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- Aug 31, 2020
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Agents of the conspiracy not only admit to rewriting history but they describe how they do it in detail (albeit in the pretentious and equivocal way that professional liars admit to their lies).
Consider, for example, this paper published by Daniela Saxer of the University of Zurich (abstract above) which describes the complicated decades-long effort in the latter half of the nineteenth century to replace documentary artifacts borrowed from archives in the Austrian empire with fradulent reproductions, as well as the methods used to overcome opposition from archivists, historians, and government actors. Saxer discloses a number of projects "in which archival objects were dislocated conceptually as well as materially in order to be stabilized and reified again in new infrastructures of research...and how the emergence of scholarly source publications accompanied a concious erasure of older contexts of meaning."
These projects were directed by a man named Theodore Von Sickel. The network of collaborators under von Sickel used "a heterogeneous array of social and political strategies to detach the historical records from the archives." These included threats "to penalize [recalcitrant archivists] by favoring other competing archivists with job offers and material resources" and bribes of "improved standing with the central administration." Archival institutions unmoved by these blandishments were accused of racism. "Such tactics," Saxer says "were exerted in an especially forceful way in the Italian lands."
Von Sickel's work entailed "a radical decontextualization of the sources in question." This process "worked selectively, by cutting out certain features" and enforced an "erasure of context" from the objects. "The historical objects under scrutiny changed their medium and form through a whole series of inscriptions. The dislocation and insertion of sources into new contexts...changed their epistemic status." These "historical documents came to be mobilized not as material objects or as integral texts, but in a derived form, as transcriptions and summaries that were then reinserted as regestae in the new order of a register," for "while the form of the regestae was predetermined in general, it still left place for subtle manipulation."
Photography provided the most effective pretext for getting the documents out of the archives. The collaborators offered to use the "glamorous" new technology to create exact replicas of archival documents that could be more easily accessed by scholars than the fragile originals. In order to preserve uniformity, however, Von Sickel insisted that all photographic work be performed in his own lab.
Unfortunately this process was somewhat destructive. "In order to photograph them, the archival objects had to be adjusted to the photographic apparatus. The parchments were flattened with the help of distilled water and squeezed under a frame of glass before being taken out of the archive to be photographed. The seals were protected by packing and sewing them into a textile cushion. In the case of codices single sheets were detached from the binding and the unity of the manuscript temporarily destroyed." These processes "affected the appearance, epistemic valence, and meaning of the mobilized written sources." Ultimately the photographs gave "a very selective view of the objects."
A constant source of frustration for the collaborators was the "juridical understanding" of archival documents that their guardians clung to. For a given archival document, this refers, for instance, to the perceived necessity of preserving "the content of its text," and making use of "official notarization" protocols in order to distinguish copies and facsimiles of archival documents from the originals. Furthermore, they "had to be careful not to offend local protagonists by questioning the worth of especially ancient and revered charters that constituted the material foundation of local narratives of origin." Provincial rubbish like that was the last sort of thing that Von Sickel's team wanted to bring into the centralized state archives, but then who wants to make grandma cry if it can be avoided?
"[Von Sickel's] erasure of context also represented a conscious reaction against the attempts at interpretation provided by the various locally anchored interest groups, especially the archivists." The truth is just one interpretation, apparently, and the least appealing, advertising as it often does one of several "no-no" qualities (such as being rural or religious in any way) which are such bad things that they devalue anything they attach to for reasons that have never been made public.
Finally, archival documents that he was not given permission to remove from the premises or examine without supervision Von Sickel determined to characterize as forgeries. Later, however, he softened his stance, generously choosing to describe them only as "spurious."
Weirdly, if we compare this paper to an article in the New York Times about someone who did the same thing—Museum Worker Sold Paintings and Put Forgeries in Their Place—we notice that the museum employee is made out to be some kind of criminal and yet the only villains in Saxer's narrative are the archivists who did their jobs. Why is that?
For people (?) like Theodore von Sickel, authenticity, fidelity, truth, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom count for absolutely nothing. History is a political tool to be revised according to the dictates of political exigency and the only constraint on its revision is what the public is willing to believe.
But they don't want to leave that up to us either. "Epistemic valence" is part of the metamodernism package of weapons being delivered to the sycophantic dupes in Academia to play with right now. Basically it means that the moral quality of a person is to be determined by their credulity and conformity. Beliefs and people are adjudged to be good ("epistemic virtue") or bad ("epistemic vice") insofar as they conform to institutional propaganda ("evidence") or not. I imagine stolenhistory is not far behind /pol/ on the epistemic vice index.
Above: Different flavors of "epistemic vice" (from an academic philosophy journal)
According to the exponents of this doctrine, intellectual humility, openmindedness, nonconformity, skepticism of authority, and deduction from premises all lead to epistemic vice and epistemic vice is not something that is to be regarded as merely "undesirable," but something to be made impermissible. Note that along with the study of history itself, neither evidence nor epistemic valence, in this model, bears any logical or causal relation to truth (other than I guess to maybe negate it).
Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
Stuff it up the hole
In your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul
Consider, for example, this paper published by Daniela Saxer of the University of Zurich (abstract above) which describes the complicated decades-long effort in the latter half of the nineteenth century to replace documentary artifacts borrowed from archives in the Austrian empire with fradulent reproductions, as well as the methods used to overcome opposition from archivists, historians, and government actors. Saxer discloses a number of projects "in which archival objects were dislocated conceptually as well as materially in order to be stabilized and reified again in new infrastructures of research...and how the emergence of scholarly source publications accompanied a concious erasure of older contexts of meaning."
These projects were directed by a man named Theodore Von Sickel. The network of collaborators under von Sickel used "a heterogeneous array of social and political strategies to detach the historical records from the archives." These included threats "to penalize [recalcitrant archivists] by favoring other competing archivists with job offers and material resources" and bribes of "improved standing with the central administration." Archival institutions unmoved by these blandishments were accused of racism. "Such tactics," Saxer says "were exerted in an especially forceful way in the Italian lands."
Von Sickel's work entailed "a radical decontextualization of the sources in question." This process "worked selectively, by cutting out certain features" and enforced an "erasure of context" from the objects. "The historical objects under scrutiny changed their medium and form through a whole series of inscriptions. The dislocation and insertion of sources into new contexts...changed their epistemic status." These "historical documents came to be mobilized not as material objects or as integral texts, but in a derived form, as transcriptions and summaries that were then reinserted as regestae in the new order of a register," for "while the form of the regestae was predetermined in general, it still left place for subtle manipulation."
Photography provided the most effective pretext for getting the documents out of the archives. The collaborators offered to use the "glamorous" new technology to create exact replicas of archival documents that could be more easily accessed by scholars than the fragile originals. In order to preserve uniformity, however, Von Sickel insisted that all photographic work be performed in his own lab.
Unfortunately this process was somewhat destructive. "In order to photograph them, the archival objects had to be adjusted to the photographic apparatus. The parchments were flattened with the help of distilled water and squeezed under a frame of glass before being taken out of the archive to be photographed. The seals were protected by packing and sewing them into a textile cushion. In the case of codices single sheets were detached from the binding and the unity of the manuscript temporarily destroyed." These processes "affected the appearance, epistemic valence, and meaning of the mobilized written sources." Ultimately the photographs gave "a very selective view of the objects."
A constant source of frustration for the collaborators was the "juridical understanding" of archival documents that their guardians clung to. For a given archival document, this refers, for instance, to the perceived necessity of preserving "the content of its text," and making use of "official notarization" protocols in order to distinguish copies and facsimiles of archival documents from the originals. Furthermore, they "had to be careful not to offend local protagonists by questioning the worth of especially ancient and revered charters that constituted the material foundation of local narratives of origin." Provincial rubbish like that was the last sort of thing that Von Sickel's team wanted to bring into the centralized state archives, but then who wants to make grandma cry if it can be avoided?
"[Von Sickel's] erasure of context also represented a conscious reaction against the attempts at interpretation provided by the various locally anchored interest groups, especially the archivists." The truth is just one interpretation, apparently, and the least appealing, advertising as it often does one of several "no-no" qualities (such as being rural or religious in any way) which are such bad things that they devalue anything they attach to for reasons that have never been made public.
Finally, archival documents that he was not given permission to remove from the premises or examine without supervision Von Sickel determined to characterize as forgeries. Later, however, he softened his stance, generously choosing to describe them only as "spurious."
Weirdly, if we compare this paper to an article in the New York Times about someone who did the same thing—Museum Worker Sold Paintings and Put Forgeries in Their Place—we notice that the museum employee is made out to be some kind of criminal and yet the only villains in Saxer's narrative are the archivists who did their jobs. Why is that?
For people (?) like Theodore von Sickel, authenticity, fidelity, truth, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom count for absolutely nothing. History is a political tool to be revised according to the dictates of political exigency and the only constraint on its revision is what the public is willing to believe.
But they don't want to leave that up to us either. "Epistemic valence" is part of the metamodernism package of weapons being delivered to the sycophantic dupes in Academia to play with right now. Basically it means that the moral quality of a person is to be determined by their credulity and conformity. Beliefs and people are adjudged to be good ("epistemic virtue") or bad ("epistemic vice") insofar as they conform to institutional propaganda ("evidence") or not. I imagine stolenhistory is not far behind /pol/ on the epistemic vice index.
According to the exponents of this doctrine, intellectual humility, openmindedness, nonconformity, skepticism of authority, and deduction from premises all lead to epistemic vice and epistemic vice is not something that is to be regarded as merely "undesirable," but something to be made impermissible. Note that along with the study of history itself, neither evidence nor epistemic valence, in this model, bears any logical or causal relation to truth (other than I guess to maybe negate it).
Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
Stuff it up the hole
In your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul
