The Effects of Truth: Re-Presentations of the Past and the Imagining of Community.

The article examines the production of effects of truth and power in both official and popular historical discourses in Mexico and demonstrates how representations of the past configure the imagining of community. All histories, whether spoken or written, are produced in an encounter between hermeneutics and a field of social action which is symbolically constituted, even though at the time of the action, the meanings embedded in practice may not be clearly or fully evident to the consciousness of actors. Representations of the past, whether professional or popular, printed or spoken, are defined as specific sorts of performances or texts through a series of framing devices. The way such reconstructions are framed configures their truth value by bringing into play the ideologically constituted status of different forms of knowledge. The discussion of the ideological constitution of histories will be limited to the role of ideology in the creation of retroactive reconstructions of social practice.