Michael Pickering-Research Methods in Cultural Studies (Research Methods for the Arts and Humanities) (2008)

ENGAGING WITH HISTORY 211
understood it, enabling me to take the analysis forward and considerably
expand its scope.
Negotiating the problem of cross-historical response could therefore only be
managed by learning the trick of avoiding both present-centred anachronism and
its antithesis, the convenient distancing across time of relativist particularism.
These are two sides of the same coin, for they entail a view of the past as chronically
different or chronically the same as our own historical world. My own
affiliations and values had to be the starting-point for the research, but could not
be entirely bound by them because this would mean that the research would
simply have ended up confirming them. This would have entailed failing to
engage with some of the key issues in the circuit of historical hermeneutics. These
include trying to avoid the twin pitfalls of anachronism and relativism, both of
which undermine the task of historical understanding. The point of developing
such an understanding of blackface minstrelsy in Britain – and in the process
trying to explain its wide and lasting appeal in musical and theatrical forms which
were based on that appeal – is to comprehensively establish the case for such
formsnever being repeated or, when they do seem to be appearing once again, of
having to hand ways of resisting and countering them. In the end that may be its
only lasting value. The real benefitofhindsight lies in not repeating the past.
KEY POINTS: SUMMARY
• The chapter argues that engaging with history should be a key aspect
of doing cultural studies, and vice versa.
• One of the benefits of this would be the avoidance of myopic forms of
presentism and particularism.
• Two broad approaches to realigning history and cultural studies were
advocated: first, through bringing historical awareness more fully into
the analysis of contemporary cultural forms and practices; and
second, through applying cultural analysis of various kinds to media
representations of history, including news for its first drafts of
history.
• Such alignment would also be facilitated by the closer engagement of
professional historians with popular experiences of the past and
audience negotiations of media representations of the past.
• The relationship between contemporary values and researching the
past was outlined; how such values methodologically affect historical
practice was discussed via a specific example.
• While it is always wise to think critically about the grounds on which
any form of historical analysis or representation is made, it is also
wise always to historicise.