Popular Memories

Ekaterina V. Haskins

Description

A critical exploration of the ways public participation has transformed commemoration and civic engagement in the United States

In the last three decades ordinary Americans launched numerous grassroots commemorations and official historical institutions became more open to popular participation. In this first book-length study of participatory memory practices, Ekaterina V. Haskins critically examines this trend by asking how and with what consequences participatory forms of commemoration have reshaped the rhetoric of democratic citizenship.

Approaching commemorations as both representations of civic identity and politically consequential sites of stranger interaction, Popular Memories investigates four distinct examples of participatory commemoration: the United States Postal Service's "Celebrate the Century" stamp and education program, the September 11 Digital Archive, the first post-Katrina Carnival in New Orleans, and a traveling memorial to the human cost of the Iraq War.

Despite differences in sponsorship, genre, historical scope, and political purpose, all of these commemorations relied on voluntary participation of ordinary citizens in selecting, producing, or performing interpretations of distant or recent historical events. These collectively produced interpretations—or popular memories—in turn prompted interactions between people, inviting them to celebrate, to mourn, or to bear witness. The book's comparison of the four case studies suggests that popular memories make for stronger or weaker sites of civic engagement depending on whether or not they allow for public affirmation of the individual citizen's contribution and for experiencing alternative identities and perspectives. By systematically accounting for grassroots memory practices, consumerism, tourism, and rituals of popular identity, Haskins's study enriches our understanding of contemporary memory culture and citizenship.

Sujets

• Social Science
• Popular Culture
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Popular history
• Flattery
• Primary ideal
• Critical literacy
• Public value
• The Good War
• Picturesque
• High culture
• Mainstream media
• Good government
• Culture industry
• Public interest
• Popularity
• Cultural diversity
• Great Society
• Affirmative action
• Semantics
• Rhetoric
• Activism
• Discrimination positive aux États-Unis
• Tradition

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 11 mars 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611174953
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

POPULAR MEMORIES
Commemoration, Participatory Culture, and Democratic Citizenship
POPULAR MEMORIES
Ekaterina V. Haskins
Studies in Rhetoric/Communication Thomas W. Benson, Series Editor

The University of South Carolina Press
2015 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/
ISBN 978-1-61117-494-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-61117-495-3 (ebook)
Cover illustration: Eyes Wide Open boots display in Washington, D.C. Photograph by American Friends Service Committee
For my family
Contents
List of Illustrations
Series Editor s Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1- Put Your Stamp on History : Celebrating Consumer Democracy
Chapter 2-The September 11 Digital Archive: Archival Memory and Popular Participation
Chapter 3-Carnival after Katrina: Popular Festivity in a Time of Crisis
Chapter 4- Eyes Wide Open: Reflecting on Patriotism and the Cost of War
Chapter 5-Toward a Participatory Memory Culture
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
1900s souvenir stamp sheet, Celebrate the Century stamp collection, United States Postal Service
1990s souvenir stamp sheet, Celebrate the Century stamp collection, United States Postal Service
Notice Concerning Sandbox
Redeemers
Union Square Park
Effigy of Osama bin Laden
The September 11 Digital Archive original home page
The Levee Mardi Gras float
Ship of State Mardi Gras float
Department of Homeland Insecurity Mardi Gras float
Red Rover Mardi Gras float
Krewe of Zulu parade
Young spectators greet the Zulu parade
Eyes Wide Open boots display
Eyes Wide Open civilian shoes and Dreams and Nightmares exhibit
Visitor contributions to Eyes Wide Open
Series Editor s Preface
In Popular Memories: Commemoration, Participatory Culture, and Democratic Citizenship, Professor Ekaterina V. Haskins offers a fresh look at the study of what she calls popular memories, examining how participatory forms of communication have redefined the rhetoric of democratic citizenship. She explores in detail how four very different campaigns for participatory public memory-the Postal Service s Celebrate the Century commemorative stamp program, the September 11 Digital Archive, the first post-Katrina New Orleans carnival, and the Eyes Wide Open project of the American Friends Service Committee-suggest, guide, and sometimes limit genuine democratic participation.
Haskins explores the now familiar distinction made by memory scholars between popularization-the engagement of mass audiences through invocation of the idioms and practices of the popular arts-and democratization, which at a minimum would involve the participation of ordinary people in the production of memory practices, and suggests that the distinction may not fully explain what happens in actual cases. Popular participation in memory work does not render it instantly more democratic, nor does the stamp of approval from government or mainstream media necessarily diminish the political charge of grassroots efforts.
Haskins asks how each of the cases she examines represents civic identity and how if at all it prompts democratic encounters among people of differing opinions about issues and about citizenship itself. The Celebrate the Century commemorative stamp program did invite citizens to participate in choosing the final designs from a menu of choices, and did depict an America of inclusiveness. On the other hand, the program equated consumerism with civic responsibility, promoting a neoliberal and self satisfied mythology in which each person has a place and an identity, but in which there is no space for strangers to mingle and debate. In a similar way, the online September 11 Digital Archive created an open web site for the uncensored contribution of diverse responses to the attacks of September 11, 2001, but while the structure of the archive encouraged a diversity of contributions, it did not enable the interactive potentials of the technology to encourage potentially transformative conversation, debate, or deliberation.
The first Mardi Gras festival after Katrina was highly complex and widely participatory for the citizens of New Orleans, though from the perspective of public memory it was ephemeral, especially for those who witnessed the carnival at a distance through the mass media. Haskins admires the complex treatment of the events by National Public Radio, and even more the fictional depiction of New Orleans in the television series Treme.
Eyes Wide Open was a traveling memory exhibit sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, in which the war in Iraq was commemorated by the display in a large field of empty combat boots, each pair with the name of an American soldier killed in the war, and a display of civilian shoes representing dead Iraqi civilians. The exhibit was supplemented with a memory wall. Haskins finds that Eyes Wide Open drew ongoing and productive contributions to the memorial itself in the sites to which it traveled, and that it was also recorded as having created a space for genuine citizen encounter with those of differing views and commitments.
Popular Memories is a fresh, vivid, theoretically sophisticated, and critically astute work of scholarship.
T HOMAS W. B ENSON
Acknowledgments
I became fascinated with the subject of this book over a decade ago, when I was completing my dissertation at the University of Iowa. At the time I was applying for academic jobs and making frequent trips to the post office in downtown Iowa City. This is where, in the fall of 1998, I first encountered the Celebrate the Century stamp program and its enticing slogan, Put your stamp on history! Although I was writing a thesis on ancient Greek rhetoric, the idea of a democratized memory culture struck me as so important that I could not get it out of my mind for years to come. As the tech bubble-induced euphoria of the 1990s gave way to the shocks of 9/11, the Iraq War, and Hurricane Katrina in the first decade of the twenty-first century, putting one s stamp on history became not just a way of looking back at distant past but a vehicle for citizens response to recent events. My fascination grew into an abiding scholarly interest as I immersed myself in the multidisciplinary field of memory studies.
On this intellectual journey, many amazing scholars offered guidance, encouragement, and constructive criticism. I am particularly grateful to Kendall Phillips, Mitchell Reyes, Brad Vivian, and Anne Demo for including me in the many workshops, panels, and conferences on public memory they have organized in the last decade. Thanks are also due to Carole Blair for her sage advice on writing book proposals; to Steve Browne for his infectious enthusiasm and careful reading of my work; to Greg Clark, David Depew, and Tom Goodnight for being tireless champions of my career; to Michael Halloran for his gentle yet incisive criticisms of several drafts of this book and for being a pedagogical role model; to Joan Faber McAlister and Pete Simonson, my fellow University of Iowa alums, for their generous and thoughtful engagement with my writing; to Liz Wright for her insights into lieux de memoire; to Sara VanderHaagen for her astute remarks on the early version of the carnival chapter; to Studies in Rhetoric/Communication series editor Tom Benson and acquisitions editor Jim Denton at the University of South Carolina Press for steering the project through revisions; and to anonymous journal, conference, and manuscript reviewers whose high standards have goaded me to be a better scholar and writer. If this book doesn t quite live up to their expectations, the fault is entirely mine.
I am indebted to colleagues, students, friends, and family who have supported me in different yet equally valuable ways throughout the years. My colleagues and students at Boston College were first to see me wrestle with the topic of participatory memory culture. Elfriede Fursich and Greg Elmer commented on several drafts of what is now chapter 1 in addition to making my sojourn in Boston so much more fun. The late Justin DeRose, my most extraordinary undergraduate advisee and dear friend, coauthored with me a paper on commemoration of September 11 that in turn inspired the essay that became chapter 2 .
At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, I was fortunate to be able to test many of this book s ideas in a graduate course, Media and Memory. My students have been the most receptive and inquisitive audience. Amy Scarfone, Jason Waite, Marcy Szablewicz, Michael Rancourt, and Hillary Brown Savoie deserve special recognition for their contributions to my thinking. My colleagues have been a wonderful group, as well. June Deery and Jim Zappen have shared their knowledge of participatory culture; Ellen Esrock expanded my understanding of photography; Jan Ferheimer read my chapter drafts and taught me salsa steps; Nancy Campbell helped me articulate the project s social relevance; and Abby Kinchy was the best writing buddy one could ask for. I am also grateful to the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences for the various forms of institutional support that enabled me to complete this project.
My friends near and far have shared my frustrations and cheered me on in moments of triumph. Mari Shopsis, Eliza Kent, Jennifer Burrell, Alex Dupuy, Pam Revak, Stephen Cartier, Dan Glaser, Erin Glasheen, Christine Tracy, Olga and Felix Ivanoff, Sat Kriya Kaur, Julia Arakelova, and the late Svetlan