Good Revisionism, Bad Revisionism

"It's Time for Another Good Idea, Bad Idea" - Animaniacs

Revisionism. The word itself makes many an historian salivate. The thought of being able to up-end established scholarship and popular perceptions of what happened in the past is a great temptation for those of us wanting to quickly establish ourselves in the scholarly community. Unfortunately, the desire to do so contains many pitfalls, so I have written up a list comparing what I consider to be "good" revisionism - i.e. revisionism that contributes to academic debate and thought, and "bad" revisionism - the type that's good for juicy newspaper interviews, but not much else. Enjoy.

The "Official" Version: A simplistic black-and-white morality tale where the "establishment" is always the "good guy" and right, and its enemies are always the "bad guys" and wrong.

Good Revisionism: A careful, objective analysis of all sides, taking into account context, contingency, zeitgeist and other factors before arriving at a reasoned judgment.

Bad Revisionism: A simplistic black-and-white morality tale where the "establishment" is always the "bad guy" and wrong, and its enemies are always the "good guys" and right.

Good Revisionism: History ("what happened") is the primary concern. Historiography (how it was written) and collective memory (what people think happened) is a secondary concern that must not affect the historical analysis.

Bad Revisionism: Historiography/collective memory are the primary concern. History is thus dependent on what people think happened, regardless of what actually happened.

Corollary: Good revisionism considers "mythbusting" to be incidental (even if it's a nice added bonus) to the primary task of the research. Bad revisionism is obsessed with rebutting popular conceptions of history, and not so much with what actually happened.

Good revisionism: Causes most reasonable people to think and consider your arguments, even if they disagree.

Bad revisionism: Convinces those who were already convinced, usually because of previous political convictions and prejudices. Happy "revising". AIWAC