
Telling It Like It Wasn't
The Counterfactual Imagination in History and Fiction
Catherine Gallagher(Author)
University of Chicago Press
Published on 18. January 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
416 pages
978-0-226-51241-9 (ISBN)
Description
Inventing counterfactual histories is a common pastime of modern day historians, both amateur and professional. We speculate about an America ruled by Jefferson Davis, a Europe that never threw off Hitler, or a second term for JFK. These narratives are often written off as politically inspired fantasy or as pop culture fodder, but in Telling It Like It Wasn't, Catherine Gallagher takes the history of counterfactual history seriously, pinning it down as an object of dispassionate study. She doesn't take a moral or normative stand on the practice, but focuses her attention on how it works and to what ends--a quest that takes readers on a fascinating tour of literary and historical criticism. Gallagher locates the origins of contemporary counterfactual history in eighteenth-century Europe, where the idea of other possible historical worlds first took hold in philosophical disputes about Providence before being repurposed by military theorists as a tool for improving the art of war. In the next century, counterfactualism became a legal device for deciding liability, and lengthy alternate-history fictions appeared, illustrating struggles for historical justice. These early motivations--"for philosophical understanding, military improvement, and historical justice--are still evident today in our fondness for counterfactual tales featuring the Civil War and Nazis. Alternate histories of the Civil War and WWII abound, but here, Gallagher shows how the counterfactual habit of replaying the recent past often shaped the actual events themselves. The counterfactual mode lets us continue to envision our future by reconsidering the range of previous alternatives. Throughout this engaging and eye-opening book, Gallagher encourages readers to ask important questions about our obsession with counterfactual history and the roots of our tendency to ask "What if...?"
Reviews / Votes
"Gallagher's new book is a genuinely original contribution to both the theory (and history) of the novel and the theory of history. Philosophers and historians have been debating the cognitive status of historical narratives for over half a century without taking into account the contributions to theory of narrative made by modern literary scholars. Based on a trove of 'counterfactualist' writings that have been little studied until of late, Gallagher's book sheds new light on the differences between history, myth, fiction, hypotheticals, the historical romance, and fantasy writing. Moreover, her book is mercifully free of jargon, her discussion of 'counterfactual' history is subtle and sophisticated, and her analysis of the relation between fiction and hypothesis convincing."--Hayden White "University Professor of the History of Consciousness, Emeritus, University of California " "At a time when fact itself is under siege, why tarry with thought experiments about pasts that didn't happen? Gallagher's answer is a historicist one: although counterfactual narratives have been with us in many forms since antiquity, their full story has remained untold. Fortunately, we no longer have to live in a timeline where Telling It Like It Wasn't has yet to be written. To read this engrossing book is to be haunted not by lives unled but by previously undermapped regions of history, philosophy, theology, legal reasoning, and literature." --Paul K. Saint-Amour, author of Tense Future: Modernism, Total War, Encyclopedic FormMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
1 table
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
570 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-51241-9 (9780226512419)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Gallagher Catherine Gallagher
Telling It Like It Wasn't
The Counterfactual Imagination in History and Fiction
E-Book
01/2018
1st Edition
University of Chicago Press
€46.99
Available for download
Person
Catherine Gallagher is professor emerita of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of many books, including The Body Economic: Life, Death, and Sensation in Political Economy and the Victorian Novel.