Navigating Displacement Through Mementoes and Re-memory

This week's selection of readings examines the various ways through which displaced peoples utilize and interact with objects and belongings from their homeland and/or past experience. The context in which people experience displacement vary, and the choices that they make when selecting objects to carry with them is reflective of their respective circumstances. The four readings covered represent an impressive diversity of perspective and insight into the importance of objects to various individuals and displaced groups, and left me with an overwhelming sense of variation and dependency on circumstance. Indeed, each group and individual discussed in the readings engaged with their objects in a different way; however, all utilized their respective mementoes to maintain a connection to the past through re-memory of lived experiences.

David Parkin focuses his study on the objects that people choose to take with them or leave behind in the face of displacement from their homes, and the ways that they interact with these objects across time and space. The other three readings, however, focus primarily on objects either obtained or coveted or both in the diaspora and following the initial break from home. The tourist commodities purchased by Irish Americans and the mementoes of concentration camps kept by Holocaust survivors, in particular, speak to the importance of objects in navigating memory and experience.

In Celtic Kitsch: Irish-America and Irish Material Culture Rains examines the commodification of Celtic tourist objects made available for purchase to Irish Americans, and the means by which Irish diasporic subjects use these objects to interact with cultural identity, thereby lending a sense authenticity to an ultimately commodified tourist object. Rain examines the common practice of Irish Americans to purchase mementoes during trips Ireland that are symbolic of their sense of Irish-ness, and of the extent to which these tourist commodities are representative of the diaspora's attempts to formulate memories of their distant past. Of interest is Rain's observation that diaspora objects must exhibit a high degree of stylization in order to function as “representative figurations of a culture that is otherwise distant or unknown,” and must “be recognizable with a minimum of cultural 'work' or prior knowledge on the part of the consumers.” Upon reading this in conjunction with Rain's earlier remarks on the commodification of cultural objects for tourist consumption, I find myself asking: is the high demand for 'authentic' objects from the homeland a product of the diasporic individual's need to both validate their connection to the homeland and increase their cultural memory?

In Hirsch and Spitzer's examination of Holocaust survivors we see an example of the way in which memory can transform innate objects into heirlooms. In the case of most Holocaust survivors, they were unable to bring mementoes from home in their initial displacement. Instead, they constructed items out of memory, such as a recipe book, for example. They also engaged with their memory to depict their experiences during the displacement, as is the case in the art and letters belonging to Arthur Kessler. These mementoes are constructed post-displacement out of memory and not only allow the initial displaced individuals to navigate their experiences, but also serve to link later generations not necessarily to their homeland but to the memory of a past that is vitally important to the construction of their distinctive Jewish identity.