How Does One Remember - Commodity and Empathy

commodity ~ empathy ~ memory ~ history ~ sensuous ~ cognitive ~ agency ~ distance ~ structure ~ rupture ~ vision ~ perception ~ action ~ feeling ~ pain ~ cost

Elie Weisel asked, "How does one remember?" Alison Landsberg has answered specifically from our vantage point of a society infused with, and in many ways defined by, mass culture.  In her book, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, Lansberg  adds to the historiographic record of the study of memory by examining how specific mass culture tools - film, books, television, comic books, experiential museums - have been used to instill memories of specific cultural events - immigration, slavery, the Holocaust - in those who did not live through the experiences themselves.

I am at a loss.  Cognitively, I can see Landsberg's theory and argument, understand how they fit into the historiographic record of studies on memory, and even respect how she bridges memory study with social history questions of class and race.  I follow the logic.  But I cannot see through her eyes to share the memories because I do not share with her any of the points of entry.  While I know of every source she uses, I have not lived through - watched, read, visited - any of them.  Yes, I've walked through the room while Blade Runner and Total Recall have blared out of the television.  I remember when Roots aired as a mini-series.  The volume containing Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is upstairs on a shelf.  I've read Morrison, but not Beloved; Butler but not Kindred.  While I have the means to experience this "new form of memory largely made possible by the commodification of mass culture" I have not braved the experience of sitting through the experience that is Schindler's List nor had the opportunity to visit the Holocaust Museum.  I have not lived through the specific experiential and meaningful contact that she posits might allow me to "see differently," and through sensual, not cognitive experiences, enter a "transferential space" where I can perceive another's experience to the point of creating personal pain.

However.  I think she's onto something.  The ability to pay to physically partake in an experience that stimulates our senses through a technologically possible medium.  The rupture of one's one comfort or experience or timeline as a mechanism for being able to see through someone else's eyes or walk through another's experience.  The human ability to be transported through empathy to creation of a memory.  And the possibility for social action or change because of that assumed - or prosthetic - memory.  Yes,  I can see that.  I don't yet possess it.  I cannot draw the personal analogy to her specific examples.  As Jay Winter says in his essay, "The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the "Memory Boom" in Contemporary Historical Studies", I haven't experienced the trauma. Or going back to Landsberg, paid the cost.  However.  While I do not feel, I do think.

Her work supports thoughts we've had this fall that comfort, while good for tourism, doesn't support the social agenda of public history.  That if through discomfort our perspective can be shifted to a point where divisions of "other" are dissolved through the sharing of memory, then there is hope for political and social action that can further erode boundaries and create understanding.  We've already on the path.  We've gone from using film to propagate nationalist concepts of "American" sameness in the 1920s to educating - and experiences - the horrors that have occurred when nations erase differences.  We have, one could say, the technology.  Now to use share that technology with more and more people, widening the base of those who share the memories and choose to take the subsequent actions.

Everyday Living

One of our Managing History readings this week was the November 12, 2007 New York Times article, "Auctioning the Old West to Help a City in the East" by Eric O'Keefe.  The article highlighted auctions held to sell more than 800 objects purchased by Harrisburg, PA Mayor Stephen R. Reed for the purpose of establishing a National Museum of the Old West.  Instead, the items were sold to raise funds to help balance the city's deficit budget.  A quote from a Western memorabilia expert about the mayor's collection jumped out at me.  "The mayor's vision of the Old West was incredible.  He bought pots and pans, cans of evaporated milk, and coffee tins, things for everyday living.  He wanted the whole picture, not just the highlights."


The collection of readings for this week are diverse.  In addition to the NYTimes article we read two articles from The Public Historian, the journal of the National Council on Public History.  "The End of History Museums: What's Plan B?" by Cary Carson and "Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and The Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco's Mission District" by Nancy Raquel Mirabal.  


Carson asks if "history museums, and historic house museums in particular" are in a "nosedive to oblivion."  His article looks at attendance at cultural organizations as a whole over the last thirty years, what may and may not have attributed to declining interest in museums, and the industry's response to perceived and real decreases in attendance.  He highlights both what has worked in the past, what has not, and what is working now.  


I appreciate Carson shaking his finger at public historians, urging us to move away from the temptation to raise museum revenue by hosting weddings and cocktail events, relegating history to "sideshow" status. (p. 15).  He also chastises us to remember that attendance cannot be the sole measure of a healthy museum.  In these statements, he raises the topic we've discussed regularly in class this fall.  The public historian's obligation to teach history.  "We must never forget that fundamentally we are history teachers.  If our institutions of lifelong learning are not teaching history, or if we are teaching to ever-smaller numbers of learners, then those are the problems we need to tackle and solve." (p.15)  


Also of immense value is Carson urging us to consider how the generations currently visiting museums learn and get excited about learning.  He specifically challenges current arguments that one must instill trust (can we translate this as comfort?).  "Trust is not the issue.  What is, is the ability of museums to make effective connections with the way people today have become accustomed to engaging in the learning process...how today's learners actually prefer to organize information and put it together to make meaning." (p. 17)  


What do today's visitors to museums want?  "To be transported back in time...to meet ordinary people to whom they can relate."  They don't want to hear about the past or see a display about it.  They want to live it by relating directly to historical figures.  They want everyday living and the whole picture, and they want to "live it - feel it - experience it." (p. 18)


The individuals and families in Mirabal's focus group aren't museum visitors who want to experience history firsthand; they are a class of people whose history was dislocated and erased by the gentrification of the Mission District of San Francisco during the dot-com boom of the late 1980s, early 2000s.  Mirabal's article relays the findings of a student-driven oral history project started in 1999 designed to investigate "the reasons for the economic and political changes in the Mission District." (p. 9) While I knew of gentrification as a concept, I'll admit to having been in the only category of folk who assumed or were taught that gentrification is "an organic, natural, and even random process, shaped by an uncontrollable market economy." (p. 16)  Mirabal builds a solid case, using individual voices and empirical research, to show that the Mission District gentrification was a "calculated process designed to benefit developers, real estate companies, speculators, and investors." Not to mention politicians or city planners who wish to change the commercial and ethnic complexion of a neighborhood from "bad" to "good." (p. 16) 


What does an essay on gentrification of a working class neighborhood - even a really good essay - have to do with public history?  Because part of the success of gentrification is erasing the neighborhood that existed previously and imposing a new persona in its place.  Mirabal uses concrete examples such as the whitewashing (read destruction) of (city sanctioned and national landmark credited) murals in order to make space for logos of new dot-com companies now in residence in buildings that used to house Latino families to represent what one interviewee described as "taking out our culture."  (p. 23) Equally alarming is her tale of historical markers scattered through the neighborhood now.  "The prevailing thought is that memorials based on a constructed past prevent erasure and allow for a collective remembering of a neighborhood, people, and community that no longer exists.  I don't buy it.  Because in the end, whose memories are the ones that we are allowed to remember, whose memories are the ones officially on display?  Who decides how we remember and why?" (p. 30)


While Mirabal isn't shaking her finger in frustration - and hope - at public historians specifically, I hear her nonetheless.  We must remember that the presentation of history requires deciding whose memories to preserve and choosing to whom you focus the telling. To tie back to last week's discussion, when we are studying history with the goal of interpreting it, we must also remember the context within which such markers were made.  Mirabal's oral history helps preserve that context by recording voices of the people who were displaced.  To use another example, we can look back at my childhood friends, the New York State Historical markers.  To understand those markers in context, we need to look at who chose which, or whose, history to share, what the state of the nation and the world was when the text was written, and who the State of New York thought would be reading those blue and yellow metal signs.  


Absolutely everyday life of everyday people can be shared, in new and technologically brilliant ways, with Generation X,Y,and Z.  In order to ethically do so however, we as historians need to capture the history of everyday people and also remember to ask hard, pointed questions of the preserved history to determine whose lives might not have made the cut into the historical record.  

The 21st Century House Museum, Or, Love and Politics

Looking Forward

I may be privileged in the next year to be part of researching the history of a specific family and creating interpretation for the house in which they lived.  The readings for this week's Managing History class are critical building blocks as I begin to think about a house museum of the 21st Century.  Partially, because they are defining works in the field.  Largely because they speak about - some to, some against - themes I know to be critical to running an ideological organization. Love and politics.  

Backstory

The professional hat I am training to wear is that of historian.  Another hat in my professional closet is fundraiser.  Early in my career I was gifted with the opportunity to work for the undergraduate college of a medium-sized research university.  This college had a curriculum based on a very simple, yet fundamental premise.  "Students learn best when they love what they study."  This modus operandi resonated with my belief in "heartstring" fundraising.  People philanthropically support that which they love or about which they feel passionately.  Viable nonprofit organizations are built around a well-defined, well-articulated core purpose.  Successful fundraising occurs when one matches individual passions with community visions.  Idealistic? Yes.  Feasible? Yes.  Messy?  Absolutely.   About 97% of the time.  Why is matching people with purposes messy? Because making a match relevant requires passion.  To make it real requires politics.  Involving politics moves you from the passions of a few to the processes of the many.  Holding on to what you love, or protecting what someone else loves, can be very challenging when dealing with hierarchies of authority, rules, and regulations.  

Interpretation

Definition: An educational activity which aims to reveal meanings and relationships through the use of original objects, by firsthand experience, and by illustrative media, rather than to simply communicate factual information." (p. 33)

Excerpt: "If you love the thing you interpret, and love the people who come to enjoy it, you need commit nothing to memory.  For, if you love the thing, you not only have taken the pains to understand it to the limit of your capacity, but you also feel its special beauty in the general richness of life's beauty."  (p. 126) 

Freeman Tilden was a writer who dedicated half of his life to exploring how staff at national and state parks interacted with the public.  In Interpreting Our Heritage, his book specifically on interpretation, he presents six principles of interpretation which he then sums up to be one - love.  I think Mr. Tilden would understand my approach of heartstring fundraising, and we could have a wonderful walk in the woods discussing the topic.  

Williamsburg's Social History Grade

The New Social History in an Old Museum, is Richard Handler and Eric Gable's critique from the 1990s of Colonial Williamsburg's implementation of the new social history movement started in the 1970s.  In short, they felt the museum had failed and were very blunt is saying so in their final chapter, "The Bottom Line."  Handler and Gable would likely scoff at my mindset, call it naive, and cite an example from their book of a duped donor whose money was shifted to fund another project, one that achieved no goals and fulfilled no one's desires.  Handler and Gable would speak to me of the politics of funding and the hierarchies of management and warn me that trying to relate unbiased history in a museum setting is as much a mythical beast as fair and honest fundraising.  

Domesticating History

Where Freeman Tilden may be my newest prophet, Patricia West may well be my new hero.  Her book, Domesticating HIstory: The Political Origins of America's House Museums is phenomenal, for many, mostly related, reasons.  She grounds the history of America's house museum firmly in the historiographic record, explaining how four different house museums were specifically products of the political and social cultures of their time.  Of very specific interest to me (and my project) she uses the lens of public history to trace historical changes in "the nature of women's relationship to the public sphere." (p. 39)  I am completely fascinated by especially her first two chapters and the histories of how women stood and spoke in the public sphere, manipulating politics and public opinion to save specific homes and the carefully crafted, mythic versions of stories of American heroes and heroines.  

Bound By Time and Place

On interpretation, at the end of her book Wise states, "Above all, the history of American historic house museums demonstrates their missions, far from being neutral and far from meriting the status of inviolability, were manufactured out of human needs bound by time and place." (p. 162)  Human needs.  Passion.  Love.  Bound by time and place.  Politics.   Messy? Yes.  Worth it?  Absolutely.   Why?  Because finding the story, discovering the history behind the story, and sharing the story is my passion.  And, as Tilden, Wise, Handler and Graber all say in very different ways and arenas, passion and politics are two sides of the same coin.  

Preservation: Independence Hall

Diana Lea has written, "The strongest initial impetus for preservation in America was the new country's conscious effort to memorialize the heroes of the Revolutionary War.  One of the first buildings to be preserved as a shrine to the Revolution was Philadelphia's Old State House, later called Independence Hall." (Stipe, ed., A Richer Heritage, p. 1)

Do you know why the Old State House was picked first?  The Marquis de Lafayette wished to see it.

A few weeks ago I had the honor of attending the panel discussion, Public History: Making 18th-Century Life Relevant to 21st-Century Lives, presented as part of the 2009 annual meeting of the East-Central American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies hosted by Lehigh University.  One of the panelists was Diane Windham Shaw, Director of Special Collections & Archives at Lafayette College, who spoke on "Retooling an 18th Century Hero for the 21st: A New Look at the Marquis de Lafayette."

The Marquis de Lafayette was a hero of the American Revolution, a protege of George Washington, and one of the young country's greatest fans. In 1824-25, the Marquis visited his adopted home, touring the country on his "Farewell Tour."  Cities in America outdid themselves competing to offering him the best welcome.  As Lafayette had voiced an interest in seeing the site where the Declaration of Independence was signed, the city of Philadelphia scurried to clean and refurbish the somewhat neglected building, bringing the Old State House to a condition worthy of being viewed by a man then held in extremely high regard by most Americans.

A few related links: press release for another Shaw lecture on Lafayette's Final Tour, Lafayette College's web site about the Marquis, a NPS document on Independence Hall.

Lived Reality

The syllabus for my Managing History class lists this week's discussion topic as "Preservation Politics." Professor Seth Bruggeman joked that he chose the terminology because he liked the alliteration.  Alliterative allegations aside, preservation is politics.  Individuals may chose to actively preserve a location or concept or object because they love it.  Preservation as a movement and a component of our society exists because of laws, policies, and court rulings.  The means and the ends are connected.  Diane Lea, in the intro to A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century tells us, "Historic preservation has flowered and endured in the United States because the very concept incorporates some of this nation's most profoundly defining ideals.  The concept of preservation is built on a finely wrought and sustained balance between respect for private rights on one hand and a concern for the larger community on the other." 

Historically, fights for private rights have often been battles for private comforts.  Cathy Stanton, in her ethnographic study of public historians The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City, explores, and questions, the balance reached in Lowell when park rangers take visitors "beyond public historical space and into the lived reality of the city."  Stanton's work explores many of the concerns of the larger Lowell community and the push-pull within both historians and visitors to reconcile realities of modern Lowell with their internal, middle class comfort levels.  

Stanton goes beyond and behind the scenes of historic preservation and education efforts in Lowell, Massachusetts to examine the perspectives, needs, and expectations through which individuals craft their realities within a postindustrial society.  By placing the ethnic backgrounds, class status, political opinions, and reasons for interest in Lowell of the public historians who work at Lowell, the visitors who take the Park Service tours, and herself within the context of a postmodern society, she exposes us to concepts not necessarily taught on the tour. (A few of these are Lowell's continued existence as an immigrant city that struggles with high poverty and unemployment levels, the dynamics of a community with clear local/outsider identities, and her contribution to discussions of levels of comfort within historic-tourism contexts.) White, middle class visitors and historians, posits Stanton, are seeking to connect with working class and ethnic roots while reassuring themselves of the safety of their own position in society and culture. Furthermore, public historians are concerned with the negative societal effects of capitalism, frustrated about how to balance discussing historic fact and modern realities without encroaching on comfort levels, and somewhat unaware of their own place as benefactors of a postmodern society via their employment in the creation of culture.  Is Stanton's concern that middle class needs for internal comfort mask the needs of the remaining members of an urban community relevant outside of Lowell? 

I recently received my first copy of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  (It happens to be the September/October 2009 issue.)  Flipping through the pages, one finds an article on the first four-year academic program teaching the hands-on skills of preservation, highlights of preservation successes, and pages of tourism ads for historic destinations.  There's no discussion of economic concerns or urban worries.  Instead, there's information on a career path similar to those discussed by Stanton, with pictures of white, mostly male participants.  

Preservation is a fascinating magazine and has been a hit with everyone in my house, read cover to cover by all three adults and even perused by the ten year old.  Said adults do, however, exactly fit the demographic Stanton discovered at Lowell.  We are white, educated beyond the high school level, interested in history, and employed in postmodern service professions. Like many of Stanton's subjects, we are able to point to members of our families making the move from wage to professional labor within the last two generations.  Two of us are also representative of the "twilight of ethnicity," being several generations away from a clear connection to one specific ethnic heritage.  Reading Preservation makes me excited that we're saving building and skills and long to see these places myself.  It does not upset my comfort level or raise my curiosity about how my desire for preservation may affect the lives of others.  This isn't overly surprising.  Discomfort doesn't sell magazines, or memberships to cultural organizations.  Having stopped to think about it and look for it, I am a bit surprised that there isn't any (obvious) reference to political legislation or court concerns.  Is all quiet on the preservation front or does political intrigue not sell subscriptions, either?  

Stanton's book is a critical read for anyone interested in pursuing public history as a career or interested in social history of the 20th century.  Lea's article in a crisp, concise summary of the preservation movement in America, an excellent background for anyone who appreciates the phenomenon but may not know its history. 

Introducing: Places to Visit

One of my hopes for this blog is to create a welcoming, inquisitive environment where "arm chair tourists" can join me on my path. Some locations will be ones I've been lucky enough to visit personally; others will have been discovered in my readings and studies.  Stay tuned!

Thinking Versus Feeling Good

*blink* The sheer amount of thought-provoking and curiosity-peaking information presented in this week's "Managing History" readings has me tempted to issue a self-challenge to write a blog-a-day for a month.  I've been alternately making notes about historical detail I didn't know and Googling referenced initiatives, people, exhibits, museums, and books. I've set up two new Bookmarks folder - [Public] Historians and Teaching History.  Most gratifyingly, I feel vindicated.  While I have learned something from every set of readings for both classes this fall, no other set has engaged me as this set has.  This is reassuring as the material is on the nitty gritty of public history - the controversies and ethics playing out recently in the field.  That I am inhaling the material, asking questions, and excited, tells me two things.  One, I'm on the right path.  Two, those creating discourse about the challenges for public historians are on the the right path.

The first correct path is likely simple and obvious.  Responding emotionally and critically when hearing first hand from voices in the field about what public history is right now tells me I've picked the right career.  The second speaks to a recurring theme in the reading - the need for the presentation of history to generate contemplation and discourse not (only) trigger positive thinking.  In short, encountering history should make you think and question, not simply feel good.

The readings are: Roger D. Launis' article,"American Memory, Culture Wars, and the Challenge of Presenting Science and Technology in a National Museum" and Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory," edited by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton.

The main goal, which is achieved, of Slavery and Public History is to demonstrate the necessity of including education and discussion of slavery in the general American discourse.  These articles dug me several layers deeper into the issues and challenges historians face when sharing history with today's public.  I simultaneously gained context about hot topics in the last 20 years ago concerning the presentation of history, especially touchy subjects, and was more solidly grounded in the background of American slavery.  Discussion from a modern view point about how intertwined American slavery is within the development of race definitions and relations in American and also the defining of class structure is timely as my social history of Early America class has been investigating the same topic but from the lens of an early time period.

One set of thoughts triggered by both readings circle back to the article by Amy Tyson discussed two weeks ago about comfort levels within interpretations (by both those learning and those teaching.)  The concept of emotional response to the topic of slavery cannot be ignored.  Memory, myth, and history of slavery are as shaped by emotion as are our personal responses when encountering the topic today.  Launius references allowing history to be "fragmented and personal."  I was struck by this language.  Fragmentation is seldom allowed a positive connotation these days.  In Launius' usage, fragmentation doesn't weaken history, it adds strength by allowing for multiple voices.   American history is complex and complicated.  Emotionally, it can be easier to gloss over the uncomfortable parts and tell just part of the story.  At times in our history we've done just that.  Even in this decade Americans still do so.

The readings also give voice to the folks in the trenches fighting to juggle public interest with educated awareness.  Dedicated, passionate people are working very hard to bring the historical perspectives on slavery, race, class, and gender gained within the academy in the last few decades into the common understanding.  Despite resistance, opportunities to talk and think about slavery and the definition of America are slowly increasing.  We are learning to talk about painful, conflicting facts.  We are learning to distinguish between fact, memory, and history.  I leave these readings (for now) convinced that memory, history, and the interplay and friction between the two are the stuff from which public historian challenges are made today and will continue to be made in the foreseeable future.