So I'm a final-year music student, and my dissertation is going to be on 1959 in Jazz. I've been warned that to start off with the (view)point that 1959 was a seminal year in the genre would be flawed, as I "detach myself from the contingencies of history". I'm not too sure what that means. If someone could ELI5 my question as well as give a detailed answer, that would be awesome. There are a couple of other things I'd like to ask, too, but I appreciate if you can't point me in the right direction as some of them are fairly specific:
How can I identify when I'm writing teleologically? What can I do to avoid teleology?
What would be a better alternative starting point than the one I've proposed (i.e. that year X was seminal [because...])?
In what ways can I address why 1959 was an important year for jazz, rather than what (events/album releases/deaths/so on) made it important? - Apologies if this is going to be a too topic-specific question.
Really sorry if some of the questions smack of "help me do my homework", because that really isn't my intention. I just want to make sure I'm thinking straight before I start writing.
*edited for grammar
To argue 1959 was important to Jazz, or a seminal year, is not a teleological statement in and of itself.
But, the 'spectre of teleology' in your argument is that you may build a case to say that events leading up to 1959 pre-determined that 1959 would be, must be, seminal and were in fact destined to happen. This is what 'ignoring contingencies of history mean' - ignoring the fact that things could have turned out differently.
Let's look at a broad example for purposes of clarity.
A big teleological argument in history would be to say that the European West was destined to rise to world supremacy because it expresses the legacy of Greek and Roman cultures. It suggests that the past could only lead to one, inevitable, result.
Teleology is about the basis and structure of a historical argument and not the evidence, because I could argue non-teleologically that Greek and Roman influence on Western civilization is a foundation on which its success have been built. But it wasn't predetermined, it didn't have to be that way, the west could have taken many turns.
Often ideological notions of progress are found in teleological arguments - that there is a natural course of historical events towards the triumph of our modern, technological, capitalist society.
One way of putting it is to think of the Seventh in the scale. It is known as the Leading Note because it indicates a return to the Tonic. But it doesn't cause the return to the Tonic, there is no necessity to go to the Tonic, and you certainly can''t say the Tonic was returned to because a Seventh occurred.
In composition chords are resolved, themes emerge and are returned to, crescendos become climaxes. It can be tempting to see similar things happening in history and write the historical narrative accordingly. But a composition is the work of human agency working with an end in mind. History is sometimes the work of human agencies too, but any end they have in mind is illusory because fini has yet to arrive.
Teleology is explaining something because of its consequences, as opposed to its causes. "9/11 happened in order to bring radical sect Al-Qaeda into the world-scope" is an example of teleological writing. Al-Qaeda may have indeed wanted to be known by the world, but that's hardly what caused the attacks to happen those growing years ago.
"9/11 happened due to the radical sect Al-Qaeda's reaction to Western values and hegemony, the US' support of Israel in spite of perceived mistreatment of Muslim Palestinians, alongside with ... (whatever other factors you can include here.) following US support and training of its preceding groups in the Afghan-Soviet War." isn't teleological writing. It looks at the events that led up to the attack, the things that angered the group, the international factors that made it possible, and so on. Motive could be included in this as well, but it would be one factor as opposed to several. In writing history, make sure you're doing the latter, not the former.
I'd suggest you focus on the event or events that made you pick 1959 on the first place so you can find the argument you're planning to defend and the historical evidence to support it. You have no ways of proving 1959 was "important" for jazz, it's not like people woke up on january 1st 1959 and said, boy, this is going to be an important year for jazz! That's what they meant when they told you you're detaching from the contingencies of history, you can't really put a start date and an end date on historical processes even when chronologies tell you the opposite.