Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass CultureInstead 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. |
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Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of ... Alison Landsberg No preview available - 2004 |
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ability African American argues Art Spiegelman Artie authentic become Beloved Benjamin biological Blade Runner body Books Cambridge century chapter child cinema Classical Hollywood Cinema collective memory commodification commodities construct David Deckard define DeMille DeMille’s empathy enables engage ethnic experience experiential father figure film film’s find first flashback form of memory Freud genealogy Haley Holocaust Holocaust Memorial Museum Ibid identification identity images imagine immigrants italics in original Jews Lauren Berlant lived Malena Mary Antin mass cultural technologies mass culture mass media melting pot Morrison narrative natal alienation novel one’s past person political possible postmodernity produce prosthetic memories public sphere Quade racial ramifications reflect relationship remembering Replicant Roots Rosewood Routledge scene Schindler’s List screen sense Sethe Sigmund Freud significant slave slavery social specific spectator spectatorship story texts tion Toni Morrison Total Recall trans University Press viewers Vladek Walter Benjamin words York