Catch Up Determinism
The narrator in Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko muses on the nature of grand narrative:
No matter what you or anyone else did, Marx said, history would catch up with you; it was inevitable, it was relentless. The turning, the changing were inevitable.The question is who gets to tell the complete history — no teller I know has that kind of grasp. But what of a history woven from many tellings?
The old people had stories that said much the same, that it was only a matter of time and things European would gradually fade from the American continents. History would catch up with the white man whether the Indians did anything or not. History was the sacred text. The most complete history was the most powerful force.
On re-reading, I note that it is "things European" that are slated to disappear. Not persons. And so I am made to recall The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and the presence of a similar trope at play. See especially the concluding chapter "The Million-Year Picnic". But that too is a partial history and whole fiction.
And so for day 731
13.12.2008
