-
You Were on Indian Land: Alcatraz Island as Recalcitrant Memory Space
Teresa Bergman and Cynthia D. Smith
Why do some memories "stick" with us, while others are more ephemeral or utterly lost? This chapter explores the complicated relationships between place, memory, and forgetting at one of the most striking tourist destinations in the United States, Alcatraz Island. We offer this research as a case study through which we can think about the staying power of memories and examine how memories can be made more engaging and enduring. We also delineate the consequences for collective memory when significant events fall short of affixing themselves. Alcatraz Island, located in the San Francisco Bay, is "one of San Francisco's must-see attractions, "1 primarily because of its colorful history as a federal penitentiary. But there is much more to Alcatraz than Al Capone and the Birdman, and much that makes it an ideal site for contemplating how memory works at locations with multiple noteworthy historical events. On Alcatraz Island, Native Americans staged one of the most important civil disobedience events in their contentious history with the U.S. government. The nineteen-month occupation of the island by the Indians of All Tribes remains unmatched in terms of improving U.S. government policies toward Native Americans. Yet, the fact that Alcatraz is hardly remembered for this momentous event is stunning. Approximately 1.3 million tourists visit the island annually, anticipating a tour through the bleak and cavernous once-notorious prison. They bring little, if any, understanding of the importance of this site in Native American history. Once visitors begin their boat ride to and tour of Alcatraz Island, they encounter multiple rhetorical elements and explore prison spaces that produce a compelling official memory of Alcatraz Island. Through a variety of mediated and direct experiences, visitors encounter historically accurate and politically sensitive interpretations of the island's many previous uses before it became a national park in 1973. Even though Alcatraz's varied historical past is well represented in banners, exhibits, and film, there are several powerful physical elements that work to diminish any memory of the site's history as other than a federal penitentiary. This is particularly alarming because Alcatraz Island is one of few nationally preserved locations where one historical event ran counter to a U.S. historical narrative of "progress" or "triumphalism." Many Native American scholars and activists credit the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz Island that took place on November 20, 1969, through June 11, 1971, as being decisive in changing and improving U.S. governmental relations with Native Americans. For instance, Troy Johnson, professor of history and American Indian studies, describes the Occupation as "the most symbolic, the most significant, and the most successful Indian protest in the modern era . . . and [it] remains one of the most noteworthy expressions of patriotism and self-determination by Indian people of this century."2 Why, then, does the experience of Alcatraz fail to make this memory, and its significance, linger? I n this chapter, we investigate the memory and meaningfulness of this particular symbolic protest and what we believe is its troubled relationship to the present-day tourist experience on Alcatraz. Throughout the chapter we call attention to the importance of the visitors' sensory, embodied experience of the island and its spaces. Ultimately, we argue that the visitors' lack of any physical access to the island spaces inhabited during the Occupation seriously and negatively affects both attention to and the staying power of Occupation memories. While visitors can directly engage with the prison by moving through it, walking into cells, and even touching objects, there is no parallel experience of the Occupation available. Clearly the Native American Occupation of Alcatraz is a counternarrative that could offer contemporary audiences particularly affective and resonant messages of nonviolent collective civil disobedience and empowerment; however, we argue that despite the National Park Service's efforts at preservation and representation of the Occupation, this is not the message or memory that tourists take from their Alcatraz Island experience. In spite of the progressive possibilities afforded by Alcatraz's history, the tourist experience at Alcatraz Island-including the island's location, the exhibits, and the architecture-reinscribes respect for government's coercive authority. Alcatraz is an especially recalcitrant location for the inclusion of Occupation memories, even though those events took place on this very site.One of the challenges for historical representation on Alcatraz Island is that this location is now considered a "fun" family tourist destination. For those visiting San Francisco, not only is the Alcatraz Island tour a history lesson, but it also offers tourists a chance to get on a boat and journey into the scenic San Francisco Bay. On a clear day, the views of San Francisco, Marin County, the East Bay, and the Golden Gate Bridge are breathtaking. Once on the water, tourists encounter seabirds, waves, and a bracing wind. The Alcatraz Island tour is part outdoor adventure and part history lesson, and it is this experiential combination that informs our research in analyzing not only what but also how tourists understand and remember this location's history.3 The materiality of an Alcatraz tour, characterized by the visitor's physical and sensory engagement with the island's spaces, overpowers attempts at remembering the counternarratives of resistance available on the island in its visual exhibits and orientation film. Without significant changes to the Native American Occupation representation on the island, Alcatraz as a memory site is a missed opportunity to encounter and retain messages of successful self-determination, empowerment, and civil disobedience. I n order to illustrate how the materiality of Alcatraz dominates its rhetorical messages, we first give a brief outline of the island's history. We then discuss how memory sites work symbolically and materially in the construction of a national identity. This is followed by an analysis of the Alcatraz Island tour, including the boat ride, the orientation film, the cellhouse architecture, and the audio tour, and how these elements affect the memory of the Native American Occupation and privilege the memory of the island's use as a federal penitentiary. We conclude with a discussion of the consequences of losing the memory of the Native American Occupation at Alcatraz Island, as well as the implications of perpetuating the understanding of Alcatraz Island as primarily a location of coercive incarceration. We finally reflect on the implications of the loss of this liberatory message and its effects in constructing a U.S. national identity.
-
Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi: The Standard Babylonian Poem of the Righteous Sufferer
Alan Lenzi and Amar Annus
SAACT 7 presents a new edition of Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi: The Standard Babylonian Poem of the Righteous Sufferer. This edition, based on all known tablets of the poem, offers the most complete text of Ludlul to date. Building on a half century of research and discovery, the editors incorporate previously unknown lines of the poem and establish the proper ordering of the material in Tablet IV. The edition includes an extensive introduction, the reconstructed text in cuneiform and transliteration, a translation, and a glossary and sign list. Assyriologists and biblical scholars alike will welcome this long overdue edition of the Babylonian Job.
-
Perception, Action, Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and Dual Vision
Michael Madary, Nivedita Gangopadhyay, and Finn Spicer
What is the relationship between perception and action, between an organism and its environment, in explaining consciousness? These are issues at the heart of philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences.
This book explores the relationship between perception and action from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, ranging from theoretical discussion of concepts to findings from recent scientific studies. It incorporates contributions from leading philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, and an artificial intelligence theorist. The contributions take a range of positions with respect to the view that perception is an achievement by an agent acting in a complex environment in which sensorimotor dynamics constitute an essential ingredient to perceptual experience.
A key focus of the book is on the debate about action-oriented theories of visual perception versus the dual-visual systems hypothesis The former champions the role of sensorimotor dynamics in perceptual awareness while the latter favours a functional dichotomy between perception and action. At least on the surface, these two approaches are in conflict. Where one emphasizes the interdependence of action and perception, the other suggests that action and perception are functionally distinct. The dialogue between these two approaches brings out wider theoretical issues underlying the research paradigm of cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind.
Exploring one of the major debates in the philosophy and psychology, this book is fascinating reading for all those in the cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind. -
Sensorimotor Dynamics and Dual Vision: An Introduction
Michael Madary, Nivedita Gangopadhyay, and Finn Spicer
This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of this book, which is to outline the results of the conference on Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and Two-Visual Systems organized as part of the CONTACT project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under the European Science Foundation Eurocores Consciousness in Natural and Cultural Contexts (CNCC) scheme. The goal was to bring together leading researchers in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence in order to discuss the relation between perception and action, specifically whether perception required action or whether perceptual awareness was merely a matter of passively representing the visual world. The chapter presents the general issues discussed in the chapters and brings out the various themes that have emerged from the discussions of the relations between perception and action. These include the following questions: What is action in perception? Does empirical evidence support the functional dichotomy between perception and action? What constitutes the content of perceptual experience?
-
What is a Good Society? Pacific Seminar 1 Textbook 2010
Macelle Mahala, Sarah M. Mathis, Marisela Ramos, Stacy Rilea, Susan G. Sample, and Caroline T. Schroeder
-
Documentary Film Theory
Teresa Bergman
Documentary film theories attempt to accomplish several goals, which include defining the genre of documentary film, articulating its components, and describing its effects and use in society. This entry explores the various definitions of documentary film, the evolving set ...
-
The botulinum neurotoxin: a deadly protease with applications to human medicine
Kirkwood M. Land and Luisa W. Cheng
-
What is a Good Society? Pacific Seminar 1 Textbook 2009
Macelle Mahala, Sarah M. Mathis, Marisela Ramos, Stacy Rilea, Susan G. Sample, and Caroline T. Schroeder
-
John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion
Lou Matz
John Stuart Mill was one of the most important political and social thinkers of the nineteenth century, and his writings on human rights, feminism, the evils of slavery, and the environment are still widely read and influential today. Published after Mill’s death to avoid controversy, the three essays in this edition, Nature, Utility of Religion, and Theism, represent Mill’s considered position on religion. Mill argues that belief in a supernatural power holds us back, but that a conception of the meaning and value of being human, or Religion of Humanity, could make the world a better place. Essential in understanding Mill’s views on religion and his practical philosophy, these essays are also significant contributions to the philosophy and psychology of religion.
Appendices include Mill’s other writings on religion, his early influences, contemporary reviews, and other 19th century writings on religion and science.
-
Mercury rising: Exposing the vaccine-autism myth
Matthew P. Normand and Jesse Dallery
Environmentalist and attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argues that childhood vaccines containing thimerosal are linked to autism and that the government has colluded with pharmaceutical companies to cover up this information. Psychology professors Matthew Normand and Jesse Dallery contend that studies have failed to uncover any specifi c link between autism and mercurycontaining thimerosal vaccines.
A selection of published books and book chapters from faculty members of the College of the Pacific at University of the Pacific.
Printing is not supported at the primary Gallery Thumbnail page. Please first navigate to a specific Image before printing.
