Hayden White's Narrative Analysis

History is a story that can be told and shared in many different ways, from the listing of years and events, like that of the Annals journal, to the more story-like approach to history, like that of Hayden White. This narrative type approach to the writing of history is one that comes with many challenges, but this style may be beneficial to scholars and readers of history. Listing events is still history but Hayden White believes it has gaps, “…this history has no central subject, no beginning, middle, or end, no evident principle of selection, no connections, no indication of the relative importance of events… in short, no narrative.” Narrative history, though has many good qualities and features about it, has many questions on how it is
One example can be seen within Toby Ditz’s, The New Men’s History and the Peculiar Absence of Gendered Power, where the men of the Creek Indian tribe sought to strengthen and solidify their spot as the dominant and more powerful gender. These men set the example of what a man should do and that success lied within possession of goods, such as cattle, slaves, and territory. Although, not a huge story in history it still ended up being a topic that was talked about, because the men writing this history were in charge and found it to be important and that it should be recorded. Another author of narrative history comes from the feminist/women’s historian and also feminist theory historians. This type of historian then looks to modify and change certain aspects of narrative history. They look to change the views to what they find importance in. Again, a quote from Toby Ditz helps reiterate why feminist historians find their area so
This sometimes becomes a problem when certain groups of people are not included within this historical narrative. These groups can be left out for a multitude of reasons: they do not further the narrative, the historian believes that this group of people did not contribute to this certain event, and also sometimes because we, as historians, have not thought about a certain group of people. One major group that has been forgotten about and not explored, in most narratives, is the persons with disabilities, these people being that with mental and physical handicaps. Yes, there are other groups that have been excluded based on class, race, and gender, but most groups have been incorporated into the modern historical narrative except for the disabled community. In Catherine Kudlick’s, Disability History: Why We Need Another “Other”, she exclaims that learning disability history would allow people to see why Western societies assume every human is strong, fit, mentally capable, and of all people being of the same size. This group’s exclusion is in result of ancient and modern historians assuming these people fit into the same categories of race, class, and gender. Kudlick’s argument brings up valid points how these people need to be seen as another group in narrative