Blunt Instruments Recognizing Racist Cultural Infrastructure in Memorials, Museums, and Patriotic Practices

by Hass, Kristin

• ISBN13: 9780807006719
• ISBN10: 0807006718
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780807006726
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2023-01-24
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• More Book Details

Summary

A field guide to the memorials, museums, and practices that commemorate white supremacy in the United States—and how to reimagine a more deeply shared cultural infrastructure for the future

Cultural infrastructure has been designed to maintain structures of inequality, and while it doesn’t seem to be explicitly about race, it often is. Blunt Instruments helps readers identify, contextualize, and name elements of our everyday landscapes and cultural practices that are designed to seem benign or natural but which, in fact, work tirelessly to tell us vital stories about who we are, how we came to be, and who belongs.

Examining landmark moments such as the erection of the first American museum and Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling pledge of allegiance, historian Kristin Hass explores the complicated histories of sites of cultural infrastructure, such as:

· the American Museum of Natural History
· the Bridge to Freedom in Selma
· the Washington Monument
· Mount Auburn Cemetery
· Kehinde Wiley’s 2019 sculpture Rumors of War
· the Victory Highway
· the Alamo Cenotaph

With sharp analysis and a broad lens, Hass makes the undeniable case that understanding what cultural infrastructure is, and the deep and broad impact that it has, is essential to understanding how structures of inequity are maintained and how they might be dismantled.

Author Biography

Kristin Ann Hass is an Associate Professor in the Department of American Culture and Director of the Humanities Collaboratory at the University of Michigan. She has written two books, Sacrificing Soldiers on the National Mall and U.S. nationalism and Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. She was also the co-founder and Associate Director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life.

Table of Contents

Introduction: White Lies Matters

Section I: Memorials
Monumental Basics

Chapter One: Memorials: The Lost Cause Won 
Memorial Timeline     
Pre-1890: A Mixed Bag     
1890-1920: The First Memorial Boom

Chapter Two: Memorials: The Lost Cause Keeps Winning
Memorial Timeline
1920-1980: Living Memorials and Dying Cities
1980-2010: The Second Memorial Boom in Three Acts
2010-Present: Tumbling Down and Rising Up

Section II: Museums  Museum Basics

Chapter Three: Museums: White Temples Emerged 
Museum Timeline       
Pre-1870: Cabinet of Curiosities       
1870-1940: The First Golden Age of American Museums       

Chapter Four: Museums: White Temples Reshaped?
Museum Timeline               
1965 - 2019: From King Tut to Emmett Till       
The Summer of 2020

Section III: Patriotic Practices
Patriotic Practice Basics

Chapter Five: Patriotic Practices: Allegiance Gets Pledged 
Patriotic Practices Timeline       
1776-1865: A Fraught Beginning
1866-1917: Patriotism from the Ground Up

Chapter Six: Patriotic Practices: Allegiance Gets Paid For
Patriotic Practices Timeline       
1917-1976: Federally Mandated Patriotism
2001-2021: Paid Patriotism and Outrageous Refusal