Memory, Mythmaking, and Museums: Constructive Authenticity and the Primitive Blues Subject

Abstract

This essay explores how museums, public memory, and authenticity intersect to privilege an understanding of the past. Reflecting White control over the promotion of blues music, the curators at the Delta Blues Museum, located in Clarksdale, Mississippi, employ two rhetorical strategies to satisfy the expectations of (White) tourists who share culturally specific memories of the blues. First, the museum's rhetorical depiction of blues artists reflects White fascination with the mythic image of the primitive blues subject. Second, the exhibit recreates an early 20th century Delta society to complement tourism goals to market the Mississippi Delta as America's last remaining “pure” blues culture. In the conclusion, implications for rhetorical scholars interested in studying the symbolic dimensions of authenticity are discussed.

The author would like to thank P. Renee Foster, Daniel F. Schowalter, Joy L. Hart, John C. Meyer, and four anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful suggestions. Earlier portions of this essay were presented at the 2003 National Communication Association convention in Miami Beach and the 2004 National Communication Association in Chicago.

Notes

1. The Delta Blues Museum's permanent exhibit is occasionally disassembled in order to make room for the installation of temporary traveling blues exhibits.

2. Since 1998, I have visited the Delta Blues Museum on several occasions. However, this analysis of the museum's exhibit hall was conducted on two occasions: July 1, 2002 and December 9, 2002. I placed a parenthesis around the word “White” in order to indicate that while Whites are largely attracted to the blues because of its constructed primitiveness, tourists from other countries and different ethnic backgrounds (e.g., Russia, Japan) are drawn to the blues for similar reasons.

3. Objective authenticity refers to the “authenticity of originals” or whether objects are “genuine” or “fake” (Wang, 1999, p. 352). Experiential authenticity, on the other hand, focuses on “tourist experiences” or how specific activities can activate the personal feelings of tourists (Wang, 1999, p. 351).

4. In the 1990s, in an attempt to save the deteriorating wood cabin from the natural elements, the Stovall family (with help from the House of Blues) disassembled the cabin and restored the house to a “half-size replica of its four-room, Muddy-era state” (Cheseborough, 2001, p. 86). From 1996 to 2001, the cabin was part of an extended five-year national tour. In 2001, the museum agreed to temporarily display the cabin to the public.