Building on theories from body phenomenology, new materialism and a theoretical concept of historical consciousness, this article argues that embodied simulations of pasts used in reenactment and living history in open-air museums make reenactors and living historians experience pasts as present and make the actors reflect on pasts. This is an argument for saying that historical consciousness has an embodied dimension that has not yet been explored in depth because most research about how ordinary people use pasts exposes how pasts on a reflexive level are present and usable to them. But what the research does not reveal, is how pasts are also physically present to people and that this process of materialization also has an effect on how people interpret, use and reflect on pasts. Two different kinds of reenactment done in Denmark are analysed and compared to build up the argument: World War II reenactors and volunteering living historians in different open-air museums communicating life and work in Denmark in the 19-20thcentury. Firstly, the material space they do their simulations of pasts in is analysed; Secondly, the things they use to simulate the pasts; Thirdly, their embodiments and their bodies’ movements, senses, habits and performances in their simulations of pasts. In conclusion, it is discussed how the reenactors and the living historians reflect on pasts in their embodied simulations of pasts. KEYWORDSReenactment; Living History; World War II; Historical consciousness; Embodiment; Materiality
{"title":"Embodied Simulations of Pasts","authors":"Anne Brædder","doi":"10.5130/PHRJ.V25I0.6391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/PHRJ.V25I0.6391","url":null,"abstract":"Building on theories from body phenomenology, new materialism and a theoretical concept of historical consciousness, this article argues that embodied simulations of pasts used in reenactment and living history in open-air museums make reenactors and living historians experience pasts as present and make the actors reflect on pasts. This is an argument for saying that historical consciousness has an embodied dimension that has not yet been explored in depth because most research about how ordinary people use pasts exposes how pasts on a reflexive level are present and usable to them. But what the research does not reveal, is how pasts are also physically present to people and that this process of materialization also has an effect on how people interpret, use and reflect on pasts. Two different kinds of reenactment done in Denmark are analysed and compared to build up the argument: World War II reenactors and volunteering living historians in different open-air museums communicating life and work in Denmark in the 19-20thcentury. Firstly, the material space they do their simulations of pasts in is analysed; Secondly, the things they use to simulate the pasts; Thirdly, their embodiments and their bodies’ movements, senses, habits and performances in their simulations of pasts. In conclusion, it is discussed how the reenactors and the living historians reflect on pasts in their embodied simulations of pasts. \u0000KEYWORDSReenactment; Living History; World War II; Historical consciousness; Embodiment; Materiality","PeriodicalId":41934,"journal":{"name":"Public History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/PHRJ.V25I0.6391","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46450487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
One Small World: the history of the Addison Road Community Centre was independently written and funded through a series of grants. While conceived as a history of place, it is also a history of the organisation that presently occupies the site, the Addison Road Community Centre (ARCCO). The Centre has had an ambivalent relationship to its past. After 60 years as an army depot, in 1976 it became a community centre. The strict discipline of the army was replaced by a very different ethos and political outlook; in fact, its antithesis. As a consequence, the Centre had an uneasy relationship to the history of the site, particularly its army past, which was underappreciated and little valued. ARCCO has recently re-engaged with its public history, but in the process it veered off into mythology. The paper explores the ANZAAC Centenary celebration at Addison Road of horses in war in 2015, and the part funding played in creating myth rather than history. It then considers the role of the Department of Urban and Regional Development in the creation of the Centre in 1975-76 and ARCCO’s attachment to its story of radical origins. KEYWORDSAddison Road Community Centre; Department of Urban and Regional Development; ANZAC Centenary; army; Marrickville; multiculturalism
{"title":"One Small World: On Writing Independent History","authors":"Sue Castrique","doi":"10.5130/PHRJ.V25I0.6406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/PHRJ.V25I0.6406","url":null,"abstract":"One Small World: the history of the Addison Road Community Centre was independently written and funded through a series of grants. While conceived as a history of place, it is also a history of the organisation that presently occupies the site, the Addison Road Community Centre (ARCCO). The Centre has had an ambivalent relationship to its past. After 60 years as an army depot, in 1976 it became a community centre. The strict discipline of the army was replaced by a very different ethos and political outlook; in fact, its antithesis. As a consequence, the Centre had an uneasy relationship to the history of the site, particularly its army past, which was underappreciated and little valued. ARCCO has recently re-engaged with its public history, but in the process it veered off into mythology. The paper explores the ANZAAC Centenary celebration at Addison Road of horses in war in 2015, and the part funding played in creating myth rather than history. It then considers the role of the Department of Urban and Regional Development in the creation of the Centre in 1975-76 and ARCCO’s attachment to its story of radical origins. \u0000KEYWORDSAddison Road Community Centre; Department of Urban and Regional Development; ANZAC Centenary; army; Marrickville; multiculturalism","PeriodicalId":41934,"journal":{"name":"Public History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/PHRJ.V25I0.6406","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44249544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Historical films have been subject to controversy and criticism within the discipline of history upon the rise of popular interest in new and innovative forms of historical representation. The five to seven years between the release of Gladiator (2000) and Rome (2005-2007) saw an upsurge of historical films focusing on the ‘epic’: the spectacular, monumental and immersive periods of history that exude a mix of historical reality and speculative fiction. This paper argues that it is not historical accuracy or film as historical evidence that matters, but the historical questions and debates that film raises for its audience and the historical profession regarding the past it presents and its implication on history. Such questions and debates base themselves around the extent to which filmmakers are able to interpret history through images and what kind of historical understandings it hopes to achieve. This paper analyses the complexity of public history through a comparative study of reviews on five online message boards, such as IMBD, Amazon, TV.com and Metacritic, relating to HBO’s Rome – chosen due to its unique ability of igniting historiographical debate by presenting history as an accident, thus allowing audiences to question and reinterpret the outcome of historical events. KEYWORDSHBO; Rome; Film; Historiography; Public History; Popular Imagination
{"title":"Popular Imagination Versus Historical Reality","authors":"Mirela Cufurovic","doi":"10.5130/phrj.v25i0.6157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v25i0.6157","url":null,"abstract":"Historical films have been subject to controversy and criticism within the discipline of history upon the rise of popular interest in new and innovative forms of historical representation. The five to seven years between the release of Gladiator (2000) and Rome (2005-2007) saw an upsurge of historical films focusing on the ‘epic’: the spectacular, monumental and immersive periods of history that exude a mix of historical reality and speculative fiction. This paper argues that it is not historical accuracy or film as historical evidence that matters, but the historical questions and debates that film raises for its audience and the historical profession regarding the past it presents and its implication on history. Such questions and debates base themselves around the extent to which filmmakers are able to interpret history through images and what kind of historical understandings it hopes to achieve. This paper analyses the complexity of public history through a comparative study of reviews on five online message boards, such as IMBD, Amazon, TV.com and Metacritic, relating to HBO’s Rome – chosen due to its unique ability of igniting historiographical debate by presenting history as an accident, thus allowing audiences to question and reinterpret the outcome of historical events. \u0000KEYWORDSHBO; Rome; Film; Historiography; Public History; Popular Imagination","PeriodicalId":41934,"journal":{"name":"Public History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/phrj.v25i0.6157","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46793633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article, I describe my public history project seeking to transform a street in Connaught Place, New Delhi, into a militarised Srinagar marketplace. Through this phenomenological project, I aim to make Hindu, middle- class, upper-middle-caste Indians realise that the Indian presence in the Kashmir Valley is a colonial, military occupation. Through this, I want them to reconsider India’s claims of being a secular, liberal-democracy. To contextualise my intervention, I briefly represent the mainstream Indian narrative on Kashmir, both in academia and the wider public space, in the first section of this article. Thus, by highlighting the ‘silences’ in the general understanding of Kashmir, I will demonstrate my project’s contribution to Kashmir’s historiography. KEYWORDScolonialism; exhibit; phenomenology; India-Occupied Kashmir; historiography; Museum
{"title":"Silent Narrative","authors":"R. Bajoria","doi":"10.5130/phrj.v25i0.6149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v25i0.6149","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I describe my public history project seeking to transform a street in Connaught Place, New Delhi, into a militarised Srinagar marketplace. Through this phenomenological project, I aim to make Hindu, middle- class, upper-middle-caste Indians realise that the Indian presence in the Kashmir Valley is a colonial, military occupation. Through this, I want them to reconsider India’s claims of being a secular, liberal-democracy. To contextualise my intervention, I briefly represent the mainstream Indian narrative on Kashmir, both in academia and the wider public space, in the first section of this article. Thus, by highlighting the ‘silences’ in the general understanding of Kashmir, I will demonstrate my project’s contribution to Kashmir’s historiography. \u0000KEYWORDScolonialism; exhibit; phenomenology; India-Occupied Kashmir; historiography; Museum","PeriodicalId":41934,"journal":{"name":"Public History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/phrj.v25i0.6149","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41767539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Public history, as it is practised in India, defies easy attempts at classification. This is partially because hardly anything that would be recognised as public history is identified as such by its author(s). For the term, despite its ever-increasing acceptance outside India as a discipline and a practice distinct from history, has yet to gain any currency within India. Any attempt to identify works that are self-consciously public history in the Indian context will likely not yield much fruit. Nor, for that matter, will borrowing any of the many definitions of the term from the West and trying to find works that adhere to it in India. Instead, this chapter will try to highlight the myriad forms that public engagements with the past have taken place in India. This article focuses specifically on museums, arguably the preeminent site of public engagements with the past in India. To that end, it will look at a new generation of museums that are charting new paths towards enabling a better public engagement with the past. It will also analyse a few institutional forms of public engagements with the past.
{"title":"East of the West: Repossessing the Past In India","authors":"Indira Chowdhury, S. Mandal","doi":"10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5763","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5763","url":null,"abstract":"Public history, as it is practised in India, defies easy attempts at classification. This is partially because hardly anything that would be recognised as public history is identified as such by its author(s). For the term, despite its ever-increasing acceptance outside India as a discipline and a practice distinct from history, has yet to gain any currency within India. Any attempt to identify works that are self-consciously public history in the Indian context will likely not yield much fruit. Nor, for that matter, will borrowing any of the many definitions of the term from the West and trying to find works that adhere to it in India. Instead, this chapter will try to highlight the myriad forms that public engagements with the past have taken place in India. This article focuses specifically on museums, arguably the preeminent site of public engagements with the past in India. To that end, it will look at a new generation of museums that are charting new paths towards enabling a better public engagement with the past. It will also analyse a few institutional forms of public engagements with the past.","PeriodicalId":41934,"journal":{"name":"Public History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5763","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43753960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Public history practise in South Africa holds out much promise of further things to come. It can close the gulf between history and heritage. This chapter argues that the role of the public historian should not be conflated with the dynamics of the heritage sector, but suggests how trained academics can indeed put their skills to work in a society that is passionately interested in understanding itself and how its pasts created the present. The student movement sharply raised the image of universities in crisis, requiring a whole new, relevant curriculum and rethinking the ways that universities relate to their publics. Public historians can work towards creating invented spaces for co-production of knowledge, moving beyond the traditional oral history interview. The divide between academia and communities is huge and needs to be constantly tackled, providing access to the secluded information of the professional world. I suggest that due to their privileged place in society, many historians have been unable or unwilling to engage with the recovery agenda – the massive need for affirmation of African identity, capacity and culture. A handful of dedicated public historians do not fit this mould and have been exemplary in rolling up their sleeves and boldly engaging with the messy complications of dealing with non-academic communities to produce new forms of historical knowledge, based on inclusiveness.
{"title":"‘deep wounds… left… in hearts and minds’: South African Public History","authors":"J. Wells","doi":"10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5781","url":null,"abstract":"Public history practise in South Africa holds out much promise of further things to come. It can close the gulf between history and heritage. This chapter argues that the role of the public historian should not be conflated with the dynamics of the heritage sector, but suggests how trained academics can indeed put their skills to work in a society that is passionately interested in understanding itself and how its pasts created the present. The student movement sharply raised the image of universities in crisis, requiring a whole new, relevant curriculum and rethinking the ways that universities relate to their publics. Public historians can work towards creating invented spaces for co-production of knowledge, moving beyond the traditional oral history interview. The divide between academia and communities is huge and needs to be constantly tackled, providing access to the secluded information of the professional world. I suggest that due to their privileged place in society, many historians have been unable or unwilling to engage with the recovery agenda – the massive need for affirmation of African identity, capacity and culture. A handful of dedicated public historians do not fit this mould and have been exemplary in rolling up their sleeves and boldly engaging with the messy complications of dealing with non-academic communities to produce new forms of historical knowledge, based on inclusiveness.","PeriodicalId":41934,"journal":{"name":"Public History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5781","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48697396","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article offers a critical reading of the first major attempt to publicly come to terms with the presence of an invasive and ideologically charged fascist monument in the border town of Bolzano-Bozen, in South Tyrol, Italy. The ‘Monument to Victory’, commissioned by Mussolini and inaugurated in 1928 to celebrate the annexation of the province after WWI, is the symbolic centre of a discourse that divides the town along an ethno-linguistic axis. To this day, this creates ongoing political tensions, fostering extreme views in both Italian and German speaking communities. To neutralise this symbolic power while preserving its supposed artistic value, a permanent exhibition inaugurated in 2014 inside the artefact tries to offer an historical explanation and contextualisation, and foster a new, inclusive and democratic discourse around the past. This article discusses this exhibition as a counter-monument, which directly challenges the ideology of the original. In interpreting the scientific aims and choices of the historians involved, and the architectural and curatorial strategies, it questions their dialogical underpinning discourse. The results lay bare an agenda to establish the site as a new monologic myth of origin for the democratic town of the future; one that aims at producing a ‘democratic and reconciled’ citizen through a prescriptive perlocutionary experience.
{"title":"One Monument, One Town, Two Ideologies: The Monument to the Victory of Bolzano-Bozen","authors":"M. Angelucci, Stefano Kerschbamer","doi":"10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5776","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5776","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers a critical reading of the first major attempt to publicly come to terms with the presence of an invasive and ideologically charged fascist monument in the border town of Bolzano-Bozen, in South Tyrol, Italy. The ‘Monument to Victory’, commissioned by Mussolini and inaugurated in 1928 to celebrate the annexation of the province after WWI, is the symbolic centre of a discourse that divides the town along an ethno-linguistic axis. To this day, this creates ongoing political tensions, fostering extreme views in both Italian and German speaking communities. To neutralise this symbolic power while preserving its supposed artistic value, a permanent exhibition inaugurated in 2014 inside the artefact tries to offer an historical explanation and contextualisation, and foster a new, inclusive and democratic discourse around the past. This article discusses this exhibition as a counter-monument, which directly challenges the ideology of the original. In interpreting the scientific aims and choices of the historians involved, and the architectural and curatorial strategies, it questions their dialogical underpinning discourse. The results lay bare an agenda to establish the site as a new monologic myth of origin for the democratic town of the future; one that aims at producing a ‘democratic and reconciled’ citizen through a prescriptive perlocutionary experience.","PeriodicalId":41934,"journal":{"name":"Public History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5776","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46674451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article is about the suicide of the chief of police of a small Canadian town, which - according to some - did not actually happen. While employed as a researcher and writer with a museum in Port Moody, British Columbia, the author heard this story as one of many told by the ‘old-timers’ who assisted with the writing of a history book. The controversy over the potential suicide provided the means by which this article reflects on issues of ethics, advocacy, and performance when doing public history. The main request of the old-timers was to ‘put the good stories in’ when writing the book. This expectation caused tension between the author and the museum, reflecting the divide between doing ‘history’ and ‘heritage’. This article draws on Anthropological theories of ‘complicity’ and performance in storytelling to make sense of the author’s role within the context of a museum working to record the stories of long-time residents. The stories of the old-timers were filtered through the lens of early 20 th century ideas about gender, race, and class, and affected by a lingering frontier mentality. As such, they wished to see their town’s history told in a very specific way. The story of the police chief’s suicide betrayed this intent, allowing for an analysis of how these expectations can affect the way in which public history is done.
{"title":"Causing a Ruckus: Complicity and Performance in Stories of Port Moody","authors":"M. Hayes","doi":"10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5442","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5442","url":null,"abstract":"This article is about the suicide of the chief of police of a small Canadian town, which - according to some - did not actually happen. While employed as a researcher and writer with a museum in Port Moody, British Columbia, the author heard this story as one of many told by the ‘old-timers’ who assisted with the writing of a history book. The controversy over the potential suicide provided the means by which this article reflects on issues of ethics, advocacy, and performance when doing public history. The main request of the old-timers was to ‘put the good stories in’ when writing the book. This expectation caused tension between the author and the museum, reflecting the divide between doing ‘history’ and ‘heritage’. This article draws on Anthropological theories of ‘complicity’ and performance in storytelling to make sense of the author’s role within the context of a museum working to record the stories of long-time residents. The stories of the old-timers were filtered through the lens of early 20 th century ideas about gender, race, and class, and affected by a lingering frontier mentality. As such, they wished to see their town’s history told in a very specific way. The story of the police chief’s suicide betrayed this intent, allowing for an analysis of how these expectations can affect the way in which public history is done.","PeriodicalId":41934,"journal":{"name":"Public History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/PHRJ.V24I0.5442","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48590901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
When the Transforming Tindale exhibition opened at the State Library of Queensland in September 2012, there was much excitement and goodwill. This landmark exhibition was curated by Michael Aird and featured Ah Kee’s drawings and enlarged prints of anthropologist Norman Tindale’s photographs of 1938-1940, as well as extensive archival information and stories from the subjects themselves and their relatives. The transformations of the exhibition’s title refer to the way Tindale’s ‘data’ was given both new physical form, as well as engendering and renewing social meanings. Scholars such as Elizabeth Edwards have argued that we should explore the materiality of images and the diverse forms they assume, attending to the ways their form and vitality shape us as much as we imbue them with meaning. Digitisation constitutes a major transformation of photographs’ historical accumulation of materiality. It also enables the return of historical archives from European museums to Indigenous relatives in Australia. In this article I explore the relations and narratives that emerge from this process, focusing on their Indigenous significance, and using the example of an enigmatic cardboard panel held by the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford on which are mounted thirteen photographs from South Australia. For Indigenous descendants of the people recorded in these photographs, their physical form is less important than the way they embody missing relatives, lost through invasion and assimilation. This process is slow and often awkward, but the rewards are great, in challenging foundational national histories, re-connecting family networks, and telling the truth of Indigenous experience.
{"title":"‘Real Photos’: Transforming Tindale and the Postcolonial Archive","authors":"Jane Lydon","doi":"10.5130/PHRJ.V23I0.5329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/PHRJ.V23I0.5329","url":null,"abstract":"When the Transforming Tindale exhibition opened at the State Library of Queensland in September 2012, there was much excitement and goodwill. This landmark exhibition was curated by Michael Aird and featured Ah Kee’s drawings and enlarged prints of anthropologist Norman Tindale’s photographs of 1938-1940, as well as extensive archival information and stories from the subjects themselves and their relatives. The transformations of the exhibition’s title refer to the way Tindale’s ‘data’ was given both new physical form, as well as engendering and renewing social meanings. Scholars such as Elizabeth Edwards have argued that we should explore the materiality of images and the diverse forms they assume, attending to the ways their form and vitality shape us as much as we imbue them with meaning. Digitisation constitutes a major transformation of photographs’ historical accumulation of materiality. It also enables the return of historical archives from European museums to Indigenous relatives in Australia. In this article I explore the relations and narratives that emerge from this process, focusing on their Indigenous significance, and using the example of an enigmatic cardboard panel held by the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford on which are mounted thirteen photographs from South Australia. For Indigenous descendants of the people recorded in these photographs, their physical form is less important than the way they embody missing relatives, lost through invasion and assimilation. This process is slow and often awkward, but the rewards are great, in challenging foundational national histories, re-connecting family networks, and telling the truth of Indigenous experience.","PeriodicalId":41934,"journal":{"name":"Public History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/PHRJ.V23I0.5329","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70741587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article I focus on the emotional, sensory and aesthetic affordances of urban archaeological remains conserved in situ and explore what these ruins ‘do’ in the context of the layered urban fabric of the city. I am concerned with a particular category of archaeological remains: those that illustrate the colonial history of settler nations, exploring examples in Sydney and Montreal. Using Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘affective economies’ – where emotions work to stick things together and align individuals with communities – I tease out some of the distinctive aspects of this particular form of social/emotional/material entanglement, that appears to create stable objects of memory and identity from a much more contingent and complex matrix of politics, social structures, and the more-than-human materiality of the city. I argue that an understanding of the affective qualities of ruins and archaeological traces, and of how people feel heritage and the past through aesthetic and sensuous experiences of materiality, authenticity, locality and identity, bring us closer to understanding how heritage works.
{"title":"Up Close and Personal: Feeling the Past at Urban Archaeological Sites","authors":"Tracy Ireland","doi":"10.5130/PHRJ.V23I0.5332","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/PHRJ.V23I0.5332","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I focus on the emotional, sensory and aesthetic affordances of urban archaeological remains conserved in situ and explore what these ruins ‘do’ in the context of the layered urban fabric of the city. I am concerned with a particular category of archaeological remains: those that illustrate the colonial history of settler nations, exploring examples in Sydney and Montreal. Using Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘affective economies’ – where emotions work to stick things together and align individuals with communities – I tease out some of the distinctive aspects of this particular form of social/emotional/material entanglement, that appears to create stable objects of memory and identity from a much more contingent and complex matrix of politics, social structures, and the more-than-human materiality of the city. I argue that an understanding of the affective qualities of ruins and archaeological traces, and of how people feel heritage and the past through aesthetic and sensuous experiences of materiality, authenticity, locality and identity, bring us closer to understanding how heritage works.","PeriodicalId":41934,"journal":{"name":"Public History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/PHRJ.V23I0.5332","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70741768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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