Paper Short Abstract:

Much of the literature on postcards focused on the recto side – the image side. Yet, the verso side is perhaps more inviting for ethnographic scrutiny. By turning the postcard back and forth, we shall follow the secret world of postal practices, offering imagined scenarios and adding fiction to facts.

Paper Abstract:

My paper reflects on my ongoing study of postcards following the donation of the David Pearlman Holy Land postcard collection to the Folklore Research Center at the Hebrew University a few years ago. This massive 200 thousand-postcard collection offers an opportunity to study what I call ‘kaleidoscopic heritage’ (Schrire 2022): the existence of many similar images and short texts. The magnitude of this collection calls for a big data study that exposes the many facts that these cards hold, and indeed, we are in the process of digitizing the collection. However, postcards are entangled objects closely woven with everyday practices (Rogan 2005). These become evident when one uses imagination to scrutinize the lives of those involved in sending and receiving these cards: a Christmas postmark from Bethlehem, a blotch, spelling mistakes, return to senders, and changes in the pen used. Since we do not know the people who sent the cards in most cases, this paper will trace plausible scenarios, invite collective daydreaming, and invent stories of broken hearts, failed communications, and other everyday tales of postcarders – anonymous heroes of a recent past. These imaginations can unwrite grand histories that - in the case of the Holy Land - are often told about national and religious identities, wars, ecstatic experiences, and death.