"All of these exercises in scholarship ( = myth + footnotes) suffer from the same problem . They attempt to reach so far back into prehistory that no textual sources are available to control the inquiry, but where archeology offers a plethora of data. In practice, all the remains found throughout Eurasia for a period of several millennia can be constituted as evidence from which to craft the final narrative, but it is often the researchers' desires that determine their principles of selection. When neither the data nor the criticism of one's colleagues inhibits desire-driven invention, the situation is ripe for scholarship as myth. Prehistory here becomes "pre-" in a radical sense: a terrain of frustration and opportunity where historians-cum -mythographers can offer origin accounts- complete with heroes, adventures, great voyages, and a primordial paradise lost- all of which reflect and advance the interests of those who tell them . Ideology in narrative form. 215"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bruce_Lincoln
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Bruce Lincoln
31 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Bruce Lincoln →
Related Quotes
"When one permits those whom one studies to define the terms in which they will be understood, suspends one’s interest…"
"It now strikes me that the attempt to reconstruct a prototypical (“Proto- Indo-European") form from which all atteste…"
"Even the unhappy example of scholarship on myth, particularly that on Aryan or Indo-European myth, is one forced to c…"
""As a student of history of religions, I (Lincoln) was taught that Fredric Max Muller inaugurated our discipline but …"
"Herder developed his theory of Asia as the original homeland and site of human unity in the second volume of his Idee…"
"Reading Jones with these preconceptions and interests, Germans rapidly came to see themselves as a Volk with a much d…"
"One might think this position (that the English colonialist should convert their Indian "brethren" to the Gospel) wou…"
"His accomplishments and large body of admirers notwithstanding, Jones's reputation has slipped in recent years, parti…"
"First, the hypothesis for which Sir William Jones is most famous had deep antecedents and was always problematic. Mos…"
""Scholars from Sir William Jones to the PRESENT imagined this group (Aryans aka Indo-Europeans) as their most ancient…"