List Books » Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture
Authors: Alison Landsberg
ISBN-13: 9780231129275, ISBN-10: 0231129270
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Date Published: May 2004
Edition: 1st Edition
Alison Landsberg is assistant professor of American cultural history at George Mason University. She lives in Arlington, Virginia.
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.
Acknowledgments | ||
Introduction : memory, modernity, mass culture | 1 | |
1 | Prosthetic memory | 25 |
2 | The prosthetic imagination : immigration narratives and the "melting down" of difference | 49 |
3 | Remembering slavery : childhood, desire, and the interpellative power of the past | 81 |
4 | America, the Holocaust, and the mass culture of memory : the "object" of remembering | 111 |
Epilogue : toward a radical practice of memory | 141 | |
Notes | 157 | |
Bibliography | 193 | |
Index | 209 |