Counterfactual Speculation

Abstract

In the second wave of feminism it was enough to say that Antonia Dickson co-wrote History of The Kinetograph, the Kinetoscope and the Kineto-Phonograph (1895) with her inventor brother William Kennedy Laurie Dickson. But in a new moment, I utilize Catherine Gallagher’s concept of “counterfactual speculation” as a “thought experiment,” offering a fuller examination of the time between 1893 and 1896 when Antonia was involved in the experiments around the “projecting” Kinetoscope. “What if Antonia Dickson Had Invented the Kinetoscope?” raises the question of historical outcome, empirical evidence, and causality, offering a way around uncritical reliance on the traditions of historical narrative and testing a new methodology for feminism and film.