DEALING WITH

IMPERFECT PASTS
Dr. Will Kurlinkus
On display in the museum, many of these ordinary objects
evoke specialness not simply because they were once
mundane but also because they survived the violent fall of the
buildings. In this, we can see that they fulfill the role of survivor
objects, as objects that persisted to have afterlives. This quality
awards a kind of agency, power, if not an aliveness, to them.
They survived when people did not; in a certain sense, they are
objects that “lived.” In this sense, they evoke what Jane
Bennett (2010) refers to as “vibrant matter”—material objects
that challenge the notion that matter is inert. Bennett (2010)
Key Writing
uses the concept of “thing-power” to define the “strange ability
of ordinary, man-made items to exceed their status as objects
and to manifest traces of independence or aliveness” (p. xvi).
Moves:
One could argue that things that are transformed through
violence offer a particular kind of aliveness through their
Engaging
evoking of survival.
1. Give your argument, example. These objects were special
Other’s
2.
because they survived…
Use your secondary author to engage with others have
Research
said, give a definition: this is an example of what Jane
Bennet call vibrant matter.
3. Return to your example: Here’s how that other authors
concept relates to what I’m talking about and how my
concept complicates or contributes
WHAT’S THE POINT OF
LEARNING HISTORY IN
SCHOOL?
Reasons for the Memory Boom
◦ Pierre Nora: lieu de mémoire, national memories they we cling to in the face of
postmodern fragmentation—they tend to homogenize local memory. A nationalist
argument that we should have one history.
◦ The acceleration of history: “he most continuous or permanent feature of the
modern world is no longer continuity or permanence but change” (when traditions
are fragmented we stockpile memory)
◦ Democratization of history: “a response to decolonization (emancipatory trend
among peoples, ethnic groups and even certain classes of individual in the world
today; in short, the emergence, over a very short period of time, of all those forms of
memory bound up with minority groups for whom rehabilitating their past is part and
parcel of reaffirming their identity).”
Past Imperfect
◦ Sankofa bird: we carry the past into the future
◦ Dungey describes the
uncomfortableness/awkwardness of some visitors of
seeing a slave re-enactor at George Washington’s
home in Mt Vernon, arguments that slaves were
happy, that Washington never had slaves,
completely ignoring her, or making racist comments
◦ How do we deal with the simultaneous emotions of
pride and regret that must be part of the American
tradition? Do we homogenize or localize?
◦ How do we get beyond the argument that to know
the tragedy and trauma of US history is also to mean
we can't be proud of it or fight for good things.
◦ “The very first White House Conference on American
History.“
◦ “Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s
founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of
the American character. We must clear away the twisted
web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our
children the magnificent truth about our country.”
President
◦ “Left-wing mobs have torn down statues of our founders, Trump’s
desecrated our memorials, and carried out a campaign of
violence and anarchy. Far-left demonstrators have
chanted the words “America was never great.”
Suggested
◦ “We will reclaim our history and our country for citizens of History
every race, color, religion, and creed.
◦ ” America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain
Revisions
of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights,
defeated communism and fascism, and built the most fair,
equal, and prosperous nation in human history.”