Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture
Instead of compartmentalizing American experience, the technologies of mass culture make it possible for anyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender to share collective memories -- to assimilate as personal experience historical events through which they themselves did not live. That's the provocative argument of this book, which examines the formation and potential of privately felt public memories. Alison Landsberg argues that mass cultural forms such as cinema and television in fact...
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Prosthetic Memory argues that mass cultural forms such as cinema and television in fact contain the still-unrealized potential for a progressive politics based on empathy for the historical experiences of others. The technologies of mass culture make it possible for anyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender, to share collective memories -- to assimilate as deeply felt personal experiences historical events through which they themselves did not live.
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction : memory, modernity, mass culture11Prosthetic memory252The prosthetic imagination : immigration narratives and the "melting down" of difference493Remembering slavery : childhood, desire, and the interpellative power of the past814America, the Holocaust, and the mass culture of memory : the "object" of remembering111Epilogue : toward a radical practice of memory141Notes157Bibliography193Index209
