Fwd: Reply: multiple versions (3 responses)

From: Leo Enticknap <[email protected]>

 Joseph DiCandeloro writes:

> On the other hand, I would humbly object
> to the idea that the historian is only interested in formalist writing.
> To name a topic at all is to give voice or representation to indexically
> related structures and discourses, some of which are bound to reflect
> commitment, necessity, obligation, or bias. (We also have arguments
> which find voice or representation implied in silence or elision.)

I'm not suggesting that the historian should only be interested in formalist
writing (s/he should absolutely be prepared to study and evaluate other
forms of source and evidence as well), but rather that the primary job
of the historian should be to try to make objective sense of inherently
subjective evidence. For me, one of the most useful ways of doing them
is to identify the received wisdom that dominate our popular knowledge
and perception of a given topic and ask how and why they have got there.
Why are newsreels usually dismissed as incapable of communicating
substantive political debate? Why are Hitchcock and Powell feted as
geniuses? Why are the majority of film scholars unable and/or unwilling
to investigate the role of technology in the process of audio-visual
communication? Doing that does not necessitate starting out with the aim
of proving that the opposite is true (although that can end up being the
final result in some cases), but it does mean creating and applying
objective (as far as possible) criteria for identifying and addressing
the question.

Though arcane (written in 1929, and very obviously so
from its prose style) and at first glance irrelevant to the study of
audio-visual media, Lucy Maynard Salmon's 'Why is History Rewritten?' is
well worth a look in relation to this issue. She develops a quite
sophisticated argument that encompasses the changing ideological climate
in which historical enquiry is undertaken, the availability of new
source material, the prominence of individual components of the existing
secondary literature on a given topic (how positively was book A
reviewed compared to book B?) and the life experiences of the individual
historian as being among the influences in play. Bringing this back to
topic, the existence of multiple versions (defined as everything from a
full-scale restoration to the use of a 30-second clip in a TV
documentary) is simply another factor to throw into the
mix.

Leo

---
Leo Enticknap
Institute of Communications Studies
2.35,
Clothworkers' Building North
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
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Kingdom
Tel. +44 (0)113 343 5853 - office, direct line
Fax +44 (0)113
343 5808
Skype: leo_enticknap
Web: Leo on the UoL/ICS Website [1] | on
academia.edu [2] | personal website [3]
NEW BOOK: Film Restoration [4]
(forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan)

Links:
------
[1]
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/people/leo-enticknap
[2]
http://leeds.academia.edu/enticknap
[3] http://www.enticknap.net
[4]
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=344520

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