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 contain the still-unrealized potential for a progressive politics based on empathy for the historical experiences of others. The result is a new form of public cultural memory -- "prosthetic" memory -- that awakens the potential in American society for increased social responsibility and political alliances that transcend the essentialism and ethnic particularism of contemporary identity politics. Cover 1 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: Memory, Modernity, Mass Culture 14 1 Prosthetic Memory 38 2 The Prosthetic Imagination: Immigration Narratives and the “Melting Down” of Difference 62 3 Remembering Slavery: Childhood, Desire, and the Interpellative Power of the Past 94 4 America, the Holocaust, and the Mass Culture of Memory: The “Object” of Remembering 124 Epilogue: Toward a Radical Practice of Memory 154 Notes 170 Bibliography 206 Index 222 Plate Section 230 Introduction: Memory, Modernity, Mass Culture. -- Prosthetic Memory. -- The Prosthetic Imagination: Immigration Narratives And The Melting Down Of Difference. -- Remembering Slavery: Childhood, Desire, And The Interpellative Power Of The Past. -- America, The Holocaust, And The Mass Culture Of Memory: The Object Of Remembering. -- Epilogue: Toward A Radical Practice Of Memory. Alison Landsberg. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [157]-207) And Index. 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