Introduction to the Special Issue: New Perspectives on Animation Historiography

Animation is strongly metamorphic. Not only in the sense of the omnipresent audiovisual and narrative changes we encounter in animated images, but it is animation itself that constantly transforms, shifts and expands (Wells and Hardstaff, 2008: 16). Therefore, our artistic and theoretical conceptions of animation constantly morph as well. These paradigmatic changes are further fuelled by the rapid emergence of new media technologies and their cultural implications (see, for example, Leslie and McKim, 2017). To account for this metamorphic nature of the field, it is helpful to conceive animation not as one single phenomenon but rather as a multitude of phenomena that are connected, in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s sense, by Familienähnlichkeit (which is usually translated as family resemblance), i.e. by overlapping features that are not necessarily shared by all phenomena (Wittgenstein, 1999: 31–32). In relation to historiography, a recognition of animation’s heterogeneity offers a fresh look at what we call animation history and paves the way for writing the histories of new and overlooked forms, contexts and uses of animation both according to their own unique features and in relation to other forms, contexts and uses. For writing the histories of animation, an ever-expanding and changing understanding of the field poses many challenges and offers as many opportunities as this Special Issue aims at exploring. The Special Issue is framed by our own contribution, which discusses various historiographical approaches to account for a continuously transforming understanding of animation. We survey discourses on historiography in animation studies, trace the impact of new film history and media archaeology on rethinking animation historiography, and point out a few lessons we can learn from ongoing debates in art history and media art history. Conceiving historiography as an interdisciplinary endeavour, we look at how history is written in performance studies and the history of science, two exemplary fields of visual culture where animation plays an important role but is usually only mentioned in passing. Finally, we show what can be gained from studying the histories of what has been perceived as marginal forms of animation, exemplified by motion graphics and animation in