Mobile monuments: A view of historical reenactment and

authenticity from inside the costume cupboard of history

Stephen Gapps*

Australian National University, Australia

Reenactment is an increasingly popular cultural practice that appears tooffer participants and audiences authentic experiences and representa-tions of history. Gapps is an historian who has participated in andcoordinated many reenactments including the ‘Battles’ of Vinegar Hill,Waterloo, Trafalgar, Hastings and Gettysburg. This article is anexploration of the central tenet of reenactment - ‘authenticity’ - froman insider’s perspective. Gapps suggests that the performance of historyhas been largely dismissed by cultural critics as a form of nostalgia, butthat it actually has a significant role to offer – particularly as a form ofpublic commemoration of shared remembrance of historical events. Henotes that reenactors’ self-reflective attention to historical accuracy inperformance is a key element in the practice of reenactment that cangenerate historical understanding. Unlike monuments, reenactmentshave the potential to create more open ended and contextual historicalcommemorations.

Keywords: reenactment; authenticity; performance; monuments;commemoration; memory

A reenactor once said to me that she felt as though she were a ‘mobilemonument’ to her great grandmother’s memory. She participated inAmerican Civil War reenactments and her assumed persona was that ofher great-grandmother. She promoted the benefits to other reenactors ofresearching a ‘real, historical person’ and recreating them in reenactmentsinstead of generically portraying just ‘anyone from the Civil War’. She feltthat an historical character could be researched and portrayed accuratelywith the help of photographs, diaries, and letters. She also suggestedreading the ‘local newspapers of the times’ to gain an understanding of theevents and issues ‘your character would have known about’ (Gapps 2003,57–8).

*Email: stephen@historica.com.au

Rethinking HistoryVol. 13, No. 3, September 2009, 395–409

ISSN 1364-2529 print/ISSN 1470-1154 online

� 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13642520903091159

http://www.informaworld.com

The concept of mobile monuments intrigues me greatly. In one sense,this person was paying testimony to the memory of her relative. Rather thanvisiting a gravestone or compiling her family tree, she was animating herancestor in what currently often operate as open-air stages of nationalremembrance – reenactments. She was also promoting her own privatepractice of reenactment as a valid form of public commemoration. We cansay, then, that a mobile monument brings together commemoration,(anti)monumentalism, family history, and historical method – some of themost significant areas of popular history, public history work, and publicremembrance. This article presents some of the problems and possibilitiesfor public history implied by historical reenactments – understood here asmobile monuments – and will examine in particular, reenactment’s claims toauthenticity.

Personal involvement

I have to declare an interest here. I have been involved in designing,coordinating, and participating in historical reenactments for over 10 years.I have ‘fought’ at the Battle of Hastings, marched to the Battle ofGettysburg, and escorted Admiral Nelson and Lady Hamilton before theBattle of Trafalgar. I have wandered the streets of Sydney with a Vikingraiding party. I have been an ‘evil redcoat soldier’ arresting Irish convicts,but have also been an Irish rebel leader fighting redcoats at the Battle ofVinegar Hill. I have sung seventeenth-century drinking songs whilecarousing with Cromwell’s men and have performed ancient Greek songsat Bacchanalian feasts. I have made tenth-century Irish leather shoes from apattern based on an archaeological find, and hand-sewn a twelfth-centurymedieval tunic with embroidered edges. I have changed my hairstyle manytimes – recently sporting a handlebar moustache and ‘mullet’ haircut toimitate the Saxons depicted on the Bayeaux Tapestry.

As both a historian and self-confessed reenactor, I find dressing andperforming in historical clothing, often from a culture or past that is not‘my own’, to be highly risky work. It is more visceral, insistent, perhapsmore creative – but definitely more audacious – than formal historicalwriting. For these reasons, reenactment has gotten under my skin. In aso-called public living history display, I find myself constantly striving fora more accurate presentation. My historical aesthetics are now very muchpiqued when, for example, I see someone at a ‘reenactment event’drinking out of an aluminum can or wearing modern army boots becausethey look ‘close enough’ to the historical item. This ‘close enough is goodenough’ version of reenactment disturbs my need to uphold the status ofreenactment as history work. I also feel as though I am in danger ofbecoming an authenticity fetishist, or, as fellow reenactors say, an‘authenticity fascist.’

396 S. Gapps

The holy grail of authenticity

Reenactors often go to extraordinary lengths to acquire and animate thelook and feel of history. As cultural critic Dennis Hall notes of AmericanCivil War reenactors, their relationships to their possessions are ‘deeplycontextualized in the knowledge and use of these objects, embedded in thesense of themselves as creative individuals’ (Hall 1994, 4–11). Reenactorsgenerally comprehend, translate, and appreciate one another’s creativityexpressed through conventions of authenticity. This degree of authenticityis, of course, tempered by the various levels of performance competencypossessed by individual reenactors and reenactment groups. For somereenactors, making an authentic scene involves putting the polystyrenecooler into a wooden box, or quickly stowing all twentieth-century itemsinside a canvas tent when the public is around. Given this kind ofsubterfuge, the distinction between the serious reenactor and the‘relaxation and fellowship’ reenactor is not always apparent to visitorsto a medieval gathering or a renaissance festival (Lowenthal 1985, Jennys1993, 23–4).

Although reenactors invoke the ‘Holy Grail’ of authenticity, they alsounderstand that it is elusive – worth striving for, but never really attainable.Reenactors constantly debate the merits of being authentic. Some feel thatauthenticity is sacrosanct if they are to claim the status of historians. Theydelight in being able to show off the fine details of their impersonation – thelining of jackets, the hand-stitching of seams, the contents of a bag withtinder and flint to light a fire. These are the small moments of surprise forthe curious that, so to speak, activate history and make the past come alive.

Figure 1. A ‘Viking Long House’ constructed for an event held in a pine forest inArmidale, Northern NSW in 2002. Constructing an evocative setting forreenactments is a significant and often time-consuming element of the practice.Author’s collection.

Rethinking History 397

Reenactors can generally describe their clothing and equipment in greatdetail, for the authentic object is deeply bound up with the way historymight feel. As one reenactor suggests, her ‘impression’ must be complete indetail or the ‘experience’ is less convincing:

My impression cannot be superficial. My objective is not (merely) to concealmodern items but to re-create a historic time and place in detail. Therefore myimpression is as accurate and complete as I can make it on every level –including . . . the contents of my pockets. (Gapps 2003, 72)

There is great pleasure in imitating the past. Indeed, through its imitativepractice, reenactment reassures us that we can trust our sensibilities of thepast. To be clear: reenactors are charmed not by the original, but by itsauthentic simulation. In a curious twist, reenactors do not want objects withthe patina of age because this is not actually ‘authentic.’ They want theirobjects to look and feel as they might have for the people they arereenacting. A reproduction is thus even more desirable than the originalbecause it has the look of an object that was ‘new’ to the period. Theauthentic original is, in other words, an anachronism in reenactments.Sometimes this causes problems, such as when a film set director calls for‘more dirt’ to make something look as though it were old or when a memberof the public sees a newly cut wooden chair and assumes it has beenpurchased at a furniture store because it does not have that ‘oldy-worldy’look they are used to seeing in dilapidated historic houses. Authenticity is acurrency and competency standard within the reenactor’s history work, butit often relies on a ‘shared authority’ of the historian and their publics. Ifsomething is too authentic it can fail to be perceived as historical.

Although some reenactors refuse to wear costumes that are not actually‘museum-quality’, authenticity fetishism has often been overemphasized as adefining feature of reenactment practice. Reenactors are constantlyconfronted with decisions about the extent to which they can or wish toachieve authenticity. Authenticity is a currency that confers status bothwithin the reenactment community and on its relations with culturalinstitutions and wider audiences. It is not used by reenactors as a term for anoriginal item or mentality; rather, it references a perceived proximity to anoriginal. Ultimately, then, authenticity is critical for reenactors: it is a keyterm in our symbolic vocabulary and often thought of as being part of our‘special responsibility’.1 Like historians, reenactors not only tell stories butalso cite evidence: the footnote to the historian is the authentic (recreated)costume to the reenactor.

However, extensive footnoting never finalizes the telling of history: thereis always endless discussion on offer. Similarly, the insistence on authenticitydoes not generally imply that a given reenactment is a finite event. By virtueof its performative nature, reenactment is open-ended – an ephemeral site ofhistory, always ready to be constituted anew at the next reenactment.

398 S. Gapps

Authenticity in reenactment inspires people to read other performancescritically. If historians do two things – compose elegant paragraphs andpursue erudition – reenactors craft a theater of history through authenticprops and costumes (Grafton 1997, 231–3).

Australian reenactors, perhaps less amenable to public drama thanNorth Americans, are more inclined to use so-called ‘second person’techniques when performing a person from the past. Reenactors in theUnited States, in contrast, often use ‘first person’ role-playing styles whenresearching a character and try to bring them ‘alive’ for expectant audiences.After the popular success of living history museums such as ColonialWilliamsburg and Plimouth Plantation in the United States, where staffrole-play as though they were from another time, reenactors have followedtheir lead. According to the Plimouth Plantation guide to living historyinterpretation, in first-person techniques, costumed interpreters assume theidentities of real or hypothetical historical individuals. The roles may eitherbe scripted or improvisational. These hypothetical characters, who ‘couldhave existed’, can be called upon to fill discrete representational voids.2

Although first-person portrayal is difficult to do well, for NorthAmericans at least, first-person portrayals have now themselves becomemarkers of authenticity: the two living history sites in the United States thatrate among visitors as the ‘most authentic’ employ first-person interpretivetechniques. They also see themselves as fulfilling a role in educating thepublic about the past and, thus, take their research seriously.3 In NorthAmerica, many historic sites now seek to employ ‘living history specialists’over professional actors for their interpretive programs. In Britain, too, thehistoric site preservation organization English Heritage promotes its sites aspeopled by skilled (but also convenient and cheap) reenactors. Manyreenactors believe they do history performance better than anyone else:professional actors employed at living history museums such as PlimouthPlantation have had to defend themselves against claims of being ‘merely’actors. A common feature of these claims lies in the authority conveyed byvarious standards of authenticity.

From ‘farb’ to ‘superhardcore’

The most vociferous debates about authenticity and styles of reenactmentemanate from the American Civil War groups in the United States. Duringthe 1980s, American Civil War reenactors began to define less authenticreenactors as ‘farbs’ – purportedly an abbreviation of ‘far be it for me to tellthem what they are doing wrong’.4 Here, reenactors chided those amongthem who pretended to represent accurately the past, even while wearingsupermarket shirts and surplus army boots. The label ‘farb’ was,simultaneously, a comment on self-appointed historical experts who hadlittle regard for authentic dress. ‘Farb’ has now developed into a term for

Rethinking History 399

what is usually the entry point of reenactment – the person who buys ormakes a basic ‘kit’ that vaguely seems to suit the period on display. In such acase, the farb’s historical knowledge may be vast, but their conception andknowledge of reenactment conventions remain limited.

American Civil War reenactment has given rise to different types ofreenactor, each with varying approaches to the question of authenticity. Thereenactor may progress from being a lowly ‘farb’, to a ‘mainstreamer’, then‘faux-progressive’, ‘progressive’, and, finally, ‘authentic’. The ‘hardcore’ andthe rare ‘superhardcore’ are essentially different variants of ‘authentic’. Theyare similar in their fastidious approach to using artifacts based exclusivelyon historical references. ‘Hardcore’ also characterizes the reenactor’swillingness to undergo feats of physical endurance such as sleeping out inwinter under the ‘same conditions’ experienced by, for example, soldiers inthe past. The reenactor does so in order to gain the physical experience ofauthenticity. Here, physical pain is proof of an authentic experience andoften works as a form of penance for playing at being soldiers: it remindsreenactors how hard it was ‘back then’. Moreover, it can be used to bolsterthe serious aspect of their activities, namely remembering the historicalparticipants (Horwitz 1996).

‘Authentics’ would rather attend small gatherings of like-mindedindividuals than attend large-scale public events. Even with the promisethat a large gathering of people will enhance the authenticity of scale andexperience, just seeing a few other reenactors with inaccurate clothingeffectively destroys the authentics’ experience. It also makes them angry thatthe public will get the wrong impression about ‘what history really was like’.

In their mission to achieve an authentic mise-en-scene, reenactors abhoranachronisms. They strive towards a complete, visible form of authenticity.In a living history setting nothing should appear as if from the twenty-firstcentury. The more successful this practice, the more glaringly obvious theone forgotten wristwatch or mobile phone seems to be. As a medievalconvention directive for reenactors suggests, ‘modern items (clothes,watches, sunglasses, plastic, coke cans, etc.) are to be hidden at all times’(Gapps 2003, 104). As if they needed reminding.

The bodily limits of authenticity

A ‘mission statement’ for American Civil War ‘campaigners’ – people whonot only take pride in their high-level of authenticity but also their simulatedmarches and battles – suggests there are but few limitations to authenticity.As one ‘campaigner’ remarked: ‘The only limitations I place upon theaccuracy of my impression are due to a prudent concern for maintainingmodern standards of health and safety’ (Gapps 2003, 108).

In exploring the limits of what can be made authentic, reenactmentbecomes a sensitive, even sensual activity. Extreme proponents demand that

400 S. Gapps

their bodies become accurate too. One reenactor claims that he attempts tomaintain

a physical condition that allows me to portray [my character] with realism.I keep my weight at a level that honestly represents men living on periodfood . . . . I am willing to accept standards of personal hygiene and groomingconsistent with life in the 1860s. (ibid., 106)

Yet another reenactor complains that ‘every reenactor ignores the elephantsitting right in the middle of the room. We are all either too tall, tooheavy, too old or too healthy.’ Not being able to achieve all thingsauthentic means that, ‘We are all farbs, some just farbier than others’(ibid. 118).

This begs the question as to how reenactors can actively pursue the finedetails of authenticity when they are surrounded by anachronisms, when,indeed, their own bodies are anachronisms? One reenactor suggests: ‘When Igo out there in a reenactment situation I know we are going to portray asclose as possible to the real thing, knowing full well that we cannot duplicateit’ (Stanton 1997, 108). Overall, reenactors who seriously engage with issuesof historical understanding and representation ultimately must embrace theartificiality of their practice.

Figure 2. Two versions of ‘Governor Bligh’ of the Bounty Mutiny and RumRebellion fame, Sydney 2005. Author’s collection.

Rethinking History 401

A visual history

Reenactors’ physical experiences and sensibilities of authenticity are oftendocumented in visual form. Proud of their wet-plate photographs or sepia-toned images and positioned in classic poses, they have finally perfectedthe modernist simulation, the tableaux vivant. At the height of popularityin the late nineteenth century, tableaux vivant were imitations of classicposes, often famous works of art or historical scenes, effectivelyestablishing a link between performer, technology, and audience (Calloway2000). Following in this tradition, contemporary reenactors constantlyphotograph one another, posing ‘as if’ from the past and creating(admittedly color photographs) of what the past ‘must have been like.’Like the original tableaux, they confirm both their own powers ofreproduction and their reenactment competencies.

As purveyors of ready-made, authentic history, reenactors are oftencalled on as extras in history films. Apart from being cheap (often unpaid)extras that come with costumes and props, a growing acknowledgment ofreenactors’ fetishism means that they can add the imprimatur of authenticityto film and television (Gapps 2007, 67). Indeed, many reenactors arepassionate about helping to disseminate historical sensibilities through film.They pride themselves on adding authenticity to film and television in thesame ways, often using similar rhetorical means, as academic historians.They boycott working with what they consider poor productions, thoughgenerally feel their presence in film adds a more scholarly dimension tolargely fictitious productions. It is thus unsurprising that reenactors havecome to enjoy an ever closer relationship with such visual media. Filmmakers trust reenactors to produce ready-made authenticity and thus to dosome of the history work for them. While some reenactors may distrust filmbecause it turns their history work into fiction, they are nonetheless drawnto a medium that offers broad public exposure and the opportunity to ‘get itright’.

Immersion in the past

Conceiving and sustaining an experience of reenactment very much dependson being immersed in authenticity – surrounded in landscapes, artifacts,costumes, and behaviors ‘as if from the past’. The Naper Settlement, arecreated nineteenth-century ‘village’ in the United States, for instance,promotes itself by claiming that one actually feels different thanks to beingimmersed in a ‘past world’:

Step into our village and watch something magical happen. Your pulse slows.You breathe a little easier. The hassles of everyday life are forgotten outsideour gates. Because here at Naper Settlement, we’ve recreated a piece of historyfor you – a time you’ll want to return to again and again. (Naper Settlement2005)5

402 S. Gapps

Successful immersion necessitates convincing settings, costumes, and props.The purpose of these is to create an authentic and immediate multi-sensoryexperience that will enhance the resemblance between the theatrical andthe historical. Enhancing the distinction between the history performancesite and contemporary society is also crucial. Unlike historical pageantryand parades that, so to speak, transport history anywhere without the needfor an evocative landscape, reenacting requires credible settings forparticipants who must answer to increasingly sophisticated and cynicalconsumers.

These combinations of props, stages, and performances expand therange of ‘memes’ for history – the sights and sounds for which people cometo look and listen. Memes are the elements of recreations that appear toconfirm or mediate the experience of an authentic past. They make us alertto the clank of the drawbridge, the clash of steel swords or the call of thetown crier, all of which serve as reassuring signifiers that we are in indeedinhabiting a (recreated) authentic past (Schwartz 1996, 273–5).

Creating appropriate environments for historical immersion has provedto be increasingly popular in recent years. Some sites now offer live-inexperiences over weekends or longer. In the UK, the Chiltern Open AirMuseum offers holidays in an Iron-Age house, while the Jorvik VikingMuseum introduced smells into the time tunnel that visitors use to access theexhibitions. At Plimouth Plantation in the United States, the combination ofsmell, taste, and touch are also crucial in giving visitors a so-called tangibleimpression of the past. Sovereign Hill Goldfields in Australia similarlypromotes its tactile gold-fossicking for visitors. This form of verifyinghistory – of ‘bringing the past to life’ – counters the failure of traditionalmuseums and reconstructed settings to promote a satisfactorily wide rangeof memes (Gapps 2003, 51). Indeed, reenactments and living historymuseums do routinely engage the senses rather than the mind, substitutingprocesses of association for analysis (Hall 1994, 8). By the same token,multi-sensory immersion typically constitutes the measure of a successfulreenactment event.

The authentic body?

At the present moment, the costume cupboard of history has never been sowell stocked: reenactors have never had such a range of pasts from which tochoose, with ‘off the rack’ costumes and equipment now readily available.Consider the British reenactors who do an impression of a Native Americanat an event run by English Heritage that is sold to the public as ‘History inAction.’ Dressing up as an ‘Indian’ recalls early twentieth-centuryreenactments in Australia where non-indigenous people painted themselveswith lamp-black to reenact Aborigines in Australian history – sometimes asAboriginal people looked on (Gapps 2003, 157–69). Most reenactors refuse

Rethinking History 403

to paint their skin, only going so far as to don native American costume andparaphernalia. Yet at some private gatherings of ‘Indian’ reenactors, somedo indeed paint their skin ‘red’ (Jones 1992, 13). This reminds us that thereenactor’s clothing and equipment are particularly vivid sites of culturalmeaning and expressions of social self. Crossing social, cultural, gender orethnic boundaries creates tension and unease, but it also generatespossibility – much more so I believe, than speaking or writing across thoseborders.

This being said, as a white Australian, I cannot conceive of reenactingAboriginal people. History on the body is always an ethical aesthetics,always potentially a political contest. The body, clothed in history, forcesethics into being: the practice of reenacting the past is close to an ethics ofwhat can be redone, what should be redone or what cannot be redone.Reenactments are always already on a knife-edge between failure andsuccess, between acceptance or rejection by performers, their publics, andthose with stakes in their history as performance. Certain histories arechosen over others for their performativity, their accessibility, or theirability to match or ignite contemporary cultural memory. What happens,for example, when an individual chooses to portray a radical or potentiallyoffensive past? What happens when a public event finds it difficult to exclude(because they are authentic) yet awkward to include (as it may offendaudiences) a German soldier from World War Two?

We see these issues at play in the controversy surrounding a proposedreenactment of slave auctions at Colonial Williamsburg. Since the 1950s,Williamsburg has thrived on its staged shows of daily life during theRevolutionary period. In the 1990s, however, management decided toincrease the presence of African-Americans (52 percent of the eighteenth-century population but a minimal presence at Williamsburg until then) andto hold what was a common occurrence at the time, a slave auction. In 1994,the proposed ‘humiliating’ auctions generated protest by both black andwhite Americans, who argued that this was a subject that should not berepresented. Indeed, many black Americans refused to watch ‘slaves’ atWilliamsburg, content instead to watch the characters of BenjaminFranklin, Thomas Jefferson or George Washington (Ellis 1992, 22; Phillip1994, 24–8).

The ‘slave auctions’ went ahead as planned but took place under protest.However, as one protester said after considering the performance: ‘Pain hada face, indignity had a body, suffering had tears’ (Carson 1998, 11). Theslave auctions eventually met with approval; protest melted under the powerof a thoughtful, visceral interpretation of history. Whether reenacting suchhistories can satisfy all stakeholders is doubtful. Yet, however much liveperformance heightens contested historical representation, it can also be arare place where the unexpectedness of live theatre can surprise even thebest-laid script plans.

404 S. Gapps

The reenactment of Australian history has also often been strongly andemotionally contested by indigenous Australians – most notably during the1988 bicentenary commemorations of European invasion and settlement.However, current historical sensibilities suggest that Aboriginal peopleought to be included in representations of colonial history, at outdoormuseums like Old Sydney Town and Sovereign Hill, and at local festivalsand commemorations where there are always a few British redcoats onhand. But on what terms? An Aboriginal presence at Sovereign Hill iscomplicated by the role of the native police on the Goldfields, a force thatwas used by colonial authorities to police white and black populations. OldSydney Town and the Swan Hill Pioneer Settlement have found Aboriginalartists willing to sell works of art but could not find willing participants forits history theater. There is, in other words, a fine line between participationthat suggests complicity with the historical project and participation thatinvolves working the politics of visibility.

Such complex political ramifications can be negotiated with role reversal.Whiteness is often invisible to us; but when it is performed by non-whiteperformers, with Aborigines playing Captain Cook, African-Americansrepresenting Confederates or Black Britons Redcoat soldiers, it becomesvisible and thought-provoking. What appears a democratic possibility – thatanyone can reenact anyone else – is in fact imbued with social memory.People are relegated to certain histories on the grounds of their race orgender because audiences cannot make sense of things any other way. Afriend of Chinese descent, for example, reenacts with an English Civil Wargroup. Members of the audience often tell him, however, that they did notknow that Chinese people fought in the English Civil War. As anotherreenactor suggested to me, she feels doomed never to be a Viking in publicdisplays because she does not have ‘Nordic features’ and the public alwaysassumes she is a ‘Saracen’.

The limits of authenticity?

During the 1970s, as people felt increasingly entitled to reclaim their ownhistories and exert their rights, reenactors began to perform (almost)whatever past they desired. An increasingly democratic access to the pasthad the effect of making possible individual, embodied representations thatwere signs of newfound political expression. Yet, this expansion ofrepresentational possibilities had an unexpected result: namely it gave riseto the view that the present has no responsibility vis-a-vis the past. Somebegan to argue that they had the right to represent any past – to dress up asNazis if they wished.

The difficulties of remembering the ‘unrepresentable’ has longconcerned historians and museum workers, particularly those dealingwith the history of the Holocaust. Yet to be concerned that there are

Rethinking History 405

indeed limits to representation is to suggest that some things are so horrificthat they cannot be represented. As Friedlander has shown, theimplication here is that some histories might then fail to be remembered(Freidlander 1992). Yet as Van Elphen has noted, it is not in the extremenature of the event, but rather in the mechanisms of its representation thatpossibilities for publicly remembering traumatic events may occur (VanElphen 1999, 26). The debate about remembering horrific pasts has, then,a good deal to do with the available forms of representation, rather thanwith any fixed sets of limits or prescribed sensitivities. Forms ofrepresentation such as performance can, with care, become avenues forgiving expression to extreme experiences from the past.

The danger, then, is that certain histories should perhaps remain, for themoment, ‘unreenactable’, like a white person’s supposed democratic right to‘blackface’. Pioneer Theme Parks and goldrush histories tend to makecolonial history appear enjoyable and uncontested. The trauma in black andwhite historical relations resists representation – without some acknowl-edgment, some mourning, the past and present fuse and the possibility ofchange is foreclosed. Thoughtful re-performances, rather than oldminstrelsies, might well assist here.

The idea of mobile monuments again springs to mind. The individualiz-ing (rather than personalizing) of history in the body of the reenactor hasmeant that reenactors can become unique monuments, even travelingmuseums. Being a human monument indemnifies your impression. You, asmonument, cannot be graffitied. As a monument, you cannot be torn down,perhaps only told to move on. There is less opportunity for the reenactor’sephemeral performances to provoke rebuke. After all, they do not remainsolid and insistent fixtures on the landscape. Physical monuments may searold wounds, whereas reenactments can be shifted around.

Can mobile monuments produce forms of commemoration that mightopen up avenues for more inclusive, more performative forms of ritual? Canthey counteract some of the problems of monumental histories in the past?The conceptual framework of a reenactment may lie in forging a consensusbetween performers and audience. However, the successful (or not)reception of a reenactment depends on whether it matches or ignites publicmemory. Reenactment, much like cinema, constitutes an awkward historicalobject for cultural analysis because it is often counterfactual. It is capable ofthinking into history many histories that might have been, or might still be(Fischer-Lichte 1992). It is full of desire for other times and other places,rather than for the here and now. Yet this is more than merely its keyattraction, as it holds interesting possibilities for performance as history-work.

Perhaps afraid that memory will vanish without solid referents, culturalcritics have suggested that shared memory would be much impoverished if itcould not reside in physically distinct spaces such as cemeteries, memorials,

406 S. Gapps

monuments or other less formalized spaces and sites (Irwin-Zarecka 1994,150). I disagree – shared memories of ephemeral performances might be lessdivisive and less insistent.

Historical reenactment often conveys a particularly heightened sense ofethical conflict and negotiation: the politics of individual and collectivehistorical representations are sharpened because the bodily form so easilyoffends. What I prefer about reenactments over tangible, fixed monuments isthat they are less tidy and ordered. Reenactments open up possibilities thatallow history to be, as is its want, unfinished business. Unlike many otherforms of popular history, performing the past retains its marks ofproduction but also contains the possibility of change.

Notes on contributor

Stephen Gapps’ doctoral thesis in Public History Performing the past: A culturalhistory of historical reenactments (University of Technology, Sydney, 2003) analyzedthe long history of reenactments in the West and contemporary cultural practices ofself-styled ‘reenactors’. Stephen has worked as a consultant historian in a wide rangeof projects for government bodies, industry and the media. Over the last three yearsStephen has co-directed HISTORICA, Australia’s first ‘History Events Management

Figure 3. Reenactments appear not to make sense in settings out of time and place,however these seventeenth-century reenactors from the NSW Pike and MusketSociety at Darling Harbour Sydney, 2002, create an interesting juxtaposition.Author’s collection.

Rethinking History 407

Company’. HISTORICA coordinates the services of historical reenactors andprovides a nexus between reenactors and historians with film and television,commemorative events, education and museums. During 2007 Stephen was a visitingfellow in Reenactment at the Humanities Research Centre, Australian NationalUniversity, Canberra. His current research interests lie in the problems andpossibilities of historical reenactment and public commemoration. Stephen’s interestin and experience with historical reenactment is based on over 15 years participationin reenactments. He has been known to dress as an ancient Greek, a Viking, amedieval minstrel, a ‘Roundhead’, an American Civil War soldier, a Redcoat, and aConvict rebel.

Notes

1. See for example Wyley, S., ‘Authenticity: Everyone’s responsibility’, available at:http://www.geocities.com/svenskildbiter/Miscellaneous/authenticity.html

2. ‘Plimouth plantation guide to first and third person interpretation’, available at:http://www.plimouth.org/Library/1&3.htm

3. For example see Dingman, B. ‘Make your character come alive; A guide foraccurate educational interpretations’, available at: http://www.recreating.history.com/ and Trent, L. ‘The art of first person interpretation’, available at: http://www.nemesis.cybergate.net/*civilwar

4. The true origin of the meaning of ‘farb’ has been much debated amongreenactors and may be lost in reenactor folklore. See ‘The origins of ‘farb’’,available at: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/1422/forigin.html

5. ‘Naper Settlement’, available at: http://www.napersettlement.org/

References

Bal, M., ed. 1999. The practice of cultural analysis: Exposing interdisciplinaryinterpretation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Calloway, A. 2000. Visual ephemera: Theatrical art in nineteenth-century Australia.Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.

Ellis, R. 1992. Re: living history; Bring history into play. American Visions 7, no. 6:22–34.

Fischer-Lichte, E. 1997. The show and the gaze of the theatre: A European perspective.Iowa: University of Iowa Press.

Freidlander, S., ed. 1992. Probing the limits of representation: Nazism and the finalsolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gapps, S. 2003. Performing the past: A cultural history of historical re-enactment.Unpublished Doctoral Thesis. Sydney: University of Technology.

Gapps, S. 2007. Adventures in the colony: Big Brother meets survivor in periodcostume. Journal of film and history 37, no. 1: 67–72.

Grafton, A. 1997. The footnote: A curious history. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

Hall, D. 1994. Civil War reenactors and the postmodern sense of history. Journal ofAmerican culture 17, no. 3: 4–11.

Horwitz, T. 1996. Confederates in the attic: Dispatches from the unfinished Civil War.New York: Sceptre.

Irwin-Zarecka, I. 1994. Frames of remembrance: The dynamics of collective memory.New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Jennys, S. 1993. The great Buckskinner debate. Harper’s 286: 23–7.Jones, T. 1992. High-tech Germans respond to the call of the wild. Sydney Morning

Herald, 8, Feb., p. 12.

408 S. Gapps

Lowenthal, D. 1985. The past is a foreign country. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Phillip, M. 1994. To reenact or not to reenact? Black issues in higher education 11, no.18: 24–8.

Schwartz, H. 1996. The culture of the copy: Striking likenesses, unreasonablefacsimiles. New York: Zone Books.

Stanton, C. 1997. Being the elephant: The American Civil War reenacted.Unpublished Master of Arts Thesis. Vermont University.

Rethinking History 409