Restoring Memory to Tell Stories of Importance

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This week, as our work in the archives came to a close, we went around the room and got to listen to other groups talk about the cases that they have curated. I loved getting to listen to everyone talk about the selections, thought processes, and themes that went into the final product. In my opinion, the best part of watching the presentations was seeing all of the objects come back to life. One of the beauties of putting the objects together in the cases is how they can all relate to each other and tell a story for the viewers. Since we all worked hard to find objects that told these stories, each case made me understand how these objects were once used and what they represented. Thinking specifically about our case, I think it was really gratifying to see how our selections created a full view of Kenyon in the world. Even though most things in our case are no longer around, the photos of them still felt alive, which was a really amazing feeling.

This week in our reading of Yazdiha's The Struggle for the People's King, we focused on two functions of civil rights memory that were used in the #MeToo movement. Yazdiha discusses how women have been left out of political memory for centuries and are now using memory as a form of "restoration and reconciliation" (Yazdiha 162). She describes restoration as the ability to reestablish people, movements, and things within the collective memory of the past. This allows them to become more prominent in the present and gives them the ability to make change. She also discusses what it means to reconcile with the past, writing "activists understand that these tensions cannot be reconciled to make forward progress without looking backward" (Yazdiha 163). She argues that the only way to make true progress and change in the present is to reexamine the past and give credit to those that were forgotten.

Yazdiha's words ring true for all of our presentations this week. Whether we realized it or not, we have spent the last five weeks restoring and reconciling with memory. As I said earlier, my favorite part of the presentations was seeing how all of the objects together told a story that made them feel alive. We were going about the process of restoring these objects and bringing them back to life for a new audience to understand and appreciate. Since they have been restored in the collective memory of the eras in which they come from, they can be used as tools in the present. I know that my group has also done a lot of reconciling with our objects as well. Most of our selections are not perfect and don't have beautiful pasts, but we still included them in our final case because we want to demonstrate how they are still relevant in today's world. Overall, this process has been a lesson in what it means to carry on and reestablish the memories of people and places when they may be at risk of slipping from collective memory.

Yazdiha, Hajar. 2023. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.


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