June 08, 2005
historical revisionism
I've just been wondering (as i re-read and rewrite this first chapter) if swing dancers function as a type of historical revisionist?
'Historical revisionism' has a few meanings. if you start with the wikipedia (which is a bit problematic I think), you are offered this definition:
Historical revisionism is the re-examination of the accepted "facts" and interpretations of history, with an eye towards updating it with newly discovered, more accurate, and less biased information. Broadly, it is a sceptical approach, that history as it has been traditionally told may not be entirely accurate, and that perhaps an accurate history is as unobtainable as a dispassionate autobiography.While reinterpreting past events in light of new facts is the essence of good scholarship, some distort these facts as a means of influencing readers' beliefs and actions for politically biased reasons.
This sort of echoes with things I've read elsewhere. I immediately think about the recent comments by people like Keith Windshuttle in Australia, especially in reference to Australian aboriginal history.
So, basically, historical revisionism is about taking another look at ‘history’ and presenting a version of history which is in some way different to the conventional, dominant or ‘accepted’ history. As you’d expect, these revised histories (as with all histories) are ideologically determined. The key examples raised in discussions of historical revisionism are studies of Nazi and Jewish history (the Holocaust) in Europe, and Australian Aboriginal history in Australia. An interesting point was raised by the Wikipedia article which noted that ‘politically correct’ histories are also revising history in accordance to a particular ideological agenda. I have trouble with the term ‘political correctness’ and won’t go into it here, suffice to say that there’s more to be discussed.
Swing dancers present a fairly sanitised version of Afro-American cultural history. There are references to slavery, but these are in passing, and the practice and historical period are primarily referred to as sources for dance inspiration or specific steps, rather than being interrogated as moments of specific cultural and social change which contributed more than simply dance steps to a Afro-American culture and society.
Similarly, there are references to Harlem in the 1930s, but hardly ever in terms of the Harlem Renaissance and the vast social and cultural changes at work in this moment. Nor is there sufficient attention to the political climate, Jim Crow and other oppressive legislation or the complexities of American race politics of the time. The few general references usually refer to the experiences of black musicians in the 30s, and use the Ken Burns Jazz documentary as a primary (and often only) reference.
The Hollywood film industry in the 30s and 40s is similarly neglected, with black dancers such as Frankie Manning and the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers and other dance troupes’ work generally referred to in terms of creative genius, rather than interrogated for their contextual positioning within films, or their relationship to other films featuring black artists. There are no discussions of work and employment practices in Hollywood in this period, and certainly no discussions of racism and segregation – both of which were rife in the industry then and today.
There are no discussions of gender and gendered work practices within dance troupes, and no interrogations of social conditions in America of the day, beyond glib references to news reels and other popular media images of the ‘swing era’ and dancing.
Swing dancers present a decidedly sanitised view of history, where dance is the focus of interest, and dance is represented as the key source and site of pleasure, creative and artistic self expression. There are no public discussions of the social and cultural conditions which surrounded the dance, nor are there any extensive discussions about alternative roles dance may have played in peoples’ lives, beyond youthful frivolity.
In this way, swingers are historical revisionists. But the readings that I do of swing dance history, with its emphasis on cultural and social justice and issues of power and civil rights are similarly revisionist.
I’ve seen dancers say and write comments such as:
very few Melbourne swing dancers were Afro-Americans and we are defiantly not in America (here in Melbourne). So while that stuff is relevant in the roots of the dance and music, i personally see it as having very little bearing due to the fact that the dance has evolved.(consult this swingtalk thread for more of this discussion).
It irritates me no end that people can see a dance – a cultural practice and contemporary community – as so divorced from its own history, as well as from the history and day to day lives of new generations of lindy hoppers. It worries me more that these sorts of comments betray a profound failure to understand how our uses of culture today and our perceptions and representations of history have fairly concrete effects. In other words, the the things we do today are determined by our own cultural history, our own individual lived experiences, as well as our own intelligence and aesthetic preferences.
If we cannot remember and remain conscious of the history of the dance, we are not only losing the meaning of individual steps and movements, but also neglecting the history of a dance, and the history of our own, dominant, white, Anglo-Australian, middle class, heteronormative urban culture.
The dance was created by generations of black dancers over time, dancers who were marginalised by a dominant culture which had much in common with that of the majority of Melbourne - international - swing dance communities today. The dance functions not only as a record and comment on American racial and ethnic history but also as a source of encouragement and liberation and education for contemporary dancers.
If we do not remember the history of this dance, and if we do not seek out the alternative social record these cultural forms offer, we are also denying ourselves an alternative medium for resisting cultural and social injustice today. We are pretending that if our dance is ‘just dancing’ we are also then a homogenous, unified group. We are resisting change within our own dance community, and within our wider, everyday interactions with Australian cultural life.
And of course, this sort of blindness also overlooks the injustices in our contemporary culture – within our contemrporary swing culture – and the patterns of power and privilege that are defended by such ignorance. If we do not remember the past injustices, we are unlikely to recognise when these injustices are repeated in our own communities, again.
It is always interesting to note which people resist certain types of historical revisionism, and from which positions of social power they speak.
So, in swing dance, we can see historical revisionism: history reworked to suit particular ideological goals. These goals may be the economic imperative of a dance school, a white, heterosexual man’s attempts to secure his social status or a feminist’s efforts to encourage diversity and inclusivity. They are certainly competing versions of history, telling us more about the ideological and cultural positioning of the revisor than any concrete ‘facts’ about the past.
