Timely Reminders

At the end of his opening essay, a thoughtful examination of the historian’s personal and professional identity, Michael Kammen reflects on his own life as a historian. He portrays himself as a quiet observer of the American past and present, one of those individuals, who, quoting John Updike’s own autobiographical reflections, “shyly wish to live by our eyes and wits, at our desks, away from the frightening tussle of human strength and appetite and intimidation and persuasiveness.” ¹ Kammen neither takes pride in nor experiences resentment at his life on the sidelines. “Marginality,” he concludes, “is not an exorbitant price to pay if one finds value in serving as the synapses of memory to a society” (p. 71).

These days, however, living in the past lane does not necessarily remove one from the heavy traffic of American life, especially if one takes up the kinds of issues Kammen does in his new collection of essays. Kammen himself maintains a level head and an even temper, but he addresses questions that provoke the scholarly and civic equivalents of road rage. Has the process of historical memory contributed constructively to national solidarity or has history been hawked, distorted, and even concealed for motives less than benign? Can a single narrative be constructed around the unique characteristics of our history or is the whole notion of American exceptionalism a foolish, even offensive, myth? In presenting the American past, should scholars, teachers, and curators stress the diversity of cultures and races that have populated our nation or instead a common set of values or experiences? If we look behind works of historical scholarship to the scholars themselves, what do we find, and what will those findings tell us about the scholarly enterprise? The nine essays that comprise this collection range widely, from the iconography of courthouses to the commercial marketing of the past, but all participate in contemporary academic and public debates over collective memory and amnesia, national identity and multiculturalism, and the objectivity and authority of the historical profession.

In the last two decades, historians have taken an increasing interest in just how a nation remembers and represents its past. Kammen himself, of course, has been in the forefront of this scholarship, with several volumes culminating in the magisterial Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991). Taking its cue from the seminal Invention of Tradition, this body of work understands memory as something constructed, not passively recorded. Many historians focus on the collective past as contested ground in which Americans struggled over what cultural functions and particular interests public memory will serve. Ordinary people, marginalized by virtue of class, race, ethnicity, gender, or local allegiance, strove to assert a version of the past meaningful to them. For their own part, social elites, business leaders, and government agencies presented history so as to legitimate the existing social, economic, and political order, a goal achieved not just by celebrating the past, but by misrepresenting and concealing it. Meanwhile, mass media marketed images of the past and corporations exploited its commercial possibilities. These themes of conflict and power, distortion and amnesia, mass culture and consumer culture pervade scholarly discussions of collective memory in contemporary America as well. But there are many who cry foul, accusing today’s historians of seeing American history as nothing but a shameful tale of ruthless exploitation. Consider the recent battle over the Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibit, in which participants accused each other of suppressing the truth on the one hand and holding their nation in contempt on the other. ²

In his exploration of collective memory, Kammen avoids hurling the epithets of either liar or traitor. Nevertheless, Kammen does not shrink from taking a firm stand against what he labels the “heritage phenomenon” (p. 214). On the surface, he remarks, Americans would appear to be taking an interest in history as they never have before. Attendance at history museums and sites has risen dramatically over the past several...