Book chapter
“A Living History of the Times”: The Modern Historic Records Association, 1911–1914
Remembrance of Things Present
University of Chicago Press
06/12/2019
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574271.003.0006
Abstract
This chapter explores the Modern Historic Records Association’s efforts to expand the possibilities for transtemporal communication. Echoing contemporaneous science fiction, its time vessels were part of an ongoing program of schemes to guarantee adequate records of the present for historians not just a century hence but far beyond. With historians on its board and the “New History” as its guiding light, the MHRA intended those records to testify not merely to a city or nation but to “modern civilization,” and not merely to “great” men and events but also to deeper social and cultural patterns, including those of indigenous peoples. It would do so by enlisting photographic, phonographic, and cinematic technologies—and Thomas Edison himself. The MHRA even devised its own archival formats by hybridizing modern with ancient media, thus indicating an overlooked awareness of the former’s limits. It would further compensate for the perishability of modern materials by adopting concrete for its vessels and headquarters. Yet, the chapter ultimately emphasizes the MHRA’s limitations: its reversion to celebrity memorialization; its subscription to the “Vanishing Indian” myth; its narrow definition of duty to posterity; its belief that historic events could be identified in their own time; and its premature demise.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- “A Living History of the Times”: The Modern Historic Records Association, 1911–1914
- Creators
- Nick Yablon
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Remembrance of Things Present
- DOI
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226574271.003.0006
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 06/12/2019
- Academic Unit
- History; American Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9984025632402771
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