#prosthetic memory

But the "real" and the "authentic" are and have always been a limit case, an ideal state. People's relations to both the world and the past have always been mediated through representation and narrative.

This opening up of once private or exclusive group memories might not be negative or damaging, for the act of publicizing a group's memory increases its chances of attaining social and political recognition. Mass culture has had the unexpected effect of making group-specific cultural memories available to a diverse and varied populace. In other words, this new form of memory does not, like many forms of memory that preceded it, simply reinforce a particular group's identity by sharing memories. Instead, it opens up those memories and identities to persons from radically different backgrounds.

A commodified mass culture opens up the possibility that people who share little in the way of cultural or ethnic background might come to share memories. Mass-mediated memories are not premised on any claim of authenticity or "natural" ownership. One's engagement with them begins from a position of difference, with the recognition that these images and narratives concerning the past are not one's "heritage" in any simple sense.

Made possible by advanced capitalism and an emergent commodified mass culture capable of widely disseminating images and narratives about the past, these [prosthetic] memories are not "natural" or "authentic" and yet they organize and energize the bodies and subjectivities that take them on.