Patchworking the past: materiality, touch and the assembling of 'experience' in American Civil War re-enactment

This article investigates the power of things and materials in the context of historical re-enactment. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among costumed re-enactors reinvigorating the American Civil War, it explores participants' close connections to specific objects and ensembles of objects and the crucial role awarded to 'experience' and 'touch' in this genre of relating to the past. It is argued that three interrelated propositions derived from my analysis allow a better understanding of this popular heritage practice: (1) Re-enactment can be understood as a human-material 'patchworking' process, (2) Re-enactment comprises a 'holistic' enterprise and (3) A key motivation in re-enactment derives from its 'unfinishedness'. By attending to these dimensions through a detailed analysis that takes the role of objects and their experiential potential seriously as going beyond 'representation', I argue that the re-enacted Civil War serves as an often implicit and non-verbal - but, precisely, enacted - critique of conventional approaches to learning about and exhibiting history and heritage, such as those epitomised by the conventional museum.