TRUTH AND AUTHENTICITY IN CONTEMPORARY HISTORICAL CULTURE: AN INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL REPRESENTATION AND HISTORICAL TRUTH*

Abstract

The contributors to this Theme Issue analyze the construction of historical truth and authenticity in five different types of historical representations that play an important role in contemporary historical culture. The six genres/media in question are historical novels, historiography, photography, feature films, video games, and museum exhibits. Since it is always easy to deconstruct other people's historical truths, the contributors focus on a representation of the past that they themselves find particularly compelling and truthful. Thus all authors play a dual role. On the one hand, they show us how a particular text or visual representation works and what sleights of hand are employed to fabricate reality-effects in different cul tural settings. On the other hand, they celebrate the success of a text and its creators who have influenced the historical consciousness of many consumers, including the authors themselves. As a result, the contributors are not offering smug deconstruc tions of historical representations produced by allegedly theoretically naive histori ans and other practitioners of history. Instead, the essays engage in probing, open ended, and self-reflexive dialogues on the question of historical truth that are based on sympathetic, close readings of a wide range of cultural artifacts. In an attempt to foster interdisciplinary intellectual interplay, all essays focus on representations of historical events that have often served as benchmarks in theoretical discussions about historiography, historical culture, and the ethics of historical representation. Five essays deal with representations of World War II and the Holocaust and one with representations of the history and legacy of slavery in the U.S. Ann Rigney discusses the extraordinary success of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaugh terhouse Five in shaping cultural memories of the bombing of Dresden. Rigney highlights the novel's generic hybridity and its innovative narrative design. Slaughterhouse Five is part fairy tale, part autobiographical testimony; it com bines elements of science fiction with passages that read like children's literature. The resulting ontological potpourri undermines chronological and logical lin earity and provides exceptional insight into the sensual experience of war through a literary performance of traumatic memory. In this fashion the novel has become