ABSTRACT
Participants in popular TV-reenactment shows from the early 2000s frequently alluded to an immediate, corporeal experience of the past when asked to explain what had motivated their involvement. Looking at reenactments through the lens of witnessing also throws light on their recurrent privileging of intense experiences. Civil War reenactors are known to seek out physical discomfort, fatigue, and hunger in their quest to become convincing Confederate soldiers. Reenactment frequently ties its experiential access to historical periods or events to present-day identity markers, and more often than not, the successful embodiment of historical personas is taken to rely on the supposed stability of gender, age, race, or class across the temporal divide. Attention to the disruptive potential of pasts that defy reproduction or to those experiences of the simulated past that have no historical precedent might encourage more pluralist approaches to history.
