Course:MDIA300/ Prosthetic Memory

Prosthetic Memory

Prosthetic memory is a concept developed by cultural theorist Alison Landsberg to describe memories acquired through mediated experiences rather than direct, lived events. These memories emerge from encounters with mass media, museums, cinema, and other representational technologies. They become personally felt memories that shape identity, despite the individual never having lived the events they “remember.” For media studies, the concept is significant because it reframes memory as public, portable, and technologically produced rather than private and organically rooted.

Origins and Development of the Concept

Landsberg introduces prosthetic memory in her 1995 “Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner,” arguing that modern media intervenes in memory formation by offering sensory, affective experiences that viewers integrate into their own sense of self. Drawing on thinkers like Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, she situates prosthetic memory within a long history of mediated experience, while emphasizing how contemporary mass media intensifies this process.

How Prosthetic Memory Works

Prosthetic memories refer to memories acquired through mediated experiences rather than direct, lived events. They are typically generated through encounters with media forms such as films, museum exhibitions, reenactments, and television. These memories are experienced as meaningful and personally felt, even when individuals are aware that they did not live the events depicted. They are affective and embodied, involving sensory engagement, emotional response, and imaginative participation. Because these memories often shape values, ethical orientations, and personal identity, they can be transformative in their social and political implications.

Landsberg emphasizes that prosthetic memories should not be understood as “false” memories. Instead, they challenge traditional assumptions that memory must originate in firsthand experience. They enable individuals to develop attachments to histories that lie outside their immediate background. Landsberg uses the example of a visitor to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, cultivating a sense of ethical responsibility toward a past they did not inherit, not by claiming ownership of the history but by relating to it effectively through mediated encounters.

Cinematic Examples

Landsberg illustrates the workings of prosthetic memory through analyses of science-fiction films that foreground the relationship between memory, identity, and mediation.

Total Recall (1990)

In Total Recall, the protagonist, Douglas Quade, urchases implanted memories that simulate a trip to Mars. These memories conflict with suppressed memories from an earlier identity, producing uncertainty about which experiences form his “true” self. The film illustrates how both authentic and manufactured memories can shape identity and action. Quade ultimately embraces the identity shaped through implanted memories, highlighting Landsberg’s argument that the significance of memory lies less in its origin than in its felt and ethical impact.

Blade Runner (1993 Director’s Cut)

In Blade Runner, replicants are equipped with implanted memories to stabilize their emotional development and promote a coherent sense of self. Rachel’s memories, borrowed from Tyrell’s niece, enable her to navigate the world with confidence and emotional grounding. The film raises questions about whether memories require an original owner and destabilizes the distinctions between humans and replicants, especially with suggestions that Deckard may also possess implanted memories. The narrative underscores how identity can be constructed from experiences that are not lived firsthand.

Together, these films blur boundaries between real and simulated memory and support Landsberg’s claim that memory in contemporary culture is increasingly public, transferable, and technologically produced.

Prosthetic Memory, Ethics, and Politics

Landsberg argues that prosthetic memory carries distinct political possibilities. Because these memories are accessible across social, cultural, and historical differences, they can challenge essentialist understandings of identity. Prosthetic memories may encourage forms of empathy across differences, enabling individuals to relate to histories and communities they are not directly part of.

This process shifts the basis of identification from similarity to a more expansive form of ethical engagement. Rather than appropriating or claiming ownership of traumatic or marginalized histories, individuals may encounter these mediated memories in ways that foster responsibility and critical awareness.

Concept in Media Studies

Prosthetic memory is especially valuable for media studies because it is key to understanding the relationship between technology, spectatorship, and identity. The term positions media as a site where individuals acquire emotional and ethical attachments to histories they did not directly live through. This changes the media’s function from merely representing the world to generating new forms of experiential knowledge that dictate subjectivity. For instance, virtual reality documentaries such as Clouds Over Sidra (2015), which places the users inside a Syrian refugee camp, foster a deep sensory and emotional engagement. Users recall experiencing scenes from the game as if they were memories. Prosthetic memory is evidence that media studies need immersive technologies, as political awareness felt through experience is more impactful than persuasion.

Landsberg’s theory can also apply to understanding memory formation in social media. The #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo movements show how platforms circulate videos and testimonies that produce affective experiences for people who are unable to access them due to geographical or cultural reasons. For example, viral videos of police violence inform a collective understanding of racial injustice. Memory becomes widely distributed and networked, raising concerns about the emotional labour of witnessing such events online. Prosthetic memory provides media theorists with a method to understand how the public internalizes events through repetitive exposure and embodied reaction.

As society becomes more reliant on technology, prosthetic memory becomes more relevant. Identity increasingly emerges from the cultural stories and images people adopt. For instance, queer communities might inherit historical memories through documentaries like Paris is Burning (1990), while climate activists may describe their commitments shaped by the prosthetic memories they adopted from Chasing Ice (2012). In every scenario, the media acts as the bridge through which individuals inherit histories they never directly experience. Media studies is crucial for analyzing how subjectivity is built through mediated encounters that blur the lines between learning and feeling.

Alison Landsberg

Alison Landsberg is a cultural historian and professor at George Mason University in the Department of History and Art History. Her work focuses on memory, film, media, and the circulation of historical narratives within public culture. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago, where she developed the foundations of prosthetic memory. Her research consistently examines how mass culture enables individuals to encounter histories beyond their lived experience, and how these encounters produce new forms of embodied knowledge. Landsberg elaborated the concept further in her 2004 book Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture, which expanded the theoretical and political stakes of the idea.

Critiques and Debates

Scholars have raised several critiques of the concept. Some address questions of authenticity and mediation, arguing that prosthetic memories may risk simplifying or metaphorically constraining complex historical experiences. Others examine whether affective identification through media reliably leads to sustained political engagement, particularly given that some cinematic examples frame implanted or mediated memories as unstable or manipulative. It is important to consider the institutions and power structures that determine what becomes visible in the mainstream, which we ultimately internalize as memory. Additional concerns focus on the ethical implications of adopting memories of traumatic or marginalized histories, noting that such processes may risk forms of appropriation or the commodification of trauma.