Show Your Workings: Towards a Creative Historical Toolkit

This chapter presents a case study of a piece of speculative historical writing based on a scene of bewitchment that took place in 1924 and testing this piece against a model of rigorous speculative work. What could a rigorous speculative piece dealing with this topic – modern witchcraft – look like? The chapter proposes a four-part model. Rigorous speculative or creative work should (1) explore historical or biographical problems (2) use specific, well-suited techniques drawn from creative practices (3) be in conversation with the existing conventions of research (4) produce new insight into its subject. The chapter shows how this model fits with the speculative scene, emphasizing the radical possibilities of shifting perspective. Such speculative work does not simply have to ‘fill gaps’. It can also draw on traditions of writing that use the whole page and empty spaces to explore silences and uncertainty. These speculative techniques suggest new insights for the specific topic of modern European witchcraft: they draw attention to silence, suggest alternative emotional frameworks at play, and reveal experiences in search of meaningful definitions.