Book chapter
Breaking the Seal: The Vicissitudes of Transtemporal Communication
Remembrance of Things Present
University of Chicago Press
06/12/2019
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574271.003.0008
Abstract
This chapter reveals the fate of each of the time vessels discussed in the earlier chapters. Despite their architects’ fantasies of glorious reception ceremonies, time vessels encountered manifold problems: from physical deterioration and the forgetting of their location (or very existence) to the indifference or condescension that spectators (and, subsequently, historians and archivists) displayed toward their contents. Yet, the chapter concludes by reiterating that these time vessels—and time capsules more generally—constitute a crucial source for historians. Read against the grain, they reveal how past groups struggled over the historicization of the present, the politics of memorialization, and the implication of new media, among other things. They also convey the various hopes and fears for the future that depositors rendered concrete through messages and artifacts addressed to specific recipients.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Breaking the Seal: The Vicissitudes of Transtemporal Communication
- Creators
- Nick Yablon
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Remembrance of Things Present
- DOI
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226574271.003.0008
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 06/12/2019
- Academic Unit
- History; American Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9984025649502771
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