Readings Response: Tyson

In The Wages of History Amy Tyson sheds light on the misunderstood world of living history museum workers, and connects their emotional labor to growing, often disturbing trends in the non-profit realm. Having worked at a non-profit, I connected with many of Tyson’s observations. Though I genuinely respect Tyson’s motivations and many of her conclusions, certain aspects of the book detracted from Tyson’s more meaningful treatment of labor. I have pointed out three specific grievances that I feel should have been addressed in order to provide constructive criticism of The Wages of History.  

1.  Who is the audience? This book is aimed at academics, public historians, and museum professionals, the overwhelming majority of whom are intimately familiar with working for non-profits (and by extension the troubles that go along with it). While Tyson described the specific troubling aspects of being a living history worker, her complaints extend to most jobs in the public or private sectors. As such, the book could have benefited from a more constructive analysis of the workplace: one that criticizes but also aims to resolve the problems.

2.  Who gets a name? This is a book about the frontline workers, but not only is there no personalization of management, only certain perspectives are personalized among the interpreters at Fort Snelling. One survey respondent reasonably noted that many employees used the seasonal nature of the job to supplement other incomes and did not want permanent status. Tyson’s retort was that the response “conforms to the tenets of neoliberalism,” instead of having an honest dialogue with the respondent’s ideas. Tyson herself used her position to supplement her income and research while in graduate school. Cathy Stanton’s The Lowell Experiment comes across similar issues when the author is troubled by her reliance on the capitalistic system that she is trying to criticize. The Wages of History could have benefited from some honest self-reflection about why certain perspectives should be dismissed before going ahead and dismissing them.

3.  What should interpreters do? Tyson spends the most time on gender, class and race issues between interpreters and the content they must present to the public. The Native American history of the site is not give nearly as much space as race or gender, though, I would argue, for this particular site it is far more important. Much of the book felt as if Tyson were projecting her own interests rather than working at a specific historical site. Fort Snelling was and is still largely a military site and yet there is surprisingly little in the book about the interpreters’ relationship with the military. Researching between 2001 and 2006, if Amy Tyson wanted interpreters at Fort Snelling to be critical and interpretive, how could she not address the question of playing soldier when the real US military is actively engaged in warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Earlier in the semester the Historical Methods course assigned Trouillot’s Silencing the Past. While I believe Tyson’s objectives were noble, I also believe that she unintentionally silences people and ideas in order to come to those conclusions.

Reading:

Tyson, Amy M. The Wages of History: Emotional Labor on Public History’s Front Lines. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013.