Abstract: This article explores the relationship between memory work and secondhand economies in the United States. "Memory work" is about the practices and conditions that constitute the ongoing (yet always partial) processes of remembering and forgetting. The continuous acts of valuation that occur with secondhand objects spotlight the contingency of memory, and a capacity for erasure or reconfiguration that is inextricable from the paths of capitalist circulation. The central argument is this: secondhand economies are a potent site of memory work that allow for the interruption of remembering through practices of material separation as well as the restoration of memory through practices of material discovery. To illustrate, I present examples of religious ephemera that emerge from Christian contexts.
James S. Bielo (Sun,) studied this question.