MATERIALIZING
MATERIALIZING
(Arbi)
Possibility of maintaining not only a verbal but also a visual record of events wherever a camera was running. Such material preservation, of course, enhances the possibilities that our representation of the present will be picked up, appropriated, accepted, revised, rejected, or reviled at some point in the future. They may, of course, still be forgotten despite their preservation. But they are available at least for collective memory work.
A second implication of the materiality of communication technologies is the deliberate attempt to shape collective memory by means of particular kinds of communicative messagea. For example, we are used to thinking about the objects in a museum ot other historic preservation site as being definitively precious, worth our time and trouble to pay a visit and observe the objects. But museums, like other communication modalities, impart very partiual understandings of the cultures and pasts they represent. Not everything from a culture, or art historical period, or technological era, si collected, retained, or displayed by a museum. Only those objects that are valued for particular reasons in the ongoing present are displayed in their collections. So, for example, why are judy garland’s ruby slippers from the wizard of oz, Indiana jones’s hat, Michael jordan’s jersey, and archie bunker’s chair displayed in the national museum of American history in Washington, DC, as opposed to the hundreds of millions of other possible choices from American popular culture and social history? Why is the giant but tattered flag that flew over fort McHenry displayed and so carefully preserved there? What is the museum attemting to impart to its audience about U.S. history by6 displaying these items and not others?
A third implication is an interesting return-with a twist-of theorized connection between memory and place. Recall that ancient rhetoricians advised speakers to associate their ideas with physical places, for clarity of recollection. More recently, communication scholars, as well as memory scholars in other fields, havev built on the assumption of thinking like gaston bachelard (1958/1994) that people already, naturally, associate ideas with places, and have begun to study places-domestic architecture, museums, pubs, and memorials, for example-as themselves representing important communicative messages, rather than simply serving asbackdrops, contexts, or scenes in which communication occurs.
Sixth, directly related ti the notion of materiality is the idea that communication ofteninvolves struggles over power. Communication is not just something we do; it is a highly valued practice or “commodity”, particularly in some forms and with some specific outcomes. As a result, sometimes communication compete for-among other things-the means to represent the past in their own ways for the purpose of serving particular interest in the present. Note, for example, the venomous conflicts over the public display of the confederate battle flag in the American south during the past fifteen years.the proponents of flag display argue that they are simply honoring their “heritage” paying tribute to a way of life represented by the “old south”. Opponents suggest that such proud displays create traumatic memories for those whose ancestors were enslaved in that culture, and that to honor the old south is to eulogize the historical practice of slavery. Needless to say, the outcomes of the present moment. Their counterparts suggest, rather disingenuously, that removing the battle flag from civic sites (like state capitol buildings) violates their civil rights. The point is that the struggle over symbolism of the past is just as surely a struggle over power in the present. It has long been held in various aphorisms and anecdotes that to the cultural “victor” belongs the privilege of writing history. With little adaptation, it seems fair to suggest that struggles for power in social groups often are waged under the sign of memory-what the group will choose to remember, how it will be valued, and what will be forgotten, neglected, or devalued in the process.
The study of communication as collective memory, like any other theoretical position, may have some drawbacks. For example, it would be problematic to place a stronger emphasis on popular renditions of the past-how we would like to remember-than on historical accounts that seek for a more neutral rendition of what happened in the past (zelizer, 1995). The dangers of presentism also have been remarked and investigated productively (cox, 1990). However, if we think of history and memory not as competitive but as mutually enriching, memory studies can serve our understanding of communication in a number of ways.
They do so most generally by urging us to consider what is at stake when a communicator refers to or invokes the past. The past, from the prespective of collective memory studies, is not a dry, neutral record of what when before but an ideologically inflected cultural resource that communicators draw upon in their interaction wiht others. Most important, when some version of the past is invoked, it is all too often marked as “true”, as an unquestioned or obvious matter of facticity, despite its inflections and what has been left out or forgotten.
Understanding communication as collective memory also invites analytic access to a broad range of communicative phenomena, from interpersonal exchanges to media programming to popular culture products. In fact, it transforms what we would usually take to be a context for communication-a museum, a park, a preservation site, or other place-and implores us to see it as a mode of communication in its own right.a collective memory perspective also allows us to probe a communicative message at a number of levels of abstraction, from the basics of its language and assumed genre to the identities it constructs and the ways in which it enacts power. It reminds us to think about how any message alters its context and speaks back to messages that have come before. And because of its focus on what how we remember, it prompts us to think clearly about what is not said, as well as what is, for forgetfulness is a central operation in the process of constructing coherent and communicatively powerful memories.
Additional Readings
Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory (L. A. coser, Ed. & Trans). Chicago : university of Chicago press.
Huyssen, A. (1994). Twilight memories : Marking time a culture of amnesia. New York : routledge.
Lipsitz, G. (1990). Time passages : collective memory and American popular culture. Minneapolis : university of Minnesota press.
Nora, P. (Ed). (1996-1998). Realms of memory : the construction of the French past (Vol. 1-3). (A. goldhammer, Trans; L. D. kritzman, Eng. Trans. Ed). New york : Columbia university press.
Zelizer, B. (1998). Remembering to forget : holocaust memory through the camera’s eye. Chicago : university Chicago press.
References
Bachelard, G. (1994). The poetics of space. Boston : beacon press. (original work published 1958)
Blair, C. (1999). Contemporary U. S. memorial sites as exemplars of rhetoric’s materiality. In J. Selzer & S. Crowley (Eds), rhetorical bodies (pp. 16-57). Madison : university of Wisconsin press.
Campbell, K.K., & Jamisen, K. H (1977). From and genre in rhetorical criticsm : An intreoduction. In K. K. Campbeell & K. H. Jamisen (Eds), form and genre : shaping rethorical action (pp. 9-32). Falls church, VA : speech communication association.
Cox, J. R. (1990). Memory, critical theory, and the argument from history. Argumentation and advocacy, 27, 1-13.
Foucault, M. (1972). The archaelogy of knowledge (A. M. S. smith, trans). new york : pantheon.
Huyssen, A. (1995). Twilight memories : marking time in a culture of amnesia. New york : routledge.
Nietzsche, F. (1989). On truth and lying in an extra-moral sense. In S. L, gilman, C. Blair, & D. J. Parent (Eds. & Trans.), friedrich Nietzsche on rhetoric and language (pp. 246-257). New york : oxford university press. (original work published 1873)
Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history : les lieux de memoire. Representation, 26, 7-25.
Yates, F. A. (1966). The art of memory. Chicago : university of Chicago press.
Zelizer, B. (1995). Reading the past against the grain : the shape of mamory studies. Critical studies in mass communication, 12, 214-239.
Zelizer, B. (2001). Cxollective memory as “time out” : repairing the time-community link. In G. J. Shepherd and E. W. rothenbuhler (Eds.), communication and community (pp. 181-189). Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum.
(Arbi)
Possibility of maintaining not only a verbal but also a visual record of events wherever a camera was running. Such material preservation, of course, enhances the possibilities that our representation of the present will be picked up, appropriated, accepted, revised, rejected, or reviled at some point in the future. They may, of course, still be forgotten despite their preservation. But they are available at least for collective memory work.
A second implication of the materiality of communication technologies is the deliberate attempt to shape collective memory by means of particular kinds of communicative messagea. For example, we are used to thinking about the objects in a museum ot other historic preservation site as being definitively precious, worth our time and trouble to pay a visit and observe the objects. But museums, like other communication modalities, impart very partiual understandings of the cultures and pasts they represent. Not everything from a culture, or art historical period, or technological era, si collected, retained, or displayed by a museum. Only those objects that are valued for particular reasons in the ongoing present are displayed in their collections. So, for example, why are judy garland’s ruby slippers from the wizard of oz, Indiana jones’s hat, Michael jordan’s jersey, and archie bunker’s chair displayed in the national museum of American history in Washington, DC, as opposed to the hundreds of millions of other possible choices from American popular culture and social history? Why is the giant but tattered flag that flew over fort McHenry displayed and so carefully preserved there? What is the museum attemting to impart to its audience about U.S. history by6 displaying these items and not others?
A third implication is an interesting return-with a twist-of theorized connection between memory and place. Recall that ancient rhetoricians advised speakers to associate their ideas with physical places, for clarity of recollection. More recently, communication scholars, as well as memory scholars in other fields, havev built on the assumption of thinking like gaston bachelard (1958/1994) that people already, naturally, associate ideas with places, and have begun to study places-domestic architecture, museums, pubs, and memorials, for example-as themselves representing important communicative messages, rather than simply serving asbackdrops, contexts, or scenes in which communication occurs.
Sixth, directly related ti the notion of materiality is the idea that communication ofteninvolves struggles over power. Communication is not just something we do; it is a highly valued practice or “commodity”, particularly in some forms and with some specific outcomes. As a result, sometimes communication compete for-among other things-the means to represent the past in their own ways for the purpose of serving particular interest in the present. Note, for example, the venomous conflicts over the public display of the confederate battle flag in the American south during the past fifteen years.the proponents of flag display argue that they are simply honoring their “heritage” paying tribute to a way of life represented by the “old south”. Opponents suggest that such proud displays create traumatic memories for those whose ancestors were enslaved in that culture, and that to honor the old south is to eulogize the historical practice of slavery. Needless to say, the outcomes of the present moment. Their counterparts suggest, rather disingenuously, that removing the battle flag from civic sites (like state capitol buildings) violates their civil rights. The point is that the struggle over symbolism of the past is just as surely a struggle over power in the present. It has long been held in various aphorisms and anecdotes that to the cultural “victor” belongs the privilege of writing history. With little adaptation, it seems fair to suggest that struggles for power in social groups often are waged under the sign of memory-what the group will choose to remember, how it will be valued, and what will be forgotten, neglected, or devalued in the process.
The study of communication as collective memory, like any other theoretical position, may have some drawbacks. For example, it would be problematic to place a stronger emphasis on popular renditions of the past-how we would like to remember-than on historical accounts that seek for a more neutral rendition of what happened in the past (zelizer, 1995). The dangers of presentism also have been remarked and investigated productively (cox, 1990). However, if we think of history and memory not as competitive but as mutually enriching, memory studies can serve our understanding of communication in a number of ways.
They do so most generally by urging us to consider what is at stake when a communicator refers to or invokes the past. The past, from the prespective of collective memory studies, is not a dry, neutral record of what when before but an ideologically inflected cultural resource that communicators draw upon in their interaction wiht others. Most important, when some version of the past is invoked, it is all too often marked as “true”, as an unquestioned or obvious matter of facticity, despite its inflections and what has been left out or forgotten.
Understanding communication as collective memory also invites analytic access to a broad range of communicative phenomena, from interpersonal exchanges to media programming to popular culture products. In fact, it transforms what we would usually take to be a context for communication-a museum, a park, a preservation site, or other place-and implores us to see it as a mode of communication in its own right.a collective memory perspective also allows us to probe a communicative message at a number of levels of abstraction, from the basics of its language and assumed genre to the identities it constructs and the ways in which it enacts power. It reminds us to think about how any message alters its context and speaks back to messages that have come before. And because of its focus on what how we remember, it prompts us to think clearly about what is not said, as well as what is, for forgetfulness is a central operation in the process of constructing coherent and communicatively powerful memories.
Additional Readings
Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory (L. A. coser, Ed. & Trans). Chicago : university of Chicago press.
Huyssen, A. (1994). Twilight memories : Marking time a culture of amnesia. New York : routledge.
Lipsitz, G. (1990). Time passages : collective memory and American popular culture. Minneapolis : university of Minnesota press.
Nora, P. (Ed). (1996-1998). Realms of memory : the construction of the French past (Vol. 1-3). (A. goldhammer, Trans; L. D. kritzman, Eng. Trans. Ed). New york : Columbia university press.
Zelizer, B. (1998). Remembering to forget : holocaust memory through the camera’s eye. Chicago : university Chicago press.
References
Bachelard, G. (1994). The poetics of space. Boston : beacon press. (original work published 1958)
Blair, C. (1999). Contemporary U. S. memorial sites as exemplars of rhetoric’s materiality. In J. Selzer & S. Crowley (Eds), rhetorical bodies (pp. 16-57). Madison : university of Wisconsin press.
Campbell, K.K., & Jamisen, K. H (1977). From and genre in rhetorical criticsm : An intreoduction. In K. K. Campbeell & K. H. Jamisen (Eds), form and genre : shaping rethorical action (pp. 9-32). Falls church, VA : speech communication association.
Cox, J. R. (1990). Memory, critical theory, and the argument from history. Argumentation and advocacy, 27, 1-13.
Foucault, M. (1972). The archaelogy of knowledge (A. M. S. smith, trans). new york : pantheon.
Huyssen, A. (1995). Twilight memories : marking time in a culture of amnesia. New york : routledge.
Nietzsche, F. (1989). On truth and lying in an extra-moral sense. In S. L, gilman, C. Blair, & D. J. Parent (Eds. & Trans.), friedrich Nietzsche on rhetoric and language (pp. 246-257). New york : oxford university press. (original work published 1873)
Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history : les lieux de memoire. Representation, 26, 7-25.
Yates, F. A. (1966). The art of memory. Chicago : university of Chicago press.
Zelizer, B. (1995). Reading the past against the grain : the shape of mamory studies. Critical studies in mass communication, 12, 214-239.
Zelizer, B. (2001). Cxollective memory as “time out” : repairing the time-community link. In G. J. Shepherd and E. W. rothenbuhler (Eds.), communication and community (pp. 181-189). Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum.
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