Rethinking History

Vol. 13, No. 3, September 2009, 395–409

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 to

offer participants and audiences authentic experiences and representa-
tions of history. Gapps is an historian who has participated in and
coordinated many reenactments including the ‘Battles’ of Vinegar Hill,
Waterloo, Trafalgar, Hastings and Gettysburg. This article is an
exploration of the central tenet of reenactment - ‘authenticity’ - from
an insider’s perspective. Gapps suggests that the performance of history
has been largely dismissed by cultural critics as a form of nostalgia, but
that it actually has a significant role to offer – particularly as a form of
public commemoration of shared remembrance of historical events. He
notes that reenactors’ self-reflective attention to historical accuracy in
performance is a key element in the practice of reenactment that can
generate historical understanding. Unlike monuments, reenactments
have the potential to create more open ended and contextual historical
commemorations.
Keywords: reenactment; authenticity; performance; monuments;
commemoration; memory

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

*Email: stephen@historica.com.au

ISSN 1364-2529 print/ISSN 1470-1154 online

Ó 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13642520903091159
http://www.informaworld.com
396 S. Gapps
The concept of mobile monuments intrigues me greatly. In one sense,
this person was paying testimony to the memory of her relative. Rather than
visiting a gravestone or compiling her family tree, she was animating her
ancestor in what currently often operate as open-air stages of national
remembrance – reenactments. She was also promoting her own private
practice of reenactment as a valid form of public commemoration. We can
say, then, that a mobile monument brings together commemoration,
(anti)monumentalism, family history, and historical method – some of the
most significant areas of popular history, public history work, and public
remembrance. This article presents some of the problems and possibilities
for public history implied by historical reenactments – understood here as
mobile monuments – and will examine in particular, reenactment’s claims to
authenticity.

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 of
Gettysburg, and escorted Admiral Nelson and Lady Hamilton before the
Battle of Trafalgar. I have wandered the streets of Sydney with a Viking
raiding party. I have been an ‘evil redcoat soldier’ arresting Irish convicts,
but have also been an Irish rebel leader fighting redcoats at the Battle of
Vinegar Hill. I have sung seventeenth-century drinking songs while
carousing with Cromwell’s men and have performed ancient Greek songs
at Bacchanalian feasts. I have made tenth-century Irish leather shoes from a
pattern based on an archaeological find, and hand-sewn a twelfth-century
medieval tunic with embroidered edges. I have changed my hairstyle many
times – recently sporting a handlebar moustache and ‘mullet’ haircut to
imitate the Saxons depicted on the Bayeaux Tapestry.
As both a historian and self-confessed reenactor, I find dressing and
performing in historical clothing, often from a culture or past that is not
‘my own’, to be highly risky work. It is more visceral, insistent, perhaps
more creative – but definitely more audacious – than formal historical
writing. For these reasons, reenactment has gotten under my skin. In a
so-called public living history display, I find myself constantly striving for
a more accurate presentation. My historical aesthetics are now very much
piqued when, for example, I see someone at a ‘reenactment event’
drinking out of an aluminum can or wearing modern army boots because
they look ‘close enough’ to the historical item. This ‘close enough is good
enough’ version of reenactment disturbs my need to uphold the status of
reenactment as history work. I also feel as though I am in danger of
becoming an authenticity fetishist, or, as fellow reenactors say, an
‘authenticity fascist.’
 Rethinking History 397

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

The holy grail of authenticity

Reenactors often go to extraordinary lengths to acquire and animate the
look and feel of history. As cultural critic Dennis Hall notes of American
Civil War reenactors, their relationships to their possessions are ‘deeply
contextualized in the knowledge and use of these objects, embedded in the
sense of themselves as creative individuals’ (Hall 1994, 4–11). Reenactors
generally comprehend, translate, and appreciate one another’s creativity
expressed through conventions of authenticity. This degree of authenticity
is, of course, tempered by the various levels of performance competency
possessed by individual reenactors and reenactment groups. For some
reenactors, making an authentic scene involves putting the polystyrene
cooler into a wooden box, or quickly stowing all twentieth-century items
inside a canvas tent when the public is around. Given this kind of
subterfuge, the distinction between the serious reenactor and the
‘relaxation and fellowship’ reenactor is not always apparent to visitors
to a medieval gathering or a renaissance festival (Lowenthal 1985, Jennys
1993, 23–4).
Although reenactors invoke the ‘Holy Grail’ of authenticity, they also
understand that it is elusive – worth striving for, but never really attainable.
Reenactors constantly debate the merits of being authentic. Some feel that
authenticity is sacrosanct if they are to claim the status of historians. They
delight in being able to show off the fine details of their impersonation – the
lining of jackets, the hand-stitching of seams, the contents of a bag with
tinder and flint to light a fire. These are the small moments of surprise for
the curious that, so to speak, activate history and make the past come alive.
398 S. Gapps
Reenactors can generally describe their clothing and equipment in great
detail, for the authentic object is deeply bound up with the way history
might feel. As one reenactor suggests, her ‘impression’ must be complete in
detail or the ‘experience’ is less convincing:
My impression cannot be superficial. My objective is not (merely) to conceal
modern items but to re-create a historic time and place in detail. Therefore my
impression 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 imitative
practice, reenactment reassures us that we can trust our sensibilities of the
past. To be clear: reenactors are charmed not by the original, but by its
authentic simulation. In a curious twist, reenactors do not want objects with
the patina of age because this is not actually ‘authentic.’ They want their
objects to look and feel as they might have for the people they are
reenacting. A reproduction is thus even more desirable than the original
because it has the look of an object that was ‘new’ to the period. The
authentic 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 member
of the public sees a newly cut wooden chair and assumes it has been
purchased at a furniture store because it does not have that ‘oldy-worldy’
look they are used to seeing in dilapidated historic houses. Authenticity is a
currency and competency standard within the reenactor’s history work, but
it often relies on a ‘shared authority’ of the historian and their publics. If
something 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 a
defining feature of reenactment practice. Reenactors are constantly
confronted with decisions about the extent to which they can or wish to
achieve authenticity. Authenticity is a currency that confers status both
within the reenactment community and on its relations with cultural
institutions and wider audiences. It is not used by reenactors as a term for an
original item or mentality; rather, it references a perceived proximity to an
original. Ultimately, then, authenticity is critical for reenactors: it is a key
term in our symbolic vocabulary and often thought of as being part of our
‘special responsibility’.1 Like historians, reenactors not only tell stories but
also cite evidence: the footnote to the historian is the authentic (recreated)
costume to the reenactor.
However, extensive footnoting never finalizes the telling of history: there
is always endless discussion on offer. Similarly, the insistence on authenticity
does not generally imply that a given reenactment is a finite event. By virtue
of its performative nature, reenactment is open-ended – an ephemeral site of
history, always ready to be constituted anew at the next reenactment.
 Rethinking History 399
Authenticity in reenactment inspires people to read other performances
critically. If historians do two things – compose elegant paragraphs and
pursue erudition – reenactors craft a theater of history through authentic
props and costumes (Grafton 1997, 231–3).
Australian reenactors, perhaps less amenable to public drama than
North Americans, are more inclined to use so-called ‘second person’
techniques when performing a person from the past. Reenactors in the
United States, in contrast, often use ‘first person’ role-playing styles when
researching a character and try to bring them ‘alive’ for expectant audiences.
After the popular success of living history museums such as Colonial
Williamsburg and Plimouth Plantation in the United States, where staff
role-play as though they were from another time, reenactors have followed
their lead. According to the Plimouth Plantation guide to living history
interpretation, in first-person techniques, costumed interpreters assume the
identities of real or hypothetical historical individuals. The roles may either
be scripted or improvisational. These hypothetical characters, who ‘could
have existed’, can be called upon to fill discrete representational voids.2
Although first-person portrayal is difficult to do well, for North
Americans at least, first-person portrayals have now themselves become
markers of authenticity: the two living history sites in the United States that
rate among visitors as the ‘most authentic’ employ first-person interpretive
techniques. They also see themselves as fulfilling a role in educating the
public about the past and, thus, take their research seriously.3 In North
America, many historic sites now seek to employ ‘living history specialists’
over professional actors for their interpretive programs. In Britain, too, the
historic site preservation organization English Heritage promotes its sites as
peopled by skilled (but also convenient and cheap) reenactors. Many
reenactors believe they do history performance better than anyone else:
professional actors employed at living history museums such as Plimouth
Plantation have had to defend themselves against claims of being ‘merely’
actors. A common feature of these claims lies in the authority conveyed by
various standards of authenticity.

From ‘farb’ to ‘superhardcore’

The most vociferous debates about authenticity and styles of reenactment
emanate from the American Civil War groups in the United States. During
the 1980s, American Civil War reenactors began to define less authentic
reenactors as ‘farbs’ – purportedly an abbreviation of ‘far be it for me to tell
them what they are doing wrong’.4 Here, reenactors chided those among
them who pretended to represent accurately the past, even while wearing
supermarket shirts and surplus army boots. The label ‘farb’ was,
simultaneously, a comment on self-appointed historical experts who had
little regard for authentic dress. ‘Farb’ has now developed into a term for
400 S. Gapps
what is usually the entry point of reenactment – the person who buys or
makes a basic ‘kit’ that vaguely seems to suit the period on display. In such a
case, the farb’s historical knowledge may be vast, but their conception and
knowledge of reenactment conventions remain limited.
American Civil War reenactment has given rise to different types of
reenactor, each with varying approaches to the question of authenticity. The
reenactor may progress from being a lowly ‘farb’, to a ‘mainstreamer’, then
‘faux-progressive’, ‘progressive’, and, finally, ‘authentic’. The ‘hardcore’ and
the rare ‘superhardcore’ are essentially different variants of ‘authentic’. They
are similar in their fastidious approach to using artifacts based exclusively
on historical references. ‘Hardcore’ also characterizes the reenactor’s
willingness to undergo feats of physical endurance such as sleeping out in
winter under the ‘same conditions’ experienced by, for example, soldiers in
the past. The reenactor does so in order to gain the physical experience of
authenticity. Here, physical pain is proof of an authentic experience and
often works as a form of penance for playing at being soldiers: it reminds
reenactors how hard it was ‘back then’. Moreover, it can be used to bolster
the serious aspect of their activities, namely remembering the historical
participants (Horwitz 1996).
‘Authentics’ would rather attend small gatherings of like-minded
individuals than attend large-scale public events. Even with the promise
that a large gathering of people will enhance the authenticity of scale and
experience, just seeing a few other reenactors with inaccurate clothing
effectively destroys the authentics’ experience. It also makes them angry that
the public will get the wrong impression about ‘what history really was like’.
In their mission to achieve an authentic mise-en-sce`ne, reenactors abhor
anachronisms. They strive towards a complete, visible form of authenticity.
In a living history setting nothing should appear as if from the twenty-first
century. The more successful this practice, the more glaringly obvious the
one forgotten wristwatch or mobile phone seems to be. As a medieval
convention 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 who
not only take pride in their high-level of authenticity but also their simulated
marches and battles – suggests there are but few limitations to authenticity.
As one ‘campaigner’ remarked: ‘The only limitations I place upon the
accuracy of my impression are due to a prudent concern for maintaining
modern standards of health and safety’ (Gapps 2003, 108).
In exploring the limits of what can be made authentic, reenactment
becomes a sensitive, even sensual activity. Extreme proponents demand that
 Rethinking History 401
their bodies become accurate too. One reenactor claims that he attempts to
maintain
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 period
food . . . . I am willing to accept standards of personal hygiene and grooming
consistent with life in the 1860s. (ibid., 106)

Yet another reenactor complains that ‘every reenactor ignores the elephant
sitting right in the middle of the room. We are all either too tall, too
heavy, too old or too healthy.’ Not being able to achieve all things
authentic 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 fine
details of authenticity when they are surrounded by anachronisms, when,
indeed, their own bodies are anachronisms? One reenactor suggests: ‘When I
go out there in a reenactment situation I know we are going to portray as
close as possible to the real thing, knowing full well that we cannot duplicate
it’ (Stanton 1997, 108). Overall, reenactors who seriously engage with issues
of historical understanding and representation ultimately must embrace the
artificiality of their practice.

Figure 2. Two versions of ‘Governor Bligh’ of the Bounty Mutiny and Rum
Rebellion fame, Sydney 2005. Author’s collection.
402 S. Gapps
A visual history
Reenactors’ physical experiences and sensibilities of authenticity are often
documented in visual form. Proud of their wet-plate photographs or sepia-
toned images and positioned in classic poses, they have finally perfected
the modernist simulation, the tableaux vivant. At the height of popularity
in the late nineteenth century, tableaux vivant were imitations of classic
poses, often famous works of art or historical scenes, effectively
establishing a link between performer, technology, and audience (Calloway
2000). Following in this tradition, contemporary reenactors constantly
photograph 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 of
reproduction and their reenactment competencies.
As purveyors of ready-made, authentic history, reenactors are often
called on as extras in history films. Apart from being cheap (often unpaid)
extras that come with costumes and props, a growing acknowledgment of
reenactors’ fetishism means that they can add the imprimatur of authenticity
to film and television (Gapps 2007, 67). Indeed, many reenactors are
passionate about helping to disseminate historical sensibilities through film.
They pride themselves on adding authenticity to film and television in the
same ways, often using similar rhetorical means, as academic historians.
They boycott working with what they consider poor productions, though
generally feel their presence in film adds a more scholarly dimension to
largely fictitious productions. It is thus unsurprising that reenactors have
come to enjoy an ever closer relationship with such visual media. Film
makers trust reenactors to produce ready-made authenticity and thus to do
some of the history work for them. While some reenactors may distrust film
because it turns their history work into fiction, they are nonetheless drawn
to a medium that offers broad public exposure and the opportunity to ‘get it
right’.

Immersion in the past

Conceiving and sustaining an experience of reenactment very much depends
on being immersed in authenticity – surrounded in landscapes, artifacts,
costumes, and behaviors ‘as if from the past’. The Naper Settlement, a
recreated nineteenth-century ‘village’ in the United States, for instance,
promotes itself by claiming that one actually feels different thanks to being
immersed 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 outside
our gates. Because here at Naper Settlement, we’ve recreated a piece of history
for you – a time you’ll want to return to again and again. (Naper Settlement
2005)5
 Rethinking History 403
Successful immersion necessitates convincing settings, costumes, and props.
The purpose of these is to create an authentic and immediate multi-sensory
experience that will enhance the resemblance between the theatrical and
the historical. Enhancing the distinction between the history performance
site and contemporary society is also crucial. Unlike historical pageantry
and parades that, so to speak, transport history anywhere without the need
for an evocative landscape, reenacting requires credible settings for
participants who must answer to increasingly sophisticated and cynical
consumers.
These combinations of props, stages, and performances expand the
range of ‘memes’ for history – the sights and sounds for which people come
to look and listen. Memes are the elements of recreations that appear to
confirm or mediate the experience of an authentic past. They make us alert
to the clank of the drawbridge, the clash of steel swords or the call of the
town crier, all of which serve as reassuring signifiers that we are in indeed
inhabiting a (recreated) authentic past (Schwartz 1996, 273–5).
Creating appropriate environments for historical immersion has proved
to be increasingly popular in recent years. Some sites now offer live-in
experiences over weekends or longer. In the UK, the Chiltern Open Air
Museum offers holidays in an Iron-Age house, while the Jorvik Viking
Museum introduced smells into the time tunnel that visitors use to access the
exhibitions. At Plimouth Plantation in the United States, the combination of
smell, taste, and touch are also crucial in giving visitors a so-called tangible
impression of the past. Sovereign Hill Goldfields in Australia similarly
promotes its tactile gold-fossicking for visitors. This form of verifying
history – of ‘bringing the past to life’ – counters the failure of traditional
museums and reconstructed settings to promote a satisfactorily wide range
of memes (Gapps 2003, 51). Indeed, reenactments and living history
museums do routinely engage the senses rather than the mind, substituting
processes of association for analysis (Hall 1994, 8). By the same token,
multi-sensory immersion typically constitutes the measure of a successful
reenactment event.

The authentic body?

At the present moment, the costume cupboard of history has never been so
well stocked: reenactors have never had such a range of pasts from which to
choose, with ‘off the rack’ costumes and equipment now readily available.
Consider the British reenactors who do an impression of a Native American
at an event run by English Heritage that is sold to the public as ‘History in
Action.’ Dressing up as an ‘Indian’ recalls early twentieth-century
reenactments in Australia where non-indigenous people painted themselves
with lamp-black to reenact Aborigines in Australian history – sometimes as
Aboriginal people looked on (Gapps 2003, 157–69). Most reenactors refuse
404 S. Gapps
to paint their skin, only going so far as to don native American costume and
paraphernalia. Yet at some private gatherings of ‘Indian’ reenactors, some
do indeed paint their skin ‘red’ (Jones 1992, 13). This reminds us that the
reenactor’s clothing and equipment are particularly vivid sites of cultural
meaning and expressions of social self. Crossing social, cultural, gender or
ethnic boundaries creates tension and unease, but it also generates
possibility – much more so I believe, than speaking or writing across those
borders.
This being said, as a white Australian, I cannot conceive of reenacting
Aboriginal people. History on the body is always an ethical aesthetics,
always potentially a political contest. The body, clothed in history, forces
ethics into being: the practice of reenacting the past is close to an ethics of
what can be redone, what should be redone or what cannot be redone.
Reenactments are always already on a knife-edge between failure and
success, between acceptance or rejection by performers, their publics, and
those with stakes in their history as performance. Certain histories are
chosen over others for their performativity, their accessibility, or their
ability to match or ignite contemporary cultural memory. What happens,
for example, when an individual chooses to portray a radical or potentially
offensive past? What happens when a public event finds it difficult to exclude
(because they are authentic) yet awkward to include (as it may offend
audiences) a German soldier from World War Two?
We see these issues at play in the controversy surrounding a proposed
reenactment of slave auctions at Colonial Williamsburg. Since the 1950s,
Williamsburg has thrived on its staged shows of daily life during the
Revolutionary period. In the 1990s, however, management decided to
increase the presence of African-Americans (52 percent of the eighteenth-
century population but a minimal presence at Williamsburg until then) and
to hold what was a common occurrence at the time, a slave auction. In 1994,
the proposed ‘humiliating’ auctions generated protest by both black and
white Americans, who argued that this was a subject that should not be
represented. Indeed, many black Americans refused to watch ‘slaves’ at
Williamsburg, content instead to watch the characters of Benjamin
Franklin, Thomas Jefferson or George Washington (Ellis 1992, 22; Phillip
1994, 24–8).
The ‘slave auctions’ went ahead as planned but took place under protest.
However, as one protester said after considering the performance: ‘Pain had
a face, indignity had a body, suffering had tears’ (Carson 1998, 11). The
slave auctions eventually met with approval; protest melted under the power
of a thoughtful, visceral interpretation of history. Whether reenacting such
histories can satisfy all stakeholders is doubtful. Yet, however much live
performance heightens contested historical representation, it can also be a
rare place where the unexpectedness of live theatre can surprise even the
best-laid script plans.
 Rethinking History 405
The reenactment of Australian history has also often been strongly and
emotionally contested by indigenous Australians – most notably during the
1988 bicentenary commemorations of European invasion and settlement.
However, current historical sensibilities suggest that Aboriginal people
ought to be included in representations of colonial history, at outdoor
museums like Old Sydney Town and Sovereign Hill, and at local festivals
and commemorations where there are always a few British redcoats on
hand. But on what terms? An Aboriginal presence at Sovereign Hill is
complicated by the role of the native police on the Goldfields, a force that
was used by colonial authorities to police white and black populations. Old
Sydney Town and the Swan Hill Pioneer Settlement have found Aboriginal
artists willing to sell works of art but could not find willing participants for
its history theater. There is, in other words, a fine line between participation
that suggests complicity with the historical project and participation that
involves 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-white
performers, with Aborigines playing Captain Cook, African-Americans
representing Confederates or Black Britons Redcoat soldiers, it becomes
visible and thought-provoking. What appears a democratic possibility – that
anyone can reenact anyone else – is in fact imbued with social memory.
People are relegated to certain histories on the grounds of their race or
gender because audiences cannot make sense of things any other way. A
friend of Chinese descent, for example, reenacts with an English Civil War
group. Members of the audience often tell him, however, that they did not
know that Chinese people fought in the English Civil War. As another
reenactor suggested to me, she feels doomed never to be a Viking in public
displays because she does not have ‘Nordic features’ and the public always
assumes she is a ‘Saracen’.

The limits of authenticity?

During the 1970s, as people felt increasingly entitled to reclaim their own
histories and exert their rights, reenactors began to perform (almost)
whatever past they desired. An increasingly democratic access to the past
had the effect of making possible individual, embodied representations that
were signs of newfound political expression. Yet, this expansion of
representational possibilities had an unexpected result: namely it gave rise
to the view that the present has no responsibility vis-à-vis the past. Some
began to argue that they had the right to represent any past – to dress up as
Nazis if they wished.
The difficulties of remembering the ‘unrepresentable’ has long
concerned historians and museum workers, particularly those dealing
with the history of the Holocaust. Yet to be concerned that there are
406 S. Gapps
indeed limits to representation is to suggest that some things are so horrific
that they cannot be represented. As Friedlander has shown, the
implication here is that some histories might then fail to be remembered
(Freidlander 1992). Yet as Van Elphen has noted, it is not in the extreme
nature of the event, but rather in the mechanisms of its representation that
possibilities for publicly remembering traumatic events may occur (Van
Elphen 1999, 26). The debate about remembering horrific pasts has, then,
a good deal to do with the available forms of representation, rather than
with any fixed sets of limits or prescribed sensitivities. Forms of
representation such as performance can, with care, become avenues for
giving expression to extreme experiences from the past.
The danger, then, is that certain histories should perhaps remain, for the
moment, ‘unreenactable’, like a white person’s supposed democratic right to
‘blackface’. Pioneer Theme Parks and goldrush histories tend to make
colonial history appear enjoyable and uncontested. The trauma in black and
white historical relations resists representation – without some acknowl-
edgment, some mourning, the past and present fuse and the possibility of
change is foreclosed. Thoughtful re-performances, rather than old
minstrelsies, 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 has
meant that reenactors can become unique monuments, even traveling
museums. Being a human monument indemnifies your impression. You, as
monument, cannot be graffitied. As a monument, you cannot be torn down,
perhaps only told to move on. There is less opportunity for the reenactor’s
ephemeral performances to provoke rebuke. After all, they do not remain
solid and insistent fixtures on the landscape. Physical monuments may sear
old wounds, whereas reenactments can be shifted around.
Can mobile monuments produce forms of commemoration that might
open up avenues for more inclusive, more performative forms of ritual? Can
they counteract some of the problems of monumental histories in the past?
The conceptual framework of a reenactment may lie in forging a consensus
between performers and audience. However, the successful (or not)
reception of a reenactment depends on whether it matches or ignites public
memory. Reenactment, much like cinema, constitutes an awkward historical
object for cultural analysis because it is often counterfactual. It is capable of
thinking 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 key
attraction, as it holds interesting possibilities for performance as history-
work.
Perhaps afraid that memory will vanish without solid referents, cultural
critics have suggested that shared memory would be much impoverished if it
could not reside in physically distinct spaces such as cemeteries, memorials,
 Rethinking History 407

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 Musket
Society at Darling Harbour Sydney, 2002, create an interesting juxtaposition.
Author’s collection.

monuments or other less formalized spaces and sites (Irwin-Zarecka 1994,

150). I disagree – shared memories of ephemeral performances might be less
divisive and less insistent.
Historical reenactment often conveys a particularly heightened sense of
ethical conflict and negotiation: the politics of individual and collective
historical representations are sharpened because the bodily form so easily
offends. What I prefer about reenactments over tangible, fixed monuments is
that they are less tidy and ordered. Reenactments open up possibilities that
allow history to be, as is its want, unfinished business. Unlike many other
forms of popular history, performing the past retains its marks of
production but also contains the possibility of change.

Notes on contributor
Stephen Gapps’ doctoral thesis in Public History Performing the past: A cultural
history of historical reenactments (University of Technology, Sydney, 2003) analyzed
the long history of reenactments in the West and contemporary cultural practices of
self-styled ‘reenactors’. Stephen has worked as a consultant historian in a wide range
of projects for government bodies, industry and the media. Over the last three years
Stephen has co-directed HISTORICA, Australia’s first ‘History Events Management
408 S. Gapps
Company’. HISTORICA coordinates the services of historical reenactors and
provides a nexus between reenactors and historians with film and television,
commemorative events, education and museums. During 2007 Stephen was a visiting
fellow in Reenactment at the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National
University, Canberra. His current research interests lie in the problems and
possibilities of historical reenactment and public commemoration. Stephen’s interest
in and experience with historical reenactment is based on over 15 years participation
in reenactments. He has been known to dress as an ancient Greek, a Viking, a
medieval minstrel, a ‘Roundhead’, an American Civil War soldier, a Redcoat, and a
Convict 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 for
accurate 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 among
reenactors 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/

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