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Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork around the 'hallowed ground' of Gettysburg, this book explores the idea of a personal and historical 'experience' in connection with paradigms of memory, heritage, and patriotism. Using empirical research to ground these often vague concepts, the author explores the meaning of the 'Gettysburg experience' in experiences of the federal National Park Service and its 'battlefield rehabilitation' programme, battle re-enactors seeking a bodily, first-person perspective on the fog of war, and practitioners of the paranormal: ghost hunters who aim to connect with the war dead through techniques and media wholly foreign to 'normal' regimes of commemoration.
About the author
Mads Daugbjerg is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Aarhus University, Denmark and author of Borders of Belonging: Experiencing History, War and Nation at a Danish Heritage Site.
Summary
To have an 'experience' in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the famous Civil War battlefield, has taken on a range of new meanings in recent years. Almost instantly after the smoke had cleared following the battle in 1863, the field was transformed into an iconic site of memory and an emblem of American patriotism. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in and around the alleged ’hallowed ground’ of Gettysburg, this book explores the experiential landscapes and 'sensescapes', examining the powerful appeal of the idea of a personal and historical 'experience' and its relations with paradigms of memory, heritage, and patriotism. Using empirical research to ground these often abstract and vague concepts and the ways in which they are translated into human and social practice, TITLE uses the notion of the 'Gettysburg experience' to scrutinize the processes through which the term 'experience' itself takes on, a range of different and contrasting meanings, as exemplified by experiences of the federal National Park Service and its ’battlefield rehabilitation’ programme, battle re-enactors seeking a bodily, first-person perspective on the fog of war, and practitioners of the paranormal: ghost hunters who aim to connect with the war dead through techniques and media wholly foreign to 'normal' regimes of commemoration. A rigorous and richly illustrated study of memory and meaning in the search for experience, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography and anthropology with interests in heritage, memory and collective remembrance.
