Myth, Memory, and Tradition in American Culture

Canadian Review of American Studies Volume23, Number 1, Fall 1992, pp: 149-155 149 Myth, Memory, and Tradition in American Culture Donald B. Meyer MichaelKammen.Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transfomzation of Tradition inAmerican Culture. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1991. In recent years Michael Kammen has been writing about memory. How do Americans remember their past? When? Why? In three previous books, he has examined memories of the American Revolution and the Constitution, and historians themselves remembering in their "selvages"and biases. A fifth book is already announced, on memory in art and literature. None of this makes reviewing Mystic Chords of Memory easier. Kammen himself warns that the book is not designed to 11 stand alone" but to "follow and complement" its predecessors and, presumably, to anticipate its successor. But, a book is a book, and I must treat this one alone, particularly as Kammen offers no guide to its complementarity. Compared to the others, each with its "single point of departure," this one's points of departure are not only manifold but often obscure and sometimes seemingly arbitrary. The book is very big, and crammed. We read of memory at work in folktales, Expositions, Centennials, monuments, antiques, and antique dealers, tourism, marching bands, ethnic foods, genealogical societies, art and architecture, lots of museums, some writers, a few historians, and much more. Kammen's curiosity and industry seem quite without selvages, unbounded. But how does he save his material from shapelessness and inconsequence? 150 Canadian Review of American Studies For one thing, he offers a chronology. "The phasing of this book depends upon a schematization of certain pivotal periods of change that took place after the Civil War, in the wake of World War I, and followed World War II.1' But this does not quite mean what it seems to mean. Only the Civil War looms vast, as measured by monuments, memorials, hagiographies, and a whole array of other myth-and memory-constructs. The two world wars do not begin to compare as incitements. In addition, some of Kammen's most interesting topics simply flood over the "phase" boundaries. The contribution of new technology to myth-making, for instance-cameras, high-speed presses, radio, TV, and media in general-does not fit neatly into any of the designated "periods of change." The phases carry less conviction as "real"epochs in a history of memory than as typical conveniences for managing a huge text. Apparently, Kammen sees himself in succession to historians "interested in American collective consciousness." Yet, despite his own repeated use of the phrases "collective consciousness" and "collective memory," the effect of his thousand-and-one stories of the memory industry at work is to undermine this familiar enterprise, and quite rightly. Every myth of America has been a partial myth, exalting some people, ignoring others. The efforts at Civil War centennials in 1961-65 were inevitably tendentious because no one has yet come up with a myth or memory of the war acceptable to everybody. Without being willing to abandon the old quest, Kammen realizes this: in America, he writes at one point, we have "multiple memories rather than a monolithic memory." At several points he explicitly labels certain memory-constructs "elitist." Indeed, from time to time, he suggests that certain tensions have appeared between myth-making and a broad evolution toward a more democratic culture, as though in some people's minds the past has seemed a drag on progress. The clearest sign that Kammen is not prepared to finally transcend the search for "America" is his appeal to comparisons. These, he says, will help clarify what is peculiar to American remembrance. For instance, comparison tells us that the "powerful tendency11 in modern times to "appreciate cultural identity in historical terms" is not at special to America. It is to be found in all modernized nations, including Japan. Donald B. MeyerI 151 However, unlike America, in all other modern nations one of the most powerful agents in the manufacture of myth, memory, and tradition has been government. Just why this is we are mostly left to work out for ourselves. Kammen manifests an almost temperamental aversion to "generalization." On occasion, he seems to imply...