Memory and Public History

Yet another week in which I had strong reactions to the readings. I greatly disagreed with a great many of Alison Landsberg's interpretations of the literary works she uses as examples of memory in her book, Prosthetic Memory. I suppose that literary interpretations are neither here nor there for our purposes. Alas, having seen none of the movies she references, I can't speak on her interpretations of those. However, I can accept that there are various ways to interpret great literature as well as good movies. That being said, Landsberg stretched my incredulity a bit too far when she claimed that after having spent a prolonged amount of time in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the experience affected her psyche so much that she wondered if she and the other attendees were being gassed when she saw smoke coming from a vent. That seems an outrageous assertion for someone who is not a Holocaust survivor. For me, that part of the book made Landsberg's other claims seem less plausible. This saddened me because I really wanted to buy what Landsberg was selling. I also thought that she relied entirely too heavily on long quotes to communicate her argument rather than using quotes sparingly and putting forth her beliefs in her own words.

I do think that museums can serve to create variations on screen memories (as in Freud's theory) which can be quite beneficial. As the readings have shown us this semester, people want to feel like they are a part of history; as if history has some relevance to their lives. I think that museums can utilize prosthetic memories to help history feel relevant to visitors. Clearly, people learn differently than previous generations, so technology needs to be a big part of the way museums integrate learning with entertainment if you will. I'm greatly interested in memory and oral history and I suspect that utilizing both will be an important part of getting people into learning about the past. I appreciate Landsberg's call to arms with which she ends her book, but I was left feeling like the entire text was a little too pie-in-the-sky, rather than serious scholarly work.

As for Jay Winter's article, "The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the 'Memory Boom' in Contemporary Historical Studies," I felt a little bit like a child overhearing her parents' conversation on a topic she's too young to understand. Winter has spent a lot of time overseas and writes from a different, more Euro-centric perspective than many historians I've recently read. The different perspective threw me a bit. I am intrigued by Winter's assertion that memory has become a popular way of thinking about the past because of greater affluence among both governments and people. Again, he asserts that people love to be able to connect themselves or their families to the larger historical picture. Clearly, it is our job as future public historians to wrangle that impulse and use it to get people back into going to museums.