Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I The Blind Ruck of Event
- Part II Worlds Made and Remade
- 11 The Literature of Reconstruction and the Worlds the Civil War Might Have Made
- 12 Frederick Douglass, Andrew Johnson, and the Work of Reconstruction
- 13 African Americans, Africa, and the Long Watch Night for Freedom
- 14 Literature and the Material Cultures of Confederate Remembrance
- 15 Elmira and the Post-War Geographies of Black Monumentalizing
- 16 Charles Chesnutt and the Reconstruction of Black Education
- 17 Charles Chesnutt, The Colonel’s Dream, and The Futures of Cotton
- 18 Brown v. Board, the Civil War Centennial, and the Literature of Civil Rights
- 19 The Future of Civil War and Reconstruction Literature
- 20 Reenactment as Resistance
- Suggestions for Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
20 - Reenactment as Resistance
from Part II - Worlds Made and Remade
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2022
- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I The Blind Ruck of Event
- Part II Worlds Made and Remade
- 11 The Literature of Reconstruction and the Worlds the Civil War Might Have Made
- 12 Frederick Douglass, Andrew Johnson, and the Work of Reconstruction
- 13 African Americans, Africa, and the Long Watch Night for Freedom
- 14 Literature and the Material Cultures of Confederate Remembrance
- 15 Elmira and the Post-War Geographies of Black Monumentalizing
- 16 Charles Chesnutt and the Reconstruction of Black Education
- 17 Charles Chesnutt, The Colonel’s Dream, and The Futures of Cotton
- 18 Brown v. Board, the Civil War Centennial, and the Literature of Civil Rights
- 19 The Future of Civil War and Reconstruction Literature
- 20 Reenactment as Resistance
- Suggestions for Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
Summary
Though Civil War battle reenactment is widely viewed as a set of regressive practices defined by a preoccupation with the past, African American-centered performances highlight its transformative potential in terms of offering counternarratives to dominant memories of the era and connecting the war and its legacies to the present. Traditional reenactment, as performed primarily by white men, focuses more on authenticity, masculine gunplay, and battle minutiae, which has the impact of divorcing the practice from its causes and consequences. Black reenactments focus more on the pedagogical goals of recentering visitors’ focus on slavery as the primary cause and emancipation as its most important consequence. This recovery of African American memory alters the meanings assigned to the sacred space of the battlefield and offers a critical interrogation of many of the core assumptions about contemporary Blackness, both of which further enhance the practice’s resistant potential.
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- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction , pp. 295 - 310Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022