How the memorials created in Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center site raise questions about the relationship between cultural memory and consumerism
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Consuming Fear and Selling Comfort 35
2. Citizens and Survivors: Cultural Memory and Oklahoma City 93
3. The Spectacle of Death and the Spectacle of Grief: The Execution
of Timothy McVeigh 139
4. Tourism and “Sacred Ground”: The Space of Ground Zero 165
5. Architectures of Grief and the Aesthetics of Absence 219
Conclusion 287
Notes 295
Bibliography 319
Index 333
Marita Sturken is a professor of culture and communication at New York University. She is the author of Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering and a coauthor of Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture.
"Tourists of History is a fearless guide through the paranoid landscape of contemporary American culture. Marita Sturken brilliantly maps the ways consumerism and tourism offer avenues of comfort in a threatening world at the same time that they become politically disabling. From the responses to the Oklahoma City bombing to the memorials to the Twin Towers, Sturken shows how the American way of mourning and remembering the dead shores up a conviction in a timeless sense of national innocence. This exceptionally timely book reaches deep into the past and will continue to resonate in the future."--Amy Kaplan, author of The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture "Tourists of History is a great read: well written, accessible on numerous levels, and driven by a persuasive argument that links tourism, consumerism, and Americans' understandings of themselves and their history."--Erika Doss, author of Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy in American Communities
"Tourists of History is a fearless guide through the paranoid landscape of contemporary American culture. Marita Sturken brilliantly maps the ways consumerism and tourism offer avenues of comfort in a threatening world at the same time that they become politically disabling. From the responses to the Oklahoma City bombing to the memorials to the Twin Towers, Sturken shows how the American way of mourning and remembering the dead shores up a conviction in a timeless sense of national innocence. This exceptionally timely book reaches deep into the past and will continue to resonate in the future."--Amy Kaplan, author of The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture "Tourists of History is a great read: well written, accessible on numerous levels, and driven by a persuasive argument that links tourism, consumerism, and Americans' understandings of themselves and their history."--Erika Doss, author of Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy in American Communities
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
