Why animation historiography?
Or: Why the commissar shouldn’t vanish “Truth is strange, stranger than fiction.” William Makepeace Thackeray, The tremendous adventures of Major Gahagan (Thackeray 1921, 1) In spring 2008, a vociferous discussion erupted on the Society for Animation Studies’ mailing list on the subject of an extensive definition of animation. More technically-oriented explanations clashed with highly theoretical ones, scarcely finding a common ground between the variety of arguments brought forward. Strangely absent from the discussions, however, was the question of animation historiography, of an analysis of the processes by which our historical knowledge of animation is obtained and transmitted, helping in the definition of the object of inquiry. And indeed, while there have been rather many histories of animation, so far only a few animation scholars have thoroughly undertaken to explore how historical developments relating to their study of animation are registered and chronicled. There are certai
