Abstract
How do the supposedly true stories we tell about the past influence our relationships in the present? What, in other words, is the rhetorical value of historical texts, written and oral? In this essay, I argue that more attention should be paid to how people socially create stories about `what really happened back then', to suit their own political interests; and how, in the process of doing so, they partition the world into cognitive territories known as `selves' and `others'.

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