Sturken's "Tangled Memories"

Review of Tangled Memories

Marita Sturken’s Tangled Memories defines cultural memory as a “field of cultural negotiation through which different stories vie for a place in history” (1). By moving through a series of twentieth century American traumas – with a specific focus on the Vietnam War and the AIDS epidemic, but also including the JFK assassination, Challenger explosion, Persian Gulf War and Rodney King – she exposes how the method of their representation reveals broader cultural concerns.

As representation itself is a loaded term, the introduction and first chapter are dedicated to establishing a theoretical framework. Sturken particularly concentrates on analyzing the “technologies of memory” (10). Using Barthes, she explains that as “the camera image provides evidence of the real,” memory has begun to take on a flashbulb effect (21). During times of national trauma, people define their relationship to the event through personal recollection of their experience at the time of the “flash.” While Kennedy and the Challenger explosion are her examples, I know our class would share this understanding if we reflect on where we were on the morning of September 11, 2001. This “flashbulb effect” explains the intrusion of technology into the way we remember, a defining phenomenon that becomes a recurring theme throughout the book. Other theorists included range from Benjamin for his parallel use of the flash as the “shock” of history and Freud for his explanation of the phenomenon of secondary revision, which is “the process by which a subject revises and narrativizes a dream or memory in order to give it coherence” (42).

Sturken’s use of the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam Memorial in particular, is her primary means of exploring how Americans handle chapters in history that resist narratives of success or progress. Maya Lin’s memorial, with its “antiheroic” aesthetic, functions “in opposition to the codes of remembrance” on the Washington Mall in order to break with classical architecture and triumphant spirit in surrounding spaces (46, 54). I thought Sturken’s explanation of the difference between memorials and monuments was particularly insightful in chapter two. By defining memorials as “ritualizing remembrance” and “marking the reality of ends,” she contrasts them to monuments that “honor ourselves and mark the myths of beginnings” (47). This is seen clearly in the contrast between Lin’s representation of the Vietnam in comparison to the Washington Monument that celebrates the man as well as the successful revolution.

By concentrating on film representations of Vietnam, Sturken highlights the gendering involved in wartime rhetoric. While the Vietnamese are coded as feminine, American military defeat also is symbolized through emasculated figures that return to nation that begrudges their presence. Although ending hopefully with the idea that Vietnam veteranship offers an opportunity for a new American masculinity defined by “comradeship, caring, and compassion,” the overall analysis reflects that Vietnam is a loss that must be corrected by the following generation during the Persian Gulf War (119).

AIDS’ representation in the memorial quilt and through medical literature is the subject of the final two chapters. Stirken notes that the quilt, by its association with craft, femininity, and comfort provides an alternative to traditional memorial practices. While emphasizing “the creation of an object in the face of death is an act of connection,” Stirken allows that the quilt is also too easily contained as “the perfect human interest story” (198, 213). AIDS medical literature, by magnifying images of the virus, emphasizes that the body itself is a new war zone where viruses hide like Trojan horses and contamination is equivalent to military invasion. To complete the circle, the final chapter demonstrates how the ability to photograph the smallest aspects of ourselves creates a new "frontier site for exploration and conquest" and, presumably, violence (238).