Representational events: Titanic and other events as case studies in collective memory.

摘要

In Representational Events Leavy analyzes the form and content of American collective memory within a realm dominated by the corporate mass media. In particular, she examines how events serve as vehicles for rituals of collective remembering and the kinds of cultural rememberings that are produced in association with events of varying historical import. Using Titanic as her primary case study Leavy analyzes the transformation of events into what she calls "representational events" which comprise a disproportionate space in the political cultural landscape and signify/embody a new form of "hypermodern" social power. In this vein, significant attention is paid to resistive discourses. Collective memory is a site of struggle over meaning and authorship. Using a content analysis of the rememberings associated with her case studies, Leavy analyzes nodal points in resistive challenges to dominant representations of race, class, and gender and ultimately outlines the processes by which events become representational and how different narratives become dominant and/or marginalized.