Deja Vu; The feeling that we've all been here before on Deja Vu: aberrations on cultural memory

Afterimage, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Alisia G. Chase

Krapp's equanimity towards new media and our response to it is compelling, and refreshing. He sides neither with those in cultural studies who urge that we must vigilantly remember (the Holocaust, American slavery. Pearl Harbor, 9-11), nor with those who in media studies who would sooner ignore cultural history. Instead, taking Walter Benjamin's media theory of modernity as his guide, he proposes that we move beyond the simple dialectic of associating memory with culture and forgetting with loss or regression. As Benjamin suggested, "if forgetting and memory, and everything in between, are best presented from the vantage point of a dialectic of attention and distraction, any appeal against forgetting is an attempt to dictate what people should think." Memory, after all, is not universal, but rather institutionalized: As an American, you do remember the Holocaust, you do not remember Rwanda. As a media baby born after the World Wars. Krapp himself is extremely Knowledgeable about how cultural history can be controlled by the memory industry. You remember what your attention has been directed towards, and that is Krapp's most potent point. As he cautions, "it is paramount to protect our freedom of decision on how attention is paid."

Peter Krapp is an Assistant Professor of New Media at the University of California, Irvine, and his enormously relevant study is proof that new media technologies necessitate new theories. Unfortunately, the book must have been going to press when we most needed Krapp's insights about how these deja vu effects are currently being used to distract our attention away from one memory of the past by directing it towards another.

ALISIA G. CHASE is a professor in the Art Department of SUNY Brockport.