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Review of Lecture One

Review of Lecture One. Acts of memorialization How and why and which public feelings should shape historical monuments? Interests of volunteer associations – predominantly white and female Locus sanctorum vs. meaning and history Memorial spaces are unpredictable.

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Review of Lecture One

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  1. Review of Lecture One • Acts of memorialization • How and why and which public feelings should shape historical monuments? • Interests of volunteer associations – predominantly white and female • Locus sanctorum vs. meaning and history • Memorial spaces are unpredictable. • National memorials are spaces of experience, places for emotional discovery rather than exemplary objects. • National Mall in Washington – shifted from public ground to public space, open stage for memorials, beginning 1922 with Lincoln and Grant Memorials • Vietnam Wall 1982, Korean War, 1995, WW II, 2004. • Public space bears the burden of conveying psychological drama of war through solid objects of art.

  2. The Vietnam Wall • Minimalism – more theatrical, evokes emotions, permits viewers’ creativity in response. • Therapeutic memorialization • Vietnam Veterans Memorial, intended to be accessible, personal, celebratory, healing • PTSD, language of trauma popularized • Rhetoric of healing ignores the historical, political, ethical sources of veterans’ pain and anger • The wall became an expression of national unity. • Focused on Americans as “recipients of suffering” • Completely ignored the enemy (N. Vietnamese) and allies (S. Vietnamese) • Sacrifice and suffering not symbolized. • The wall was a way to hate war and love the veterans.

  3. Tombs of the Unknown Soldier • Also memorial as therapy • European idea (France/Britain, and others) • Remember the lost, unidentified “son” of the nation. • Relief for those families who had no knowledge of the fate of their lost sons. • Unknown soldier was sacred • View and guards part of the design • Bodily Epistemology – blurs boundaries between past and present, dead and living • The guard teaches the viewer not about what is in the tomb or who, but about their own behavior toward the unknown soldier • Sites of Tombs of Unknown soldiers in Britain, France, other countries • Soil from battlefields, melted down ammunition, some sites already sacred to military memory and accomplishments, or with religious sites. • Common imagery and symbolism – arc, column, eternal flame, helmet, sword, laurel, classic figures, monarchs

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