| Abstract | This paper explores the construction of history through the shaping of popular memory, or preferred memories. Empirical data from interviews with 7 people involved in historic and cultural preservation in the US South is analyzed in order to explore how people manage history in light of present needs and understandings. Through memory, history becomes an important site to create and negotiate meaning as well as the site of utopian desire (how we wish to remember ourselves in the present). Heritage Organizations create a usable past through attempting to position themselves as victims. This is accomplished through a discourse of embattlement, which makes culture a surrogate for race, thus leaving whiteness unexamined and unchallenged. Thus, popular memory and culture are revealed as strategies for managing white identity.
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