John Bodnar’s work, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century¸ (1992) uses cultural history to study the relationship between social meaning and public ceremony and memorials. Bodnar defines public memory as a system “of beliefs and ideas about the past that help the public or society understand both its past and present and, by implication, its future,” (Bodnar, 15). Although the author does not mention Michel Foucault, Bodnar does seem to use the theorist’s methodology regarding discourse as a multicultural, multivocal act. This discourse revolves around the cultural elite and what Bodnar calls the “ordinary people,” (16). Bodnar argues that the former uses public memory to emphasize as history of unity and nation building; the latter uses history to support its own goals, usually on a much more local level.
Bodnar begins his work by examining public memory at very regional or local levels by exploring and comparing twentieth-century Cleveland, Indianapolis, and different ethnic communities across the Midwest. His last portion of the book explores commemoration on a national level: the National Park Service, the Civil War Centennial, and the American Revolution Bicentennial. Overall Bodnar concludes that at the national level there is a consistent use of history that emphasizes a particular discourse of patriotism that relies heavily on service and sacrifice. On more local levels history is used in multiple ways. An example of this is the 1974 Kansas Wheat Centennial. The centennial celebrated the use of winter wheat which revolutionized Kansas’ economy. The commission pursued rhetoric of nationalism that placed Kansas’ agriculture at the center of nation building. However, Russian Mennonites- who had brought over the winter wheat seeds- used the ceremonies to place their unique contributions to Kansas into a national as well as local past.
Ultimately Remaking America illustrates that government officials and others who benefitted by keeping a status quo use history to their own ends. By examining the local uses of public memory Bodnar argues that history is used by different groups to insert their unique pasts into a nation’s history. This allows the “ordinary people” to feel as though they belong inside the past rather than the nation’s history being an unchanging nebulous of dates, names, and events that may have little or nothing to do with today’s individuals. There is something eloquent about Americans using something that Bodnar argues is highly standardized- US history- to teach a multicultural past.
Bodnar’s book is valuable to those seeking to study a kind of crossroads between social and cultural history. Sometimes his portrayal of the “ordinary people” is a bit too simplistic. It was disappointing that he did not include more research on African Americans’ and their relationship with public memory. His footnotes also suggest that he relied heavily on already published manuscripts, rather than primary sources, for much of his work. While the book is not exactly inspiring it will remain valuable to an audience trying to study public commemorations and their symbolic meanings.
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I am glad that you brought up the dearth of non-European ethnicities. I was wondering where that information was too and why Bodnar chose the Midwest as his “ethnic” example. Surely there are more diverse areas of the countries than the Midwest.
ReplyDeleteBesides Foucault, do you think that Bodnar is influenced by Marxism? It seemed that the struggle between official and vernacular was ultimately rooted in social class (the political “haves” and the ordinary “have nots”). Does the creation of the national historical/preservation groups such National Park Service bridge the gap or exacerbate it? I would like to see a new edition of this book where Bodnar talks about the changes which have occurred in ethnic sensitivity and multi-vocality in patriotic memorials and events such as the debate surrounding the Liberty Bell and the presentation of it in its new home.
I also wondered why Bodnar did not talk more about African Americans and other non-white ethnic groups in his detailed examples of vernacular culture vs. official culture. The one thing that all of the groups that he talked about in Chapter 3 (“The Construction of Ethnic Memory”) had in common was the fact that their skin color allowed them to be more easily assimilated into upper and middle-class American culture. The official culture displayed in parades and other public celebrations in the nineteenth century was one that excluded the story of non-European Americans. It would be really interesting to see what Bodnar would say about more recent examples of vernacular vs. official celebrations of ethnic culture. What about the celebrations that followed the last presidential election? There were many vernacular celebrations commemorating the election of the first African American president, but we have yet to see what kind of public pageantry or monuments will be made.
ReplyDeleteI definitely appreciate that you raise the question of Marxism. It made me review my impressions from another perpsective. But in the end I don't think I see much in the way of Marxist influence in Bodnar's thesis. As I've explained in more detail elsewhere in the discussions, I didn't really see much struggle and conflict in the sense that a Marxist would have meant it. The official expression I think was presented as a viewpoint coexisting with the vernacular, not as one trying to crush it (with the possible exception of the Civil War Centennial).
ReplyDeleteI do wonder about the insertion of "diversity" into a book that never made a claim to be such. Moreover there is an apparent assumption that "diversity" isn't truly "diverse" unless it focuses on "the black community." I do agree that there could have been some way to touch on it more, and the book would probably have been better for it. But I don't find fault with the book for not talking about the African American perspective on the celebrations of westward migration, any more than the lack of Chinese American perspective; after all, the African American migration didn't occur until much later. As the author states, "The attempt here is not to be all-inclusive but to suggest fundamental points about the origins and functions of collective memory within ethnic communities by looking selectively at ethnic celebrations." (p. 43) To mandate multi-vocality in small-town Minnesota celebrations of Norse heritage, for example, would serve only to impose the present-day official national mantra, skewed as it is. Has anyone suggested mandating performances of "We Shall Be As One," commemorating the Russian Mennonite family's move to 1874 Kansas, during Harlem's annual remembrance of the assissination of MalcomX? I would suggest that there is a time and a place for everything, and that, conversely, not everything is necessarily needed at all places and all times.
There are also additional hints of assumptions about "diversity" I might respectfully challenge. For one, I believe that there is no more one "black community" than there is one "white community." Just because Europeans are all white and Africans all black, there is not much more harmony between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants than there is between Hutus and Tutsis. Having emigated to the US where they experienced somewhat homogenizing influences doesn't erase ethnic differences among groups of more or less similar skin tone. Indeed, the fact that all three groups were more easily assimilated into the upper class seems beside the point the author is trying to make.
And I would urge the country not to rush a discussion of public pageantry or monument befitting the first African American president before we see just what his legacy will be; I suggest we ponder it in light of his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize without having lifted a finger to earn it. An election, in and of itself, hardly seems appropriate to memorialize alongside the legacy of Lincoln or Washington. Consider the dramatic economic prosperity following the Carter years, not to mention the Cold War victory, that Reagan brought us; the only recognition he received for all that hard work and perseverance can be summed up in a renaming of an airport outside Washington, DC.