Description
Book Synopsis In an age of information and new media the relationships between remembering and forgetting have changed. This volume addresses the tension between loud and often spectacular histories and those forgotten pasts we strain to hear. Employing social and cultural analysis, the essays within examine mnemonic technologies both new and old, and cover subjects as diverse as U.S. internment camps for Japanese Americans in WWII, the Canadian Indian Residential School system, Israeli memorial videos, and the desaparecidos in Argentina. Through these cases, the contributors argue for a re-interpretation of Guy Debord’s notion of the spectacle as a conceptual apparatus through which to examine the contemporary landscape of social memory, arguing that the concept of spectacle might be developed in an age seen as dissatisfied with the present, nervous about the future, and obsessed with the past. Perhaps now “spectacle” can be thought of not as a tool of distraction employed solely by hegemonic powers, but instead as a device used to answer Walter Benjamin’s plea to “explode the continuum of history” and bring our attention to now-time.
Trade Review “This is an extremely interesting collection of essays on a wide variety of memory practices from across the globe.” · Jo Labanyi, New York University
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Lindsey A. Freeman, Benjamin Nienass, and Rachel Daniell
PART I: SPECTACULAR MEMORY: MEMORY AND APPEARANCE IN THE AGE OF INFORMATION
Chapter 1. Haunted by the Spectre of Communism: Spectacle and Silence in Hungary’s House of Terror
Amy Sodaro
Chapter 2. Making Visible: Reflexive Narratives at the Manzanar U.S. National Historic Site
Rachel Daniell
Chapter 3. The Everyday as Spectacle: Archival Imagery and the Work of Reconciliation in Canada
Naomi Angel
PART II: SCREENING ABSENCE: NEW TECHNOLOGY, AFFECT, AND MEMORY
Chapter 4. Viral Affiliations: Facebook, Queer Kinship, and the Memory of the Disappeared in Contemporary Argentina
Cecilia Sosa
Chapter 5. Learning by Heart: Humming, Singing, Memorizing in Israeli Memorial Videos
Laliv Melamed
Chapter 6. Arcade Mode: Remembering, Revisiting, and Replaying the American Video Arcade
Samuel Tobin
PART III: SILENCE AND MEMORY: ERASURES, STORYTELLING, AND KITSCH
Chapter 7. Remembering Forgetting: A Monument to Erasure at the University of North Carolina
Timothy J. McMillan
Chapter 8. The Power of Conflicting Memories in European Transnational Social Movements
Nicole Doerr
Chapter 9. Memories of Jews and the Holocaust in Postcommunist Eastern Europe: The Case of Poland
Joanna Michlic
Chapter 10. 1989 as Collective Memory “Refolution”: East-Central Europe Confronts Memorial Silence
Susan C. Pearce
Conclusion: Silence, Screen, and Spectacle: Rethinking Social Memory in the Age of Information and New Media
Lindsey A. Freeman, Benjamin Nienass, and Rachel Daniell
List of Contributors
