Jessica Tracy
Collective Constellations: How The Seven Myths Re-images Truth Through Holistic Epistemology
“Historians today are priests of a cult of truth, called to the service of a god whose existence they are doomed to doubt.”
-Matthew Restall
Within the context of the Spanish Conquest, Matthew Restall brings to the surface questions on the value of absolute truth, advocating the reader to instead examine history as multifaceted and composed of various perspectives, ideas, and dimensions. Over the course of his work, Restall deconstructs seven cultural misconceptions about the Conquest, targeting the source of the “myths” as well as aiming to determine their effect on our understanding of history and formation of roles within the greater context of events. He supports his argument by defending the value of subjectivity to the interpretation of history and observing the insight differing perspectives offer to our greater understanding of an event. In the interest of accuracy, we must remain cognisant that like the present, the past is an infinitely complex constellation of collective experiences in which cultures and individuals simultaneously create and validate varying conceptions of reality. In the face of such complexity, it is clear the idea of absolute truth is one that’s best abandoned. Restall claims that, “We can compare the truths of the conquistadors to our truths about them, and as a result achieve a better understanding of the conquest--- even if that understanding does not pretend to be the truth in an absolute sense.” (Restall, xvii) He further elaborates that while it is the aim of a good historian to seek out the most accurate and unbiased information, accuracy does not imply absolute truth. Rather, in examining situations from a more macroscopic lens, the historian reduces the risk of misconceptions deriving from cultural differences, while also widening the intellectual arena to incorporate multiplicities of varying accounts, each offering shades of truth to further enrich our understanding of the human narrative.
Restall’s point resonates with many other contemporary scholars, whose work can be interpreted as a holistic approach to epistemology, moving towards a reunification of experience, knowledge, and meaning. The reappearance of holism in western thought seems to signal the approach of a paradigm shift; pulling away from the mechanized state of being and reestablishing the significance of interconnected resonance. The demystification began during the Eighteenth century, when the western world experienced a pivotal shift in consciousness as the sciences replaced religious doctrines as the dominant philosophical authority. With the scientific revolution, reason became the new dogma and with the emergence of mechanical philosophy, all behaviors of tangible bodies could be explained through examination of the relationships of their parts. The concept of the whole was delegitimatized, instead an object’s actuality was derivative of the sum of parts. The best way to know about the world was to look deep within, to pry loose the esoteric stitches binding truth and knowledge to religious authority and continue the deconstruction in search of truth itself. It was from here the quest for absolute certainty set forth to free knowledge from the deceptions of the senses to incite reconstruction of a new epistemological framework upon a solid foundation of a inarguable and universal truth.
This cultural paradigm transcended into all forms of academia, though Restall questions the overall effectiveness of absolute certainty in the realm of history, for it attempts to sterilize a group or culture’s experience of an event of subjectivity. This eradication is not only an impossible aim, but doing so results in the creation of more distorted misconceptions. The other issue is one purely of translation. When history is read and recorded it is told from a singular voice, as if seen by one set of eyes omnipresent, and the result is the flattening a multidimensional object---time--- into a single story; one protagonist, one plot line, one image. Restall uses the example of Cuauhtémoc’s capture and assassination to illustrate the conflicts historians face when trying to translate an experience of the collective into the language of singularity. Here the author is faced with four accounts of the events, from varying cultural backgrounds and motivations from which he aims first to establish common grounds between the stories before comparing the conflicting details. He finds that, “the dialogues seem clear within the context of each individual account, but that clarity breaks down when the texts are compared.” (Restall 155) This statement is not surprising when interpreted literally, as each account is not so simply a record, but an interpretation of events. If one chooses to examine the statement as a metaphor, it reflects the integrated relationship between truth and context, a symbiotic relationship that renders the individual as both an island and atom in the larger culture, influenced by both personal and collective experiences.
The resolution Restall provides is a more phenomenological approach to truth, accepting subjectivity as integral to the human experience and of value when struggling to derive meaning from cultural phenomena. While it would be nice to observe the events of history from an omnipresent state, our individual interpretations will always remain altered and imprisoned by our cultural conditioning and individual experiences. Although a concrete idea of what really happened evanesces when you compare the accounts of Cuauhtémoc’s death, unintentional information reveals itself about the affiliations and values of each witness and opens the doorway for further dialogue on the cultural and political implications of perceptual differences between major actors within the Spanish Conquest. Likewise, the way historians choose to present this story can also be examined as a reflection of cultural consciousness. As opposed to reducing the Conquest to bits of facts and evidence rearranged mosaic-like in loose cohesion, Restall’s method for best deconstructing the mythos and preventing harmful misconceptions is to approach the past in search of clarification through understanding instead of certainty. The Conquest of the Americas remains one episode in history where “The concepts of a particular culture, the way they are expressed, and the relationship between those words and reality, can lead to genuine insight into a historical phenomenon.” (Restall xv) Further, meaning can derive not just from the alinement of common information, but also from conflicting accounts there is born a peripheral truth which speaks to a more holistic understanding of the relationship between past histories and current situations. He concludes in musing that, “our purpose as readers of history is to explore [the] metaphors, to journey behind them into the motive, methods, and mundane patterns of human behavior.” (Restall 157) In this we draw connections between cultures and movements across the transcendent terrain of space and time, a galaxy of tapestries in complete truth interwoven, conveying the story of life.
Works Cited:
Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. New York: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.
