Pseudohistory  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 13:01, 8 January 2012

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

pseudo-

Pseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions. Works which draw controversial conclusions from new, speculative or disputed historical evidence, particularly in the fields of national, political, military and religious affairs, are often rejected as pseudohistory.

Examples

Template:See The following are some commonly cited examples of pseudohistory:

• Catastrophism
  • Immanuel Velikovsky's book Worlds in Collision<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Alternative chronologies - revised sequences of events or other alterations to the timeline of ancient history.
  • Anatoly Fomenko's theory New Chronology<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• Psychohistory The ill-fated attempt to merge psychology with history, replacing historical method.
• Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
  • Gavin Menzies's book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, which argues for the idea that Chinese sailors discovered America.<ref>Fritze, Ronald H,. (2009). Invented knowledge: false history, fake science and pseudo-religions. Reaktion Books. p. 11.ISBN 978-1861894304.</ref>
• Religious history (see also scientific foreknowledge in sacred texts)
  • Priory of Sion: works such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which conjecture that Jesus Christ may have married Mary Magdalene, who later moved to France and gave birth to the line of Merovingian Kings<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • The writings of author David Barton and others postulating that the United States of America was founded as an exclusively Christian nation.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>House Passes, Considers Evangelical Resolutions, Baltimore Chronicle</ref><ref>David Barton - Propaganda Masquerading as History, People for the American Way</ref><ref name=Pierard>Boston Theological Institute Newsletter Volume XXXIV, No. 17, Richard V. Pierard, January 25, 2005</ref>
  • See also Searches for Noah's Ark<ref>Dietz, Robert S. "Ark-Eology: A Frightening Example of Pseudo-Science" in Geotimes 38:9 (Sept. 1993) p. 4.</ref>

• Ethnocentric pseudo-history (see also National mysticism)
  • Most Afrocentric (i.e. Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories, Black Egypt) ideas have been identified as pseudohistorical<ref>{{

1. if: {{#if: http://dcn.davis.ca.us/~gizmo/2001/clarence.html | {{#if: Clarence Walker encourages black Americans to discard Afrocentrism |1}}}}

 ||Error on call to Template:cite web: Parameters url and title must be specified

}}{{

1. if:

 | {{#if: {{#if: | {{#if:  |1}}}}
   ||Error on call to template:cite web: Parameters archiveurl and archivedate must be both specified or both omitted

}} }}{{#if: Sherwin

 | {{#if: 
   | [[{{{authorlink}}}|{{#if: Sherwin
     | Sherwin{{#if: Elisabeth | , Elisabeth }}
     | {{{author}}}
   }}]]
   | {{#if: Sherwin
     | Sherwin{{#if: Elisabeth | , Elisabeth }}
     | {{{author}}}
   }}
 }}

}}{{#if: Sherwin

 | {{#if: | ; {{{coauthors}}} }}

}}{{#if: Sherwin|

   {{#if: 
   |  ({{{date}}})
   | {{#if: 
     | {{#if: 
       |  ({{{month}}} {{{year}}})
       |  ({{{year}}})
     }}
   }}
 |}}

}}{{#if: Sherwin

 | . }}{{
 #if: 
 |  {{{editor}}}: 

}}{{#if:

   | {{#if:  | {{#if: Clarence Walker encourages black Americans to discard Afrocentrism | [{{{archiveurl}}} Clarence Walker encourages black Americans to discard Afrocentrism] }}}}
   | {{#if: http://dcn.davis.ca.us/~gizmo/2001/clarence.html | {{#if: Clarence Walker encourages black Americans to discard Afrocentrism | Clarence Walker encourages black Americans to discard Afrocentrism }}}}

}}{{#if: | ({{{language}}}) }}{{#if:

 |  ()

}}{{#if:

 | . {{{work}}}

}}{{#if:

 |  {{{pages}}}

}}{{#if: Davis Community Network

 | . Davis Community Network{{#if: Sherwin
   | 
   | {{#if:  || }}
 }}

}}{{#if: Sherwin

 ||{{#if: 
   |  ({{{date}}})
   | {{#if: 
     | {{#if: 
       |  ({{{month}}} {{{year}}})
       |  ({{{year}}})
     }}
   }}
 }}

}}.{{#if:

 |  Archived from the original on [[{{{archivedate}}}]].

}}{{#if: 2007-11-13

 |  Retrieved on {{#time:Y F j|2007-11-13{{#if:  | , {{{accessyear}}}}}}}.

}}{{#if:

 |  Retrieved on {{{accessmonthday}}}, {{{accessyear}}}.

}}{{#if:

 |  Retrieved on {{{accessdaymonth}}} {{{accessyear}}}.

}}{{#if:

 |  “{{{quote}}}”

}}</ref><ref name=Ortiz1997>Template:Cite journal</ref>

• • The Indigenous Aryans theories published in Hindu nationalism during the 1990s and 2000s.<ref>Template:Cite journal

Template:Cite book </ref>

• • The "crypto-history" of Germanic mysticism and Nazi occultism.<ref>Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. 1985. The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890–1935. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press. ISBN 0-85030-402-4. (Several reprints.) Expanded with a new Preface, 2004, I.B. Tauris & Co. ISBN 1-86064-973-4</ref>
  • British-Israelism (Anglo-Israelism).
• Anti-semitism inspired (see also Blood libel)
  • The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fraudulent work purporting to show a historical conspiracy for world domination by Jews<ref name="ushmm.org">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", last updated 4 May 2009.</ref>
  • Holocaust denial: claims of writers such as David Irving that the Holocaust did not occur or was exaggerated greatly.<ref>Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, Plume, 1994, Page 215, ISBN 0452272742</ref>
• Ancient Astronauts, Archaeoastronomy and Lost lands (see also Atlantis location hypotheses)
  • The theory of Lemuria and Kumari Kandam.<ref>Fritze, Ronald H,. (2009). Invented knowledge: false history, fake science and pseudo-religions. Reaktion Books. p. 11.ISBN 978-1861894304.</ref>
  • Chariots of the Gods? and other books by Erich von Daniken, which claim ancient visitors from outer space constructed the pyramids and other monuments.<ref>Fritze, Ronald H,. (2009). Invented knowledge: false history, fake science and pseudo-religions. Reaktion Books. p. 201. ISBN 978-1861894304.</ref>
  • Publications by Christopher Knight, such as Uriel's Machine (2000), claiming ancient technological civilizations.<ref>Merriman, Nick, editor, Public Archaeology, Routledge, 2004 page 260</ref><ref>Tonkin, S., 2003, Uriel's Machine – a Commentary on some of the Astronomical Assertions.</ref>
• The Shakespeare authorship question, which claims that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the works traditionally attributed to him.<ref>Hope, Warren and Kim Holston. The Shakespeare Controversy (2009) 2nd ed., 3: "In short, this is a history written in opposition to the current prevailing view".</ref><ref>Potter, Lois. “Marlowe onstage” in Constructing Christopher Marlowe, James Alan Downie and J. T. Parnell, eds. (2000, 2001), paperback ed., 88-101; 100: “The possibility that Shakespeare may not really be Shakespeare, comic in the context of literary history and pseudo-history, is understandable in this world of double-agents . . .”</ref><ref>Aaronovitch, David. “The anti-Stratfordians” in Voodoo Histories (2010), 226-229: “There is, however, a psychological or anthropological question to be answered about our consumption of pseudo-history and pseudoscience. I have now plowed through enough of these books to be able to state that, as a genre, they are badly written and, in their anxiety to establish their dubious neo-scholarly credentials, incredibly tedious. . . . Why do we read bad history books that have the added lack of distinction of not being in any way true or useful . . .”</ref><ref>Kathman, David. Shakespeare Authorship Page: “. . . Shakespeare scholars regard Oxfordianism as pseudo-scholarship which arbitrarily discards the methods used by real historians. . . . In order to support their beliefs, Oxfordians resort to a number of tactics which will be familiar to observers of other forms of pseudo-history and pseudo-science.”</ref>

See also

• Historical Revisionism (negationism)
• Historiography and nationalism
• Misery lit
• Pseudoarchaeology
• Pseudoscience
• Pseudoscientific metrology