lovehistory.net

This post is not directly related to the readings in our classes last week, however, after commenting on Megan’s blog post I thought I might open my thoughts up to the class-at-large. I’m not sure if any of you are familiar with Alison Landsberg, but she is a (wonderful) professor in the History Department here at Mason whose research, among other things, focuses on “museums and the installation of memory.” Her book Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture examines the way mass culture influences the development of individual and collective memory(1). She explicitly states in her introduction that she believes “modernity makes possible and necessary a new form of public cultural memory” (2). She dubs this memory “prosthetic memory,” which she defines as a memory engendered in a person of an event that they did not actually experience that “emerges at the interface between a person and a historical narrative about the past, at an experiential site such as a movie theater or a museum” (2).

The crux of Landsberg’s argument for the role of prosthetic memories is that they can be used to engender within a historical observer an empathy for and understanding of those who actually experienced the historical event in a way that then might be transposed to the way historical observers interact with similar situations in the present. The intent of my post, however, is not to discuss this aspect of her argument, but instead to examine how Landsberg evaluates the missions of experiential museums like the Holocaust Museum, and how her conclusions may come to bear on projects in digital history.

Because the Holocaust Museum is what Landsberg dubs to be an “experiential museum,” or one in which new technologies and specifically designed physical sites and exhibitions have made it possible to “experience an event or past without actually having lived through it,” (38) it “raises questions about what it means to own or inhabit a memory of an event through which one did not live” (129). Because the Holocaust is falling out of “living memory,” those who seek to transmit knowledge about it in a way that conveys not only a factual recounting of it as an event but of the emotional impact if wrought upon people across the globe must explore new avenues of disseminating this information. The Holocaust Museum, in this sense, seeks not only to inform a viewing public of the factual occurrence of events and to present reliable evidence and artifacts, but to engage visitors emotionally with the suffering of the millions who died under Hitler’s brutal regime. It does this not only by presenting documentary evidence, written, visual, oral, and recorded, but by physically structuring the museum (and controlling the way visitors move through its space) and displaying artifacts in such a way that will strike or even shock the viewer into actively participating with and digesting the material they are being presented with. As Landsberg writes,

“The museum visit is deigned to be an experience for the visitor. This is not to say that visitors somehow experience the Holocaust. Rather, they have an experience that positions their bodies to be better able to understand an otherwise unthinkable event” (131).

From being handed identification cards that literally identify you with one of the victims to seeing a room powerfully filled with shoes taken from those exterminated in the camps (which Landsberg writes about, and which has always been my own most lasting memory of this museum), the visitor is purposefully guided through the museum from exhibit to exhibit on a very carefully crafted path meant to leave a distinct emotional as well as intellectual impression, though perhaps what that impression is remains up to you to decide. Either way, it is evocative. It elicits the active participation we discussed in class. But this evocation is very firmly grounded in the visitor’s physical presence in this physical space which they physically as well as intellectually interact with.

My question then becomes, what place does this kind of experiential museum have in digital history? Is it possible to create such a space digitally? Can the flexibility of hypertext work to improve upon the experiential nature of the Holocaust museum by allowing the user to find their own path, or will it dilute the message? Putting aside the question of whether we should be attempting to create prosthetic memories at all (and Landsberg may argue that it is impossible in many cases to avoid doing so due to the diffusion of historical narratives into mass culture via mediums such as film, etc.), is it possible to create these experiences/prosthetic memories in digital media? Should we be examining how digital media might be creating prosthetic memories itself? How does the presentation of digital history as a public history project shape the way we remember historical events? How should builders incorporate these considerations into their digital history projects?

I’m not sure if these issues will come up in future readings/discussions, or if you all have any other questions you’d live to pose, but I think it’s an interesting angle to examine. One starting point might be to compare and contrast the structure and mission of the Holocaust Museum or other experiential museums with the mission and design of their websites. Either way, I look forward to continuing this conversation.