Silence, Screen, and Spectacle: Rethinking Social Memory in the Age of Information
New York; Oxford: Berghahn (2014), viii, 249 pp.
Contains illustrations, index
Series: Remapping Cultural History, 14
ISBN 978-1-78238280-5 (hbk); 978-1-78238-281-2 (ebook)
"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 thedesaparecidosin 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." (Publisher description)
Introduction: Rethinking social memory in the age of information / Lindsey A. Freeman, Benjamin Nienass, and Rachel Daniell, 1
PART I. SPECTACULAR MEMORY: MEMORY AND APPEARANCE IN THE AGE OF INFORMATION
1 Haunted by the spectre of communism: spectacle and silence in Hungary's house of terror / Amy Sodaro, 17
2 Making visible: reflexive narratives at the Manzanar U.S. national historic site / Rachel Daniell, 38
3 The everyday as spectacle: archival imagery and the work of reconciliation in Canada / Naomi Angel, 59
PART II. SCREENING ABSENCE: NEW TECHNOLOGY, AFFECT, AND MEMORY
4 Viral affiliations: Facebook, queer kinship, and the memory of the disappeared in contemporary Argentina / Cecilia Sosa, 77
5 Learning by heart: humming, singing, memorizing in Israeli memorial videos / Laliv Melamed, 95
6 Arcade mode: remembering, revisiting, and replaying the American video arcade / Samuel Tobin, 118
PART III. SILENCE AND MEMORY: ERASURES, STORYTELLING, AND KITSCH
7 Remembering forgetting: a monument to erasure at the University of North Carolina / Timothy J. McMillan, 137
8 The power of conflicting memories in European transnational social movements / Nicole Doerr, 163
9 Memories of Jews and the Holocaust in post-Communist Eastern Europe: the case of Poland / Joanna B. Michlic, 183
10 1989 as collective memory "refolution": East-Central Europe confronts memorial silence / Susan C. Pearce, 213
Conclusion: Comments on silence, screen, and spectacle / Lindsey A. Freeman, Benjamin Nienass, and Rachel Daniell, 239
PART I. SPECTACULAR MEMORY: MEMORY AND APPEARANCE IN THE AGE OF INFORMATION
1 Haunted by the spectre of communism: spectacle and silence in Hungary's house of terror / Amy Sodaro, 17
2 Making visible: reflexive narratives at the Manzanar U.S. national historic site / Rachel Daniell, 38
3 The everyday as spectacle: archival imagery and the work of reconciliation in Canada / Naomi Angel, 59
PART II. SCREENING ABSENCE: NEW TECHNOLOGY, AFFECT, AND MEMORY
4 Viral affiliations: Facebook, queer kinship, and the memory of the disappeared in contemporary Argentina / Cecilia Sosa, 77
5 Learning by heart: humming, singing, memorizing in Israeli memorial videos / Laliv Melamed, 95
6 Arcade mode: remembering, revisiting, and replaying the American video arcade / Samuel Tobin, 118
PART III. SILENCE AND MEMORY: ERASURES, STORYTELLING, AND KITSCH
7 Remembering forgetting: a monument to erasure at the University of North Carolina / Timothy J. McMillan, 137
8 The power of conflicting memories in European transnational social movements / Nicole Doerr, 163
9 Memories of Jews and the Holocaust in post-Communist Eastern Europe: the case of Poland / Joanna B. Michlic, 183
10 1989 as collective memory "refolution": East-Central Europe confronts memorial silence / Susan C. Pearce, 213
Conclusion: Comments on silence, screen, and spectacle / Lindsey A. Freeman, Benjamin Nienass, and Rachel Daniell, 239
