"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world, " said Wittgenstein.
It might be reasonable to suggest that historical documents could partially represent historical events and also, in which, inscribed creators' perspectives, consciously or unconsciously. Consequently, these documents leave quite a space for descendant historians to interpret historical causations and conjecture whole pictures of historical events.
It is impossible to perfectly re-construct historical event by piecing up historical documents since there always exists undiscovered and inexplicable historical components Therefore, fissures of history allow interpretations suggested by future offspring to fill in the cracks. These historical documents not only serve as evidences of historical events, also, due to its trait of incompleteness with which various logical speculations are tolerated, could support historian's arguments for reasoning of historical events. As long as historian arrange historical documents based on valid and rational grounds, the developed propositions then become plausible, however, not necessarily indisputable. According to Hayden White, the historian's work as a process of active engagement of transforming archival materials, rather than the delivery of facts and evidences. And Derrida proposed, "The archivist produces more archive. The archive is never closed. It opens out of the future." Thes
e historical documents are not static evidences served for specific explanatory purposes. They are flexible and welcome further developments from various point of view.
Human Remains and The Maelstrom depict historical figures and event with historical documents. However, by interweaving of editing, voice over, and intertitles, directors unmistakably deliver their attitudes. Although historical documents are opened to interpretations, facing with this kind of historical figures and events, is that proper to adopt the assumption of "truth is always a sort of middle?"(Fischer, 296) When a historian attempts to give justifications for these figures and event, does it involve moral issue? How do historian position himself or herself when writing these particular historical figures and events?
"Everything we see / could be otherwise. / Everything we can describe at all / could be also otherwise." – Wittgenstein
Could historian express their "otherwise" attitudes toward the Holocaust?
Pi-Ju Liang
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