Alexander The Great Wikipedia Summary

Producing a History: A Case Study of the Alexander the Great Wikipedia Article

Trouillot believes in analyzing the narrative, or history being told, to see how it works and under what conditions it was created, to understand the powers at play and what narratives are being silenced. In the Alexander the Great Wikipedia page, a narrative is being told, and according to Trouillot, rather than define what the history is by coming at it directly (which will only yield frustrating results), we must find out how and why the history is being told to get the most out of the present narrative, as well as be able to identify what other narratives have been ignored due to power, or other reasons. Approaching the Alexander the Great Wikipedia page …show more content…
This particular history of the king works through group sourcing to produce the most 'accurate' and most agreed-upon narrative available, being able to be updated real time should new realizations arise. The process of the history being told on the Wikipedia begins with its main sources biases and its production never ends- it continues to be edited, the most recent update to the page being within the month this essay was …show more content…
Alexander's life happened so long ago, that no one left alive could offer their input on him, and none of the authors we have were contemporary sources to Alexander. This allows for more ambiguity in one way, and less in another. In Alexander's history, we do not have an excess of narrators; in fact, all primary sources are now lost and have been filtered through to secondhand sources. However, we are unable to trace bias or power to any one author, generation, or even region, due to the open nature of Wikipedia editing. No one can be held accountable, though we can assume that what is on the page must be popular opinion, as anyone can change