Book chapter
Memory, History, Posterity
Remembrance of Things Present
University of Chicago Press
06/12/2019
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226574271.003.0001
Abstract
The history of transmitting messages and objects to the future via a sealed container did not commence with Westinghouse’s Time Capsule of 1939-40. Nor can time capsules be elided with various deposit practices dating back to antiquity; the specification of a target date makes this device distinct. The introduction flags some concerns and desires that spurred the invention and development of the “time vessel” in Gilded Age and Progressive Era America. Noting how historians have neglected time capsules, it suggests how we might read them as interventions in debates about the role of memory (especially mnemonic institutions such as museums, libraries, historical societies, or halls of fame) in American society. Early time vessels were also implicit critiques of the increasingly professionalized practice of academic history, insofar as they probed the history of the present, the local, and the everyday, and embraced new evidence such as material artifacts, photographs, and film. Lastly, in projecting an open and embodied conception of the future, they counter our assumptions about the rationalization of temporality in modernity. In particular, they could communicate and stimulate hope for various kinds of utopias, and a sense of duty to posterity to lay the groundwork for such radical transformations.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Memory, History, Posterity
- Creators
- Nick Yablon
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Remembrance of Things Present
- DOI
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226574271.003.0001
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 06/12/2019
- Academic Unit
- History; American Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9984025526402771
Metrics
30 Record Views