In the Sand a Line is Drawn A Reflection on Animation Studies

There are at least three problems that arise when any topic of interest (heterogeneous and globally dispersed as it must necessarily be at the outset) transforms itself, in an (equally necessary) institutional/territorial gesture, into a defined field of study- and I have seen all these problems materialise at least once before in my lifetime, during the rise of Cultural Studies. How might these problems affect the burgeoning area of Animation Studies? 1. As Paul Wells rightly remarks in his contribution to this issue of Animation Studies, ‘Battlefields for the Undead: Stepping Out of the Graveyard’, all previous attempts to describe, map, appreciate, criticise or theorise the area are briskly banished into an obscure pre-history, or handily erased altogether. This is the tabula rasa mode of a field’s active self-definition: nothing that came before really matters; nobody ever before attempted anything like we are doing; we are beginning from scratch. As John Cale once sang: Antarctica Starts Here. 2. An academic field- and this is not a whinge against the academy per se – tends quickly to erect a certain kind of canon: not so much the greatest works (although that implicit judgement or valorisation tends to come quietly attached) as those that most readil