dc.contributor.author |
Turner, Stephen |
en |
dc.date.accessioned |
2012-03-26T23:17:29Z |
en |
dc.date.issued |
2011 |
en |
dc.identifier.citation |
Memory Connection 1(1):114-126 2011 |
en |
dc.identifier.issn |
2253-1823 |
en |
dc.identifier.uri |
http://hdl.handle.net/2292/15497 |
en |
dc.description.abstract |
This article focuses on collective memory in a place that has been radically transformed by settlement and where memory itself is part and parcel of the makeover. Remembering isn’t passive or received but active, and forms a process of settlement too. For visitors, says Walter Benjamin, a new country is exotic, and the object of an exoticising gaze, whilst for natives the place is perceived through layers of collective memory. The problem for settlers is that the place they come to consider their own is originally exotic to them. They now have a memory of a place made-over in their own exotic image of it—at first a picturesque landscape occupied by a disappearing indigenous people. Just how an exoticised experience of landscape and its indigenous inhabitants became “us” New Zealanders is forgotten today in declaring settler nature—“our” identity and character—to be of nature, now primordial and pure, and quite organic. Benjamin’s formulation suggests a corrective to cultural organicism and the constructed public memory of popular national identity. The exotic place of settlers’ perception, even when familiarised and domesticated, is the lens though which settlers view history. Their collective remembering makesover the place in terms of the experience of its difference to them, not in terms of Ma¯ori experience of European difference to Ma¯ori. The gap in perception is foreclosed by the make-over, which itself constitutes national popular memory. The remembering activity of settler culture makes all the more real a made-over place while occluding its making over. An industry of historians, or memory machinery, is needed to support settler place-making, working to shape and contain memory, and to secure it against real knowledge of the making over of place. I will explore how it does so by explaining three components of national popular memory: re-enactment, remediation, and cultural plagiarism. |
en |
dc.publisher |
The Memory Waka Research Group (Massey University, New Zealand) |
en |
dc.relation.ispartofseries |
Memory Connection |
en |
dc.rights |
Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. Previously published items are made available in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. |
en |
dc.rights.uri |
https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm |
en |
dc.title |
Settler dreaming |
en |
dc.type |
Journal Article |
en |
pubs.issue |
1 |
en |
pubs.begin-page |
114 |
en |
pubs.volume |
1 |
en |
dc.rights.holder |
Copyright: The Memory Waka Research Group (Massey University, New Zealand) |
en |
pubs.author-url |
http://www.memoryconnection.org/article/settler-dreaming/ |
en |
pubs.end-page |
126 |
en |
pubs.publication-status |
Published |
en |
dc.rights.accessrights |
http://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/RestrictedAccess |
en |
pubs.subtype |
Article |
en |
pubs.elements-id |
312408 |
en |
pubs.org-id |
Arts |
en |
pubs.org-id |
Social Sciences |
en |
pubs.org-id |
Media and Communication |
en |
pubs.record-created-at-source-date |
2012-03-06 |
en |