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.

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.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments   

Introduction
Lindsey A. Freeman, Benjamin Nienass, and Rachel Daniell

PART I: SPECTACULAR MEMORY: MEMORY AND APPEARANCE IN THE AGE OF INFORMATION

Chapter 1. Haunted by the Spectre of Communism: Spectacle and Silence in Hungary’s House of Terror
Amy Sodaro

Chapter 2. Making Visible: Reflexive Narratives at the Manzanar U.S. National Historic Site
Rachel Daniell

Chapter 3. The Everyday as Spectacle: Archival Imagery and the Work of Reconciliation in Canada
Naomi Angel

PART II: SCREENING ABSENCE: NEW TECHNOLOGY, AFFECT, AND MEMORY

Chapter 4. Viral Affiliations: Facebook, Queer Kinship, and the Memory of the Disappeared in Contemporary Argentina
Cecilia Sosa

Chapter 5. Learning by Heart: Humming, Singing, Memorizing in Israeli Memorial Videos
Laliv Melamed

Chapter 6. Arcade Mode: Remembering, Revisiting, and Replaying the American Video Arcade
Samuel Tobin

PART III: SILENCE AND MEMORY: ERASURES, STORYTELLING, AND KITSCH

Chapter 7. Remembering Forgetting: A Monument to Erasure at the University of North Carolina
Timothy J. McMillan

Chapter 8. The Power of Conflicting Memories in European Transnational Social Movements
Nicole Doerr

Chapter 9. Memories of Jews and the Holocaust in Postcommunist Eastern Europe: The Case of Poland
Joanna Michlic

Chapter 10. 1989 as Collective Memory “Refolution”: East-Central Europe Confronts Memorial Silence
Susan C. Pearce

Conclusion: Silence, Screen, and Spectacle: Rethinking Social Memory in the Age of Information and New Media
Lindsey A. Freeman, Benjamin Nienass, and Rachel Daniell

List of Contributors