An exegetical essay of Alison Landsberg's Prosthetic Memory

In Prosthetic memory Landsburg explores how technologies of mass culture challenge the distinction between individual and collective memories. She notes how the process of modernity has caused a breakdown in the traditional social frameworks upon which individuals originally relied for recall and interpretation of their past (p2). She argues that globalisation and capitalism have crumbled communities, and the impact of modern life with its continual demands has caused the individual's social relations to multiply, stretching subjectivity over a complex grid of influences.

She claims mass culture has produced an arena for representations of collective memories, transforming memory by 'making possible an unprecedented circulation of images and narratives about the past'(p.2), providing new memory frameworks. Analysing the process of commodification and the use of visual mediums, she argues that memories can be transmitted via modern mass media and cause the viewers to become engaged with memories that are outside of lived experience.

Landsberg argues that 'prosthetic memories' are personalised through interpretation, becoming vital to individual articulation of identity and personal understandings of social environment. She draws upon the writings of Halbwachs and Otis but points to an inadequacy in their work to explain the effects of modernity upon forms of collective memories, arguing that new technologies have allowed people who are otherwise unconnected to inherit memories which they did not directly experience (Landsberg, 34-41).

Describing these 'prosthetic memories' as emerging in the interface between personal and historical narratives, she explains that the adopted memory due to its unique ability to create a connection between the individual and the past, whilst not supplanting their contemporary moment, is unique to the individual and culturally specific.

Are memories - whether they are personal or public - transferable, implantable, or purchasable? Landsberg argues that with the advent of new (mass) technologies like cinema memory can be massively distributed through the form of commodity. The memory that is formed and circulated through the modern technologies of mass culture is called “prosthetic memory” - “This new form of memory… emerges at the interface between a person and a historical narrative about the past, at an experiential site such as a movie theater or museum”(2). The mass cultural technologies are so powerful that, even though the consumers (or spectators) did not experience the event, they can feel as if they really lived through the historical moment. That is to say, prosthetic memory is not directly connected to a person's lived experience and yet anyhow deeply related with the formation of subjectivity.

According to Lansdberg, prosthetic memory can be called “prosthetic” memory for four reasons: 1) not natural or organic memory; 2) like an artificial limb, can be worn on the body; 3) interchangeable and exchangeable in the commodified form; 4) useful and feel real producing empathy (20-1). Put it another way, prosthetic memory functions like a prosthesis to the memory, being purchased as a commodity and being implanted to extend and replace a missing body part. Regarding prosthetic memory, the important thing to consider is whether this ...