Tangled memories
Subtitle: the Vietnam War, the AIDS epidemic, and the politics of remembering
By: Marita Sturken.
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Berkeley
Language: eng
Number of pages: 358
Subjects: Memory -- Political aspects -- United States; Political culture -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 -- Influence; AIDS (Disease) -- United States; Persian Gulf War, 1991 -- Influence; Popular culture -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Television and history -- United States; Motion pictures and history
Description: This fascinating investigation into the production of American cultural memory focuses on two of the most traumatic and contested events in recent U.S. history: the Vietnam War and the AIDS epidemic. Each, Marita Sturken argues, disrupts our conventional understanding of nationhood, identity, and American culture. She brilliantly compares the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the AIDS Quilt as key sites where cultural memory is produced and debated.

While debunking the characterization of the United States as a culture of amnesia, Sturken shows that remembering is itself a form of forgetting, and memory an inventive social practice.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-350) and index.