Silence, Screen, and Spectacle: Rethinking Social Memory in the Age of Information

Freeman, L. A. (eds.)

ISBN 10: 1782382801 / ISBN 13: 9781782382805

Published by Berghahn Books, 2014

About this Item

This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside.This book has hardback covers. Clean from markings. In good all round condition. No dust jacket. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item,650grams, ISBN:9781782382805.

Seller Inventory # 9863821

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Silence, Screen, and Spectacle: Rethinking Social Memory in the Age of Information
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1782382801
• ISBN 13: 9781782382805
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 650 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Sociology

About this title

Synopsis

In an age of information and new media the relationships between remembering and forgetting have changed. This volume addresses the tension between loud and often spectacular histories and those forgotten pasts we strain to hear. Employing social and cultural analysis, the essays within examine mnemonic technologies both new and old, and cover subjects as diverse as U.S. internment camps for Japanese Americans in WWII, the Canadian Indian Residential School system, Israeli memorial videos, and the desaparecidos in Argentina. Through these cases, the contributors argue for a re-interpretation of Guy Debord’s notion of the spectacle as a conceptual apparatus through which to examine the contemporary landscape of social memory, arguing that the concept of spectacle might be developed in an age seen as dissatisfied with the present, nervous about the future, and obsessed with the past. Perhaps now “spectacle” can be thought of not as a tool of distraction employed solely by hegemonic powers, but instead as a device used to answer Walter Benjamin’s plea to “explode the continuum of history” and bring our attention to now-time.

About the Authors

Lindsey A. Freeman is an Assistant Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. She is the author of Longing for the Bomb: Oak Ridge and Atomic Nostalgia and a co-editor of The Bohemian South: Creating Countercultures from Poe to Punk.

Benjamin Nienass is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at California State University San Marcos. His research is concerned with the politics of memory in postnational contexts, particularly in the European Union.

Rachel Daniell is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at The Graduate Center, CUNY and works with the Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense (EAAF). Her research examines everyday social practices around data and documents that contribute to the visibility of human rights violations.