Facts

Facts Michael Maranda (bio) A statement of fact: “James Jarves, a nineteenth century collector, sold the Madonna with the Pomegranate (Madonna with Child), a painting by Sandro Botticelli, to the Yale Art Gallery in 1870.” In this apparently authoritative art historical assertion, I have made what could be called a factual error. The painting in question was not painted by Botticelli, and thus the attribution is not credible (at least, not in the terms of current art historical scholarship). It is quite clearly indicated, both on the label to be found in the Yale Art Gallery which accompanies this painting, as well as in the catalogue where this information was most recently verified (by myself—although if requested I can show you the catalogue in person), that it is attributed to “an associate of” Botticelli. 1 An honest mistake? Perhaps. If I contextualize this statement with a slightly different argument, I can turn this incorrect fact (of attribution) into a credible “historical fact.” In the process, I wish to ask implicitly what it could mean to get a fact wrong. Before considering the implications of “getting the facts wrong,” I want to direct this discussion to interrogating what exactly is a fact. A good place to begin would be an essay of Carl Becker, aptly titled “What are Historical Facts?” 2 Becker writes that, perhaps because “historians feel safe when dealing with the facts . . . the facts of history come in the end to seem something solid . . . like bricks or scantlings, so that we can easily picture the historian as he stumbles about in the past, stubbing his toe on the hard facts if he doesn’t watch out” (WH 42). One wonders if such an image of the fact as a solid object with which the historian constructs just as solid an essay ever had much valence. Nevertheless, while the “linguistic turn” in literary studies affected greatly the scope and tenor of scholarship in that discipline, it appears that—despite the great promise of the work of Hayden White—the practice of writing history has not altered in many significant ways. 3 Perhaps not for all intents, but apparently for all purposes, the “linguistic turn” in historiography has not been that much of a turn at all. The usefulness of historiographical studies influenced by literary studies is in the understanding of a rhetoric that, essentially, has remained the same. [End Page 415] If this “turn” has not aided us directly in the writing of history, it has given us tools with which to read one. Becker points out that there is never a simple “fact”—“[t]hat is to say, [for example] a thousand and one lesser facts went to make up the one simple fact that Caesar crossed the Rubicon” (WH 44). A “historical fact” is the condensation of the innumerable “facts” which constitute it—all not “historical facts” unless they carry the same symbolic weight as, to retain Becker’s example for now, the “crossing” itself. Becker continues by noting that “[w]hen we really get down to the hard facts, what the historian is always dealing with is an affirmation—an affirmation of the fact that something is true” (WH 47). What enters into the historian’s realm is not the event of Caesar crossing the Rubicon. What enters is the affirmation of the truth of the phrase, “Caesar crossed the Rubicon.” In other words, a historical fact is not what has happened but what is said to have happened. 4 This affirmation occurs in conjunction with the textual source—either while being written by the historian or read by the reader. To restrict our discussion to “historical facts” would beg the question concerning the status of these lesser facts in a historical narrative. To aid in understanding the nature of these facts, we can go to the work of Frank Ankersmit and his discussion of historical reality. The core of Ankersmit’s argument consists of a claim that historians do not “analyze a previously given historical reality, but define it first. Historical reality is not a datum but a convention created by the reality effect.” 5 The “reality effect,” a term coming from Roland Barthes’s

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