International Marketing

MKTG 4530-M50

History is subjective. Why is this true or false? Cite specific examples.

History is subjective, indeed: defined simply as "the study of past events, particularly

human affairs (citation)," one can and must invariably ask how long "past" must an event be to

be categorized as history and whose story, indeed, is worthy of being told as a significant history

rather than a random occurrence. Is history yesterday? Yes, one can say history was made

yesterday or in the making today, but is yesterday history? Are the events of the preceding 24

hours history? Is one lifetime a history or a generation? Is an individual's life history worth

telling or a nation's history? As the old adage goes "as above, so below" and events of ancient

history that have shaped our world in a macrocosmic sense are all too often reflected or

paralleled on a smaller scale in everyday life in a microcosmic sense. Thus, myths become real

as our everyday lives reveal "nothing new under the sun" and that ordinary people can, given a

long enough time, become legends of ancient history. Science proves mitochondrial dna actually

passes down memory to descendants (Gaydos), as well as, even more shockingly, irrational fears

such as agoraphobia or arachnapobia (Kellerman). Does this prove, then, that the events of one

person's life, passed down through dna and mitochondrial memory, become history? Thus, this

project serves to explore whether the study of history, then, is ever just a study of a given

perspective rather than that actual factual events that happened in any individual time frame of

any individual life.

If truly history is subjective, it must be, then, that a history or histories are [co]created,

actively made through layering of experience and perspective with meaning ascribed to that

experience and its relative significance with regards to how a selected series of events enriches

or makes sense of the rest of one's life timeline. Instead of merely told or taught, history also

can't be given, created of the history is in the precise moment of its unraveling and in the very

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MKTG 4530-M50

telling of it-- and how skillfully it is told (because, truly, great histories remembered are

essentially the ones told the best, not necessarily the most accurately...and therein lies the rub).

How exactly does history stick in our memories? Indeed, maybe it all boils down to which bard's

or griot's account the most was rousing. Surely, say, the War of 1812 was no more significant, no

more grippingly emotional and dramatic in its re-telling, than, say, the lesser known (but more

intriguing and memorably named) War of Jenkin's Ear spanning 1739-1748 (Enclyclopedia

Brittanica). So it seems that there is some measure of worth by which some events are

considered more worth telling than others.

In the literary world, Mark Z Danielewski's seminal Only Revolutions is often applauded

for its masterful reconstruction of historical events as filtered through the sombre irreverence of

teenage lovers (akin to time-traveling Romeo and Juliet on stimulants and hallucinogens) Sam

and Hailey:

Only Revolutions prompts for a complicated double-scope story

blend, allowing the reader to combine seemingly opposed
conceptions of time. The text invites the reader to derive meaning
from the paradoxical statement that time is both subjective and
objective...Only Revolutions attempts to move past the thesis-
antithesis opposition, from "neither/nor" to "both/and." This
argument requires a dynamic account of narrative reading that can
describe multiple simultaneous processes of conceptual
integration-- in short, it requires a blending-based account of
narrative (Schnieder, p295)
The past, in and of its mere self, is not history. In a way, a history is akin to a good

marketing campaign, ad, or historical biography; no different from a great PR write up, the

historian like the journalist is looking to cover the history from a particular angle (Arnold),a

specific perspective, in order to ascribe a certain significance to the story. When we study a

historical event, we are not studying a history. Those who study histories, students, scholars,

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critics, etc are those who, like literary analysts, analyze events, shaping them within a certain

context to elicit a certain discourse--- all of these themselves subjective. The subjectivity of

history has long been debated as questions inevitably arise concerning differing layers of

meaning that deepen the profundity of a particular event, such as from whose point of view is the

story being told and are they ultimately considered a "winner" or "loser" in the outcome and

consequence of the event, long term and short term. In other words, historical significance often

boils down to wondering proverbially how the hunter will be portrayed when the lion gets to tell

the tale. The telling of history/ies is contingent upon the acknowledgement and acceptance that

who controls, hegemonically, the predominant global language currency controls the "right," fair

or not, to write history. The literate elite is Eurocentric, therefore history is presented through a

patriarchal Eurocentric lens because historically women and people considered colored, tribal,

indigenous, native, or Original/Aboriginal, or otherwise non-white were denied or rejected

literacy.

Self both emerges from and contributes to ongoing social

interactions, such that how we narrate our experiences with others
shapes how we come to understand these experiences for
ourselves. Through describing, explaining and evaluating our past
in socially-situated reminiscing, we come to construct an
interpretive framework for understanding both our experiences and
our selves. (Fivush, p.2, internal citations removed)

Self can be individual or collective. in this case, a collective self, perhaps even a national

self as a political and social entity, creates history in a culturally nuanced context the same way

an individual creates his/her own history in autobiography that gives meaning to one's life

through a specific lens of perspective shaped by personal experience, relative and subjective.

Provocatively, our sense of self is not tied solely to personally

experienced events [but, rather,] ...who we are and how we

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 International Marketing
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understand our personal experiences is also shaped by how we

understand others’ experiences..[and] Stories of the past that we
did not experience still provide powerful models, frameworks and
perspectives for understanding our own experiences.... We are who
we are because of what we have experienced and what we have
been told; our sense of self is constructed from both personal
history and the social cultural history in which our personal history
is embedded. (Fivush, p.2)

The trouble with shaping our sense of self individually or as a society with histories we've been

told, is the risk of shaping one's identity over a false presentation or interpretation of history. In

other words, most troublingly, this shaping of personal self by perceived subjective history can

contribute to the evils of discrimination, bias, high ethnocentrism, and prejudice. In the case of

white supremacists inheriting the neo-Nazi dogma of Hitler, their justification for heinous hate

crimes is the ignorance of their blind, unresearched acceptance of a history in which whites are

erroneously claimed to be the superior progenitors of humanity from which all mankind was

spawned. In cases like this, it truly does matter who presents history and how it is presented. how

can one present a subjective history "accurately", then?

History's subjectivity is an issue that can indeed with ease be well covered in relation to

literature studies, religious studies, political and sociological studies, even art, etc. however it can

be somewhat of a challenge, a seeming far stretch of ingenuity, it seems, to relate as existential

and allegorical a topic as history's subjectivity to the world of marketing and business. however,

astoundingly, it can be done. In the case of the workplace and marketing, a subjectivity of

experience may determine the potential for drastic corporate losses. Possibilities are numerous in

which it can easily be reasoned how a hypothetical scenario could easily bring

consumer/shareholder backlash and withdrawal of support and investment. Marketing can do

little to prevent falling revenue for a company perceived as having either offended a consumer

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through a faulty product that had to be recalled for some hazard to the customer and caused the

company to fall into mainstream displeasure, or having injured a company employee through

practice (i.e. reports of a company's unsafe work environment, illegal labor impositions, and/or

employee harassment). Besides real tangible goods and products, and besides services, ideas and

conceptualizations can be and indeed have been marketed. Consider briefly, for instance, the

"selling" of "The American Dream." There's historically been a market of sorts to perpetuate the

belief in this American-ness, however, it is not necessarily one set tangible material good or

product. Instead, less definitively, it is a history/myth that has long endured but it can be

explored through a marketing lens just how has that story, itself, that

perception/conceptualization come to evolve to update and make fresh meaning and relevance in

Americans' lives over generations, over time. Truly, it would be interesting for analysts to

consider studying the history of marketing a history. Ay, there's the rub...

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References

Arnold, J. (2014, September 14). The Historian's Many Hats. Retrieved February 12, 2015, from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/htd_history/historians/historians_hats_06.shtml

Fivush, Robyn. "The intergenerational self: Subjective perspective and family history."
November 2005. Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life Working Paper No. 44 to
appear in F. Sani (Ed.) Individual and Collective Self-Continuity. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Gaydos, Laura J., Wenchao Wang, and Susan Strome. "H3K27me and PRC2 transmit a memory
of repression across generations and during development."Science 345.6203 (2014): 1515-1518.

Kellermann, Natan PF. "Epigenetic transmission of holocaust trauma: can nightmares be

inherited?." Isr J Psychiatry Relat Sci 50.1 (2013).

KILGORE, CHRISTOPHER D. "“Allways our rush returning renewed”: Time, Narrative, and
Conceptual Blending in Danielewski’s Only Revolutions1."Blending and the Study of Narrative:
Approaches and Applications 34 (2012): 295.'

Lopes Duarte, E. L. "360 Degrees of Convergence and Separation: Hermeneutics and Reader
Response Theory in Mark Z. Danielewski's Only Revolutions." (2013).

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