7: Critical Reflection

Part 2
Option a

Having observed the attacks on the World Trade Centre via television, this prosthetic memory has become part of my personal archive of experience (Landberg 45).  This experience is in part sensory, a prosthetic memory that Landsberg terms an "experiential event" (25-26).  This is reflected in my first blog post where I've described watching the television broadcast and, as my subjectivity was informed, I felt horried, an emotion that induced goosebumps.  Something like a weak form of immersion also took place during this experience; I have detailed how throughout the day clients brought me news updates as the event developed and explained that I thought and prayed about the matter often, feeling guitly when breaking away from solemnity, in order to portray this immersion.

Seeing people who had escaped from the collapsing towers, traumatised and covered in blood, in the six o’clock news further aided my immersion and informed my subjectivity, as evidenced by my description of saddness that “made my eyes prick with tears…”  The fact that my emotions came about due to prosthetic memory and not ‘lived experience’, as was the case for the waiter in one blog post, makes little difference (45).  I have reflected this observation by indicating that both the waiter and myself found the attacks brought forth elements of surrealism: it was like watching a science fiction film. 

This prosthetic memory also structures my subjectivity by positioning me as almost a mourner and a vulnerable person in the face of potential terrorism in the future tense.  Effectively then, this event has influenced my “identity informing process” (33).  Furthermore, this blog reveals my personal history that involves witnessing the event on television, being stirred up emotionally, and feeling inclined to pay tribute is what motivated me in the then-present (2008) tense to visit ground zero.  My prosthetic memory also serves as a base from which to build new, lived-experience memories from: as detailed, I stood at ground zero seeing it as a construction site but feeling it was almost haunted by its history.  Additionally, visiting ground zero with others who had prosthetic memories of 9/11 demonstrates how “mass cultural technologies provide people with a common or collective archive of knowledge” (39).  Reflected in this post is the notion that we are all on the same page, despite being geographically distant from both the event and each other at the time the towers were attacked. 

 

I have described my actions and thoughts at ground zero so that they might read as similar to those one might expect from someone who had ‘real’ memories of the event as part of their personal archive of experience.  This demonstrates how there is no distinction “between ‘real’ and prosthetic memories" (41).  Moreover, empathy also helps explain both my own and my travelling companions’ motivation to go and pay tribute.  I have displayed this empathy by detailing what I imagine life is like for the partners and children of those who died that day, a life very different from my own.

Finally, I’ve further sought to demonstrate how my prosthetic memory informs my relationship to the present tense by detailing how I saw both my suitcase examination, and my possessions being scanned for bomb detection, as measures taken to increase security and surveillance following the attacks.  I have included how questions of safety arise in my mind when considering future travel, thus revealing how my prosthetic memory informs my relationship to the future tense.  As stated, upon booking flights, my past engagement with “commodified images” gives me a sense that, as a passenger, I am vulnerable and reliant on officials to carry out safety checks, factors which demonstrate my new way of engaging with the social world (46).  How my memory has been reconfigured by my subjectivity is also seen in the final blog post.  Here I mention that I used to think that living in the States would be more fulfilling than living here, but that now I take comfort living in geographically distant New Zealand.  I have ended with the same picture of a plane flying into the world trade centre that was used to my first blog post in order to illustrate how my thinking now continues to relate back to my initial experience.

 

Reference:
Landsberg, Alison. "Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remebrance in the Age of Mass Culture." Prosthetic Memory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 25-48. Print.