interpret our past.
