Abraham Lincoln as Authentic Reproduction: A Critique of Postmodernism
Author(s): Edward M. Bruner
Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 96, No. 2 (Jun., 1994), pp. 397-415
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/681680
Accessed: 06/04/2009 05:47
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the
scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that
promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Blackwell Publishing and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist.
http://www.jstor.org
AbrahamLincolnasAuthenticReproduction:A
Critiqueof Postmodernism
EDWARDM. BRUNER
DepartmentofAnthropology
Universityof Illinois,Urbana-Champaign
POSTMODERN WRITERSSAYTHATIN HYPERREALITYthe reproduction is better than the
original; for example, a museum diorama is more vivid and effective than the scene
represented (Eco 1986:8). Jean Baudrillardwritesthat Americans construct imitations
of themselves and that the perfect definition of the simulacra iswhen the reproduction
is "morereal"than the original (1988:41; see also Eco 1986:18). Meaghan Morriswrites
that once we have a simulacra, "the true (like the real) begins to be reproduced in the
image of the pseudo, which begins to become the true"(1988:5). Umberto Eco contends
about America that "the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic
copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication" (1986:6). Eco takes us on a "journey
into Hyperrealityin search of instances where the American imagination demands the
real thing, and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake" (1986:7).
Is thisjust postmodern gibberish, and are the writingsof Baudrillardand Eco simply
the babblings of a long series of Europeans who have "rediscovered"an America of the
Continental imagination?
Baudrillard (1983) writes that in this postindustrial era, we have entered a new stage
of history, an electronic one, marked by changes in information flow and patterns of
reproduction. In the Renaissance we had originals and counterfeits; in the industrial
period we had the serial repetition of the same object; but in this postmodern phase we
have simulation, without origins, referential values, or beginnings, where the simulacrum
becomes the true. For Baudrillard and for Eco, America is hyperreality. "America
cultivatesno origin or mythical authenticity; it has no pastand founding truth ... it lives
in a perpetual present. . . it lives in perpetual simulation" (Baudrillard 1988:76).
My objectives in this essay are to examine critically the postmodern perspective of
Baudrillardand Eco; to develop a view of historical reproduction based on a constructivistposition
that sees allculture as continually invented and reinvented (Bruner 1984);
and to argue for transcending such dichotomies as original/copy and authentic/inauthentic.
Myinterest is in a critique of postmodernism, but as the term is used so loosely,
in such diverse ways-from architecture to the artsto scholarship to popular media-in
the interest of clarity, I take postmodernism to refer specifically to the writings of
Baudrillardand Eco, twoof the more prominent practitioners, and even more narrowly
to their work on copies and originals in America. Lest the focus seem too narrow, it
should be noted that the theory of simulacraisan essential component of manydifferent
postmodern positions.
AmericanAnthropologist96(2):397-415. Copyright ? 1994, American Anthropological Association.
397
Essay
398 AMERICANANTHROPOI,OGIST [96, 1994
I argue also that in the work of Baudrillard and Eco about America, despite their
theoretical arguments against origins, there is an implicit original, and it is Europe, for
America is seen as essentiallya satellite of Europe (Baudrillard 1988:76). Iwillshow also
that not only Baudrillardand Eco but scholars such as Dean MacCannell and Richard
Handler, in their writings on authenticity, retain an essentialist vocabulary of origins
and reproductions. Derrida (1974) has taught us that these either/or binaries are built
into Western metaphysics, and that not only are such oppositions established but one
term is privileged at the expense of the other.
In order to examine these issues, I turn to an ethnographic example, to Lincoln's
New Salem, a historic site in central Illinois, and to the museum professionals in charge
of producing New Salem. A historic site is a good place to gather data on issues of
reproductions, originals, and authenticity1because museum professionals struggle with
these issues daily. They are the working practitioners who take responsibility for the
staging of the site. They continually construct and reconstruct New Salem astheychange
exhibits, develop new storylines, and traininterpreters and guides. Among historic sites,
New Salem is a particularlyappropriate place to study as the literature at the site calls
New Salem an "authentic reproduction," an intriguing oxymoron, as we are not sure if
it is an original or a copy; we willwant to explore the meaning of this term.
Baudrillardand Eco do not deal with the significance of historic reproductions to the
touristsand visitorsexcept byimplication. Asthis essayrejectssome of the postmodernist
generalizations, in the concluding section I present an alternative reading of the
significance of New Salem that contrasts with the views of Baudrillard and Eco. My
alternativeviewisderived from preliminaryfieldworkwith the touriststhemselves. While
this segment of the essayis admittedly speculative, it contains the seeds of a revisionist
position focused on the construction of meaning byvisitors to sites. Myhypotheses are
that the tourists at New Salem are (1) learning about their past, (2) playing with time
frames and enjoying the encounters, (3) consuming nostalgia for a simpler bygone era,
and simultaneously (4) buyingthe idea of progress, of how farwe haveadvanced. Finally,
they are also (5) celebrating America, which at New Salem means the values and virtues
of small-townAmerica. These experiences go well beyond a search for authenticity. The
New Salem experience provides visitors with a sense of identity, meaning, and attach-
ment.
In the conclusions, we apply what we have learned about New Salem to postmodernism
and to the literatures on the invention of tradition, authenticity, and historic
sites in America. Rather than more grand theorizing about the postmodern condition,
this essay offers an alternative perspective based on a specific case study utilizing the
methods of ethnography and the concepts of performance and practice.
New Salem
New Salem Historic Site2is a reconstructed village and outdoor museum in Illinois
where Abraham Lincoln lived in the 1830s (Thomas 1934). MostAmericans know that
Abraham Lincoln wasU.S. president during the CivilWar,that he freed the slaves,and
that he was assassinated in 1865. Arguably the greatest American folk hero, Lincoln's
life is an embodiment of the American success ideology. Abraham Lincoln came to New
Salem at the age of 22, and he lived there between 1831 and 1837. In his own words,
Lincoln arrived as "apiece of floating driftwood," "afriendless, uneducated penniless
boy,"and by hard workand strength of character this humble backwoodsman left New
Salem to become a lawyer and politician in the state capital. An Illinois Historic
Preservation Agency handout distributed at the park, entitled "Lincoln's New Salem"
(n.d.), says,
The six yearsLincolnspentin New Salemformed a turningpoint in his career.Fromthe
ganglingyoungsterwhocameto the villagein 1831withno definiteobjectives,he becamea
manof purposeashe embarkedon a careerof lawandstatesmanship.
399ESSAY
The same theme appears in Sandburg's famous biography, where he calls New Salem
"Lincoln's 'Alma Mater' " (1954:743) and refers to the site as Lincoln's "nourishing
mother" (1954:55). Implicit in the storyis the "frontierhypothesis"of FrederickJackson
Turner, which suggests that,just as the United States was formed by overcoming the
obstacles of the wilderness, so too Lincoln was formed by overcoming the hardships of
frontier life. Also implicit is the notion that America is an open society, that the
American dream of success can be achieved by anyone willing to work hard by day and
study by night. New Salem, then, is a national shrine, a site of America's civil religion,
because it was the locality that gave birth to the adult Lincoln. New Salem was the site
of transformation, and Lincoln's story is the story of America, the rags-to-riches,
log-cabin-to-White-HouseAmerican myth.
The premier tourist attraction in Illinois, drawing over a half million visitors a year,
New Salem Village is located in a 640-acre park that also contains a campground and
picnic areas.The site is a public facilityowned bythe state of Illinois. The village consists
of 23 log houses, and in most of the houses there are interpreters in period dress who
greet the tourists, discuss aspects of life in the 1830s, tell about the original residents of
the house, and answerthe tourists'questions. Itis third-person interpretation, although
in practice it sometimes slips into first person.3 The site features craftdemonstrations,
including blacksmithing and cooking, carding, spinning and dying of wool, and the
making of candles, soap, brooms, shoes, and spoons. New Salem is one of a number of
reconstructed prairie villages in the Midwest, and indeed, Baudrillard and Eco are
correct: there are many reconstructed historic sites in America (Anderson 1984).
Authenticity, Copies, and Originals
Ada Louise Huxtable (1992:24) writes that "Itis hard to think of a more dangerous,
anomalous, and shoddy perversion of language and meaning than the term 'authentic
reproduction'." She iswritingabout Colonial Williamsburg,but the term isused at many
other historic sites.4NewSalem isone of the sites thatdescribes itselfin itsown brochures
as an "authentic reproduction." We ask, What does this mean? Rather than to give a
general answer to the question, I turn first to the discourse produced by museum
professionals, by the staff and the interpreters at New Salem, to learn how the term
authenticreproductionis used. As anthropologists know, the meaning of any expression
is not a property inherent in the wording or in the dictionary, but rather is dependent
on the perceptions and practices of those who use the expression.
By authenticreproduction,the museum professionals acknowledge that New Salem is a
reproduction, not an original; but they want that reproduction to be authentic in the
sense of giving the appearance of being like the 1830s. Most aim for what Taylor and
Johnson (1993) call "historicalverisimilitude," to make the 1990s New Salem resemble
the 1830s New Salem. Authenticin this sense means credible and convincing, and this is
the objective of most museum professionals, to produce a historic site believable to the
public, to achieve mimetic credibility. This is the first meaning of authenticity.
Some museum professionals go further, and speak as if the 1990sNew Salem not only
resembles the original but is a complete and immaculate simulation, one that is
historically accurate and true to the 1830s. This is the second meaning of authenticity.
In the first meaning, based on verisimilitude, a 1990sperson would walkinto the village
and say,"Thislooks like the 1830s,"as it would conform to what he or she expected the
village to be. In the second meaning, based on genuineness, an 1830sperson would say,
"Thislooks like 1830s New Salem,"as the village would appear true in substance, or real.
I found that museum professionals use authenticityprimarily in the first sense, but
sometimes in the second. Handler and Saxton (1988:242) writethat for all living-history
practitioners, authenticity is an exact isomorphism, the second meaning; but I found at
New Salem thiswasso only for some practitioners, some of the time. In order to achieve
authenticity, museum professionals rely on historical scholarship, on such sources as
400 AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST [96,1994
archeologicalresearch, deeds, court documents, diaries, letters, newspaper accounts,
recordedstatements and memories of older settlers, and comparative evidence of other
1830svillages in the Midwest,as these sources are interpreted by scholars and experts.
Thereare at least two other meanings of authenticity.In the third sense, it means
original,as opposed to a copy; but in this sense, no reproduction could be authentic,
bydefinition.. New Salem Historic Site, however, claims to have some original objects
andone original building,5 so the aura of authenticity pervades the 1990ssite, as if the
lusterof the few originals had rubbed off on the reproductions. In the fourth sense,
authenticitymeans duly authorized, certified, or legally valid;in this sense New Salem is
authentic,as it is the authoritative reproduction of New Salem, the one legitimized by
thestate of Illinois. There is only one officially reconstructed New Salem, the one
approvedby the state government. This is a fascinating meaning because, in this sense,
theissue of authenticity merges into the notion of authority. The more fundamental
questionto ask here is not if an object or site is authentic, but rather who has the
authorityto authenticate, which is a matter of power-or, to put it another way, who
hasthe right to tell the storyof the site. This question emerged late in the 19thcentury
whenthe term authenticityfirstappeared in New Salem discourse.
AfterWilliam Randolph Hearst purchased the site in 1906 and donated the land to
thelocal Chautauqua Association, the movement to reconstruct New Salem appeared
poisedto achieve its objective, for a reconstructed New Salem had become a real
possibility.The question emerged, What did the 1830s New Salem look like?The village
hadbeen abandoned in 1839 and, by 1906,the site was simplya barren plot of ground
onthe top of a hill with no remaining buildings or markers.Local historians,journalists,
politicians,entrepreneurs, businesspeople, the descendants of the original settlers, and
residentsin the surrounding Menard County who had an interest in the reconstruction
allvoiced their views and their interests. Authenticity committees were formed. This
concern with authenticity began even before any museum professionals or scholars
becameinvolved in the reconstruction. Questions surfaced, such as:Where should the
buildingsbe located? Should they be built with one storyor two?What were the details
ofconstruction? Which material objects should be in which houses?6
Fromthe late 19thcentury to the present, experts gave different answers to these
questions,reflecting their own understandings and concerns. Even before it was given
toIllinois in 1919, the reconstructed New Salem was a contested site. The layers of
contestation-scholarly versus popular viewsof Abraham Lincoln, various descendants
ofthe original settlersdefending their family names, New Salem as a public parkversus
asa historic site, the Lincoln message versuscraftactivities,and historicalversusbusiness
interests-have hovered over New Salem as the dark clouds of a thunderstorm engulf
theIllinois prairie (Bruner 1993b).
Because of conflicting interests and the struggle over meaning at New Salem, the
fourth sense of authenticity-who has the authority and the power to authenticate-is
alwayspresent in the background, at least for museum professionals, insiders, locals,
and scholars, and at times of open dissent becomes even more prominent. However,
mosttouristsarenot awareof authenticity in thisfourth sense, unless aparticulardispute
overinterpretation becomes a public issue. The museum staff rely on the authority of
professional and local historians, but frequently the scholars do not agree. Because the
stateof Illinois owns the site and provides the funding, some (e.g., Wallace 1981) might
expect the site to reflect the interests of the dominant classes and the elite; but the
administrators at New Salem report that in practice state officials will rarelyinterfere,
and then only when an issue has become openly politicized. The problem is not one of
the establishment versus the people, but rather one of multiple competing voices, even
within what mayappear to be such homogeneous blocks as the scholars, the people, the
locals, or the establishment. There are many different views,and the question is, Who
has the authority to decide which version of history will be accepted as the correct or
ESSAY 401
authentic one (Bruner 1993a)? The issue of who constructs history is a familiar one in
this age of multiculturalism.
In summary thus far, we have identified four meanings of authenticity7based on
verisimilitude, genuineness, originality, and authority. Museum professionals at New
Salem accept the firstand strivefor a New Salem that resembles the 1830sand iscredible
to the visitors; they occasionally lapse into the second and speak of an accurate
simulation; they tend to ignore the third as New Salem is an acknowledged reproduction,
except for a few originals; and they cannot avoid the fourth, the question of
authority. The problem with the term authenticity,in the literature and in fieldwork, is
that one never knows except byanalysisof the context which meaning is salient in any
given instance. My aim was to understand the different meanings of authenticityas
employed in social practice rather than to accept at face value the usuallyunexamined
dichotomy between what is and what is not authentic.
The staff at New Salem use the term authenticityconsciously and frequently, and they
want to work toward the approximation of a believable simulation, if not an accurate
one, in part because their reputations and their professional identities depend on it.
They are defined byothers and define themselves as experts on the 1830s.We maythen
ask, Have the museum professionals achieved authenticity at New Salem in either the
first or second senses? Is New Salem either a credible simulation or true to the 1830s
original? How well do the museum professionals achieve their objectives? I begin with
some trivialexamples and then move to deeper levels, from the explicit to the implicit,
aswe penetrate the unexamined and the taken-for-granted.3
The Site
One day the superintendent sawa gasoline can exposed to public viewin the cooper
shop, and he requested that in the future it be hidden from the visitors. If the gasoline
can was needed, he said, it could be retained, but it should not be visible. On another
occasion, one of the interpreters constructed a flower bed outside the Sam Hill house,
as after the construction of a new road there was a patch of ground that got muddy in
the rainand the touriststrackedmud into the house. When the assistantsuperintendent
sawthe flowers she said they looked "ridiculous"and were not "authentic,"as there were
no flower beds in the 1830s,and she promptly replaced the flowers with less obtrusive
wood shavings. Although one could raise questions about the shavings, in these two
cases items considered inappropriate, a gasoline can and flowers, were simplyreplaced
or removed from the tourist view.Authenticity in either the first sense of believable or
the second as genuine cannot be taken for granted; there is backsliding, and the site
needs constant monitoring and editing.
At New Salem there are many conscious compromises to authenticity. Some are
necessaryfor the creation or longevity of the site, while others (most) are designed to
make the visitors' experience more enjoyable. These compromises are the little white
lies of historical reconstruction. They make the reconstructed New Salem better than
the original, at least for contemporary tourists.
Here are examples. Gutters are constructed on the log cabins to channel rainwater.
Inthe past the animals would roam free, but now they are fenced in so thatanimal waste
is not scattered throughout the village and so that visitors are protected. There are
fences, made to look as if they were original, that are designed to direct the flow of
tourist traffic. Unobtrusive restrooms have been built with drinking fountains on the
side,a convenience not found in the 1830s.Along the path, benches have been erected
so that the visitors may sit and rest. The road is now paved so that when it rains the
touristsdo not have to walk in the mud. The schoolhouse in the 1830s was located 1.5
miles awayfrom the village, but it has been reconstructed inside the compound for the
convenience of the visitors.The carding mill is supposedly operated entirely by animal
power,byoxen moving in a circle, but it has a hidden motor. The Rutledge Tavern and
402 AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST [96, 1994
the firstBerry-Lincoln Store have electric heaters placed so that they cannot be seen by
the tourists. The caulking between the logs on the sides of the cabins is now made of
cement, but in the 1830s cement had not yet been invented. There isadisguised security
gate around the entire village to protect against vandalism, as well as a security system
and alarm boxes, which the tourists never see. At one time New Salem provided
self-guided commentaries from recording devices, which have since been removed; but
there are still small wires sticking out from some of the houses. As the houses are old,
they periodically need renovation. In one case over 50 percent of a house wasrenovated,
and the state building codes required that a ramp be built for persons who use
wheelchairs. A flagstone ramp wasconstructed as required, but is kept covered up with
leaves and dirt so that it will be less conspicuous. At New Salem the lawnis now mowed.
I asked the superintendent if they mowed in the 1830sand he replied that theyprobably
did not, adding that if you do not mow your lawn in central Illinois now you are not
regarded as a good citizen. Many more such examples of conscious compromises to a
believable or precise replication could be presented, but more subtle factorsareatwork,
to which I now turn.
The houses at the 1990s New Salem represent the original 1830s houses, thus they
are weathered to look old so that they will be more credible, as the original houses
existed 160 years ago. The 1830s houses, however, actually looked much newer, as the
village of New Salem wasfounded in 1829 and abandoned by 1839, a period of only ten
years. The 1830s houses were not occupied long enough to look aged, hence the 1990s
houses at New Salem appear older than the originals. This example shows that there is
a tension between the firstand second meanings of authenticity.To the degree that the
houses look old and weathered, they are more credible to the visitors but are a less
accurate reproduction of the 1830s. The houses also look more respectable than those
of the original village, as all are substantial log houses and there are no cabins, shacks,
or flimsy structures, which maywell have existed in the 1830s village. Thus 1990s New
Salem presents a more suburbanversion of history,and this is built into the construction
of the houses and the site. Again, it makes the site more believable to 1990s tourists, but
less true to the 1830s original.
In the 1830s, over the ten yearsof occupation, the surrounding trees were cut down
to obtain lumber for building and for firewood; but in the reconstructed New Salem,
the trees have been allowed to grow and hence the foliage is more dense and lush. In
the 1990s the thick stand of trees at New Salem gives the village a much more ruraland
rustic appearance than in the 1830s.
The interpreters are in period dress, but they have a special problem with eyeglasses.
The volunteers and the staff do wear their own eyeglasses, which they need, but some
have bought small round "granny"glasses, as these are somehow thought to look more
"old-fashioned." The costumes in general present a dilemma, as no one really knows
about the dress of the original occupants of New Salem. There are no specific records
about attire.
AJune 19, 1936, newspaper account from the PeoriaJournalreads as follows: "Four
guides at the village wearjeans jackets and trousers, linsey-woolsey shirts and leather
boots as part of their costumes, to portraythe role of the original residents."Although
jeans, wool shirts, and boots mayhave been an acceptable version of 1830sdress for the
1930s, this is no longer the case in the 1990s, as most students and many visitors
themselves now wearjeans. There has to be some difference in attire to distinguish
between the tourists and those who play the parts of the original residents. What was
proper 1830s dress in 1930 is not proper in 1990; in terms of the concepts developed in
this essay,what was considered authentic in the sense of credible in one historical era
has changed in the course of 60 years. Standards change, and what any era considers
authentic moves in and out of consciousness. The museum professionals at historic sites
realize that they need to be awareof the public's sense of what is believable-a complex
problem, because there are many publics; because some persons are more aware,
403ESSAY
knowledgeable, or skepticalthan others; and because the professional's and the public's
view are not independent, for each shapes and is shaped by the other, in dialogic
interplay.
When I initiated research at New Salem in 1988, there was little discussion of the
interpreter's costumes; but this changed during the summer of 1990. At that time some
of the staff made the criticism that too many interpreters dressed the same, that all the
costumes seemed to be derived from the television series "LittleHouse on the Prairie,"
that everyone wore workclothing, and that they all looked like farmers.As the accuracy
of the costumes was called into question, an internal dialogue began among the staff
about authenticity. As Lionel Trilling (1972) notes, authenticity becomes an issue only
after a doubt arises.
The debate about clothing reminded me somewhat of Victor Turner's concept of
social drama, and illustratesthe constructivistprocess atworkin showing how the culture
at New Salem is continually reinvented. At first the styleof clothing wassimplyaccepted
and wasneither examined nor discussed. The critique of clothing practices emerged as
an abrupt breach, as a rupture of accepted custom, leading to a period of doubt, wide
discussion, and a mounting crisis.Alternative clothing styleswere explored, and experts
were consulted. New dress patterns were devised and the issue was at least temporarily
resolved. The dispute was less about what genuinely existed in the 1830s New Salem,
which no one knew, and more about the issue of credibility, about what was currently
acceptable 1830s dress. In all probability, the issue will arise again in the future and the
cycle will be repeated.
During the discussion about clothing, someone made the point that costumes should
reflect class distinctions. It was argued that as the residents of the Sam Hill house were
rich, as Hill was a successful merchant, and those of the Burner house were poor, they
should have different costumes. Current views of class disparities were projected into
the past. Thus the interpreters at the Hill house, for example, were to wear upper-class
clothing, and those at the poorer Burner house were to wear working-classdress-except
for Mrs. Hinsley.9She was a volunteer interpreter assigned to the Galiher house,
known to be a poor 1830s family. In the new vision, Mrs.Hinsley was expected to wear
poor work clothing; but she was interested in clothing, had nice outfits of her own
design, wanted to dress well, and wore what was considered to be inappropriate "rich"
clothing. Mrs. Hinsley was a point of resistance, and no one could change her. She
expressed her own individualityin dress.
Authenticity is a struggle. From the point of view of the professional staff, who have
the goal of making New Salem a believable or genuine reproduction, one constantly
has to be aware of possible inauthenticities. But there are even more fundamental
problems, as the inauthentic is built into the fabric of New Salem, into the details of
construction, and into the social practices of production of the site.
Each log house is named for its most prominent resident, and when the visitorscome,
the interpreters tell the story of the occupants of that particular house. For example,
there are the Rutledge Tavern, the Onstot house, the Hill house, and so forth. Manyof
the buildings in the 1830s, however, were occupied by a series of families, and the
Onstots lived in three different residences, as did others. The first Berry-Lincolnstore
was only a store for a few months, but because of the importance of Abraham Lincoln
and the widely known storythat he wasa shopkeeper, the Berry-Lincolnname has been
given to the residence. The consequence is to fix history, to solidify and to simplify it.
Although the focus ison a single resident familyfor each dwelling, the storytold about
that particular family is one of transitoriness, of when the familyarrived,what they did
at New Salem, and when they departed. Although these narrative histories are not
necessarily inaccurate, theywould not appear to be the stories that 1830sresidents would
have told about themselves, at least not in their finality, for at the end of each story the
family leaves the community, providing an absolute ending. Each narrativecontains a
complete cycle of transition, beginning with when the family came and ending when it
404 [96,1994AMERICAN ANTHROPOIOGIST
left. Clearly, such stories could not have been told until at least 1839, after the village
had been abandoned. This retrospective perspective serves to reinforce the master
narrative of New Salem, the transition of Abraham Lincoln from common laborer to
educated lawyerand politician, in preparation for his life work of leading the nation in
the CivilWarand saving the Union. If New Salem is seen as a site of transformation for
its hero Abraham Lincoln, then the individual stories of each familyreplicate the larger
narrativestructure.
Not only is each house given the name of only one former resident, but in each house
there is only a single interpreter, a concession to a limited state budget. The visitors
move from house to house, serially, and in each house the interpreter provides
information about one or another aspect of life in the 1830s.There areno groups talking
and visiting together, no scenes of surrounding farmers coming with their families to
town to sell grain, to repair tools, to see a doctor, to buy supplies, or to pick up their
mail at the post office. New Salem is thus presented as a village of autonomous homes
and isolated individuals, without any sense of group or community activity,with the
consequence that the 1990srepresentation provides a distorted viewof 1830s life. There
are special events at New Salem, like craftor quilt shows, but even then the visitorsmove
serially through the display booths, visiting them in sequence. The result is that 1830s
life is devoid of its group character and is presented much more like 1990s suburban
life in America, where neighbors live in their individual homes and are socially isolated
from one another.
Taylor and Johnson (1993) note that New Salem does not have any interpreters
representing the frontier toughs, "Clary'sGrove boys,"and the carousing, gamboling,
cockfighting, hard drinkers who were part of 1830s pioneer life in New Salem. The
roughnecks have been left out of history.This concession to middle-class sensibilities is
similar to Colonial Williamsburgignoring blacks, the "other half' of Williamsburg life
(Gable et al. 1992), at least until recently. There is, however, no current movement to
represent the frontier roughnecks in New Salem.
New Salem is an outdoor museum, and like all museums, the wayit is apprehended
by the visitors is primarily visual. The tourists do hear about the 1830s from the
interpreters inside the homes, generally in the form of oral narratives, and there is
conversation, butas the touristswalkabout the village their mode of perception ismainly
visual. Basically,they look. They almost never hear two or more interpreters talking to
each other. However, the 1830smaywell have been more of an oral than avisualculture,
characterized by the exchange of information, by talking, gossiping, and telling. As this
dimension is less dominant in the 1990s New Salem, the waythe villagewasexperienced
and the sensory mode through which it wasperceived in the twoeras maybe fundamen-
tallydifferent.
Aswe can see, it isimpossible to make ahistoric reproduction accuratein everyregard,
especially with limited knowledge and resources; the best one can hope for is a
representation that the touristsare willing to accept. Even if the log houses of the 1990s
prairie village were an exact physical replica of the original 1830s, in every detail, the
question could then be raised: How does one make authentic the sensory mode of
experiencing and indeed the verymeaning of the site?
There are truly momentous differences between the 1830s and the 1990s. One
difference, almost too obvious to mention, is that most persons in the 1990s New Salem
are tourists, while in the 1830s there were no tourists, although there were visitors,
travelers,and traders.Also, the 1990s New Salem is an idealized community that leaves
out the conflict, tension, and dirt of the 1830s. New Salem in the 1990s is presented as
an idyllic, peaceful, harmonious village.
The craftactivitiesin New Salem in the 1830swere considered to be the most modern
and advanced technology of the time, designed for efficiency and survival,but in the
1990s the same handicrafts represent nostalgia for an earlier period when material
culture wasmade byhand and waslocallyproduced. The meaning of craftwascompletely
405ESSAY
different in the two historical eras. In the 1830s New Salem was a commercial trading
center, and when Lincoln migrated there he probably thought he was moving to an
urban center; but in the 1990s New Salem, for many, is rural, isolated, self-contained,
rustic, and folk-like (cf. Whisnant 1983), in opposition to the commercialism, materialism,
and fragmentation of 20th-century America.
The 1990s New Salem features Abraham Lincoln-indeed, the site is called Lincoln's
New Salem, or as an official in the state tourist bureau told me, "Whatwe sell in Illinois
is Lincoln"-but AbrahamLincoln wasnot thatprominent in the 1830svillage. Lincoln
left New Salem in 1837, and by 1839 the village was abandoned when the county seat
was moved to another location. Thereafter, from 1839 to 1860, New Salem was unmarked
and effectively out of history. Then, in 1860, when Lincoln became the
presidential nominee of the Republican party, campaign biographers and politicians
constructed the political image of Abraham Lincoln as Honest Abe, the rail-splitter,the
common man of the prairies, the man of humble origin who stood in opposition to the
Eastern establishment. In fact, in 1860 Lincoln wasa corporate lawyerin Springfield, a
man of wealth and power, who had married into a socially prominent family. After
Lincoln wasassassinatedin 1865, he became the martyredleader, the Christfigure who
gave his life so the nation might live, who was sacrificed for the Union. Thus arose the
mythic Lincoln, the greatAmerican folk hero, celebrated in novels, songs, poems, plays,
biographies, and textbooks, known by every schoolchild in America.
In 1897 local residents formed a Chautauqua Association to reconstruct New Salem,
60 years after Lincoln had left the village. The interest in restoration arose after most
of the original settlerswho had known Lincoln had passed away.Possiblythe movement
to restore the site wasan effort to preserve the memory of a wayof life fast disappearing,
as the old pioneers who had first settled the land were dying off. The oral traditions
about AbrahamLincoln were recorded in a number of books (Herndon and Weik 1889;
Onstot 1902;and Reep 1927) long afterLincoln had lived in New Salem. The Old Salem
Lincoln League gathered the elders together to tell their stories in 1918, after the village
of New Salem had already been abandoned for 79 years. The present-day New Salem
was reconstructed during the 1930s, a full century after the old village had been
occupied. The point is that the present-dayrestoration of the 1830s New Salem attempts
to reconstruct the historical and the mythic Lincoln, but this history and myth did not
yet exist in the 1830s, for it emerged only after 1865, a disjuncture illustrative of the
many built-in paradoxes, ambiguities, and ironies at this historic site.
Two Stores
The challenge in this anthropological analysisis to transcend the opposition between
the authentic and the inauthentic. In considering the 1830s and the 1990s, there is no
need to prioritize, to define one as better than, more real than, more basic than, or
more authentic than the other, nor does such a qualitativecomparison typicallyoccur
to visitors at historic sites. There is the 1830s New Salem and there is the 1990s New
Salem. The 1830s village was historically prior, it came first, whereas the 1990s New
Salem came later and conforms to 1990s sensibilities, allowing visitors to attribute their
own meanings to the site. The point may seem obvious, but the implications will be
developed by examining two New Salem stores.
The first Berry-Lincoln store, where Lincoln worked in the 1830s as a storekeeper,
has been reconstructed as a store selling souvenirs to the visitors, unlike other reconstructed
stores in New Salem such as the second Berry-Lincoln, the Hill-McNeil, and
Offutt's, which do not have items for sale. The first Berry-Lincolnstore is operated by
the New Salem Lincoln League for profit, with volunteer salespersons in period dress.
It isquite successful and the proceeds are used to support the activitiesof the site. When
the store firstbegan, the New Salem Lincoln League formed an authenticity committee
to check on each item sold; but these early efforts met with limited success. They
AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST [96, 1994406
eventually hired a professional manager for the store who had an eye on the bottom
line. The new manager selected inventory that sold, and the authenticity committee no
longer met.
Itwillbe instructiveto examine the inventoryof the Berry-Lincolnstore. Ithasbecome
acraft shop, with many handmade items, including pottery, baskets, quilts, rugs, stuffed
dolls, brooms, large wooden ladles, copper pots, products of the carding shop such as
small barrels and tubs, pattern books of early American clothing, coonskin caps, and
candles. I was told that many tourists come asking for objects made in the craft shops
of New Salem, but my observation was that they did a brisk business in all items, and
that the shop wasfrequently crowded with tourists.When I asked the volunteer if their
inventory was representative of the items sold in the 1830s store, the answer was that
they want everything they sell to be "authentic to the era,"which means that it could
have been made in the 1830s. This is authenticity in the sense of credibility. When I
inquired if touristsask for authentic items, the replywas that the question rarelycomes
up.
The setting is a log cabin; the storekeepers are dressed in 1830s clothing; the objects
sold look "oldfashioned," "country,"or "folk";and myinterviewssuggest that the tourists
accept itassuch. To the degree thatthe museum professionals are successful in adhering
to the goal of creating acredible reproduction based on verisimilitude-that is,ahistoric
site believable to the visitors-the probability will be greater that the tourists will be
satisfied with what they find at the site. It is important to note that the discussion has
turned from the museum professionals to the tourists. Itwould be a mistake to assume
that the distinctions made in this essay about the concept of authenticity used by
museum professionals would necessarilybe the same distinctions made by the tourists.
Museum professionals are the producers, whereas touristsare the consumers, and they
do not approach the site in the same way.Tourists know, of course, that the objects they
purchase are not from the 1830s and that many are not even reproductions of 1830s
objects, and they may realize that no store in the 1830s ever had an inventory like the
present first Berry-Lincoln store. They are buying souvenirs, mementos of their trip to
New Salem, gifts for those back home, and not necessarily "authentic"objects or even
objects that are "authentic reproductions."
We have no direct knowledge of the inventory of the first Berry-Lincoln store in the
1830s at New Salem, as no records have been found; but we do know that other stores
in the prairies at that time period stocked items such as varnish, shellac, paint ingredients,
dyes, spectacles, spices, knives,axes, tools, pens and ink, hardware,thread, buttons,
needles, jewelry, liquor, china, books, textiles, hats, window glass, tin pans, nails,
gunpowder, door locks and hinges, and foodstuffs such as coffee, tea, sugar, flour, rice,
cheese, and molasses (Atherton 1939; Kwedar et al. 1980). There were fashionable
goods from Eastern wholesalers, manufactured items, and products from Europe.
Tourists in the 1990s are not interested in these 1830s items, or if they are, the items
are better purchased elsewhere than in the New Salem craft shop.
Given the inventories of the 1830s and the 1990s stores, we can see clearly that each
of the first Berry-Lincoln stores stocked items that met the needs of their respective
clientele. The older store sold items necessary for the survival of the 1830s prairie
pioneers, while the contemporary store with its handmade crafts sells souvenirs to the
1990s tourists. Each store is meaningful in its era, and I do not see what we gain by
privileging one at the expense of the other. It is the postmodernists and the social
theorists who makejudgmental evaluations, as I will show in the next section.
Discussion
Myargument about authenticity and reproductions is different than the postmodern
one presented by Baudrillard and Eco and is also different than the position taken by
such theorists as MacCannell and Handler in their writingsabout tourism, authenticity,
ESSAY 407
andhistoric sites.1?I begin byframing myargument in termsof the postmodernist vision,
then turn to MacCannell and Handler, then develop some of the implications of my
constructivistperspective.
ForBaudrillard and Eco, the simulacrum becomes the true, the copy becomes the
originalor even better than the original. In postmodern hyperreality,allwe have is pure
simulacra,for origins are lost, or are not recoverable, or never existed, or there was no
original reality. As Baudrillard (1983:48) says, "itis alwaysa false problem to want to
restore the truth beneath the simulacrum." This is the postmodern condition, one
specific to our electronic era, argues Baudrillard. I argue that this is the human
condition, for all cultures continually invent and reinvent themselves. In the 1830s
duringthe development of New Salem, there wasa prior image, the cultural knowledge
ofhow other prairievillages in central Illinois were built in the 1820s. We could saythat
the 1830svillagewasacopy based on a model of 1820svillages,adapted to the conditions
of the 1830s, modified in accordance with the particular situation of the New Salem
locality,and subject to whatever creative modifications were devised by the New Salem
residents.We all enter society in the middle, and culture is alwaysin process (Turner
and Bruner 1986).
Thisperspective, which I have been advocating for the past few decades (e.g., Bruner
1973, 1984, 1993a), has sometimes been known as the constructivist position. Recently
it has been called the "invention of culture" tradition, and has produced important
studies (e.g., Babcock 1990; Borofsky 1987; Handler and Linnekin 1984; Hanson 1989;
Hobsbawnand Ranger 1983; Hymes 1975;Wagner 1975). But the roots of the perspective
are really very old, going back to Wilhelm Dilthey, John Dewey, George Herbert
Mead,and the American pragmatists; to the writings in the 1920sof the great Russian
literaryscholar Mikhail Bakhtin; to Roland Barthes and the poststructuralists;and to
performance theory (cf. Bauman 1992).
The constructivistview that culture is emergent, alwaysalive and in process is widely
accepted today (Lavieet al.1993). This is not the place to present an intellectual history
of the perspective or to discuss its variations, but what all proponents have in common
is the view that the meaning of the text is not inherent in the text but emerges from
how people read or experience the text. All share the view that socialization is at best
an imperfect mechanism for cultural transmission, and that each new performance or
expression of cultural heritage is a copy in that it alwayslooks back to a prior performance,
but each is also an original in that it adapts to new circumstances and conditions.
AsHandler and Linnekin (1984:288) argue, "Allgenuine traditions are spurious ... all
spurious traditions are genuine"; or as Geertz (1986:380) says, "Itis the copying that
originates." We could say that the 1990s New Salem is an original because each
reproduction in the process of emerging constructs its own original-or better yet, as I
advocate in this essay,we could just abandon the distinction.
In our era both the 1830s New Salem and the 1990sNew Salem are continually being
constructed in an endless process of production and reproduction. All we have of the
1830s now are a few artifacts, archeological remains, old records, stories, and mental
models of the old prairievillage, models that mayexist vividlyin the imagination of the
public and the historians, but that are ever-changing. We are continually reconstructing
the 1830sNew Salem, rewriting history to fit the era,just aswe rewriteAbraham Lincoln
(e.g., Basler 1935). The 20th-century New Salem has changed many times and has been
totally rebuilt at least twice. An earlier effort to restore the village in 1918 was razed to
the ground in 1932, and a second restoration occurred in stages during the 1930s.
Periodically, the log houses receive additions and modifications, as do the interiors. In
the 1990s,a new visitorand orientation center wasopened, the location of the store was
moved, and a restaurant at the entrance to the parkwas built.
It is not just that the 1990s and the 1830s New Salem are always in process of
construction, but that the 1990s New Salem influences our conception of the 1830s. In
other words, what is called the copy changes our view of the original, a problem that
408 AMERICANANTHROPOl.OGIST [96, 1994
haunts Taussig's (1993) book on Mimesisand Alterity.Academic historians would agree
that the 1990s New Salem, by its verypresence, overemphasizes the importance of New
Salem on the earlyAbraham Lincoln, to the neglect of the formative influences of the
earlier Indiana years and the time spent at Vandalia. Lincoln was 22 years old when he
arrived at New Salem, already an adult, and his truly formative adolescent years were
spent elsewhere. The historian MarkE. Neeley (1982:222) suggests that New Salem as
a tourist attraction mayhave served to inflate the importance of the New Salem yearsin
Lincoln biographies. Thus a 20th-century touristic representation may have distorted
the discourse of professional historians, and hence our understanding of the 1830s.
In their work on authenticity, hyperreality, and the simulacrum, Baudrillard, Eco,
MacCannell, and Handler all are making a critique of the culture of the West and of
America. MacCannell (1976) makes the claim that tourists are so dissatisfied with their
own culture that they seek authentic experiences elsewhere. MacCannell's work was
rooted in the 1960s and repeated the old 19th-century critique of Western civilization,
of alienated man in search of self.
Handler and Saxton (1988) have a similar position. They write, "Forliving-history
practitioners, as for many of us, everydayexperience is 'unreal' or inauthentic, hence
alienating. Practitionersseek to regain an authentic world, and to realize themselves in
the process, through simulation of historical worlds" (1988:243). For MacCannell,
tourists seek authenticity in another place, in a tourist site;for Handler and Saxton, it
is in another time period, in a historic site. Authenticity for Handler (1986) has to do
with our "trueself,"and for him and Saxton (1988:243), "anauthentic experience . . .
is one in which individuals feel themselves to be in touch both with a 'real' world and
with their 'real' selves,"which assumes that our everydayworlds are not experienced as
real or authentic. In the work of MacCannell and Handler and Saxton, the quest for
authenticity is doomed, or as they point out, it is a failed quest, because the verysearch
destroys the authenticity of the object, which before the quest was presumed to be
pristine and untouched. These authors thus assume an original pure state, an authentic
culture in the thirdsense, like the ethnographic present, before contact. Itisasif history
begins with tourism, which then pollutes the world.11
MacCannell and Handler saythat tourists are looking for authenticity, but it may be
these contemporary intellectuals who are the ones looking for authenticity, and who
have projected onto the tourists their own view of themselves. The museum professionals
who say that a historic site is an authentic reproduction use authenticityin the first
and second senses, not the third. The question is,who are the ones seeking authenticity?
Trilling's (1972) insight again is that authenticity emerges to consciousness when a
doubt arises. Those in the early 20th century in central Illinois who found themselves
in the predicament of having to reconstruct an 1830s New Salem without adequate
knowledge became concerned with authenticity. In our era, anthropologists, museum
curators, historians, serious collectors, and art dealers aswell as some tourists acknowledge
that they are seeking authenticity. I agree with Appadurai (1986:44-45) that
authenticity todayisbecoming amatter of the politics of connoisseurship, of the political
economy of taste, and of status discrimination; beyond that, Iwould claim, it is a matter
of power, of who has the right to authenticate.
The concept of authority serves as a corrective to misuses of the term authenticity,
because in raisingthe issue of who authenticates, the nature of the discussion ischanged.
No longer is authenticity a property inherent in an object, forever fixed in time; it is
seen as a struggle, a social process, in which competing interests argue for their own
interpretation of history. Culture is seen as contested, emergent, and constructed, and
agency and desire become part of the discourse. When actors use the term authenticity,
ethnographers may then ask what segment of society has raised a doubt, what is no
longer taken for granted, what are the societal struggles, and whatare the cultural issues
at work.These are ethnographic questions, empirical questions, requiring investigation
and research. Grand theorizing gives wayto ethnography.
409ESSAY
There are twofundamental problems with the essentialist vocabularyof originals and
copies, of the authentic and the inauthentic. One is that, despite claims to the contrary,
there frequently is an implicit original, an authenticity in the third sense. For the
postmodernists the original is Europe and America is a satellite. Baudrillard (1988) says
that he knew all about America "whenI wasstill in Paris"(1988:5), claims thatAmerica
"wasborn of a riftwith the Old World"(1988:10), assertsthat "the truth of America can
only be seen by a European" (1988:28), and contends that America is "the only
remaining primitive society" (1988:7). If for the postmodernists the original is civilized
Europe, then for MacCannell and Handler the original is before alienation, the pure
state,located elsewhere, around the bend, beneath or behind the touristicor the historic
site.
The second problem with essentialist vocabularyis that there is a built-injudgmental
bias that regards one side of the dichotomy as better so that the other side becomes
denigrated. It usually implies that originals are better than copies or, as the postmodernists
Baudrillardand Eco say,the exact opposite, which is still the inverse of the same
binarylogic. The consequence of the project of Baudrillard,Eco, and MacCannell (and
Boorstin 1961) is to diminish historical sites like New Salem because they are seen as
inauthentic, as pseudo, as surface, as plastic, as simulacra,as hyperreality,even as fakes.
It also implies that copies are based on originals, but from a constructivist perspective,
the process may not be that simple. Sometimes an object is constructed in the contemporary
era and then an older form is somehow "discovered"as a hypothetical original
to add historic depth and legitimacy. To label one form a copy highlights the features
that are similar to the supposed original, and may not adequately take account of the
differences or of the variations in the societal context within which the originals and
the copies were produced. The vocabulary of origins and reproductions and of the
authenticity and the inauthentic may not adequately acknowledge that both are constructions
of the present.
Conclusion
Let us turn to my speculations about the tourists. If the tourists are not buying into
scripts of postmodern hyperreality or authenticity, then what are they buying at New
Salem?In their writings, Baudrillard and Eco make grand generalizations about America,
without nuances. They use homogenizing monolithic language when they write
about Americans, and they do not differentiate among the many kinds of tourists of
historic sites. They fail to recognize the constructed nature of the meanings of historic
sites.
In the view argued here, the meanings of New Salem Historic Site for tourists are
constructed in the performance of the site, as visitorsmove through the village and as
they interact with the interpreters. Experiencing the site gives rise to meanings that
might not have been predicted before the visit,so thatthe site in this sense is generative.
Itis not that all meaning is individual and idiosyncratic-for of course there are cultural
patterns, as I will demonstrate-but meanings are generated in a social context. An
ethnographic perspective is needed to examine the social organizational settings within
which New Salem is experienced. Baudrillardand Eco reflect none of this complexity.
For example, many visitors to theme parks come as family groups, not as isolated
individuals, so that the family becomes the basic social unit for processing the touristic
experience, and as such the visitfrequently assumes an educational focus (Willis 1993).
At New Salem, especially when school is in session, busloads of schoolchildren arrive
with their teachers on class outings to the site. One day there were forty different bus
loads of schoolchildren at New Salem, and the educational function was quite explicit.
Another time a group of immigrants from Chicago, taking their citizenship training
class, spent a hurried two hours rushing through New Salem. In these cases, parents or
teachers or immigration officials were explaining the meaning of New Salem, empha-
410 AMERICANANTHROPOI,OGIST [96, 1994
sizing the role of AbrahamLincoln in American history.The recipients of the knowledge
had come to New Salem as children, students, or learners.
I have shared the New Salem experience with a troop of 7- and 8-year-oldgirl scouts,
on an all-dayouting with their scout leader, supported by a few parent volunteers, and
the main attraction appeared to be cooking beef stew for lunch on a wood-burning
fireplace. It seemed to take hours for the stew to cook, everyone was hungry, and the
conversation centered on the life of the early pioneers who settled in central Illinois,
and particularlyon the difficulty of that life. This was a recurrent theme among many
of the visitors.
One farmer from Illinois entered a log house where one of the interpreters was
spinning wool. The farmer stated that when he was a child there wasa spinning wheel
in his home very similar to the one at New Salem, and he recalled images of his
grandmother sitting at the spinning wheel telling stories about her earlylife on a family
farmin the prairies.That experience of New Salem wasveryevocative, but many tourists
make associations between what they see at the site and their personal lives. The
meaning of New Salem is emergent in the social context of the visitor'sexperience of
the site.
A judge told me how he loved to come to New Salem very early on snowy winter
mornings so that he could walk,in solitude, on the same hallowed ground thatAbraham
Lincoln had walked. The judge had practiced law in the same district as had Lincoln.
He had a bronze bust of Lincoln in his office, he had played the partof Lincoln in local
theatricalproductions, he wastalland thin, he physicallyresembled Lincoln, and clearly
he had made a personally meaningful identification.
Visitors to New Salem include Lincoln buffs, antique collectors, retired people
making their way through the theme parks of America, sophisticated urbanites from
Chicago on a visit to the "rural"hinterlands, and university professors entertaining
foreign visitors. It is indeed a varied audience. Tourists are not monolithic, and neither
is the meaning of the site. There are many New Salems (Bodnar 1992). Tourists
construct a past thatismeaningful to them and that relates to their livesand experiences,
and this is the waythat meanings are constructed at historic sites.
Whatencourages the local production of meaning is the formatof dialogic interaction
between the interpreter and small groups of tourists who move from house to house.
As the interpreter tells about Lincoln or about the 1830s village or about the history of
the original residents, the tourists have an opportunity to ask questions and to interact
with the interpreter. Although the tourists have received the main message of the
museum professionals, of New Salem as the site of Lincoln's transformation presented
to them in the orientation video and the brochures, their relationship to the interpreters
has a more personal and immediate quality. The interpreters, too, have received the
official messages of the site, primarily in training sessions and in manuals, but they
frequently depart from the official scripts and move off in their own directions.12The
tourists, aswe have seen, bring their own concerns and interests to the interaction. The
result is a very open format, more like a discussion than a lecture, one that allows for
improvisation and that facilitates the constructivist process.
I found many instances of a playful quality to the interaction, whereas much of the
literature emphasizes the seriousness of the tourist quest and experience.13The interaction
between interpretive guides and visitors at historic sites may be oriented to
enjoyment as much as to discovery of historic fact. For example, one time on the
reconstructed Mayflowerin Plymouth, which does first-person interpretation, I saw a
woman guide in period dress. She told me that it wasa long and arduousjourney across
the ocean, that she had lost her husband on the voyage, and that she felt so lonely in
this vast new country. Then she looked me straight in the eye and winked, and I could
not tell if it was a 1620s wink or a 1990s wink. On numerous occasions, interpreters at
New Salem will engage in light banter and joking behavior with the visitors.A woman
storekeeper in period dress will say to the assembled tourists, "Whathave you come to
ESSAY 411
purchase today?"Such an inquiry, an example of slippage from third to firstperson, will
lead to humorous conversation about the goods sold in the store or the 1830s prices,
noting how low they were compared to today's prices. In these settings, many tourists
playwith time frames and experiment with alternative realities; it is a good wayto learn
about the past. Visits to historic sites have a strong entertainment and playful quality.
In the course of my fieldwork, I often remained in one location and noted how the
topic of conversation changed with the arrivalof each new group of tourists. Also, I
followed some groups from house to house, and noted how the discourse and even the
roles changed as persons moved through the village.The roles of touristand interpreter
are not fixed. A mother who had been a tourist began to explain New Salem to her
children, and at that point she was in a sense becoming an interpreter, switching roles.
Subjectivitiesand motives change, even within one individual, even during the course
of a single visit.
Although individuals construct their own meanings, I found there were clearly
recurring patterns and generalizations that emerged. In reporting on what I learned
about the meaning of New Salem to the tourists, I acknowledge that my findings are
hypotheses and that they are my own constructions of meaning, open to further study
and testing. In addition to learning about the pastand enjoying the historic site, Ifound
the following three major themes.
First,some tourists to New Salem are consuming nostalgia, the hand-crafted and the
locallyproduced, in opposition to machine age materialism.Manytouriststo New Salem
view the village with a sense of nostalgia for a vanished past, for an imagined time when
life wasmore natural, purer, and simpler-in effect a Midwestequivalent of the Garden
of Eden. Manysee in New Salem the image of earlypioneer life in the prairies, a return
to the first settlers in central Illinois. For these tourists, New Salem is an Illinois origin
myth, a prairie pastoral.
Second, as visitorswalk through the village they are also buying the idea of progress,
of how far we have advanced, for the one question that the interpreters repeatedly ask
is,Would you like to livebackin the 1830s,when life wasso hard?The answerisinvariably
no. The theme of progress is prominent in New Salem discourse. The emphasis is on
the contrast between the hardships of the 1830sand the conveniences of the 1990s. The
two themes mentioned thus far are not in conflict, because where the first focuses on
the simplicity of life in the past, the second focuses on the severity of that life. In the
first, technology is seen as evil;in the second, as progress. Manyvisitorshold both views
simultaneously. In their imagination, they yearn for a simpler life. But they are not
alienated beings; they want modern 1990s conveniences, and they would not be willing
to give up their 1990s lives in exchange for the 1830s.
Finally, many tourists are also buying a commemoration of traditional America, of
honest values, good neighbors, hard work,virtue and generosity, the success ideology,
and the sense of community in small-townAmerica. The tourists are seeking in New
Salem a discourse that enables them to better reflect on their lives in the 1990s. New
Salem and similar sites enact an ideology, recreate an origin myth, keep history alive,
attach tourists to a mythical collective consciousness, and commodify the past. The
particularpasts that touristscreate/imagine at historic sites maynever have existed. But
historic sites like New Salem do provide visitorswith the raw material (experiences) to
construct a sense of identity, meaning, attachment, and stability. In the America of
Baudrillard and Eco, copies refer only to themselves, no origin myths pertain, and no
collective realityis invoked. This, however, is an America of their own imaginations and
not an America of everydaypractices.
Following Zipes (1979), New Salem can be read in two different ways.There is the
pessimistic view (Haraway 1984; Wallace 1981), which sees museums and historic sites
as exploitative, as strengthening the ruling classes, as deceit, as false consciousness, as
manipulation of the imagination of alreadyalienated beings. Or there is the optimistic
view,which focuses on the utopian potential for transformation, offers hope for a better
rAr 1 A j
412 AMERICANANTHROPOI,OGIST [96, 1994
life, says people can take charge of their lives and change themselves and their culture.
The story of Abraham Lincoln is, as Zipes writes (1979:119), the "folk tale motif of the
swineherd who becomes a prince," but there is revolutionary potential in this fantasy,
for it can be heroic and can lead to greater-not less-contact with social life. In this
respect, fantasy, art, and historic sites have a similar function.
In postmodern writings, contemporary American tourist attractions tend to be described
in ways that replicate elements of the theory of postmodernism, emphasizing
the inauthentic constructed nature of the sites, their appeal to the masses, their
imitation of the past, and their efforts to present a perfected version of themselves. This
is a narrow and distorted view that fails to account for the popularity and frequency of
such sites on the American landscape, that begs the question of the meaning of the sites
to the participants, and that by its denigration of popular American culture and mass
tourist sites imposes an elitist politics blind to its own assumptions.
Notes
Acknowledgments.I wish to thank Richard S. Taylor for his help and friendship; Robert
Johannsen,Jean-Philippe Mathy,Norman Denzin, and the students in my 1992 tourism seminar
for their critical comments; Christina Hardwayfor her many efforts on behalf of the project; the
Hewlett grantprogram and the Center for the Studyof CulturalValues and Ethicsatthe University
of Illinois. Earlier versions of this essaywere presented at the anthropology departments of the
Universities of Wisconsin, Chicago, and Virginia; at the 1992 annual meeting of the American
Anthropological Association; and at a conference on Le Tourisme International entre Tradition
et Modernite, Carrefour Universitaire Mediterraneen, Nice, November 19-21, 1992.
1. Relevant literature on authenticity includes Trilling 1972, MacCannell 1976, Handler 1986,
Appadurai 1986, Cohen 1988, Morris1988, Handler and Saxton 1988, Kirshenblatt-Gimblettand
Bruner 1989, and Bruner 1993a.
2. Following the suggestion of the students in my seminar on tourism that we take a field trip
to explore some of the theories we were reading about, the classwent to New Salem in April 1988.
It wasmy firstvisit. I became fascinated with the site, returned later that season, and worked on
New Salem full time during the summers of 1989 and 1990, with financial support for fieldwork
from the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend and the Universityof Illinois
Research Board. Partof the time wasspent in the librarydoing historical research on New Salem
and the earlyAbraham Lincoln; the remaining time was devoted to participation, observation,
and interviewing at New Salem.
3. In third person, the interpreter talksabout the 1830s;in firstperson, the interpreter adopts
an 1830s persona and speaks from that time perspective.
4. Relevant literature on reconstructed villages, historic sites, theme parks, and museums
includes Wallace 1981, Anderson 1984, Schechner 1985, Lowenthal 1985, Dorst 1989, Karpand
Lavine 1991, Gable et al. 1992, and Willis 1993.
5. The Onstot house, which was moved from New Salem to Petersburg and then, with the
reconstruction, back to New Salem, is an original. The interpretive guides at New Salem point
this out to the visitors.
6. This paragraph relies on Taylor andJohnson (1993), historians at the Illinois Historic
Preservation Agency, the branch of state government in charge of the interpretive program at
New Salem.
7. I make no claim that there are only four meanings of authenticity,only that these four
emerged in myfieldwork. There are other shades of meaning (see the OxfordEnglishDictionary).
If one says,for example, that an object is a counterfeit or a forgery, it implies that the object is
not authentic but wasfalsely or mistakenly presented as an original. To be authentic in this sense
would mean that the object actually is what it professes to be.
8. Afterpresenting myfindings to the superintendent at New Salem, he said that he had never
thought about some of the issues raised in my study,but that the issues now made sense to him,
which is what I mean by penetrating the taken-for-granted.
9. This is a pseudonym.
10. Mycriticism in this essayis of the assumptions in Handler (1986) and Handler and Saxton
(1988), not of Handler and Linnekin (1984) and not of the Colonial Williamsburg research
conducted with Eric Gable. I criticize MacCannell 1976, not MacCannell 1992.
ESSAY 413
11. Criticisms of this position in the tourism literature include Van den Abbeele 1980,
Goldberg 1983, Cohen 1988, Morris 1988, and Bruner 1989 and 1991.
12. Gable and Handler (1993) have made a similar observation at Colonial Williamsburg.
13. Exceptions are Schechner 1985 and Cohen 1988.
References Cited
Anderson,Jay
1984 Time Machines: The World of Living History. Nashville:American Association for State
andLocal History.
Appadurai,Arjun, ed.
1986 The Social Life of Things: Commodities in CulturalPerspective. Cambridge:Cambridge
UniversityPress.
Atherton, Lewis B.
1939 The Pioneer Merchant in Mid-America.NewYork:Da Capo Press.
Babcock,Barbara
1990 By Way of Introduction. In Inventing the Southwest. Special Issue, Journal of the
Southwest32(4):383-437.
Basler,Roy P.
1935 The Lincoln Legend: A Study of Changing Conceptions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Baudrillard,Jean
1983 Simulations. New York:Semiotext(e).
1988 America. London: Verso.
Bauman, Richard
1992 Performance. InFolklore, CulturalPerformances, and Popular Entertainments. Richard
Bauman, ed. Pp. 41-49. New York:Oxford University Press.
Bodnar,John
1992 RemakingAmerica: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotismin the Twentieth
Century.Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.
Boorstin, Daniel
1961 The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York:Harper Row.
Borofsky,Robert
1987 Making History; Pukapukan and Anthropological Constructions of Knowledge. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Bruner, EdwardM.
1973 The Missing Tins of Chicken: A Symbolic Interactionist Approach to Culture Change.
Ethos 1(2):219-238.
1984 [ed.] Text, Play and Story:The Construction and Reconstruction of Self and Society.
1983Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society.Washington, DC:American Anthropological
Association.
1989 On Cannibals, Tourists, and Ethnographers. CulturalAnthropology 4:438-445.
1991 The Transformation of Self in Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 18(2) :238-250.
1993a Epilogue: Creative Persona and the Problem of Authenticity. In Creativity/Anthropology.
SmadarLavie,KirinNarayan,and Renato Rosaldo, eds. Ithaca:Cornell UniversityPress.
1993b New*Salemas a Contested Site. Museum Anthropology 17(3):14-25. Special issue on
Museumsand Tourismedited by EdwardM. Bruner.
Cohen, Erik
1988 Authenticity and Commoditization in Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 15(3):371-
386.
Derrida,Jacques
1974 Of Grammatology. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press.
Dorst,John D.
1989 The Written Suburb: An American Site, an Ethnographic Dilemma. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
Eco, Umberto
1986 Travelsin Hyperreality.InTravelsin Hyperreality:Essays.Pp. 3-58. SanDiego: Harcourt
BraceJovanovich.
414 AMERICANANTHROPOI.OGIST [96,1994
Gable, Eric, and Richard Handler
1993 Colonialist Anthropology at Colonial Williamsburg. Museum Anthropology 17(3):26-
31.
Gable, Eric, Richard Handler, and Anna Lawson
1992 On the Uses of Relativism:Fact, Conjecture, and Black and White Histories at Colonial
Williamsburg. American Ethnologist 19(4):791-805.
Geertz, Clifford
1986 Making Experience, Authoring Selves. In The Anthropology of Experience. Victor
Turner and EdwardM. Bruner, eds. Pp. 373-380. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Goldberg, A.
1983 Identity and Experience in Haitian Voodoo Shows. Annals of Tourism Research
10(4):479-495.
Handler, Richard
1986 Authenticity. Anthropology Today 2(1):2-4.
Handler, Richard, andJocelyn Linnekin
1984 Tradition, Genuine or Spurious.Journal of American Folklore 97(385):273-290.
Handler, Richard, and William Saxton
1988 Dyssimulation: Reflexivity, Narrative, and the Quest for Authenticity in "Living."CulturalAnthropology
3(3):242-260.
Hanson, Allan
1989 The Making of the Maori: Cultural Invention and Its Logic. American Anthropologist
91 (4):890-902.
Haraway,Donna
1984 Teddy Bear Patriarchy:Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936.
Social Text 11:20-64.
Herndon, William H., andJesse William Weik
1889 Herndon's Lincoln: The Story of a Great Life. Chicago: Belford, Clarke.
Hobsbawn, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds.
1983 The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huxtable, Ada Louise
1992 Inventing American Reality. The NewYork Review of Books, December 3, pp. 24-29.
Hymes, Dell
1975 Folklore's Nature and the Sun's Myth.Journal of American Folklore 88:345-369.
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency
n.d. Lincoln's New Salem. Brochure distributed at New Salem Historic Site, Springfield, IL.
Karp,Ivan, and Steven Lavine
1991 Exhibiting Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett,Barbara,and EdwardM. Bruner
1989 Tourism. In International Encyclopedia of Communications, Vol. 4. Pp. 249-253. New
York:Oxford University Press.
Kwedar,Melinda F.,John A. Patterson, andJames R. Allen
1980 Interpreting 1830s Storekeeping in New Salem, Illinois. Report submitted to the
National Endowment for the Humanities, July 1.
Lavie, Smadar, KirinNarayan, and Renato Rosaldo, eds.
1993 Creativity/Anthropology. Ithaca:Cornell University Press.
Lowenthal, Richard
1985 The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
MacCannell, Dean
1976 The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. New York:Schocken.
1992 Empty Meeting Ground: The Tourist Papers. London: Routledge.
Morris, Meaghan
1988 At Henry Parkes Motel. Cultural Studies 2(1):1-47.
Neeley, MarkE.,Jr.
1982 The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia. New York:McGraw-Hill.
Onstot, T. G.
1902 Pioneers of Menard and Mason Counties. Forest City,IL:T. G. Onstot.
PeoriaJournal
1936 Speed 'Aging' at New Salem, PeoriaJournal, June 19, p. 4.
415ESSAY
Reep, Thomas P.
1927 Lincoln at New Salem. Chicago: Old Salem Lincoln League (Petersburg, IL).
Sandburg, Carl
1954 Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years. San Diego: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich.
Schechner, Richard
1985 Restoration of Behavior. InBetween Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press.
Taussig, Michael
1993 Mimesis and Alterity:A Particular History of the Senses. New York:Routledge.
Taylor, Richard S., and MarkL.Johnson
1993 Inventing Lincoln's New Salem: The Reconstruction of a Pioneer Village. Unpublished
MS.
Thomas, Benjamin P.
1934 Lincoln's New Salem. Springfield: Abraham Lincoln Association.
Trilling, Lionel
1972 Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge, MA:Harvard UniversityPress.
Turner, Victor, and EdwardM. Bruner, eds.
1986 The Anthropology of Experience. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Van den Abbeele, Georges
1980 Sightseers: The Tourist as Theorist. Diacritics (December) 10:2-14.
Wagner, Roy
1975 The Invention of Culture. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-Hall.
Wallace, Michael
1981 Visiting the Past:History Museums in the United States. Radical History Review 25:63-
96.
Whisnant, David
1983 All That is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an Appalachian Region. Chapel
Hill: Universityof North Carolina Press.
Willis, Susan, ed.
1993 The World According to Disney. Special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly,Vol. 92, Iss.
1.
Zipes,Jack
1979 Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and FairyTales. Austin: University
of Texas Press.