This week I read Alcade’s work and Dietze and Naumann’s work, both of which offered interesting methodological nuances to the practice of transnational history. Alcade’s text, which focuses on the historiographical shift toward ‘historical space’ as opposed to the mainstream temporal focus, highlights how nation-states and borders need to be discredited from concrete entities determined by physical features but rather should be interrogated as historically constructed arenas. Dietze and Naumann’s text, on the other hand, acted as an intervention to the tendency of transnational historians to assume international or cross-border actors as passive or detached from ties to their local or national influences. This text highlights the need to emphasize, or at least acknowledge in transnational historiographies, that historical actors did in fact carry influences, biases, and knowledge from their place of origin, as well as from their previous cross-border experiences, which ultimately impacted the way in which they operated internationally.
After reflecting on both texts, which I believe serve complementary critiques and solutions regarding the practice of transnational history, I wondered how I would implement or at least consider implementing these methodological adjustments into my long essay. Since my long essay will center around rock music and Western consumerism and the impact of both on the collapse of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe during the 1980s, I do not think that Alcade’s work will apply as it is mainly grounded in comparative history. Unless, however, I implemented it in another way through focusing spatially on the interaction between the West and Eastern Europe in the same time frame. However, I do think that Dietze and Naumann’s work and its emphasis on actors and how they ‘remain anchored’ to their origins and international experiences could potentially apply to my long essay. By this, I mean that a section of the essay could include exploring how international actors travelling between the West and the Eastern bloc, especially in the case of divided Germany and the Berlin wall, played a role in introducing and exacerbating the presence and popularity of Western consumerism and rock music. I look forward to doing further research and finding substantial sources to see if this can become a considerable argument within my long essay, in which case I will undoubtedly return to Dietze and Naumann for theoretical support, particularly in my short essay.