Readings Response: Stanton

In The Lowell Experiment Cathy Stanton explores how historical sites are constructed. Lowell, Massachusetts, once an expansive industrial city, was hit hard by de-industrialization and has since attempted to revitalize its economy through culture-led redevelopment. An anthropologist by training, Stanton turns her critical inquiry onto the historians, staff, politicians and visitors who have determined what happens at Lowell. Stanton’s aspiration is that Lowell’s historical sites be used to foster “a fuller consideration of capitalism in our lives.” (57)

I have two primary criticisms of The Lowell Experiment. The first is that Stanton denies any meaningful discussion about the potential uses and interpretations of the Lowell sites by assuming that the conversation necessarily will revolve around a critique of capitalism. Capitalism has played an integral role in Lowell’s past and there is certainly room for discussion about working conditions, gendered jobs, and organized labor. However, the type of focus that Stanton would like requires that the visitors have a firm grasp on what capitalism is opposed to other systems of economics (a feat that I am not convinced the American education system has handled well, if at all) and possibly detracts from some of the more intimate, human elements of the past that makes places like Lowell attractive to visitors.

The second critique is that though she provided some poignant criticisms of the Lowell sites and clearly explicated what she would like to see for the future, Stanton is vague about how to realistically apply criticism in practice. This became clear when Stanton discussed the Acres tours. The Acres neighborhood was historically and is presently inhabited by poorer, blue collar, immigrant workers. Stanton uses the tours to criticize the manner in which the parks anachronistically emphasizes the positive precisely because tours of this neighborhood illustrate the level of disconnect between the present immigrant population and the park’s staff and visitors. While Stanton is right that both history and the present have not always been positive, she dismisses a comment by one of the tour guides that I wish she had addressed. Namely, that the guide felt it would be disrespectful to Acre locals to go into their neighborhood and remind them (and a group of strangers) of all the problems they face on a daily basis. Where and when sensitive topics are brought up is essential to the dialogue that Stanton wants to create. Questions of how to start the dialogue, how to reach out to the community, and how to involve local civic organizations are not discussed.

This critique of Stanton is ironically a critique of critical history in a broad sense and encourages me to turn to David Blight’s article “It You Don’t Tell it Like It Was, It Can Never Be as It Ought to Be.” Blight makes a clever allusion to One Hundred Years of Solitude that questions if we, as historians, have become so obsessed with our past failures that we feel the need to over-compensate by reading critique into everything. Slavery and Public History shares a collection of thoughts, yet one common thread is that the practical side of presenting sensitive and at times controversial topics is just as arduous and time consuming as it is rewarding. As a result, I tend to view The Lowell Experiment as a foundation from which to start to think about, not just critique, but how critique can transform into something more tangible.

Readings:

Horton, James Oliver & Lois E. Horton, ed. Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Stanton, Cathy. The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.