ABSTRACT Title of disertation: MONUMENTS AS A NATIONAL PRACTICE: THE DILEMAS OF LIBERAL NATIONALISM Avital Shein, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Disertation directed by: Profesor Ronald Terchek Department of Government and Politics Profesor Vladimir Tismaneanu Department of Government and Politics At first glance, the very idea of liberal nationalism appears to be an oxymoron. It is dedicated to universal liberal values but it maintains that a nation, a particularistic entity par excelence, is a justifiable, legitimate, and even beneficial entity. Liberal nationalism, in other words, tries to reconcile two semingly ireconcilable values: national and liberal ones. However, if one thinks of liberal nationalism as a set of practices, it becomes clear that liberal nationalism is both possible and actual: it exists, and it is articulated in diverse spheres that touch our everyday lives as wel as the foundations of liberal polities. In this study, I consider nationalism (and liberal nationalism in particular) to be a set of practices that continuously create and define the image of the nation, its boundaries, and the meaning of national identity. This disertation focuses on one of these national practices: national monuments. I argue that as an example of a national practice in the built environment, they are appropriate grounds for exploring the intersection betwen space and nationalism and, more specificaly, betwen space and liberal nationalism. At the heart of my discussion is the asumption that as a national practice, monuments must operate not only in a traditional (e.g., ethnic) national context, but also in a liberal national one. Therefore, I argue that within a liberal national context, monuments would construct an image of a liberal nation?a nation that melds together national and liberal values. To do so, I first examine how monuments construct an image of a nation; specificaly, I focus on the politics of memory and death. This, in turn, leads to my discussion of liberal monuments. I explore the ways in which national monuments can be liberal, as wel. Overal, the disertation seks to show that liberal monuments capture the dilemas of liberal nationalism, and that they articulate these dilemas in space. MONUMENTS AS A NATIONAL PRACTICE: THE DILEMAS OF LIBERAL NATIONALISM by Avital Shein Disertation submited to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degre of Doctor of Philosophy 2007 Advisory Commite: Profesor Ronald Terchek, Chair Profesor Vladimir Tismaneanu, Chair Profesor C. Fred Alford Asistant Profesor Jilian Schwedler Asistant Profesor Angel D. Nieves Profesor Nancy L. Struna ? Copyright by Avital Shein 2007 -i- Acknowledgements While I was writing this disertation I often felt, like many other graduate students, isolated. But, now that the disertation is completed and I reflect on the past few years, it is clear to me that I was not alone in working on this project?I had many companions and many who shared in it. I would like to thank them for keping me company: I am grateful to Prof. Ronald Terchek for the warmth and dedication he has always shown me. I met Ron on my first day at the University of Maryland and since then, and until the very last lines were writen in the disertation, he has ben part of this project. Prof. Vladimir Tismaneanu played a crucial role in my understanding, and growing interest, in nationalism. His encyclopedic memory and his sincere interest in this project were fountains of help throughout the proces. None but Prof. Fred Alford could have asked me more straightforward yet incisive questions about my ideas in this project. At my prospectus defense, he recomended I narow my broader proposal to focus solely on monuments. I am stil grateful for that sugestion. I would like to thank my other comite members, Prof. Jilian Schwedler, Angel Nieves, and Nancy Struna, who acomodated the dificulties of my being in Berkeley, California during the writing stages of this disertation. In Berkeley, I was profoundly helped by the ideas of the late Prof. Alan Pred, who introduced me to the world of cultural geography, and Prof. Andrew Shanken, who generously gave me a place where I could talk and learn about monuments and memory within the context of art history and architecture. Also, I am grateful to my dear friends who doubled as coleagues: Yaele Amir, Ana Kogl, Jeny Wustenberg, and Chris Huneke. And especialy to Saya Kedar, who was never a coleague but whose presence in my life I value precisely for that reason. To acknowledge or thank my family wil inevitably be inadequate. Their contribution to this disertation began much before my life in graduate schol: My mother, Miriam, who taught (and continues to teach) me how to write in English and who, I believe, often loks at the world as a political theorist might. My father, Luis, who always encouraged my taking an independent path and who taught me to love and value the world of ideas. My sisters, Noa and Michal, who were the best sources of motivation and distraction whenever I neded it. y grandparents, Ralph and Hadasah, whose warm and loving home was a place of true calm. My aunt Lisa, who during my years in Maryland gave me a home away from home. My grandparents, Ana and Jos?, whose presence in my life does not diminish. And my aunt Deby, who reminded me of what was important to me. My families far away: the Brodins?Lil, Lars, Tove, and Mats, whose love and suport I have always felt and ben grateful for. And the Shalevs? ichael, Inbal, Daniel, and Avinoam, each of whom tok care to give me words of encouragement throughout. And to Jonas, who was a coleague precisely when I neded him to be. He was not only patient and endlesly encouraging, but being away from y home campus, he provided me with a rich and chalenging academic environment. He did not merely listen or simply advise me?he was thinking with me. That he should be the man I love and with whom I share my life, is therefore a very hapy coincidence. -ii- Contents Acknowledgements i List of figures iv Introduction / Layered Geographies 1 Chapter One / Liberal Nationalism 6 Chapter Two / National Monuments 36 Chapter Thre / Memory and Monuments 77 Chapter Four / Death and Dying in the Nation 107 Chapter Five / Liberal Monuments 138 Appendix 172 Bibliography 182 -iv- List of Figures Figure 1. The National World War I Memorial, Washington, DC Figure 2. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC Figure 3. The Euston Memorial and the Memorial to the Men of Hull, London Figure 4. Nixon at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC Figure 5. The Washington Monument, Washington, DC Figure 6. The Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC Figure 7. The Marine Corps War Memorial, Washington, DC Figure 8. The Monument against Fascism, Harburg Figure 9. Stumbling Blocks, Berlin Figure 10. The Aschrott-Brunnen Memorial Fountain, Kesel Figure 11. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, DC Figure 12. The National Mal, Washington, DC Figure 13. The Shaw Memorial, Boston Figure 14. El Vale de los Ca?dos, Madrid Figure 15. The Jeferson Memorial, Washington, DC Figure 16. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, DC -1- Introduction / Layered Geographies Walking down the steps of the ceremonial entrance to the National World War I Memorial in Washington, DC, one is imediately struck by the national geographies at play. The memorial weaves physical geographies with imagined geographies. The memorial itself reflects the physical map of the war, with two pavilions rising on either side, one representing the Atlantic front and the other the Pacific front. The pool in the center of the memorial reminds us that the war was not fought at home but across oceans, in places far away. But the mapping also includes the physical boundaries of the United States, quite independent from the batle-lines of the war. Fifty-six pilars encircle the pool, each carying the name of one state or teritory of the United States. One enters the memorial as if entering a thre-dimensional political map?one is, in other words, in a symbolic representation of the nation itself. Standing at the center of memorial one cannot help but se the Washington Monument casting its long shadow nearby as wel as the image of a seated Lincoln gazing at us from just beyond the Reflecting Pool. The memorial is posed in dialogue with these two memorials?a fact that is readily acknowledged, if not proudly stated, in the memorial?s brochure under the section ?ideals of democracy.? The axis that was once left open, the axis that connects the founder of the nation with the man who reaserted its -2- principles four score and seven years later, is now shared by a third event: World War I. A new founding moment, not just a new memorial, has been added. The change in the geography of the Mal becomes linked to a change in the imagined geography of how America ses itself: which moments are its founding moments and what defines those moments. Wandering through the structure, the memorial brings to one?s atention national memories, sacrifices, and values. The bas-relief sculptures that line the entrance to the memorial depict fragmented (but apparently highly significant) memories of the war. The scenes are intimate but also are somewhat of a caricature: there is an image of the meting of U.S. and Russian troops, enlisting in the military following the atack on Pearl Harbor, the active women in the army, and so on. These are scenes of what could be personal memories, but they sem ore iconic than personal. The memorial itself operates almost entirely through iconography. Wreaths and eagles abound, and every 100 dead are represented by a golden star. Despite the fragmented scenes at the entrance, memory here sems total. The war was fought, above al else, by a unified nation; in the memorial, any personal memories and stories of the war are eclipsed, if not entirely erased, by the ?big picture.? But standing in front of the ?Fredom Wal?, one knows that people are present. The dead are here, their stars filing the wal, and those who remember them are also here: we, the visitors. Amidst the celebration of the victories of the war, the memorial leaves a space open for the commemoration of death and loss. But this is not Maya Lin?s Vietnam wal. Here the memory of the dead is not a ?gash in the earth,? a black granite wal carved into the side of a hil. In this memorial, the dead are not so much mourned as -3- honored. The text etched on the stone below tels us that their death marks the price of fredom. But, who are the individuals we honor? How many of them peer at us behind each star? This, the memorial does not reveal. The memorial is fairly terse. Not much text, except the names of the states, the famous batles, and the war front. The only sentence to be read is in front of the stars: ?Here we mark the price of fredom.? It sems almost like a slogan. Fredom is the principle mesage here, reinforced once again by the proximity to Washington and Lincoln. We, who believe in (and die for) fredom, belong here. Or so it sems. Not al those who care for fredom have a space within these imaginary boundaries. There is no mention of our alies or of the dead of our alies. One is also steadfastly surrounded by a space that miics the borders of America and that marks the location of the war from an American perspective. Fredom speaks to everyone, but here it sems to be reserved for Americans. The memorial revolves around fredom, a universal value, but paradoxicaly, it remains quintesentialy American. The representation of the political geography of America is met by an imagined geography of those who belong in America and the values they believe in. * * * In this disertation, I explore how monuments, like the National World War I Memorial, operate as a national practice. I am interested in the way ideas about nation and nationhood are situated in our daily lives. To do so, I have chosen to focus on national monuments. These are architectural and symbolic tools that speak to us in national terms -4- about national events, heroes, and values. But how do monuments do this? How does their design, for instance, afect the image we have of our nation? Or, alternatively, what do the activities that monuments inspire tel us about our nation and our relation to it? How, in other words, are monuments a national practice? In the disertation, I extend this idea further: if monuments are part of the discourse of nationalism, I want to understand how would they operate in a particular kind of nationalism?in this case, liberal nationalism. I am especialy interested in liberal nationalism because it sems, on the surface, to be a contradiction in terms. Liberal nationalism is dedicated to universal liberal values but it maintains that a nation, a particularistic entity par excelence, is a justifiable, legitimate, and even beneficial entity. How would a monument capture these tensions? If it did so, what would this tel us about the tensions that liberal nationalism sems to have at a theoretical level? To answer these questions, I begin the disertation with a chapter dedicated to a theoretical analysis of liberal nationalism. I outline the main diferences betwen liberal nationalism and ethnic nationalism, and, in more detail, I examine the ways in which liberal nationalism is indeed liberal. The discussion leads into a brief discussion of liberal nationalism versus cosmopolitanism and communitarianism. Throughout, the chapter seks to highlight the tensions that are inherent in liberal nationalism. In Chapter 2, I re-examine nationalism but from the perspective of national practices. I show what it means to think of nationalism as a set of practices and I introduce monuments as an example of these. I define the term ?national monuments? as I use it in this disertation and I discuss why monuments can indeed be considered as a national practice. Chapter 2 sets the stage for the next two chapters. -5- Chapters 3 and 4 discuss how monuments operate as a national practice. In Chapter 3, I examine the way in which monuments construct a national memory and thereby define a national community. This chapter emphasizes the way in which monuments deal with the representation of diferent types of memory, such as vicarious memory or the memory of absence. The discussion foreshadows some of the arguments developed in the last chapter about the possibility of liberal national monuments. In Chapter 4, I focus on the way in which death and dying is conceptualized in the nation. In particular, I discuss the idea of sacrifice in the nation?the way in which the death of the individual is transformed into the life of the nation. The chapter centers on the memorialization of the hero and the presence of funerary architecture and customs in national monuments. This chapter, as the one before it, sets the stage for the final, concluding chapter of the disertation. The final chapter explores the possibility of liberal, national monuments. Here, I bring back the tensions within liberal nationalism that I explored in Chapter 1, and I relate them to monuments. The chapter begins with a description of the iliberal tendencies of monuments and the obvious chalenge this poses to a liberal polity. However, the rest of the chapter is dedicated to showing how monuments, in spite of these tendencies, can fit in a liberal polity. The chapter highlights, with the help of the discussions in Chapters 3 and 4, the ways in which monuments can be more liberal. Overal, the chapter shows not only that liberal monuments do exist and are possible, but that this suggests that liberal nationalism can, despite its contradictions, be practiced. -6- Chapter One / Liberal Nationalism At first glance, the very idea of liberal nationalism appears to be, using Levinson?s language, an oxymoron. (Levinson 1995) Indeed, if one thinks of liberal nationalism primarily as a theory, one cannot escape the inherent tensions which lie at its center. It proposes to meld together particularistic values with universal ones. It simultaneously conceives of the individual as dependent on his culture for self-definition and, at the same time, as an independent and autonomous agent. Liberal nationalism, in other words, tries to reconcile two semingly ireconcilable values: national and liberal ones. However, if one thinks of liberal nationalism as a set of practices, it becomes clear that liberal nationalism is both possible and actual: it exists, and it is articulated in diverse spheres that touch our everyday lives as wel as the foundations of liberal polities. In this study, I consider nationalism (and liberal nationalism in particular) to be a set of practices that create or sustain an image of the nation. These are practices that construct the image of the nation in a variety of realms such as architecture, politics, education, and art. Although I discuss national practices (what they are and what they do) in more detail in Chapter 2, it is sufficient to say here that by considering nationalism as a set of practices, my approach implies that nationalism is not limited to being a theory, but rather that it is negotiated on the level of the individual and daily life. Therefore, I argue that to study -7- nationalism we must look at national practices. These can reveal to us which national ideas are articulated and, not least, how they are articulated. My disertation focuses on one of these national practices: national monuments. As a form of national practice, they participate in the definition, maintenance, and definition of the boundaries of the nation and the meaning of national identity. They reveal to us, as I wil show in Chapter 5, that although liberal nationalism ay sem to be oxymoronic in theory, it can be and is indeed practiced. This chapter begins with a theoretical analysis of nationalism. Through a discussion of the theoretical aspects of liberalism, it aims to highlight the inherent tensions within liberal nationalism. Here I discuss how liberal nationalism relates both to nationalism and liberalism. With respect to nationalism, liberal nationalism aims to distance itself from the exclusionary, oppresive, and authoritarian manifestations that have been asociated with nationalism, especialy as witnesed during the last century. However, it maintains that these profoundly iliberal tendencies are not intrinsic to nationalism, and instead it proposes that there is a ?good? nationalism?a liberal one. But, as liberal as liberal nationalism proposes to be, it also keeps a distance from liberalism. As opposed to the liberal view of the individual, liberal nationalism ses the individual as having atachments, e.g., national loyalty, that are constitutive in the political sphere. These atachments are sen as beneficial rather than detrimental to liberal polities. Therefore, liberal nationalism ust constantly mediate betwen values that sem to come to a head: universalistic-liberal values and particularistic-national values. This constant mediation is inherent to liberal nationalism. -8- I. Nationalism and modernity Traditionaly, nationalism has been regarded as a political tool of the state. From the early writings on nationalism there has been a strong correlation betwen the discourse of nationalism and the nation-state. Elie Kedourie, for example, argues that to speak of nations necesarily implies that we are speaking of nation-states: nationalism defines a particular set of relations betwen the individual and the state. The individual?s relation to the state is based on his right not only to demarcate his diferences from others, whether these are natural or not, but also to make ?these diferences [his] first political principle.? (Kedourie 1993) To give our diferences primary political significance means that we expect our political structure, i.e., the state, to embody, or rather protect, these diferences. Therefore, Kedourie argues that ?a society of nations must be composed of nation-states, and any state which is not a nation-state has its title and its existence perpetualy chalenged.? (Kedourie 1993, 73) What is important about Kedourie?s theory of nationalism is that it emphasizes the politicization of the national identity. Similarly, Ernest Gelner links national and political identity by examining the role of literacy in the development of nation-states. (Gelner 1983) Whereas Kedourie focuses on the way national identity becomes a primary political identity for the individual, Gelner is more interested in the way that state (or administrative) boundaries lead to the creation, or definition, of a national identity. Rather than looking at how an individual comes to fel part of a nation, Gelner looks into the changes in certain social conditions which lead to the link betwen a culture, a nation, and a specific political structure. -9- Acording to Gelner, modernity brought with it the need for ?standardized, homogenous, centraly sustained high cultures.? (Gelner 1983, 55) Specificaly, Gelner has in mind the need for a broad educational system, whereby citizens are trained to becomes ?clerks? in the great machinery of the state. The main medium of this educational system is, acording to Gelner, the medium of language. A unified language becomes crucial because ?if the educational machinery is [to be] efective, its products wil be, within reason, substitutable for each other, but les readily substitutable for those produced by other and rival machines.? (Gelner 1983) What occurs, then, is that the language that one speaks, or more importantly, the language in which one was educated, wil determine one?s political identity. Political loyalties wil be ?centered on political units whose boundaries are defined by the language of an educational system.? (Gelner 1983) However, the rise of the nation-state is not the only link betwen nationalism and modernity. Many theorists of nationalism have argued that the loss of religious credibility in modernity created a vacuum that was easily filed by nationalist sentiments. Nationalism semed to return to individuals a lost sense of the sacred by moving ?the central locus of the sacred ? from the religious sphere to the political sphere.? (Milosz 1992) Anthony Smith explicitly likens nationalism to ? a ?surrogate? religion,? arguing that it helped ?overcome the sense of futility engendered by the removal of any vision of an existence after death, by linking individuals to persisting communities whose generations form indisoluble links in a chain of memories and identities.? (Smith 1986) And, in the same vein, Kedourie argues that ?the break-down of ? the religious community in modernity ? [led to] a growing need for a community which can take the -10- place of these structures.? Nationalism became, in many ways, a new civil religion. It replaced the old locus of divine authority with that of the nation and nationhood. As a civil religion, nationalism ade the image of the nation sacred. Its sanctity was strengthened by the creation of national myths. These myths ofered, similar to religion, promises of salvation. (Tismaneanu 1998) The myth of imortality, for instance, ties the life of the individual with that of the nation. As I explore in Chapter 4, the memorialization of the national hero plays the role of a promise of imortality in the nation. The hero and those for whose sake he fought or in whose name he stands, i.e., the nation, are guaranted eternal remembrance. The life span of an individual expands from the here-and-now to the eternal life of the nation. Rogers Smith also emphasizes the stories of peoplehood that define a national community. These are stories that help create a sense that one?s nation is unique and special, and they help the members of the nation ?fel proud and confident about who they are and about their futures, both as individuals and as a national community.? (Smith 1997, 38) Furthermore, Smith argues that this often takes the form of an ??ethnic myth? of common descent? because after the loss of divine authority in modernity, ?the most straightforward way to make a membership sem natural is to portray it as an expresion of actual physical kinship or shared ancestry.? (Smith 2003, 66) The ethnic myth is at the center of ethnic nationalism. Leah Grenfeld defines ethnic nationalism as the case in which ethnicity, and hence belonging to a specific nation, ?is believed to be inherent?one can neither acquire it if one does not have it, nor change it if one does; it has nothing to with individual wil, but constitutes a genetic characteristic.? (Grenfeld 1992, 11) This view of the nation and national belonging is a -1- primordialist view. Ethnicity, and in general diferences betwen groups, is sen as not only unique but as having roots in the primordial past. The nation, therefore, claims to be ?so ?natural? as to require no definition other than self-asertion.? (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983, 14) Ethnic nationalism has grown, in most instances, to be an iliberal nationalism, one that is known for its exclusion and persecution of minorities, at times culminating in genocide. This is particularly true of the Nazi case and more recently we have sen the bloodshed caused by the ethnic nationalisms in the Balkans. The historical events marked by ethnic nationalism have led to a rejection of nationalism as inherently dangerous both to individuals and to a healthy political life. It is precisely in light of this critique of ethnic nationalism that liberal nationalism has found its voice. Liberal nationalism joins the rejection of ethnic nationalism as dangerous to our political, and possibly also cultural, life. But rather than reject nationalism altogether, it proposes a third way: there is a ?good? nationalism (a liberal nationalism)?one that can both guard against the dangers of ethnic nationalism and, at the same time, provide a sense of belonging and loyalty, and ofer protection of one?s cultural community. In short, liberal nationalism ofers an argument for the legitimacy and justification of the nation and national belonging in a world shaped by the horors of virulent nationalism. I. What is liberal nationalism? One of the first distinctions to be made betwen ethnic and liberal nationalism is that, whereas ethnic nationalism claims that the nation is natural, liberal nationalism claims that the nation is a social construction. Gelner argues that nationalism does not, as -12- nationalists claim, awaken the nation from a long slumber, but rather that nationalism ?invents nations where they do not exist.? (Gelner 1964, 168) A nation is invented by creating myths about the origin of the nation, its defining characteristics, and its destiny. Though the myths need ?some pre-existing diferentiating marks to work on,? they are nonetheles manipulated by ?social engineering which [is] often deliberate.? (Gelner 1964, 168, Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983, 13) This has led thinkers like Ernest Renan to claim that ?to forget and?I wil venture to say?to get one?s history wrong are esential factors in the making of a nation.? (Renan 1994) The nation is a social construction also in the sense that it is an imagined community. Benedict Anderson argues that a nation is imagined because ?the members of even the smalest nations wil never know most of their felow-members, met them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives an image of their community.? (Anderson 1991, 6) This means that members of the nation are tied through a common imagination of the nation and their membership in it. It is this shared imagination of the nation that constitutes the heart of nationalism. In liberal nationalism there is a conscious acknowledgment of the nation as a social construction (something that is mising from ethnic nationalist discourse). But the idea that nations are socialy constructed does not mean that nations do not actualy exist. Rather, ?at most what can be denied is that they exist (and have existed) in the terms claimed by nationalists.? 1 (Archard 2000, 161) The myths that surround the nation should be understood as necesary tools in creating and sustaining a sense of belonging?a sense that for liberal nationalism is beneficial rather than destructive. Therefore, David Miler 1 David Archard goes on to say: ?No one should dispute that groups of human beings are bound together, and distinguished from others, by a real sense of comon nationality. That is indisputable, even if the basis of the sentiment can be shown to be dubious.? -13- points to two important purposes of national myths: First, ?they provide reasurance that the national community of which one now forms part is solidly based in history, that it embodies a real continuity betwen generations.? And second, ?they perform a moralizing role, by holding up before us the virtues of our ancestors and encouraging us to live up to them.? (Miler 1995, 36) For liberal nationalism, the social construction of nations does not amount to a dismisal of nationalism at large. Rather, it pushes its scholars to ask a diferent set of questions, such as the way in which nationhood is institutionalized, the power of nationhood as an identity category, the resonance of this category in social movements, etc. (Brubaker 1996, 16) The distinction betwen viewing the nation as either natural or an invention can also be interpreted ?as a tug of war betwen reason and pasion.? (Gelner 1964, 146) Because ethnic nationalism requires no other justification for its indigenous roots than the fact that they are ours, the politics in such a nationalism becomes a ?fight for principle,? rather than an ?endles composition of claims in conflict.? (Kedourie 1993, 18) In ethnic nationalism, the existence of the nation is never debated and the claims of others to the same indigenous roots (e.g., language, teritory, or race) are not negotiable. Politics in this context is therefore acompanied by strictly emotional responses which are divorced from critical deliberation. The most common emotions asociated with ethnic nationalism are those of humiliation, marginality, and resentment. Isaiah Berlin argues that a defining characteristic of nationalism is that it results from ?some form of collective humiliation.? (Berlin 1990, 245) The oppresion and denigration of a people leads to the creation of nationalism because it wil necesarily result in a reaction like that of a bent twig, ?forced -14- down so severely that when released, it lashes back with fury.? (Berlin quoted in Gardels 1991, 19) Borrowing from Nietzsche, Grenfeld describes this ?backlash? as resentiment, which she defines as the ?selection out of [one?s] own indigenous traditions of elements hostile to those of [the oppresing nation] and their deliberate cultivation.? (Grenfeld 1992, 16) The emphasis on indigenous traditions provides ?emotional nourishment? to a nation that ses itself humiliated or under atack. (Grenfeld 1992, 16) Liberal nationalism, which by and large distances itself from ethnic nationalism, agres with ethnic nationalism on this point: that emotions are not only an integral part of nationalism but that they are neither regretable nor unimportant. However, liberal nationalism tends to emphasize another set of emotions, such as dignity and self-respect, which are not intended to deny the role of humiliation and resentment in nationalism but rather to complement them. Liberal nationalism ses, in Miler?s words, ?nationality as an esential part of our identity.? (Miler 1995, 10) This means that ?the self-image of individuals is highly afected by the status of their national community.? (Tamir 1993, 73) Therefore, in order to preserve individual dignity and self-respect, liberal nationalism asumes a need for nations to be ?generaly respected and not be made a subject of ridicule, hatred, discrimination, or persecution.? (Margalit & Raz 1990, 449) Liberal nationalism emphasizes the importance of dignity on two levels: first, at the national level: the nation must have ?a safe, dignified, and flourishing ? existence [in order to] significantly contribute to [individuals?] wel-being.? (Tamir 1993, 73) And second, at the individual level: the ?demand of recognition of [individuals?] dignity as human beings? must be recognized and respected in any national endeavor. (Berlin 1990, 257) -15- Recognizing the role of dignity in nationalism does not, however, preclude the existence of debate in liberal nationalism. National memberships to which one ties one?s wel-being and self-respect ?are not beyond choice? or deliberation. (Tamir 1993, 7) Because liberal nationalism does not se the nation and national identity as natural, but as a social construction, the members of the nation are expected not only to help preserve the national culture but also to constantly participate in negotiations over its meaning and boundaries. This obligation mirors Ernest Renan?s definition of nationalism as ?a daily vote of the people?: un plebiscite de tous les jours. (Renan 1994, 17) Here the nation is interpreted as, first of al, being in the hands of the people. Neither the state, a divine entity, nor history are responsible for its creation and maintenance. And, secondly, the nation is not sen as static, as an entity that was created in a singular event in the past. Rather, the nation claims its legitimacy from an ongoing deliberation among its members about the nature and meaning of the nation?s boundaries. Liberal nationalism, like liberalism, emphasizes the autonomy of the individual. The individual should be able ?to make as many efective decisions without fear or favor about as many aspects of her or his life as is compatible with the fredom of every other adult.? (Shklar 1989, 21) To be fre to make one?s choices means that in a liberal society, there wil be room for ?diferent experiments of living.? 2 (Mil 1978, 55) The nation does not have to endorse, or even support, those experiments of living, but if it respects the autonomy of the individual, it wil let its citizens choose how they should live their lives. As J?rgen Habermas argues, ?the legaly guaranted fredom of choice of private legal 2 Mil goes on to argue that pluralism goes to the heart of what makes us human, because ?he who lets the world, or his own portion of it, chose his plan of life for him, has no ned of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.? (Mil 1978, 56) -16- subjects creates the fre space for pursuing a plan of life informed by one?s own conception of the good.? (Habermas 1998, 100) The variety of experiments of living in liberal nationalism is framed by a common belonging to the nation. However, the boundaries and ?the nature of the national culture? are far from fixed. (Tamir 1993, 89) There is room, in other words, for a variety of experiments about the meaning and breadth of the national identity. So, for example, Miler argues that ?recognizing one?s French identity stil leaves a great deal open as to the kind of Frenchman or Frenchwoman one is going to be.? (Miler 1995, 45) Liberal nationalism requires internal debate because it is only through self-reflection that national identity can be legitimately argued to be a mater of individual choice. Choice is important in liberal nationalism because it brings with it individual liberty and autonomy?something which is absent from ethnic nationalism. The importance of individual liberty and autonomy in liberal nationalism has much to do with its conception of the individual. In ethnic nationalism, the individual is understood as fundamentaly a member of a group. One?s identity is fundamentaly tied to that of the group in the sense that ?it ses social roles and afiliations as inherent, as a mater of fate rather than of choice.? (Tamir 1993, 20) Therefore, the history of the nation becomes intimately linked to that of the person and even though the life of an individual is finite, he wil nonetheles identify himself with a national history that appears to loom ?out of imemorial past, and, stil more important, glide into a limitles future.? (Anderson 1991, 19) For this reason, in ethnic nationalism the individual takes on the fate of the nation (whether glorious or victimized) as though it was his very own. The particular life of an individual becomes submerged by the collective life of the nation. -17- In liberal nationalism, the individual is sen neither as solely a member of a group nor an isolated individual, but rather as both. There is a conscious efort to find a ?midway position able to encompas the nationalist belief that individuals are the inevitable products of their culture, as wel as the liberal conviction that individuals can be the authors of their own lives.? (Tamir 1993, 13) Liberal nationalism, therefore, argues that one should simultaneously understand the individual as living within a cultural context, from which he derives his moral and national identity, and at the same time acepts that this ?contextuality need not preclude choice.? (Tamir 1993, 33) In other words, cultural contextuality is said to co-exist with individual autonomy. For liberal nationalism, it is central to the conceptualization of the individual that these two aspects of the individual are sen to be in co-existence. A liberal such as John Rawls does not deny this cultural contextuality: we may have atachments that we cannot give up, even constitutive atachments. However, he argues that atachments that we are not wiling to give up, even in his original position?such as national belonging?have no place in a wel-ordered society. For a liberal society to be at al possible, acording to Rawls, it is necesary to have reasonable pluralism rather than pluralism as such. That is, in liberal society it is possible for the citizens to have ireconcilable comprehensive doctrines as long as those doctrines are also reasonable. (Rawls 1996, 36-8) As for the individual, liberal nationalism, like liberalism, argues that one must have ?wil, choice, reflection and evaluation? in one?s life plan if one is to claim true autonomy. (Tamir 1993, 20) However, what distinguishes liberal nationalism from liberalism is that liberal nationalism argues that these choices and reflections not only can, but necesarily must occur within a social context. For example, a liberal like -18- Stephen Holmes does not believe that liberalism fits comfortably within a national context; rather, he ses it as universalistic: ?In principle, basic liberal rights should be extended charitably across al national borders. ? As a universalistic or cosmopolitan doctrine, liberalism is wholly unable to draw teritorial boundaries or separate insiders from outsiders in a principled way.? (Holmes 1995, 39) However, acording to Avishai Margalit and Joseph Raz, national belonging ?shapes to a large degre [individuals?] tastes and opportunities.? (Margalit & Raz 1990, 448) In this sense, being a social animal cannot be reduced to a game of means and ends in which society is no more than a vehicle to satisfy individuals? goals. Rather, being a social animal in the sense used by liberal nationalism eans that ?those goals themselves are the creatures of society, the products of culture.? (Margalit & Raz 1990, 448) Because cultural context frames the choices made by individuals, it is impossible to separate these choices from the social context in which they are created. A defense of individuals? right to choose must therefore recognize that the choice is bounded by the culture. However, Yael Tamir is careful to note that ?liberal nationalism does not claim that individuals can find true fredom and expresion only through complete identification with the community.? (Tamir 1993, 84) Rather, liberal nationalism only makes the asumption that individuals can lead a more meaningful life in a cultural context. For Tamir, understanding life within a social context is more meaningful because ?it conceptualizes human actions, no mater how mundane making them part of a continuous creative efort whereby culture is made and remade.? (Tamir 1993, 85) By being part of a nation, our actions take a personal and national relevance. For Isaiah Berlin, on the other hand, a contextualized life is meaningful because of the ease it -19- creates for individuals to communicate with others. Lonelines, he says, ?is not just the absence of others but far more a mater of living among people who do not understand what you are saying: They can truly understand only if they belong to a community where communication is efortles, almost instinctive.? (Gardels 1991, 21) Communal life alows for human relationships that are more conducive to mutual understanding while at the same time communal life is the context within which we frame our individual goals and values. II. Liberal nationalism and the self-governing individual Liberal nationalism argues that our ability to have individual ?wil, choice, reflection and evaluation? depends on the presence of society itself. Only by being part of society can we determine ?the boundaries of the imaginable? and ?the limits of the feasible.? (Margalit & Raz 1990, 449) To talk about individual choice becomes meaningles without a social context in which to understand those choices. Culture does not so much limit our choices as enable them. Therefore, if one is interested in an individual?s ability to exercise choice, one must be equaly interested in protecting the cultural context within which the individual frames and exercises his choices. Liberal nationalism is as much concerned with the preservation of cultures, in so far as they contextualize the individual, as it is with the protection and promotion of an individual?s ability to make meaningful choices within those cultures. Maintaining a plurality of cultures, in which a variety of individuals are situated, becomes closely connected with a concern for individual autonomy?the right to choose. In order to alow for al people to ?make cultural choices? there is a need to create a -20- ?world where the plurality of cultures is protected.? (Tamir 1993, 30) Only by guaranteing the existence of diferent cultures, which enable individuals to make a variety of choices, can liberal nationalism claim that individual autonomy is being protected. In order to protect that autonomy, it is important that members of a liberal nation, in particular members of minority groups, should be able to chalenge public decisions and policies that harm them without at the same time chalenging the legitimacy of the institutions that made them. Ronald Dworkin thinks that this can be acomplished with ?a scheme of civil rights, whose efect wil be to determine those political decisions that are antecedently likely to reflect strong external preferences, and to remove those decisions from majoritarian political institutions altogether.? (Dworkin 1978, 134) This removal is necesary if the liberal state is to remain neutral betwen conceptions of the good. However, whether liberal nationalism ultimately prefers autonomy over diversity, that is, that it ses diversity as no more than a vehicle to get at individual autonomy, is not clear. Wiliam Galston argues that this ambiguity is representative of a tension which exists in liberalism regarding these two concepts. (Galston 1995) Galston claims that Wil Kymlicka, in his book Liberalism, Community, and Culture, is worried about cultural diversity only because he is ultimately interested in the protection of choice. This, Galston argues, is problematic on two acounts: first, because Kymlicka, and other like- minded theorists of liberal nationalism, would have to reckon with groups who do not value choice and who nonetheles deserve to exist, by Galston?s standard, for the sake of diversity. And, second, because if indeed liberal nationalism would deny such groups a right to exist, it would lead to the inevitable conclusion that ?in the guise of protecting the -21- capacity for diversity, the autonomy principle in fact represents a kind of uniformity that exerts presure on ways of life that do not embrace diversity.? (Galston 1995, 523) This, for Galston, would be profoundly iliberal. Therefore, if liberal nationalism wants to uphold its claim that it is trying to place ?national thinking within the boundaries of liberalism without losing sight of either,? it must be watchful of the emphasis it puts on either diversity or autonomy. (Tamir 1993, 12) Whether liberal nationalism opts to emphasize diversity for its own sake or not, it is nonetheles clear that liberal nationalism akes a strong connection betwen the individual and the cultural group, specificaly, the nation. More importantly, liberal nationalism claims that this connection implies that a concern for the individual must be matched with a concern for the nation. That is, to defend the value of the nation is nothing more than to defend the individual himself. Yet, liberal nationalism goes one step further. Not only is the nation beneficial for the individual but the nation is also beneficial for politics. This claim derives from the asumption that ?ties of community are an important source of trust betwen individuals ? A shared identity caries with it a shared loyalty, and this increases confidence that others wil reciprocate one?s own co-operative behavior.? (Miler 1995, 92) In other words, trust and wilingnes to work with others, created by a national identity, engenders a greater facility for deliberation and social cooperation in a polity. 3 But, Miler is not the first to point out the benefit, if not necesity, of national identity to politics. John Stuart Mil saw nationality as a ?principle of sympathy,? a 3 Miler argues that, in particular, states should require citizens to ?trust one another if they are to function efectively as democracies; in particular if they are guided by the ideal of deliberative democracy.? (Miler 195, 96) -2- ?feling of common interest,? that was esential for good politics, that is, politics that promote fredom. In his often quoted statement from Consideration on Representative Government that ?fre institutions are next to imposible in a country made up of diferent nationalities,? Mil makes the claim that a polity that is interested in promoting fredom must also promote national cohesion. (Mil 1975) National cohesion provides a sense of solidarity that opens up the possibility for citizens to ?respect one another?s good faith in searching for grounds of agrement.? 4 (Miler 1995, 98) In a similar vein, Alexis de Tocquevile wrote favorably of American patriotism and noted it as one of the virtues, rather than dangers, of American democracy. Tocquevile argued that in the United States one finds a patriotism that is ?more rational,? drawing its strength from the fact that it is ?mingled with personal interest.? (Tocquevile 1988, 235) Tocquevile admired this type of patriotism because it led each citizen to ?se the public fortune as his own.? (Tocquevile 1988, 237) For him, such a sentiment meant that an individual had a stake in the wel-being of society and this would in turn encourage citizen participation in the polity. Though Tocquevile and Mil later disagred with each other regarding the type of patriotism each was defending (Mil claimed Tocquevile glorified a national sentiment based on ?pride? rather than ?interest?), both these thinkers saw the existence of a national sentiment to be crucial for a society that was interested in the promotion of individual liberty and self-rule. The argument that national identity is good for politics serves as the basis for one of liberal nationalism?s most important tenets: the right to national self-determination. 4 For an excelent acount of Mil?s writings on nationality se (Varouxakis 202) -23- This right comes from a liberal concern with self-government and the idea that an individual can only be fre if he has control over his own life. Any imposition on that control, whether by a king, a state or another individual, denotes a loss of fredom. Therefore, it is not surprising to find Mil defining the word ?nationality? in terms of self- government: ?a portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they ? desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be a government by themselves or a portion of themselves, exclusively.? (Mil 1975) Similarly, Grenfeld finds the meaning of the word ?nation? to be linked to sovereignty. She traces the changing meaning of the word from ?group of foreigners? to ?a community of opinion,? ?an elite,? ?a sovereign people,? and finaly to ?a unique sovereign people.? (Grenfeld 1992, 9) What is important about this transformation is that the final evolution of ?nation? to mean a particularistic (unique) sovereignty co-exists with its previous non- particularistic sovereign meaning. This is important to Grenfeld?s argument because she argues that it has led to two competing and ?disimilar interpretations of popular sovereignty.? (Grenfeld 1992, 11) One interpretation of popular sovereignty is that people are sovereign insofar as their nation?understood as a ?collective individual??is sovereign. This is a ?collectivistic-authoritarian nationalism? that values the sovereignty of the collective over that of the individual. The second interpretation is that of liberal nationalism. Here popular sovereignty means that the nation is sovereign only insofar as there is ?actual sovereignty of individuals.? (Grenfeld 1992, 11) This is termed by Grenfeld an ?individualistic-libertarian nationalism? because national sovereignty ultimately relies on individuals actualy governing themselves?which does not mean that each minority group has a right to its own state. -24- However, the right to national self-determination stands in opposition to clasical liberalism because it claims that individuals have a right to govern themselves not only as individuals but also as members in a group. The defense of national self-determination is a consequence of the way in which liberal nationalism conceptualizes the individual. Because national liberalism links the wel-being of the individual with that of the group, the wel-being of the group must be protected. This implies that ?group interests cannot be reduced to individual interests? and that the group, qua group and not simply as an aggregation of individuals, deserves rights of its own. (Margalit & Raz 1990, 449) The right to national self-determination is a right that aims to protect the wel-being of the nation for the sake of the individuals who are members in it. Therefore, the right must be understood on two levels: national and individual. On the national level, the right to national self-determination entails ?the right to a public sphere.? (Tamir 1993, 8) The public sphere is where a community can expres that which ties it together, that is, community life requires a space where individuals ?can share a language, memorize their past, cherish their heroes? and, generaly, live a fulfiling national life. (Tamir 1993, 8) The public sphere is central to the right to national self-determination because the expresion of one?s membership in the nation, that which gives its meaning, can only take place ?in the open, public life of the community.? (Margalit & Raz 1990, 451) It is only by guaranteing this space for national life that there can be said to be an honest efort in the ?preservation of a nation as vital and active community.? (Tamir 1993, 73) The existence of a public sphere in which national life can actualy take place? with shared language, memory, ceremony, etc.?implies a corollary right to political -25- institutions. Liberal nationalism interprets this right in two diferent ways. First, the right to political institutions requires that these institutions are sen as ?representing a particular culture and as cariers of the national identity.? (Habermas 1998, Tamir 1993, 74) This is achieved by creating public institutions that reflect the history, the culture, and the language of the nation. Only by having this representation can members of the nation consider these institutions to be their own. Second, the right to political institutions means that members of the nation should have aces to the political sphere. In the liberal view, these political rights, acording to Habermas, aford citizens the opportunity to asert their private interests in such a way that, by means of elections, the composition of parliamentary bodies, and the formation of a government, these interests are finaly aggregated into a political wil that can afect the administration. In this way the citizens in their political role can determine whether governmental authority is exercised in the interest of the citizens as members of society. (Habermas 1998, 240-41) From the liberal nationalist perspective, these are rights that alow members of the nation to participate ?in the political life of their state, and [fight] in the name of group interest in the political arena.? (Margalit & Raz 1990, 452) In this sense, the right to political institutions is a right to political participation. In order to efectively exercise the right to political institutions, there is an implicit need for as litle external interference as possible. However, acording to liberal nationalism, this need does not necesarily imply that the members of the nation should be granted autonomy and the right to establish their own sovereign nation-state. The demand for sovereignty is not necesarily part of the right to political institutions, nor part of the larger right to national self-determination. Rather, the degre to which autonomy is desirable must ?take into acount that al nations are equaly entitled to it.? -26- (Tamir 1993, 74) Therefore in order to avoid inequalities, liberal nationalism emphasizes the variety of political arangements that can be established to satisfy the right to national self-determination without necesarily granting a nation a sovereign nation-state. For example, Tamir suggests ?the establishment of national institutions, the formation of autonomous communities, or the establishment of federal or confederal states.? Margalit and Raz point to ?multinational states, in which members of the diferent communities compete in the political arena for public resources for their community.? (Margalit & Raz 1990) Al these solutions are meant to grant nations the right to self-determination while at the same time avoiding dogmatism by being sensitive to the particular conditions of each case. However, the arguments in favor of the right to national self-determination should not lose sight of the fact that ultimately this is a right that belongs to individuals. Because the membership of individuals in a nation constitutes, acording to liberal nationalism, an important aspect of their identity, the justification for the right to national self- determination is in esence based on a concern for the protection of this individual identity. This means that in order to preserve their national identity, individuals must be given the opportunity to expres this identity, both privately and publicly. This is the sense by which the right to national self-determination should be understood at an individual level. For liberal nationalism, it is only insofar as the nation is valuable to individuals that there is any ?moral importance? to protecting the group?s interest. (Margalit & Raz 1990, 450) In other words, ?the right to national self-determination should be sen as an individual right.? (Tamir 1993, 73) -27- IV. Liberal nationalism and cosmopolitanism In addition to its dialogue with both nationalism and liberalism, liberal nationalism is also in a debate with cosmopolitanism. Precisely because liberal nationalism tries to rescue nationalism from the bad reputation it has received during the history of the 20th century, cosmopolitanism is eager to show that liberal nationalism is no beter than the old (or ?bad?) nationalism, and, contrary to the claim that liberal nationalism is a liberal theory, cosmopolitans find liberal nationalism to be just the opposite. The cosmopolitan critique of liberal nationalism can be divided into two central arguments. The first concerns what Salman Rushdie cals the ?mongrel self.? (Waldron 1995, 94) Cosmopolitans do not, by and large, chalenge the liberal nationalist notion that we have cultural atachments that create and shape our choices and identity. In fact, cosmopolitanism takes our cultural identities very seriously?more seriously, it argues, than liberal nationalism does. What is chalenged in the cosmopolitan view is that the existence of a cultural contexualization of our choices does not mean that we ?need any single context to structure al our choices.? (Waldron 1995, 108, emphasis added) Rather, the cosmopolitan self draws meaning for its choices from a variety of cultural contexts. In other words, contextuality can be fragmented and diverse. By upholding the multiple sources of identity, cosmopolitanism leaves liberal nationalism with the chalenge of knowing precisely which culture constitutes the individual, and therefore, which culture must be protected in order to secure the wel- being of the individual. Whereas liberal nationalism tries to draw cultural boundaries around the individual, cosmopolitanism aims at disrupting them. Cosmopolitanism streses boundary-crossing because it ses this as the only honest defense of diversity. To -28- put any kind of boundary would mean some sort of exclusion, and this is precisely what cosmopolitanism thinks is dangerous with liberal nationalism. 5 The second argument of cosmopolitanism concerns what I cal the ?universal, cosmopolitan spirit.? Cosmopolitanism argues that there are some universal values that everyone, regardles of their cultural background, should (or do) believe in. Judith Lichtenberg argues that one of the problems of liberal nationalism is that while it ?promotes diverse national sentiments and ideas within a state? it is unable to answer the question ?whether members of diferent cultures wil have enough in common to bind them into one society.? (Lichtenberg 1990, 68) For Lichtenberg this question of social unity is important because she suspects that lacking a shared sense, various national groups within a society wil not only be at odds with each other, but may also experience actual conflict. Therefore, she argues that to avoid this social disunity there should be a ?glue that binds us? specificaly, the recognition that ?we are al human beings.? (Lichtenberg 1990, 69) Martha Nussbaum modifies this somewhat, seing ?reason and the love of humanity? as common to al human beings. (Nussbaum 2002, 15) Lichtenberg?s ?glue? translates into a commitment among al people that ?recognizes our undiference,? that is, it acepts both our diference and equality. (Lichtenberg 1990, 69) The mutual recognition of our humanity is part of the efort to recognize diversity and avoid the trait in liberal nationalism of protecting one culture at the expense of others. The ?glue? that Lichtenberg writes about is echoed in Jeremy Waldron?s article ?Minority Cultures and the Cosmopolitan Alternative.? Here Waldron argues that liberal 5 For a response to the cosmopolitan critique of liberal nationalism se, for example, (Taras 202, 203-5) -29- nationalism fails to appreciate the existence of a cosmopolitan spirit that is commited to the protection of cultures in a way that is very similar to that of liberal nationalism. Because liberal nationalism is concerned with protecting boundaries around minority cultures, it loses sight of the fact that there are a ?large number of men and women who are prepared to devote themselves to isues of human and communal values in general.? (Waldron 1995, 104, emphasis in original) Similarly, Nussbaum warns that ?by conceding that a moraly arbitrary boundary such as the boundary of the nation has a deep and formative role in our deliberations, we sem to deprive ourselves of any principled way of persuading citizens they should in fact join hands across these other bariers.? (Nussbaum 2002, 14) Neither Nussbaum nor Waldron are interested in contesting the fact that people have ?their own particular heritage? and that this should be protected. (Waldron 1995) However, they are contesting the denial by liberal nationalism that this precludes the existence of a cosmopolitan spirit that can help promote these particular heritages. Furthermore, Waldron is also concerned that liberal nationalism overlooks the value and benefit of international institutions. He argues that similar to the way ?individuals need communal structures in order to develop and exercise the capacities that their rights protect, so minority communities ned larger political and international structures to protect and to sustain the cultural goods that they pursue.? (Waldron 1995, 104) In a similar vein, Kymlicka also remarks that minority nationalism would benefit from increased atention to the way international institutions ?exercise an increasing influence over our lives.? (Kymlicka & Straehle 1999, 79) International institutions cross national and state borders and represent a universal concern for the protection of cultural -30- minorities?a concern that is not unique to liberal nationalism, International institutions should therefore be considered relevant and valuable in any discussion about the protection and promotion of cultural groups. V. Liberal nationalism and communitarianism Although liberal nationalism has entered into a debate with cosmopolitanism, the relation betwen liberal nationalism and communitarianism has not been as readily debated. Communitarians share liberal nationalists? suspicion that the liberal individual is too decontextualized. Michael Sandel, for example, claims that the liberal individual is a disembodied self, a self unencumbered by atachments and by the specifics of the local context. This means that the liberal individual is not shaped by experience: No commitment could grip me so deeply that I could not understand myself without it. No transformation of life purposes and plans could be so unsetling as to disrupt the contours of my identity. No project could be so esential that turning away from it would cal into question the person I am. (Sandel 1982, 62) Likewise, Benjamin Barber criticizes the liberal emphasis on autonomy as being isolating. This is how he describes the liberal individual: ?We are born into the world solitary strangers, live our lives as wary aliens, and die in fearful isolation.? (Barber 1984, 68) Both liberal nationalism and communitarianism argue against liberalism by stresing the view that an individual?s identity is properly conceived as formed by constitutive atachments to community and culture. Thus, understanding the ?nation? as a type of ?community? can easily lead to a smooth reconciliation betwen the communitarian emphasis on community and the defense of the nation by liberal nationalism. Given the strong similarity betwen these two critiques of liberalism, is there a diference betwen liberal nationalism and communitarianism? -31- In his article ?Should Communitarians Be Nationalists,? John O?Neil argues that communitarians should not consider the nation a community and should, therefore, distance themselves from nationalists. Acording to O?Neil the modern state was ?responsible for centralizing power that was previously difused?empire, church, prince, lord, city and guild had distinct powers over an individual.? (O'Neil 1994, 137) The nation-state, therefore, ?demands of its citizens loyalty that overides al others.? (O'Neil 1994, 137) O?Neil is particularly critical of the view that the nation can be considered a community at al. He argues that the idea of a coherent national culture is a myth because no modern nation actualy has a coherent ethnic and cultural identity. Rather, nationalism has had to go out of its way to create a coherence and to ?suppres the diferences within a nation.? (O'Neil 1994, 141) Though he does not argue this directly, O?Neil is also implying that the ?centrifugal force inherent within nationalism that each ?ethnic and cultural group? within existing nations deserves its own nation? means that nationalism can only deal with diference by alotting it an independent realm. In other words, nationalism does not acknowledge real diference; the only tool it has to do so is to apply the principle of the right to self-determination to smaler and smaler homogeneous sub- groups within the nation ad infinitum, thus retaining its original position that nations (or sub-nations) need to be internaly cohesive. Liberal nationalism does not embrace diversity as much as it compartmentalizes it. However, for Tamir, the problem of minorities in the liberal nation is of a diferent nature. Rather than a concern for the internal cohesion of minorities, she argues that although minorities in a liberal nation wil have ?a wide range of rights and liberties and distribute goods and official positions fairly? [they] wil unavoidably fel alienated to some extent.? But, she argues, ?the -32- opennes of the political culture and the readines to compensate culturaly disadvantaged members of minority groups may lesen the hardship faced by cultural minorities.? Tamir acknowledges that ?this tension is endogenous to any liberal national entity and cannot be resolved.? (Tamir 1993, 163, emphasis added) For communitarians, the rise of the nation is largely responsible for the proceses of monopolization of power and the suppresion of diference that has left the individual isolated, lacking local loyalties and cultures, i.e., using Sandel?s term, an unencumbered self. On this basis, O?Neil argues that it is a mistake for communitarians to align themselves with the nationalist defense of the nation, because ?if communitarianism is to be understood as a form of social criticism that is aimed at the disappearance of community in modern society, then nationhood and nationalism should be amongst its targets.? (O'Neil 1994, 141) The inability of the nation to work as a real and meaningful community means that communitarianism is not only diferent from liberal nationalism but that it stands in opposition to it. O?Neil?s critique of the relation betwen communitarianism and liberal nationalism depends on the main claim that the nation is not a community. However, the extent to which a nation is a community goes back to the theory of liberal nationalism itself. From the standpoint of liberal nationalism, the nation cannot help but be a community, albeit an imagined one. Anderson?s description of the nation as an imagined community is not an acusation of the nation as being a ?false? community. Rather, the term ?imagined community? serves as a distinction betwen ?real? communities where there is actual physical interaction among people, and ?imagined? communities where such contact is impossible due to its large size but in which the sense of belonging exists -3- nonetheles. (Archard 1996) Therefore, acording to Archard, ?any nation whose members consider themselves to be a nation is a genuine community.? (Archard 1996, 218) But this argument does not make the relation betwen communitarianism and liberal nationalism irelevant. Rather, Archard claims that the real question nationalists should addres is not whether nations are real communities, but rather they should examine ?what sort of status [nations] are to have as communities.? (Archard 1996, 219) In a world that is increasingly globalized there is no longer a need to restrict the existence of the nation to the state level, but instead focus on its significance as a community. Following Kymlicka, Archard argues that the value of the nation as a community should be questioned in terms of its worth in providing a meaningful identity, a cultural resource and in contextualizing our lives and choices. (Archard 1996, Kymlicka 1989) Conclusion By virtue of trying to bridge betwen two semingly ireconcilable values, liberal nationalism is in constant dialogue with nationalism and liberalism. It espouses liberal values which are universal because everyone is entitled to them regardles of cultural, racial, or geographical background. This means that within liberal nationalism there is an aspiration to some kind of universality whereby one?s identity and political choices depend on one?s ability to reason and, as Nussbaum terms it, to sek the pursuit of justice and the good. However, these universal values must sit with national-particularistic values which situate the individual in a particular cultural context. These values emphasize the importance of belonging to a group, i.e., the nation, and the importance of -34- this belonging for political life. For liberal nationalism a healthy political life depends, in fact, on our protecting our cultural or national background. Naturaly, liberal nationalism has many voices which can be, at times, in tension with one another. On the one hand, Tamir believes that a liberal nation wil have necesarily one dominant national group whose cultural values wil have more representation in the political structures (e.g., the Jewish population in Israel). On the other hand, someone like Kymlicka increasingly emphasizes the idea of cultural federalism in the nation where no one group dominates over the others. However, in this chapter I have sought to describe liberal nationalism in broad strokes, avoiding the finer distinctions within theories of liberal nationalism. I have done so in order to emphasize the inherent tensions of liberal nationalism, i.e., national versus liberal values, which are shared by al theorists of liberal nationalism. Liberal nationalism ust walk the fine line betwen arguing that national sentiments (and the nation-state) are stil legitimate and defensible in today?s world, and avoiding the dangers that nationalism is known for. In the chapter that follows, I reconsider nationalism not as merely a theory, but as a set of practices. My discussion turns from theoretical analysis of the values espoused by liberal nationalism to an analysis of national practices, specificaly national monuments. The next chapter, as wel as the rest of the disertation, focuses on the idea that nationalism is a situated practice. This means that to understand nationalism, and by extension liberal nationalism, we must not look only at the theoretical arguments in its defense (or against it), but rather look to its manifestations in our daily life. It is in the practice of daily life that we can se how nationalism operates. Such an analysis can show -35- that problems that nationalism ay face on a theoretical level, such as the tensions within liberal nationalism, find a whole host of solutions when it takes form on the ground. -36- Chapter Two / National Monuments Nationalism is sustained by a set of practices that together construct the idea of a nation. Far from being an idea that exists apart from the material world, nationalism is embodied in the everyday life of individuals. From political and economic policies to aesthetics in art, music, and literature, nationalism finds expresion in a range of activities that afect the individual in an imediate and real way. Through these practices the idea of a nation is continuously created and reproduced. The practices create imaginative ties, in the sense proposed by Benedict Anderson, that bind people into a community and which define the boundaries of the nation, its characteristics as wel as its relation to the individual. Together, these practices comprise a national narative, or alternatively, they are the substance of nationalism. This chapter explores the ways in which nationalism can indeed be considered a set of practices. It serves, more specificaly, as an introduction to the study of national monuments as a vehicle for a study of liberal nationalism. It argues that national monuments are an example of a national practice in the built environment and that, as such, national monuments are appropriate grounds for exploring the intersection betwen space and nationalism and, more specificaly, betwen space and liberal nationalism. It further argues that national monuments produce meaning and are capable of embodying a -37- particular image or interpretation of the nation. In Chapters 3 and 4, I analyze how monuments do so?I explore this question by focusing on the politics of memory and death?while here I provide a general discussion of what monuments do and I make explicit what I mean by the term ?national monuments.? I. Nationalism as a collection of practices National practices produce national meaning. They include al those activities that contribute to the construction of the ?nation.? National practices are considered a category of cultural practices, to use Wiliam Sewel?s language, in the sense that they are part of a dialectical relation betwen a system of symbols (a semiotic code) and the practical activities that reproduce them. (Sewel 2005) National practices produce a distinctly national meaning by using the symbols available to them and by interpreting them through a national lens. More specificaly, national practices are elements that contribute to our understanding of what the nation is, how it is defined, and who belongs to it. They produce what is often refered to as the national narative or discourse. Like other cultural practices, national practices cut acros spatial, political, educational, and aesthetic dimensions. They are present in the buildings we construct, in the social policies we support, in the music we compose, in the history we learn at school, etc. They permeate, to borow from Piere Bourdieu, our habitus. (Bourdieu 1992) Along these lines Rogers Brubaker argues that the nation should be sen as a category of practice rather than a category of analysis. (Brubaker 1996) He ses the idea of ?nation? as arising from a series of practices and not, as it is usualy sen, as engendering them. In this view, the ?nation? as such does not exist; what exists are the -38- practices that give rise to it. Brubaker argues that ?nationalism is not engendered by nations? but rather that ?it is produced?or beter, it is induced?by political fields.? 1 By political fields Brubaker means the diverse locations where national meaning, i.e., the construction of the nation, is contested, produced and chalenged. By this acount, the study of nationalism wil turn away from asking the routine question: ?What is the nation?? and instead ask ?How is a nation practiced?? The analysis wil look into the diferent modes and conditions by which the ?nation? afects our perception of the past and future, our relation to others, and our sense of self. The study of nation and nationalism wil, in other words, investigate the political fields of nationalism, or rather, the set of national practices that produce the ?nation.? National practices take a variety of forms and in this work I focus on one of them: national monuments. National monuments are a national practice because they produce meaning for the nation. Through their design and location, as wel as the debates and competitions that precede their construction, national monuments, like other forms of national practices, participate in the construction of the ?nation.? However, as opposed to other national practices?which may include educational curricula, language policies, or political rhetoric?national monuments reveal a particular mode of producing meaning that is anchored in space. The configuration of space, both of the monument itself and of its surroundings, serve as a medium through which national meaning is constructed and 1 This is reminiscent of Ernest Gelner?s view that ?nationalism engenders nations.? (Gelner 1983, 5) -39- reproduced. Therefore, the role of space in the production of meaning becomes central to a study of national monuments as a form of national practice. 2 By this acount, the debates that precede the construction of national monuments can be considered as a separate set of national practices that is distinct from practices which operate after a national monument has been built. The practices that precede the construction of many national monuments often involve bargaining and negotiation betwen political interest groups which sek to determine the construction, design, and location of national monuments. This was famously the case with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, whose original design by Maya Lin was contested (and eventualy modified) due to eforts by Secretary of the Interior James Wat, and with the National World War I Memorial, whose design and placement on the National Mal?s main axis was subject to many controversies. (Has 1998, Mils 2004, Mock 2003) The politics at play before national monuments are constructed not only reveal that national monuments do not arive on the scene de novo, but also that national monuments are the result of prolonged eforts by individuals whose diverging views reflect competing ideas about the nation and the monuments that are erected in its name. Ironicaly, the very practices that are at play before a national monument is constructed are often concealed by the actual, built monument. Kirk Savage argues that ?public monuments [exercise] a curious power to erase their own political origins and 2 The idea that national monuments contribute to the construction of the nation is not new. Eric Hobsbawm argues that monuments can play an important role in the invention of tradition. In his discusion of France during the Third Republic, he finds that the multiple statues of Mariane, which apeared throughout France during this time, were not simply a colection of public art works, but that they were ?the visible links betwen the voters and the nation.? (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) In other words, the monuments to Mariane were active participants in the construction of an ?image of the Republic.? -40- become sacrosanct.? (Savage 1997, 7) This is a power, he believes, that is evident ?whenever people rise to defend monuments from change or atack.? (Savage 1997, 7) Once a monument is built, it sems to have always existed. Its design does not refer, at least not in an explicit or intentional way, to the debates and controversies that may have surrounded its construction. Furthermore, a national monument often appears to exist quite independently from any particular human choices and debates. Therefore, as opposed to the practices that operate after the construction of national monuments, these early practices are quintesentialy non-material: once the monument is built, al traces of them sem to disappear. However, the seming disappearance of debates and controversies does not mean that the national meanings produced by the built monument are imutable. On the contrary, national monuments produce an aray of national meanings through their design, configuration in space, and the activities they inspire. These elements are necesarily influenced by the debates and intentions that brought the monument into existence, but it is precisely because these are often concealed from us that meaning is rooted, ultimately, in the monument as it stands before us. In other words, the debates that occur before a monument is built?in particular, the way in which these debates reflect diferent national meanings?are relevant only insofar as they help us understand monuments as objects anchored (and existing) in space; otherwise, the debates that precede the construction of monuments would be similar to any other non-material national practice. Therefore, in considering national monuments as a national practice that is quintesentialy embedded in space, I focus on the production of meaning that occurs once national monuments are, indeed, put in place. -41- Yet beyond the questions of space, what is particularly interesting about national monuments producing a national meaning, or in Hobsbawm?s term, an invented tradition, is that not al national monuments produce the same meaning. Diferent monuments wil produce diferent visions of what the nation is and how an individual relates to it. These diferences wil often play out in the diverse design choices of monuments. Monuments on a grand scale, for example, are likely to construct an image of the nation as larger than life?larger, perhaps, than the individual. Monuments that are smaler, even dispersed, are more likely to signal a view of the nation as composed of (and not imposed on) individuals. Since diferent design choices in national monuments reflect an aray of diferent national meanings, the study of national monuments opens the door to a paralel examination of diferent, and often competing, ideas of the ?nation.? 3 In order to discuss national monuments as a national practice, i.e., to study the national meanings they produce, it is necesary to first define what I consider to be a national monument. The second part of this chapter looks at what monuments do?a discussion about the production of national meaning. But here I begin first with a discussion about the definition of national monuments. I ofer this discussion not in order to arive at a definite and final definition of the concept but rather to explore the subtleties and nuances that are at stake when considering national monuments as a type of 3 In Chapter 5, I discus how national monuments might produce a national meaning that is congruent with liberal nationalism. My discusion relies on the idea that since national monuments produce diferent national meanings one would expect national monuments built in the context of liberal nationalism to apear diferent from onuments built in, say, the context of ethnic nationalism. In particular, I examine how national monuments can contribute not only to a national narative but also a liberal one. That is, how might they produce a national meaning without sacrificing a comitment to liberal values? -42- national practice. Above al, this discussion aims to map the potential for multiplicity of meanings and functions in national monuments. I. What is a monument? Monument or memorial? A distinction is often drawn betwen a monument and a memorial. A monument is sometimes asociated with a life-afirming commemoration, such as a celebration of a victory or a hero, whereas a memorial is linked to the commemoration of death and is considered part of the grieving proces. However, etymologicaly the words ?monument? and ?memorial? come from roots that do not draw this distinction betwen life and death. The word ?monument? is derived from the Latin monre which means to remind; so monument could be construed as a ?remind-ment.? The word ?memorial? is the adjective form of the Latin word memoria, that is, memory. Both these roots refer to the way in which we recollect the past. A monument refers to those objects that bring back to mind, through representation, events or stories that otherwise would remain forgotten. And a memorial functions as a physical extension of memory itself. The etymological roots of both words imply that both monuments and memorials are active participants in the renactment (or even invention) of a past. If both monuments and memorials engage with the past, how can we distinguish betwen them? Or, rather, should we distinguish betwen them? Maya Lin once said that in order to understand her work properly it is important to diferentiate betwen a monument and memorial. (Lin 1995) For Lin, monuments and memorials perform diferent functions: the first stands detached and works to inform or educate its audience, -43- while the later engages the individual, encouraging introspection and self-evaluation. About her commemorative designs, Lin said: ?I consider the work I do memorials, not monuments; in fact I?ve often thought of them as anti-monuments. I think I don?t make objects; I make places.? (Lin 1995, 13) Here Lin asociates monuments with objects and memorials with places. The distinction that she draws betwen an object/monument and a place/memorial is important because Lin argues that a place alows for ?experience and for understanding experience.? (Lin 1995) And since she is keenly interested in the proceses that occur within the individual rather than the proceses that impose a certain experience or knowledge on the individual she is interested in designing memorials and not monuments. Lin?s distinction is appealing because it diferentiates among the roles that commemorative structures may have. However, such a distinction is weakened by the day-to-day use of the terms ?monument? and ?memorial.? For example, on the National Mal both the Lincoln and Jeferson structures are officialy named memorials, even though they are structures that do not imediately sem to alow for the type of personal experience that Lin is interested in. They do not encourage an active engagement with their audience, but are rather objects which tower above their audience and whose main object is to invoke awe and respect. And, conversely, there are commemorative structures whose aims are similar to Lin?s definition of a memorial, which nonetheles cary the title ?monument.? Such is the case with Jochen Gerz?s Monument to Racism?a commemorative structure composed of 2,148 engraved stones dispersed throughout the Sarbrucken plaza in Berlin. Gerz?s design is meant to create a space where one can -4- experience a sense of absence and loss. It is, like Lin?s memorials, a place that reaches for personal, inward experience. Lin?s desire to distinguish among diferent commemorative functions is important. But doing so through terminological distinction, i.e., monument versus memorial, is counterproductive. The two terms are so often used interchangeably that forcing a separation betwen the two becomes not only artificial but cumbersome. Therefore, in this disertation, I use the words ?monument? and ?memorial? interchangeably, and what I say about one refers to the other. This does not mean that I think that diferent commemorative structures cannot have diferent functions?far from it. In Chapter 5, I focus precisely on the diferent commemorative functions that a monument (or memorial) might have in the context of liberal nationalism. As opposed to Lin, I do not anchor these diferences in the choice of word (monument/memorial), but rather in an extended description about how these diferences operate. 4 What is a national monument? Although I use ?monument? and ?memorial? interchangeably, I must distinguish a national monument from other non-national monuments. In a succinct formulation, I consider a national monument to be a monument that forms part of the national discourse. By national discourse I refer to (similar to Brubaker) the practices that contribute to the construction and maintenance of the idea of the ?nation.? In this sense, 4 My choice of the word ?monument? in the title of the disertation, and its more comon use throughout the text, is to some extent arbitrary. I prefer the word ?monument? over ?memorial? because ?memorial? apears to be linked more strongly to memory and, although I certainly think it has a lot to do with memory (se Chapter 3), I also argue that monuments are linked to death, space, the production of meaning, etc. -45- monuments, as I have discussed at the beginning of this chapter, are one of the many practices of nationalism. Yet, what is at stake with national monuments, as opposed to other monuments, is the way in which they addres their viewers. The primary viewers of a national monument are asumed to be members of the nation. In order for the monument to function as part of the national discourse, it must be able to engage the individuals who form part of the national community. Therefore, the location, as wel as the values, events, and people represented in the monument, are meaningful only if the viewer, the individual, ses himself as part of the nation. Because national monuments are only one in a variety of mechanisms that bind the individual to the nation, national monuments have a dual role of both reinforcing and inspiring the relationship betwen the individual and the nation. And, although diferent national monuments may vary in the way that they represent the nature of this relation, aserting the existence of such a relationship is nonetheles an integral part of what makes a monument national. The dificulty in defining national monuments as monuments that participate in national discourse is that some monuments may not intend to engage in the national discourse but do so nonetheles. James Young discusses this particular phenomena with regard to Holocaust memorials. In The Texture of Memory, Young examines Holocaust memorials in four countries: Poland, Germany, Israel, and the United States. (Young 1993) On the surface, these memorials are dedicated to an event that transcends national discourse and national belonging. They are memorials dedicated to an event that is relevant to the Jewish people, or alternatively, to humankind in general?their significance is not limited to any particular nation. However, Young finds that the Holocaust memorials have diferent designs and interpretations about the meaning and -46- significance of the Holocaust and that these diferences are dependent on the national context in which they are embedded. Holocaust memorials in Poland, for example, fail to distinguish betwen Jewish and non-Jewish Polish victims and therefore couch the Holocaust within a general Polish suffering. Similarly, in the United States and Israel, the Holocaust is memorialized from each country?s perspective: America as a safe haven and Israel as Zionist redemption, respectively. And, finaly, in Germany, the design of counter-memorials convey the uneasy and dificult task of Germany which has ?[caled] upon itself to remember the victims of crimes it has perpetrated.? (Young 1993, 21) Young?s study shows that monuments that commemorate events that are not originaly limited to a national audience, can nonetheles become ?nationalized.? However, Young leaves open the converse question, that is, can a national monument gain an international, supra-national, significance? Because national monuments are often sites for international tourism, they may become part of an international stage and have international significance that may replace, or add to, the national one. A good example for this is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in Japan. The memorial speaks to a specific Japanese narative of nationalism which, acording to Benedict Giamo, views the Japanese as ?a pacifist people emerging from the very act of atomic victimage.? (Giamo 2003, 705) However, for the non-Japanese visiting the site, the memorial functions as a reminder of the horors of nuclear weapons in general and as a warning against al future nuclear wars. The memorial functions both as a Japanese -47- national memorial and as an international one. 5 This example indicates that national monuments may have an ambiguous character, oscilating betwen having a national and universal significance. However, despite the way in which international tourists may approach a national monument, the role of the monument in participating in and framing the national discourse is not diminished. The various ways in which a monument can operate?for example, as an international symbol?does not bear on the role national monuments have as one of the practices of nationalism. What distinguishes national monuments from other monuments is their conscious efort to speak to members of the nation. As I have discussed, national monuments may have a paralel efect on individuals who are outside the national community. Although an examination of the nature of this paralel discourse is interesting, it lies outside the scope of my study of monuments as national practices. 6 National monuments function as national tools insofar as they deliberately contribute to, and participate in, the national discourse. 7 5 Giamo?s critique of the memorial as ?the ideal project of specious national identity for public consumption and reiteration? rather than ?historic acuracy,? is misguided. He criticizes the memorial for doing exactly what national monuments are meant to do: giving a historic event a national significance. On the whole, it is not clear whether his dislike of the ?mas ignorance? that the memorial produces is a criticism of the memorial as a national memorial, or whether it is a criticism of ?bad? Japanese nationalism. 6 Monuments that have a super-national audience, e.g., humankind, or a narower one, e.g., a particular city, should of course be considered monuments, but not necesarily national ones. 7 The question of ?intent? is, of course, tricky. Monuments do not have a wil or agency. They do not intend to be part of the national discourse. Rather, the design, location and construction indicate a particular way of integrating the monument into a national landscape. This is true even in the case of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial whose architect, Maya Lin, did not intend it to be specificaly a monument about American nationhod (she wanted it to be ?about death?). However, the location and some elements in the design of the monument make it quintesentialy an American monument. Located at the intersection of the axis betwen the Washington and Lincoln memorials, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial places the Vietnam war in relation to, and in dialogue with, the American War of Independence and the Civil War. Furthermore, the inclusion of the names of only the American dead on the black granite wal shows again that, despite Lin?s intent, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a monument about and for Americans. -48- National monuments are public monuments The function of national monuments as tools that afect the way people think of themselves and their relation to the nation is dependent on the monuments? being placed where people can view them and, in some cases, interact with them. National monuments are, in other words, public monuments. They are located in public spaces that have open aces for people to se them. The location of national monuments can be divided into two types of public spaces: official space and everyday space. An official space is a space that is dedicated to the symbolic representation of the nation. Often these spaces are located in a center of a city, either in official buildings or great avenues and squares, such as the location of monuments on the National Mal. It is important to note that an official space does not have to be purely symbolic. Often it can be tied to a function, such as housing a governmental body (e.g., the Capitol building in Washington, DC). However, even when official space is functional, its design and location is imbued with symbolic significance. One enters these spaces as a member of a particular public (i.e., the nation), rather than as a private individual. And, therefore, these official spaces might be more properly caled national spaces. They are spaces that derive their meaning from the national discourse with which they are imbued and to which they contribute. 8 National space is not limited to what one might cal ?intentional national space.? There are national spaces that become significant to the nation by virtue of a particular event. This is the case for places like Pearl Harbor and Ground Zero that have become 8 The National Mal is a god example of a national space. It is especialy interesting to note that L?Enfant?s original design of the National Mal was meant to actualy replicate the geography and national destiny of the United States. The western extreme of the Mal, where the Lincoln Memorial is located today, was left open with a clear view of Virginia and the Potomac in order to represent the open Western frontier. -49- meaningful to the nation not because they were designed to be so (as with L?Enfant?s design of the National Mal), but rather because of the events that took place on their grounds. This type of national space may be thought of as acidental. Despite the fact that the space was originaly built for a military or economic purpose, it has become a space that is meaningful for the nation because of subsequent events that occurred there and therefore a place where one finds national commemorative monuments. However, although these two types of national space are distinguished by their ?intentionality,? they both share the characteristics of a space imbued with national meaning and identified with a specific representation of the nation. National monuments can also be public by being located in everyday spaces, such as neighborhoods, shopping centers, or public parks. Everyday spaces are characterized by their imediacy to people. As opposed to official spaces, one does not have to travel to an everyday space?one lives in it. Monuments that are built in these locations derive their public character from the interaction of individuals in their vicinity. They are monuments that are woven into daily routines, even though their design is often meant to interupt it. Take, for example, Shimon Atie?s Writing on the Wal, a memorial which consists of projected images in the old Jewish quarter of Berlin. The images are photographs of buildings from the 1920s and 1930s that are projected onto the current buildings. Through this juxtaposition, Atie seks to draw atention to the loss of the Jewish community in the places where this community actualy lived. 9 9 In Chapter 3, I further discus the problems that designs like Atie bring to the memorialization of absence. -50- One of the main diferences betwen national monuments in official and everyday spaces is what they say about how individuals relate to the nation. Monuments in official spaces addres the individual only when he stands, both metaphoricaly and literaly, in a national space. What is relevant to the nation, the representation of its values and history, occurs only in oficial spaces (potentialy, strictly state-sanctioned spaces). The designers of monuments that are built in everyday spaces, on the other hand, offer a critique of this view. By locating the monuments where people actualy live, the designers hope to make their monuments (and their mesage) more visible and harder to ignore. But, more importantly, the location of national monuments in everyday spaces is meant to remind us that what is relevant on a national level must also become relevant in our daily life. One cannot relegate the various debates about the content of our national identity to an oficial space. In this view, the individual becomes responsible for defining the nature of his national identity, rather than leaving this responsibility to the power structures from above. A typology of national monuments National monuments can be roughly divided into four types. 10 These types can overlap and be used simultaneously; they are not mutualy exclusive. However, it is useful to provide a typology of monuments insofar as it elucidates the various elements that may be used by monuments to construct a national meaning. The various elements resonate in diferent ways and each contributes to the image of the nation, its characteristics and 10 I restrict myself here to ?useles? monuments. Living memorials, monuments that are functional, such as freways and stadiums, provide an alternative view of how monuments should comemorate. (Shanken 202) However, asuming that monuments should comemorate through a ?useles,? arguably aesthetic, artifact, this typology is relevant. -51- boundaries. The types of national monuments are: founding monuments, hero monuments, value monuments, and object monuments. Founding monuments First, founding monuments are monuments that are dedicated to specific historic events that are deemed significant to the national community. The historical moments can be represented either as the moment of the birth of the nation or as a significant and therefore defining moment in the nation?s history. However, whether it is a literal moment of birth (e.g., independence) or a significant turning point, these events symbolize a founding moment for the nation, that is, a moment that quintesentialy defines the way in which the nation ses itself. The particular moment that is memorialized is deemed crucial to the identity of the nation and to articulating its defining characteristics. The memorialization of founding moments often take the form of war monuments. In these monuments, the victory or defeat is represented as an event that has fundamentaly changed the nation. This is the case with such monuments as the World War I Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the Korean War Memorial whose presence on the National Mal reflect the important historic events that changed the way America ses and understands itself. Founding monuments can be simultaneously sen either as new founding moments in the history of the nation or as moments that strengthened or redefined the original founding. Hero monuments The commemoration of national founding moments can overlap with the other type of national commemoration: the hero monument. The national founding monuments often -52- play the double role of memorializing heroes whose ideas or actions are believed to have alowed the nation to come into existence (or, as Gelner would have it, ?to be awakened?). This is the case, for example, with the Washington Monument that presents George Washington as a role model for American civic virtue, and George Washington as the father of the American nation. Similarly, the Lincoln Memorial has the dual function of commemorating Lincoln as national hero and representing the Civil War as a second founding of the United States. (Johnston 2001) Monuments to national heroes are probably the most common form of national monuments. The construction of national monuments can be traced back to the identification of the king as national hero. (Borg 1991) Since the king was sen as embodying the nation, in order to commemorate the nation, the king himself was commemorated as its representative. This concept proceded to spil over to the representation of military leaders as national heroes. (Borg 1991) Monuments to particular batles were centered around the person who led them?a good example here is Nelson?s Column in London, commemorating Lord Nelson and the Batle of Trafalgar. In these monuments, it was not just the war that was commemorated, but the hero asociated with it. Later, particularly after World War I, the concept of a national hero was expanded to include the common soldier as a representative of the national community.(Borg 1991, Mosse 1991, Savage 1997) In particular, the concept of the ?tomb of the unknown soldier? was developed during this time?in the United States it lies in the Arlington Cemetery. It was a response to the changing nature of war which made the scale of the dead imensely larger, and to a growing inclination to de-emphasize military rank in favor of anonymous heroism. Hero monuments, whether those that commemorate the -53- leaders or the common soldier, have the dual function of memorializing the person along with the cause or ideas for which he or she died. 1 Value monuments However, the commemoration of specific ideas that are important to the nation is not always directly tied to a hero. The idea of fredom, for example, recurs in many American national monuments with the actual word appearing as part of the monument?s design. This is most noticeable in the World War I Memorial, which bears the following text at the center of the memorial, ?Here we mark the price of fredom.? (Se Figure 1.) 12 In this memorial, the concept of ?fredom? is presented as one of the values for which the nation is wiling to sacrifice its own. In other words, the memorial articulates a threat to fredom as an equivalent threat to American identity. In this, and many other memorials, it is not merely an event or a person that is being memorialized but there is an afirmation and commemoration of national values. Object monuments Lastly, the fourth type of monument is a monument that commemorates an object. Rather than abstract ideas, there are certain objects that become focal points for national commemoration. National monuments that commemorate objects are rare since it is seldom that a national identity centers around an object. However, in the United States 1 Civil War memorials are an interesting case. Kirk Savage argues that after the Civil War it was more comon to se monuments to soldiers than to the ideas, e.g., emancipation, for which the war was fought. (Savage 197) Savage claims that the comon soldier provided a beter ?glue? for a recently-divided nation, whereas the comemoration of emancipation was more likely to revive the North-South animosities. In the case of the Civil War?s hero monuments, by omiting one idea (emancipation) another idea was memorialized: the hero died for unification, not for emancipation. 12 Al figures can be found in the apendix. -54- (and possibly in other constitutional democracies) the Constitution, as a physical object, becomes an especialy cherished object. The Constitution is sen as a concentrated, physical representation of the core of American values. As an example, the Constitution has received its own commemorative center in the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The center revolves around the Constitution and its significance to the American nation. Although not strictly a monument to the Constitution, the center provides an insight into how an object can become integrated into national commemorations. 13 What is not a national monument? This typology of monuments provides a broad sketch of the diferent themes that are commemorated in national monuments and which are woven into the national discourse. However, these diferent types of national monuments share the same function, that is, the construction of a national community. This function is not unique to national monuments. As I discussed at the beginning of this chapter, there are many other practices that form part of the national narative and participate in the construction of a national community. However, some of these practices are particularly interesting in the context of national monuments because they function in a very similar but ultimately diferent way than national monuments. The following discussion covers a selection of practices whose function often becomes blurred with that of national monuments. They deserve special atention not so much in order to distinguish them from national 13 The Center becomes particularly lively around Constitution Day when there are four days of activities and comemorative ceremonies on the Center?s grounds. -5- monuments, therefore making the definition of a national monument more narow, but rather to elucidate the subtleties that are at play with the practices of nationalism. A museum is not a national monument Museums can be similar to national monuments in two important ways: they can be pedagogic tools and vehicles for the construction of memory. 14 In museums, there is a particular organization of knowledge that is meant to display a specific view of society. Michel Foucault regards museums as places that, like a miror, reflect a real image of ourselves?of society?but do so through the creation of a space that is not real?in the case of museums, a space that is isolated and apart from society. (Foucault 1986) By functioning as both ?utopias? and ?heterotopias,? museums are capable of creating knowledge about ourselves and our place in society. This knowledge is particularly interesting when it is appropriated by a national narative, because the knowledge that we gain about ourselves becomes filtered as knowledge about the nation and the nature of our relation to it. Through a national narative, the content of the museum and even the building that houses the museum is sen as part of a national heritage that must be studied and preserved. Therefore, the museum becomes a symbol of ?national identity? and a site of ?civic education.? (Bennet 1995, Macdonald 1998) Like a national monument, the museum can be a place that can teach us who we are and what our society, or nation, is. The display of artifacts, and the instruction that results from viewing them, means that museums also engage in the construction of memory. Museums use artifacts in 14 There are many diferent types of museums. Here, I particularly have in mind history museums, such as the American History Museum in Washington, DC. These museums not only aim to reconstruct the past but also to put it into a distinctly national context. -56- exhibitions to display, like national monuments, a certain narative about the past. The collection and exhibition of artifacts is guided by a specific interpretation about what the past contains and, more importantly, what elements about the past are important to the viewers of today. The past is organized, categorized and presented as a re-teling of the past, not least a national past. This organization of the past is nothing les than the construction of memories, elements of the past that we wish to re-enact in the present. In this sense, museums are lieux de memoire?sites of memory?since they collect and archive memories. 15 (Nora 1989) The relation of museums to memory in this sense is similar to that of national monuments. Both engage in the politics of memory and use it to construct, or sustain, a national community. The similar roles that national monuments and museums play in the construction of a national community has led to an apparent bluring of the two concepts. The apparent blurring is literaly achieved in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which houses both a museum, with its usual series of displays and educational resources, and a memorial. (Se Figure 2.) The existence of both an educational component and a contemplative one makes the Holocaust Memorial Museum neither ?just? a museum nor ?just? a memorial, but both. However, the combination of both museum and memorial does not mean that there is a blending of both national practices. Rather, the combination serves as an ilustration of what a museum needs but a memorial can fulfil, and vice versa?what a memorial lacks but a museum can supply. The museum is capable of teaching its viewers the history of the Holocaust. It uses its archives, which are an 15 I shal return to this point and discus it extensively in the next chapter. -57- extension of the exhibits, to preserve the testimonies of survivors and to make them acesible to visitors. However, in order for the museum to provide a place for visitors to ?reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust,? the museum avails itself of a distinctly memorial practice: it creates a sacred space. 16 Later in this chapter I discuss the creation of sacred space in more detail, but here it is enough to point out that memorials have the capacity of creating a space?sacred-like in nature? that is separate from our everyday life and that encourages introspection and contemplation. And this is precisely what the Holocaust Memorial Museum incorporates into its structure. However, the inclusion of a memorial within the Holocaust Museum also signals that memorials may need museums too. The memorial in the Holocaust Museum is especialy powerful precisely because it comes after the experience of walking through the exhibitions. The proces of learning that precedes entering the memorial augments the impact of the memorial itself and makes the need to reflect more acute. Memorials therefore sem to lack something that museums can provide: education. The increase and broadening of visitor centers at national memorials is an indication that there is a need to educate in order to remember properly. The growing visitor centers often function as quasi-museums which serve as built-in educational tools for the memorial. Therefore, the increasing overlap betwen monuments and museums shows that while both can 16 The ful mision statement of the Museum is: ?to advance and diseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who sufered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as wel as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.? (htp:/ww.ushm.org/museum/ision/) -58- complement one another, this does not imply that they replace one another. They are, in other words, two related but distinct national practices. A historical monument is not a national monument Historical monuments are sites that become appropriated by the national narative as a place that is significant to the nation. They share with national monuments the preoccupation with the preservation of the past. However, like national monuments ?the past that is invoked and caled forth, in an almost incantatory way, is not just any past: it is localized and selected to a critical end, to the degre that it is capable of directly contributing to the maintenance and preservation of the identity of an ethnic, religious, national, tribal, or familial community.? (Choay 2001, 6) Historical monuments are often architectural structures, such as buildings or gates, that are selected from the ruins of the past and are conceived as symbolic or meaningful to the history of the nation. Once selected, these sites require conservation because keeping the structures intact in some way guarantes the survival of the national memory atached to them. This proces is linked to the construction of a national heritage which sems to become particularly urgent when the site is ?couched in terms of some national legacy at risk.? (Lowenthal 1996, 25) Historical monuments are sites that become significant to the nation post factum. The original functions of the sites are diferent than they are today?they move from being sites with particular utilitarian functions to being conceived as ?mirors of a world or a period.? (Nora 1989, 22) It is in this sense that historical monument difer the most from national monuments. Historical monuments lack what Piere Nora cals an ?intent to -59- remember.? (Nora 1989) They become monuments, whereby they contribute to the national discourse, only by acident. As Alois Riegl argued: ?Any object from the past can be converted into an historic witnes without having had, originaly, a memorial purpose. Conversely, any human artifact can be deliberately invested with memorial function.? (Riegl 1998) The acidental nature of historical monuments means that given a diferent construction of the national past, the same building that today is considered a historical monument (or a national heritage site) could have been left to oblivion. National monuments, on the other hand, owe their meaning not to their location but to the premeditated wil to remember, that is, to the conscious intent to build them in order to remember. However, as was the case with museums and national monuments, historical and national monuments can overlap. This is the case with sites that become integrated into the national narative and as a result are provided with a new memorial structure on their grounds. For example, many batlefields are considered ?monuments to the nation? but the actual memorial that is placed on the batlefield is also considered a ?monument to the nation.? The field, in this case, is a historical monument, whereas the memorial is a national monument. The two types of monuments share a space that is specificaly set aside for remembering the past. They both contribute to commemorating the batle as a significant and formative event for the nation. But, while both historical and national -60- monuments may share the same national space, they do not lose their distinguishing characteristics, of preservation and memorialization, respectively. 17 National monuments and national cemeteries Similar to museums and historical monuments, national cemeteries are also national practices. They too define the nation by a specific relation to the past. However, national cemeteries are distinctive due to their imediate relation with death. It is in this regard that they are more similar to national monuments than museums and historical monuments. Like national monuments, national cemeteries integrate the dead into a national narative. By being buried in a distinctly national cemetery, the body becomes literaly embedded in the national space. The burial in the cemetery marks the individual?s death as significant for the nation, thereby incorporating it into a national narative. As I wil discuss in Chapter 4, the death of the individual becomes transformed into the life of the nation. In both national cemeteries and monuments, the memorialization of the dead converts death into sacrifice, the ordinary into heroism and the inevitable into destiny. The similar atitude towards death in both national monuments and cemeteries can also be sen in the architecture and ceremonies that they inspire. Both places can be 17 There are symbolic buildings such as the Capitol that are neither historic nor national monuments. While they are structures that have utilitarian functions and have grown more iconic with time, they lack both the acidental element of historical monuments and the comemorative purpose of national monuments. However, the Statue of Liberty (not Elis Island) can arguably be sen as both a historical and national monument. Its aesthetic and symbolic imagery reminds us of traditional national monuments. But, at the same time, it was not built with the intent to comemorate liberty, but was rather built as a token and symbol of friendship betwen France and the United States. In this sense, it is more like a historical monument. However, the Statue of Liberty is an interesting case because its prominence as an American icon is rather divorced from its original role as a symbol of universal friendship. -61- marked by similar architecture, some of which is inspired by Christian motifs. The cross, for example, is a common symbol that is used for marking a grave site as wel as being integrated into memorial forms. (Se Figure 3.) (Borg 1991) National war memorials can often be confused in their scale and design for mausoleums, that, in the absence of an actual body, memorialize rather than bury the dead that are honored by the nation. By constructing monuments to the dead, national monuments inspire the same type of funerary practices that are commonly found in cemeteries. These may include laying of flowers or wreaths, routine pilgrimages, speeches, and possibly even the act of respectful silence. The blurring of the lines betwen tombs and monuments is the result of extending the boundaries of the national community to include the dead. This inclusion links the present with the past. The national community does not only exist today, but it is presented as though it has always existed, and, by extension, always wil exist. In many ways, national cemeteries, e.g., the Arlington Cemetery, can be considered national monuments. They are built intentionaly to memorialize the dead. By cordoning off a space that is solely dedicated to the nation?s dead, national cemeteries create a national space that both speaks to the construction of a national community and contributes to the definition of its boundaries. However, although I argue in Chapter 4 that national cemeteries can be analyzed as national monuments, there are a few diferences betwen the two that should not be overlooked. First, national cemeteries, like most cemeteries, are located on the outskirts of the city. (Ari?s 1974) They are not, like national monuments, integrated into the main axis or spaces of public life. Second, in national monuments, the memorialization of the dead is achieved only through metaphor and symbol, while in national cemeteries, the incorporation of the dead into the national -62- community is not metaphorical?the actual body is intered in national ground. Third, because national cemeteries are actual locations of death, they can inspire a reverence for the dead that may be absent in national monuments. National cemeteries appear to be more sacred in this sense. There are far more social taboos about death that deny the possibility of protests, marches, grafiti, or political ralying on cemetery grounds than around national monuments. 18 National cemeteries demand a reverence (or arouse anxiety) in a way that national monuments do not. Therefore, national cemeteries are more imune to the type of political activities that national monuments often inspire?an imunity, one might add, that is augmented by the location of cemeteries away from the city. Arguably, this makes national cemeteries a more powerful national practice. They are more protected than other practices from chalenges and debates about their role in constructing a certain image of the nation. II. Monuments as practice: What do national monuments do? National monuments, like other national practices, produce meaning. 19 However, monuments, in particular, create meaning through space. In this final part of the chapter, I discuss the ways in which monuments produce meaning. First, I look at the capacity of monuments to create a space that is distinctly national and sacred-like in character. And, second, I describe how the choices in monument design and location contribute to the construction of an imagined national community. The later discussion serves as the basis 18 Se Ari?s for a discusion about social atitudes toward death. (Ari?s 1974) 19 From here on, and throughout the rest of the disertation, I wil use the word ?monument? to refer to ?national monuments.? I do so in the interest of simplicity only. -63- for Chapters 3 and 4 which analyze the construction of an imagined community through a particular approach to memory and death in the national narative. Monuments separate the sacred and the profane Monuments create a spatial separation betwen sacred and profane space. The creation of a sacred space in particular contributes to the sense in which nationalism can be thought of as a civic religion. (Mosse 1991, Smith 1986) Whether through their design or the space formed around them, monuments have the capacity to inspire activities akin to those usualy asociated with religious ones. The sacrednes of a monument is often upheld through repetitive ceremonies on its grounds: for example, the President delivering a speech inside the Lincoln Memorial on Lincoln?s birthday not only honors Lincoln?s memory; it also serves to asociate the current President with Lincoln?s legacy. (Se Figure 4.) These ceremonies can include laying wreaths or holding an oficial event on its grounds, such as the annual Memorial Day ceremony held at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. These ceremonies mark the monument as a place of veneration and of paying one?s respect. In addition, one finds that marches or protests often begin or end at monuments. The significance of the march or protest is increased by its proximity to a national symbol. The monument is used as a sacred spot that might be said to bles the event and give it its extraordinary?i.e., outside of the ordinary?meaning. In both these cases, of ceremonies and marches, the monument and the space around it are used as locations, similar to temples, that one visits on holidays, or special, non-ordinary, days. Thinking of monuments as temples is also expresed in the structure of the monuments themselves. Many monuments resemble temples both in scale and in their -64- design. The grandiose scale of cathedrals, for example, is shared by monuments in which the individual is meant to fel smal and insignificant compared to the grandeur of God or the nation, as the case may be. But, beyond a question of scale, the architecture of monuments has borrowed heavily from traditionaly religious architecture. The obelisk, for example, was originaly dedicated to the worship of the sun-god. (Borg 1991) It later evolved as a monument to victory, and today we se it on the National Mal as a monument to George Washington and the nation he founded. (Se Figure 5.) Similarly, the Doric columns of the Lincoln memorial are reminiscent of Grek temples. The steps leading up to the platform where Lincoln?s larger-than-life sculpture appears God-like contribute to the sense that one is entering a sacred place. (Se Figure 6.) The memorial is similar to a religious temple, because its architecture is designed to inspire awe and invite worship and is thus unlike everyday useful buildings. 20 The capacity of monuments to provide a sacred space is harnesed for the purpose of converting bureaucratic centers into spiritual ones as wel. A nation?s bureaucratic center is usualy in its capital which houses such institutions as the Parliament or the Supreme Court. However, a nation?s capital is also a symbolic center for the nation, and therefore it must go beyond being merely a bureaucratic center. Monuments bring to a city both a symbolic and spiritual power. They are built along the main avenues and squares of the city as markers of a place that is special. One example of this is the recent construction of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe one block south of the Brandenburger Tor in the center of Berlin. In the United States, on the other hand, the 20 Viewing the memorial as a temple is made explicit in the memorial itself. Above Lincoln?s sculpture, the text reads: ?In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.? (Emphasis aded.) -65- whole city of Washington was designed around the axis of the National Mal which was, from its inception, intended to include governmental institutions, such as the Capitol and the White House, as wel as symbolic elements, such as the monument to George Washington. In fact, one of the original proposals for Washington?s monument caled for bringing his body to Washington, DC and placing it in the monument (then conceived as a mausoleum). The presence of Washington?s body on the National Mal was intended to emphasize the sacred aspect of the monument and, by extension, of the city itself. (Savage 1992) Nevertheles, the idea that a monument ought to create a scared space that is separate from daily life and its routines has not always been sen as a positive thing. After World Wars I and I, there was an increasing criticism of monuments that were not integrated into the environment of daily life. Traditional monuments were said to be ?cluttered and random? and that their distance from living space made them easily ignored and forgotten. (Shanken 2005, 7) There was a cal to make monuments useful, rather than merely works of public art?pieces that risked becoming stale and purely decorative. It was argued that the falen could only be appropriately commemorated through an actual and real improvement in the lives of those who survived them. In the 1940s and 50s, this notion of living memorials led to a wave of public institutions such as highways, parks, and community centers that were built in the name of people or events -6- to be memorialized. 21 (Borg 1991, Shanken 2002) Some examples include the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC and the Nimitz Freway in the San Francisco Bay Area. However, the integration of monuments into daily life is problematic. Practical monuments rob them of their sacred character. Practical monuments undo the separation betwen a daily space, in which we perform our biological necesities (borrowing Arendt?s terms), and a space that is set aside for contemplation and introspection. One of the more striking elements of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, for example, is the silence it inspires. As one approaches this monument, one involuntarily quiets down, forgets the heat or hunger one often experiences on a hot summer day at the Mal, and instead one?s eyes are drawn to the black granite and to the names etched onto it and one?s thoughts begin to wander. Similar to the type of silence one encounters in a church, monuments are places were the buzz and hum of daily life stops. On the grounds of a monument, our minds are turned away from our personal needs towards a contemplation of the thing being memorialized. We stop and ponder about the meaning of, for example, the Vietnam War or the values for which our nation stands. At a monument we are oriented toward the nation and our relation to it; that is, our thoughts reach beyond ourselves. 2 By making monuments practical, we lose this silence and contemplation that monuments can provide. In addition to silence and a contemplative environment, the sacrednes of monuments is also maintained by the prohibition of touching. Monuments are restricted 21 Borg argues that although these charitable institutions might themselves risk losing their memorializing meaning, at the very least, ?it is beter to provide a form of remembrance that wil be of some practical value.? (Borg 191, 138) 2 This is diferent from the type of contemplation that ocurs in a church where our thoughts are directed inwards towards an examination of our actions and our inermost thoughts and desires. -67- areas where playing, picnicking, or climbing is prohibited. (Se Figure 7.) The scale itself can also prohibit meaningful contact with monuments, since many of them can only be appreciated from a distance. By placing monuments beyond our reach, their sacred character is emphasized. Like holy objects, we are alowed to view them, but not touch them. This sacred distance also occurs with monuments that ostensibly invite people?s interactions with it. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a clasic example, but one can also think of the Monument Against Fascism in Harburg, Germany, where the viewers are encouraged to engrave their thoughts onto the monument itself. (Se Figure 8.) However, even in such monuments, the type of touch that is encouraged is contained. We do not touch these monuments in the sense of using them, but rather, we touch them on the terms determined by what is being memorialized. The interaction that we have with such monuments is stil sacred in nature; touching them is done out of reverence and respect, something akin to the way we might touch a gravestone or the fet of a sculpture of a saint. The creation of sacred space is also significant in terms of separating the spaces we enter as individuals and those we enter as members of a group. Because the space around monuments is public, when we enter these spaces we necesarily become mindful of our existence in relation to others. Rather than retreating into our private lives, monuments propel us into a space that binds us to others. Of course, what binds us to others may vary. However, the communal worshiping and meditation that occurs at monuments strengthen the sense in which we can understand monuments as creating a sacred space that emphasizes and defines our membership in the nation. -68- That being said, there are numerous new monuments whose designs sek to disturb precisely this sense of ?holy-nes? and ?religious-nes? of monuments. These monuments are purposefully placed within our living places, so that we do not need to take a special trip to visit them, but rather we encounter them in our daily routines. A good example of this type of monument is Gunter Demnig?s Stumbling Blocks in Berlin and other cities in Germany and Austria. This monument is composed of blocks of stone engraved with names of individuals kiled by the Nazis which are distributed throughout the city. (Se Figure 9.) The monument is not limited to one particular place, but rather it is scatered throughout diferent neighborhoods in the city. The intent of Deming?s monument is to bring the reality of the Holocaust into our daily life where we are more likely to perform a personal reckoning, rather than visit the monument with a tourist-like detachment. Monuments like Deming?s undo the sense in which monuments can be thought of as sacred, and instead, they offer a vision of monuments that disrupt (if not, undo) the sacrednes of what is asociated with the nation. Monuments like Deming?s blur the separation betwen the sacred and the profane but they do so at some risk. With such monuments, the everyday spaces that are normaly reserved for our profane activities as individuals or as members of other non-national groups, become invaded by the symbols, texts, and images of monuments. Elements that would otherwise be relegated to national, i.e., sacred space, become an inseparable part of our everyday life. The dificulty in the blurring produced by such monuments is that spaces that we enter as individuals and those we enter as members in the nation become indistinguishable. The bluring of the sacred and profane, in other words, means a blurring of national and individual space as wel. -69- The risk of bluring national and individual space is not so much the loss of the national space as it is a loss of individual space. The loss of individual space means a loss of a distinct space where an individual can be just that?an individual. The existence of individual space is crucial for the development of a sense of self and a capacity for self- government. Therefore, without this space, the individual may be left without the tools necesary to build an identity separate from a national one. The loss of individual space should be of particular concern to those who are wary of a nationalism that does not distinguish betwen an individual and national identity. In Chapter 5, I wil discuss this line of argument more at length. However, here it is sufficient to say that, although the concerns that motivate the construction of monuments that are integrated into our daily environment are appealing, such monuments may ultimately risk losing a distinction? betwen the sacred and the profane?that can be important for safeguarding the individual. 23 Monuments construct and define the nation The production of sacred space is linked to the production of a certain image of the nation. The sacred space creates an area that is dedicated to the display of what the nation, now deemed sacred, looks like. Similar to a church, the sacred space is not only used for worship, but also for the presentation of the history, values, and promises of the nation (or in the case of the church, of Christianity). In the sacred space, monuments create an image of the nation through the activities, images, and spaces they encourage. 23 To be sure, there are other ways in which nationalist practices can invade our daily life, e.g., the use of nationalist slogans in advertising or postage stamps. However, the diference betwen such practices and monuments is that monuments ned not enter our daily routines, whereas other practices would not exist if they did not do so. -70- They become objects in the national landscape in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Literaly, monuments are visualy present on national grounds, such as the National Mal, just as their reproductions are present on postcards and in film and advertising. However, if we think of the national landscape as a metaphor for the ideas and actions that contribute to the definition of the nation, we find that monuments play a role in inspiring and reflecting competing interpretations of the nation itself. The design of monuments reflects a certain conception of the nation which, when it is observed by an audience, creates an understanding not only of the nation as an abstract entity, but of an individual?s relation to it. Furthermore, because the construction of monuments is never a smooth and unchalenged proces, the contestations about the design, location, or necesity of a monument are in themselves a contestation about how the nation defines itself and the relation of individuals to it. Therefore, a monument is not a stagnant object that, once in place, becomes simply an ornament that neither stirs nor chalenges us. Rather, the space created by monuments is a ?moraly and politicaly charged space.? (Barshay 1995, emphasis in original) At stake with the politics of space and monuments is the representation of competing ideas about the character and boundaries of the nation. The location and the design of monuments are critical in conveying a certain image of the nation. This image is based on the creation of an imagined community. Similar to the role Anderson asigns the printing industry (itself a form of national practice), monuments also participate in the construction and definition of an imagined national community. Acording to Anderson, an imagined community is defined by a feling of comradeship among people who are, by al acounts, strangers. However, the feling of comradeship that Anderson writes -71- about is not only limited to people who are presently alive and who are separated by remote distances. In the nation, the comradeship extends backward in time to include people who are dead but who are stil considered part of the community. The inclusion of the dead in the imagined community is central to the way a nation defines itself. Without a connection to a life preceding our own, a nation can only exist for a single generation. By linking the community to the past, a nation simultaneously creates a sense of shared history and a shared destiny. Death The presence of the dead in national monuments?particularly, the memorialization of the falen?creates a promise of life beyond death. With the dead included in the national community, there is a sense that the nation has existed since antiquity. This strengthens the idea that the nation is timeles and that its existence does not require further justification. However, the inclusion of the dead does not merely give the nation a certain characteristic, i.e., that it is eternal, but it also afects the way an individual is related to the nation. The memorialization of the dead provides an asurance that one?s life is not lost with physical death, but rather that it can be imortalized through its appropriation by the nation. One?s life is no longer sen as beginning with one?s own birth and ending with one?s own death, but rather one?s life is reconceptualized as linked to the life of the nation. And, since the nation is sen as eternal, one?s life is also sen as eternal. The inclusion of the dead in the national community is nothing short of a promise of imortality. This is a promise which, one might add, makes the idea that nationalism is a civic religion sem once again compeling. -72- The memorialization of the dead plays a role in defining the character of the nation, that is, of its national values. By publicly memorializing those who died for the nation, monuments asociate the wilingnes to die for the nation with a respectful and admirable act. The memorialization of the dead signals an endorsement and appropriation of the wilingnes for sacrifice as a value that defines the members in the nation. To be included in the national community, one must, in other words, acept the occasional need for sacrifice. However, the causes that lead to the individuals? death are also articulated as national values and they too find expresion in monuments. The causes for which people died are represented as values worth dying for. Without these particular values the nation would risk losing its defining character?hence the wilingnes to die for them. Once again, the etching of the sentence ?This is the price of fredom? at the World War I Memorial is significant because it links the death of the soldiers with a cause: a threat to fredom. This link establishes the value of fredom as a distinct value for Americans. If it were not an important American value, the death of the soldiers in its name would have been pointles. Therefore, the representation in monuments of the causes that lead to the death of people serves as an indication of the values that define the nation. 24 Memory By memorializing the dead, monuments become responsible for conserving the past. In them, they capture a glimpse into the past and the people who lived before. However, 24 The particular way in which the dead are memorialized can signal how the boundaries of the nation are defined. For example, the racial makeup of the figures that are represented can serve as an indication of the inclusion, or exclusion, of a racial factor in national membership. A god example of how this plays out can be sen in the Fredrick Hart?s Vietnam Veterans Memorial sculpture which includes a racialy diverse ensemble. The design choice of the soldiers? racial background conveys the notion that American heroes are considered heroic regardles of race. -73- beyond the pervasive presence of the dead in monuments, monuments also relate to the past through the collection and reproduction of memories. By representing past events, monuments bring to our atention specific moments and help us re-live them, thus serving as a vehicle for collecting and re-teling the stories of the past. However, the selection of events from the past is not random, but is rather done through a nationalist lens. The events are selected because they are deemed relevant to the nation and their mere presence in a national monument gives them a national significance. The asembling of memories in monuments creates a distinct interpretation of the past. It is a past that has become, by way of monuments, a national memory. Monuments, in other words, help us remember the past but they do so while giving the past a distinctly national meaning. In this sense, monuments do not simply reify memory by collecting it; rather, they are also involved in producing memory, namely, a national memory. 25 The production of national memories is central to the way in which monuments create an imagined national community. Because the construction of a national past is also the construction of a shared past, monuments link individuals who may not know each other but who are joined through ?shared? national memories. A shared past also? and perhaps more importantly?creates a sense of companionship that extends over several generations. Generations of the past become linked to those of the present, and both of these become linked to the generations of the future. Therefore, the construction of shared past establishes a national life, so to speak, that extends beyond our own. It 25 The idea of a national memory is not restricted to one, singular, monolithic memory. Monuments can produce national memories. They can do so both in the sense that diferent monuments remind of us of diferent things, but also in the sense that one monument can host a multiplicity of national memories. In Chapters 3 and 5 I discus the later type of monument particularly in regard to counter-memorials. These memorials speak to the idea that memory, like individual identity, is varied, multiple and fluid. -74- both looks back toward a shared past and forward toward a shared future (if not a shared destiny). The companionship that arises from the construction of a shared, national past implies the construction of an imagined national community. In addition to constructing an imagined community, national memory also helps define the character of the nation. The nature of the events being memorialized defines in some way the character of the group that is being linked to these events. The connection betwen what the past consists of and the defining character of the nation is particularly important to Isaiah Berlin. He writes that nationalist sentiment springs from a shared sense of a past injury. (Berlin 1990) The event, or series of events that mark the moments of collective humiliation, awakens the nation to self-awarenes and defines the terms in which it ses itself. Berlin argues that the experience of being under atack leads its victims to asert themselves as a nation through the cultivation of specific traits that separate them from their atackers. These traits are cultivated as a resistance to and separation from the other. Berlin?s discussion of collective humiliation as defining the character of the nation is, to be sure, only one example. Other non-humiliating events, such as victory or independence, can be equaly important for the definition of a nation. However, in general, the legitimization of the existence as wel as the definition of the distinguishing character of a nation is based on having a common past. And, it is precisely this?a common past?that monuments create so wel. The creation of a national past means that monuments define what should be remembered, as for example with the memorialization of instances of collective humiliation. However, beyond what is remembered, monuments also give us a sense of how we remember. The construction of a specificaly shared past establishes a -75- relationship betwen the individual and the group. It binds the individual to memories that he may not have lived through but with which he identifies precisely because they are presented as a shared past. As I argued earlier, this means that the individual is connected to a past beyond his lifetime. But, more than that, it means that, in a national context, to remember adequately, one must do so with others. A shared national past tels us that the past can only make sense when it is shared by a community. In other words, we cannot remember alone because our memories do not have meaning in the absence of others. Therefore, the question of how we remember is related to how the nation conceptualizes individuals, i.e., as forming part of an imagined community. Conclusion Monuments, both with regard to death and memory, are oriented toward the past. The preoccupation with the past is central to the way a monument can function as a national practice. In order to contribute to the construction of an imagined community, monuments must extend their meaning beyond the imediate and the daily. A past that is not limited to our life span, either because there is a shared past or because the concept of sacrifice transforms individual death into national life, connects us in a fundamental way to others. Furthermore, the way in which the past is articulated helps define the boundaries and character of those included in the group. Since monuments articulate the past in a variety of ways, whether with regard to memory or death, monuments construct diferent, possibly competing, ideas about the ?nation.? And this, as I argued at the beginning of the chapter, makes monuments a national practice. -76- In the chapters that follow I look at monuments and memory. In the next chapter, I use Nora?s concept of lieux de m?moire as a framework for thinking of monuments in relation to memory. I examine the way in which monuments function as sites of memory that simultaneously safeguard memory but also have the potential of corrupting it. I discuss how diferent ideas about the way we remember and what we can remember afect the design of monuments. Then, in Chapter 4, I analyze the ubiquitous presence of death in monuments. I look at the place of the hero in the memorialization proces and I examine the ways in which the memorialization of the hero reflects a certain understanding of the relation betwen the individual and the group. In that chapter I also discuss how the concept of sacrifice in the nation denies death itself and aserts, instead, the eternal life of the nation. Finaly, in Chapter 5, I investigate how monuments not only are able to construct national meaning but also acommodate liberal values. I rely on Chapters 3 and 4 to develop a discussion about how monuments might respond to a conception of the ?nation? as both traditionaly national but also liberal. Chapter 5 examines how monuments can open up to liberal possibilities while maintaining their role in the production of a national narative. More generaly, the chapter serves as a concluding discussion about monuments as a national practice but with particular atention to how monuments would serve as a national practice in the context of liberal nationalism. -7- Chapter Thre / Memory and Monuments One of the distinguishing characteristics of monuments, as a national practice, is their relation to the past. Overwhelmingly, monuments bring to our atention events that occurred in the past or people that have lived before us. They represent, or more acurately, they create memories that contribute to the construction of the image of the nation. These memories, in turn, become national memories because they both create a national community and define its character. In this chapter, I begin with a discussion about memory as a particular approach to the past. I argue that memory infuses the past with particular meanings. In the case of national memory, the past is interpreted through a national lens. The second section of the chapter analyzes the particular relationship betwen monuments and memory. Here I expand Piere Nora?s brief discussion of monuments as lieux de memoire to ilustrate the way in which monuments can be simultaneously places, sites, and loci of memory. Finaly, the third part of the chapter is dedicated to an analysis of the relationship betwen the design of monuments and their approach to memory. In particular, I am interested in the implications that this relationship has on the way in which the nation is imagined. Therefore, I discuss a variety of diferent designs and I examine how each might reflect a particular understanding of national memory and, by extension, of the -78- nation as wel. The purpose of this analysis, as of the chapter as a whole, is to ilustrate how monuments, vis-?-vis memory, function as a national discourse. I. Memory and nation Piere Nora famously distinguishes betwen the role of history and memory. He argues that memory is an organic, if at times inacurate, reteling of the past. It relates to the past as a source for explanation and meaning for the present. In particular, memory participates in the construction of communities and their respective identities. In a similar vein, David Lowenthal argues that memory is responsible for exaggerating, emphasizing, de-emphasizing, or minimizing the significance of events. He argues that memory imposes a framework on the past that infuses it with purpose. (Lowenthal 1996, xi) However, Paul Ricoeur is careful to point out that the selection of certain events at the expense of others has the dual efect of recaling and forgeting. Ricoeur reminds us that ?seing one thing is not seing another, recounting one drama is forgeting another.? (Ric?ur 2004, 452) In order to make sense of past events, memory purposefully selects those moments that are most meaningful to us. But, in doing so, it cannot help but reject some other moments as wel. So, although memory is neither an acurate nor an infalible re-teling of the past, it is not a total creation or fabrication of facts either. Memory is the proces through which the past is subject to ?succesive deformations, vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant and periodicaly revived.? (Nora 1989, 8) For Nora, history, as opposed to memory, is a distinctly modern phenomenon that is rational, ordered, and objective in its aim. It organizes the past rationaly, acording to -79- universal guidelines, in order to make its re-presentation inteligible to us. (Nora 1989, 9) Nora argues that history besieges memory because it aims to explain the past rather than mold it in order to give meaning to the present. Lowenthal argues that the desire to explain the past, if not rationalize it, makes the past sem as though it were fundamentaly separate from the present, that is, as though the past were ?a foreign country.? (Lowenthal 1985) Both Nora and Lowenthal se memory as having opposing tasks: revealing the past only insofar as it supports or creates values in the present whereby it blurs the separation betwen our life in the present and the past. 1 (Nora 1989, 22) However, it should be made clear that Nora?s definition of history and memory, as wel as the distinction he draws betwen them, reflect diferent approaches to the past. Whether or not we agre with caling one approach ?history? and the other ?memory,? Nora?s discussion is useful insofar as it ilustrates that the past can indeed be approached in diferent ways, and that the way we approach the past afects the way we frame the present. In this chapter, I am particularly interested in how the past can be ?infused with meaning,? which in Nora?s terms would be the construction of memory. To take Nora?s definition of memory as an approach to the past opens the possibility of analyzing how meaning is constructed, how that construction changes over time, and the shape and efect of these constructed meanings on our society. Therefore, in the discussion that follows I understand the term ?memory? as Nora does: it is neither a neutral nor an 1 For a god review of the literature about the distinction betwen history and memory, se (Jenkins 197, Leg 205, Olick and Robins 198) -80- objective re-teling of the past. That ?history? also is neither neutral nor objective goes without saying. Collective memory Maurice Halbwachs argues that the proceses of memory cannot help but be social. He rejects Freud?s notion that the ultimate source of memory stems from an individual?s subconscious. Rather, Halbwachs thinks that what is crucial about memory is not what we remember, but rather how we remember. He argues that our memories spring from our social, exterior environment. Memory cannot be individual, as Freud would argue, because ?it is in society that people normaly acquire their memories. It is also in society that they recal, recognize, and localize their memories.? (Halbwachs 1992, 38) This notion of the social source of our memory leads Halbwachs to introduce the term ?collective memory.? Collective memory is the understanding that ?memory is a mater of how minds work together in society, how their operations are not simply mediated but are structured by social arangements.? (Olick & Robbins 1998, 109) Therefore, to speak about memory is to speak about a social community. The collective nature of memory can be understood in two paralel ways: first, as Halbwachs points out, memory draws meaning from the social frameworks to which we belong. Second, memory interprets the past so that our curent experience makes sense to us. That is, the meaning and values that memory imposes on the past provide a social context for our identity. The power of collective memory is, therefore, its ability to connect us to other people. Specificaly, it makes us fel linked to people we may not even know, but who nonetheles form part of our same collective memory. Eviatar -81- Zerubavel argues that collective memory gives us ?the ability to experience events that happened to groups and communities to which we belong long before we joined them as if they were part of our own past.? (Zerubavel 1996) This means that collective memory alows for the development (or the maintenance) of such familiar emotions as pride or humiliation that result from events we did not experience in our own life, but fel connected to through the groups to which we belong. The fact that we fel connected to people who esentialy are strangers is an odd notion. This should remind us of Benedict Anderson?s discussion of ?imagined communities.? Anderson uses the term ?imagined community? to define communities in which members ?wil never know most of their felow-members, met them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives an image of their community.? (Anderson 1991, 6) For Anderson, the national community is an imagined community par excelence. However, the nation is noteworthy not because of its imagined quality but because of what is imagined and the way in which it is imagined. A nation is often imagined to share language, culture, teritory, history, and destiny. And, while some nations may have only some of these elements, and others may have elements not listed, what characterizes a nation above al else is the sense of belonging to it. (Renan 1994) A nation owes its existence to a specific collective memory: a memory that interprets the past and imposes on it meaning, purpose, and values that give the nation its legitimacy. Eric Hobsbawm cals this proces of imposing national meaning on the past, the invention of tradition. Hobsbawm argues that nations are ?exercises in social engineering? because they claim to ?to be the opposite of novel, namely rooted in the remotest antiquity, and the opposite of constructed, namely human communities so -82- natural as to require no definition other than self-asertion.? (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983, 14) The ancient and natural quality asigned to the nation forms the basis for the justification of its existence. And, furthermore, this justification becomes the base for any actions caried out in the name of the nation, whether they be struggles for independence, external or internal war, citizenship restrictions, etc. A nation cannot help but be a community tied by memory because it uses the past to transmit values?in this case values that afirm its antiquity and legitimacy. The invention of tradition, the construction of a collective national memory, works through various proceses and discourses. Ernest Gelner, for example, argues that the codification and extensive literacy of vernacular language and folk culture in general in the 19th century gave rise to a sense of solidarity and loyalty to the new political unit, the nation. He points out that ?the age of nationalism? was defined by a rise of a bureaucratic machinery that required the invention of a common language for its workers, i.e., the people. (Gelner 1983) This, he claims, constructed a sense of national belonging. The spread of a common national language was simultaneously sustained by the rise of print-capitalism. Anderson argues that not only did the newspaper extend its reach further than ever before, therefore transforming local events into national news, but more importantly, the spread of the newspaper gave rise to a new national awarenes and consciousnes. (Anderson 1991) -83- I. Monuments and memory Monuments play a particularly interesting and important role in the construction of a national memory. 2 This role makes them, once again, a national practice. The role of monuments in the construction of memory is distinct because they are exclusively constructed for the sake of memory. As I discussed in the previous chapter the very word ?monument? is derived from the word monare, which means ?to remind? in Latin. Monuments remind us of past events and re-enact them for us in the present. In this sense they truly re-present the past for us. But, by doing so, monuments link the past with the present. A monument, by virtue of having a public, necesarily brings together its audience?the present?with the symbolic representation of the past. A monument does not, however, remind us of just anything: it reminds us about what is deemed important for the nation. By choosing specific events or people to memorialize, monuments control ?the narative of actual events, determining the sequence of experiences, and interpreting them for subsequent generations.? (Ivy 2002, 190) A monument serves as a reminder of a nationaly significant past which in turn serves as a vehicle for the communication of national values. But, more importantly, monuments participate in the justification and legitimization of the nation. The selection and manipulation of the past is done to serve the present. In Nora?s terms, this would mean that the past that is captured in monuments is transformed into memory, rather than history, because it does not aim for acuracy?rather, the past is a maleable substance that contributes to the national discourse. The memory that results from this construction 2 As before, I use the term ?monument? to mean national monuments. -84- is a ?memory of a national past [that] aims to afirm the righteousnes of a nation?s birth, even its divine election. ? To do otherwise would be to undermine the very foundations of national legitimacy, of the state?s semingly natural right to exist.? (Young 1992, 52) The interplay of the past and the present in monuments has a pedagogic element. Monuments can instruct us about events we never lived through. Since most monuments are constructed to last for many generations, or at least so that they sem to last forever, most monuments are sen by people who did not actualy live through the events that the monuments memorialize. Despite not having lived through the experience that is being memorialized, the fact that it been deemed worthy of a monument teaches the audience that this event was, and continues to be, important to the nation. In addition, a monument teaches how one ought to remember a specific event. The monument represents a specific interpretation and explanation of the past and as such it is, once again, a tool of memory. The audience is instructed in what the past, the event that is memorialized, should mean to them. For example, the Korean War Memorial bears the inscription ?Fredom is not fre.? The inscription is significant because it simultaneously teaches us that the war required human sacrifice, and, more importantly, that the war was fought for the sake of fredom. In this way, monuments can ?supplement? our memory, that is, teach us about the past, as wel. 3 3 A special case of the pedagogic character of monuments can be sen in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Again, this museum is unusual because it combines a museum with a memorial. In the context of memory, this example is relevant because one enters the memorial only after having walked through the museum and learned about the Holocaust. In this way, the museum provides an aditional pedagogical tol to the memorial. -85- Though monuments are artifacts of memory and therefore are bound to the past, they also promise an existence in the future. The construction of collective memory implies a timeline which extends not only from the past to the present, but to the future as wel. Gelner observes that ?the most commonly used word in the nationalist vocabulary: [is] awakening.? (Hutchinson & Smith 1994, 8) He argues that saying that national sentiments are being awakened, rather than constructed, implies that one conceives of the nation as having been merely aslep rather than non-existent. Monuments participate in a similar proces of awakening because they remind us of?literaly, they bring back to our atention?memories that otherwise would be forgotten. This is particularly interesting when the meaning of monuments change over time. To ilustrate how this occurs, in 1988 the artist Hans Haschek built a replica of a Nazi monument in Garz, Germany as a protest against the Nazi regime. The same monument that previously celebrated Nazi Germany now served to condemn it. What is important here is that although the meaning of monuments may change, the existence of the monument itself provides an important link betwen the present generation and the future ones. In this case, it alows for a symbolic dialogue betwen Nazi Germany and the present non-Nazi generation. Therefore, a monument can addres present as much as future viewers. The orientation of monuments toward the future can take unexpected shapes. A striking example is the case of the ?Victory Arch? designed by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The monument was meant to mark the victory of Iraq over Iran, yet it was commisioned in 1985 when no victory was in sight. Its conception therefore ?precedes the reality it is meant to commemorate, which is most uncommon in the history of monument making.? -86- (Makiya 2004, 10) This monument is future-oriented in a diferent sense: it is premptive because it serves as a prophetic declaration, or memorialization, of victory. The continuity betwen past, present, and future makes the destruction of a monument significant to the proceses of construction?and destruction?of memory. The physical destruction of a monument symbolizes a break in the connection to the past and the future. It literaly demolishes the image of the nation as eternal and ever-lasting that is conveyed by the monument. The ruins symbolize the end of national values, myths, and destinies. There are countles examples of monuments that were destroyed as part of an efort either to bring an end to a certain society and the memories that shaped it and/or to herald the beginning of a new era with new memories. It suffices simply to mention the wel-publicized demolition of the statues of Lenin after the fal of the Soviet Union, and in a similar manner, those of Saddam Hussein after the American invasion. II. Monuments as lieux de m?moire The link betwen monuments and memory is significant because monuments serve, in addition to vehicles for the construction of memory, as lieux de m?moire. The term follows from the distinction Nora draws betwen history and memory and from what he ses today as the rise of history and the relegation of memory as primitive or irational. As I have discussed before, Nora argues that modern society is obsesed with history, resulting in compulsive archiving, and that memory is being endangered. But, he argues, the decline in ?spontaneous memory? results in a forced, unnatural protection of memory at the hands of history; it consecrates memory in the form of lieux de m?moire. Lieux de -87- m?moire can be thought of as islands of memory in a constantly rising ocean of history. They are the stuff of memory but they are inextricably situated in the world of history. Unraveling the term ?lieux de m?moire? Nora?s term lieux de m?moire has been translated in a variety of ways. The word lieu is problematic because it can have diferent meanings in English. Lieux de m?moire can be translated as places, sites, or loci of memory. Each of these choices expreses a diferent aspect of what Nora meant by the term . Lieux de m?moire can rightfully be translated as places of memory because for Nora these ?shels of memory? are material locations or things which host or embody memory. He gives the examples of museums, monuments, and cemeteries (Nora 1989, 12) These are the locations where the politics of memory play out. But Nora is also careful to include in his definition of lieux de m?moire such things as calendars and national flags. (Nora 1989, 19 and 23) These examples are not a physical location of memory but rather its place in our social imagination. The Stars and Stripes, for instance, embodies our American collective memory and identity even when we are not confronted with the physical flag itself. Any image, description, or alusion to the flag are sufficient to inspire in us the memories it symbolizes. Therefore, we would be wise to extend the places of memory to sites of memory, as wel. However, for Nora what is crucial about lieux de m?moire is that they are the remnants of organic memory. In the face of the danger of being lost to the advance of history, lieux de m?moire serve as a safeguard for memory. In this sense, they should also be understood as loci of memory because our memories emanate from them while at the same time they keep our memories safe and secure within them. Nora?s term lieux de -8- m?moire describes the varied ways in which memory is preserved and reproduced in today?s world. Selecting only one of these translations, whether places, sites, or loci of memory, would limit the scope of the term and would highlight one aspect of it while obscuring another. 4 What makes monuments lieux de m?moire In his definition of lieux de m?moire, Nora includes thre diferent characteristics: Lieux de m?moire are material, functional, and symbolic. Although Nora identifies monuments as examples of lieux de m?moire, he does not provide a comprehensive analysis of how monuments embody these thre characteristics. (Nora 1989, 12 and 22) It is possible, however, to draw this analysis rather directly from Nora?s work. The monument as physical object is the most obvious way in which a monument has a material manifestation. The choice of its location and design is purposeful and is diferent from, say, historical monuments, which are ?ensembles constructed over time? and which serve as mirors to history rather than as objects of memory. (Nora 1989, 22) Furthermore, the very existence of the monument is testimony to the wil to remember. The materiality of a monument reflects the desire to ?stop time, to block the work of forgeting, to establish a state of things, to imortalize death, to materialize the imaterial.? (Nora 1989, 19) By being, both literaly and metaphoricaly, inscribed into the material of the monument, memory appears to be fixed and permanent. Like the stone (or marble, or granite, or 4 In order to maintain its richnes, I have chosen to kep Nora?s term in its French original. I wil only use the words places, sites, or loci of memory to emphasize a particular aspect of the broader concept. -89- glas) of the monument, memory sems to be protected from decay and, idealy, from destruction as wel. 5 A monument shares with other lieux de m?moire a functional aspect as wel. Like other lieux de m?moire, monuments have the function of preserving memory. Through diferent design choices and the selection of specific imagery, text, and location, a monument ?preserves an incommunicable experience that would disappear along with those who shared it.? (Nora 1989, 23) Acording to Nora, a monument captures memory and saves it from forgetfulnes, not to mention from the claws of history. In addition, the preservation of memory has a pedagogical function, as wel. It instructs us about a shared past and teaches us about our national values and their meaning. Finaly, monuments have a strong symbolic power. The very image of monuments plays an important symbolic role in popular culture. For example, Miranda Banks traces the imagery of monuments in science fiction films and ilustrates how their appearance in films such as Independence Day or The Day the Earth Stood Stil reinforces ?the ideals and aspirations ? related to the nation and the political body.? (Banks 2002, 144) Monuments that are reproduced and used as icons in popular culture cary with them a reference to the nation and what it stands for. And, conversely, monuments can integrate recognizable symbols, such as eagles or flags, in their designs to elicit an imediate, partialy pre-existing response. 5 As I wil discus later in this chapter, the ned for a ?materiality? requirement in monuments is chalenged by James Young. Young argues that the debate surounding a monument prior to its construction is in itself a monument. -90- For Nora, the symbolic aspect of lieux de m?moire is particularly important because he argues that beyond the symbols themselves, monuments inspire symbolic actions. Monuments could be said to inspire two diferent kinds of actions: ?dominant? and ?dominated? (to use Nora?s terms). The former would include official events such as ceremonies and parades that occur on and around monuments, while the later points to non-official or spontaneous activities inspired by monuments?such as protest marches, demonstrations, and speeches, as wel as objects for grafiti and vandalism. Monuments can become, in other words, centers for resistance movements and oppositional politics. Monuments also draw non-political and extremely personal pilgrimages, such as those that occur at cemeteries or road-side shrines. (Santino 2002) The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is noteworthy in this case because it not only atracts tourist-like visitors, as do most of the other national monuments on the National Mal, but also individuals who approach the monument as a tombstone for their loved ones. The monument?s funerary architecture has inspired the now wel-known tradition of leaving objects to the dead ones, much like the tradition of visiting a grave. (Has 1998) This aray of symbolic activities, official and non-oficial, contribute to the politics of memory and monuments. However, even though Nora argues that lieux de m?moire are our only connection to memory in a time when it is increasingly being lost, he also argues that lieux de m?moire are fundamentaly unsatisfactory. He distinguishes betwen the memory embedded in lieux de m?moire and ?true? memory. He argues that lieux de m?moire are born out of a fear of loss of memory whereas ?true memory? is an organic extension of society. True memory is transmited through story-teling, ceremony, and ritual. It is a memory that is born out of experience within our social or cultural frameworks, and not -91- kept in the constrained, somewhat artificial, form of a lieu de m?moire. For this reason, Nora thinks that lieux de m?moire are ?like shels on the shore when the sea of living memory has receded?; they have the trappings of memory but are lacking its real substance. (Nora 1989, 12) Surprisingly, therefore, to understand monuments within the framework of Nora?s lieux de m?moire means that one takes monuments to be a fundamentaly unsatisfactory medium for the exercise of memory. Furthermore, Nora argues that the les memory is experienced from the inside, in our daily life, the more it wil exist through ?exterior scafolding and outward signs.? (Nora 1989, 13) He claims that the proliferation of lieux de m?moire, and hence of monuments, is the result of the general loss of true memory in society. James Young extends Nora?s notion that monuments may be inversely related to memory and claims that monuments shoulder our ?memory-work.? This is crucial for Young because he is concerned that the building of monuments may encourage us to abandon our ?memory- work? and be encouraged to forget the past. (Young 1992, 55) He warns that monuments in particular may run the risk of relieving us of the responsibility, and possibly the burden, of doing our own ?memory-work.? Perhaps, he continues, the drive to build monuments goes hand in hand with the desire to forget. Ironicaly, the very thing that was meant to protect memory from disappearing sems, if we take Young?s word for it, to induce more forgeting. However, at the same time, Young believes that monuments are the perfect tools and vehicles of memory because they have the capacity to create a discussion, or debate, about memory. He argues that the most succesful monument may not be a ?single memorial at al, but simply the never-to-be-resolved debate over which kind of memory to preserve, how to -92- do it, in whose name, and to what end.? (Young 1997, 879) Monuments have the capacity to problematize memory in a unique way because they can inspire debate that reaches beyond a discussion about the monument, but that extends to a discussion about the meaning and nature of memory itself. The ability of a monument to inspire debate is important because it can contribute to the creation of a meaningful public space. Specificaly, Michael North argues that monuments are succesful only if they engender a public space in the Habermasian sense. (North 1992, 27-8) North credits the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with achieving such a space because it places the ?viewers in a public space that is articulated in terms of political controversy so that to view the piece is not simply to experience space but also to enter a debate.? (North 1992, 20) The design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial creates not only a symbolic and powerful national monument but also a natural space for ralies, reunions, and political speeches. (Griswold 1993) The monument and its surroundings are a physical and metaphorical public space. By creating space for debate, monuments like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial articulate the idea that memory, especialy national memory, is fleting, unsetled, and in need of exploration. Monuments that can become locations for debate provide an alternative to ?closed? memory that is imune to criticism and analysis. Furthermore, monuments as centers of debate that create an ?open memory? may be particularly important to a democratic nation that aspires toward self-reflection and even self-criticism?a point I return to in Chapter 5. -93- IV. Memory, the design of monuments, and the image of the nation The complex relationship betwen monuments and national memory implies a running dialogue with the discourse of nationalism. Because memory is tied to the construction of a national community, as I have discussed in the first section of this chapter, whenever monuments wrestle with the meaning of memory, they simultaneously grapple with the meaning of the nation as wel. Diferent approaches to memory, or rather the problematization of memory, as wel as competing ideas about the nation, are therefore expresed in the design choices of monuments. The problematization of memory is most salient in the design and conception of counter-monuments. Counter-monuments are ?memorial spaces conceived to chalenge the very premise of the monument.? (Young 2000, 96) Counter-monuments set out to question the relationship betwen memory and monument and to represent this dificult relationship in their designs. Rather than do away with monuments entirely?which would be an alternative response to chalenging the merit of monuments?counter- monuments sek to integrate the material, functional, and symbolic aspects of traditional monuments with new modes of understanding the role of monuments in our society, in general, and in constructing memory, specificaly. In this sense, counter-monuments continue to be lieux de m?moire because they continue to sustain a dialogue with and about memory. -94- The complexities of memory and monuments The burden / responsibility of memory-work One of the most interesting chalenges of counter-monuments is the claim that monuments cannot remember for us. James Young argues that monuments fal short in helping us remember things past because ?once we asign monumental form to memory, we have to some degre divested ourselves of the obligation to remember.? (Young 1992) Rather than view the monument as a guarante for remembering, monuments can often lose their social and political significance and become points of reference in the landscape, or artifacts of public art. Counter-monuments are designed to warn us of the risk of building a monument in the name of memory, but in actuality building them because we do not want to deal with a painful past, that is, building them for the sake of forgeting. Architects Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz ilustrated this danger in their design of the Monument Against Fascism. The design of this monument focuses on the idea that the responsibility to remember lies on our shoulders, and cannot be relegated to the monument itself. The Monument Against Fascism was unveiled in Harburg in 1986, and it consisted of a pilar 12 meters high made of hollow aluminum. The pilar was designed to alow for memorial grafiti to be etched onto it, and invited viewers to expres their thoughts and reactions to fascism or the monument. As the lower sections of the monument filed with grafiti, the monument-pilar was succesively lowered into the ground. At the end of seven years, the pilar was completely underground leaving only a burial stone inscribed to ?Harburg?s Monument against Fascism.? (Young 1992) (Se Figure 9.) For the Gerzes, the memory of fascism could not be tied to a monument -95- because, like the metaphoric disappearance of their pilar, the meaning of a monument risks fading away with time. The idea of the Monument Against Fascism is that we, the viewers, commit ?ourselves to remain vigilant.? It represents an understanding that ?in the end, it is only we ourselves who can rise up against injustice.? (Gerz and Shalev-Gerz in (Young 1992, 274) The memory of fascism and its horrors can ultimately survive only in the commitments made by living individuals?that is, it can only survive in the absence of monuments. The Monument Against Fascism brings up the interplay betwen recaling and forgeting which Ricoeur so aptly captures. For Young and the Gerz architects, the danger of forgeting is so daunting that they se the building of monuments as a threat to memory, rather than its tool or vehicle. For them, monuments should be built only if the dangers they imply, i.e., forgetfulnes, are made explicit. However, it is worth at least noting that in order to remember the past, which both the Gerzes and Young are keen to do, there needs to be some form of forgeting. In order to make sense of the past or, in the case of the Gerz monument, to make sense of fascism, we must reckon with the need to forget as wel. To avoid forgeting al together, as the Gerzes argue, may be not only impossible, but undesirable. 6 6 Jorge Luis Borges muses over the consequences of total memory in his short story entitled Funes the Memorious. In this story he tels the story of Funes who remembers everything and forgets nothing. (Borges 198) Though at first we are tempted to be jealous of Funes, Borges makes it clear that Funes? gift is nothing other than an afliction from which he sufers considerably. Funes? present is solidly melded to his past (and future). Borges ilustrates that forgeting is necesary, because without it we canot have a sense of progresion (not progres) through time. -96- Monuments as a medium for changes in memory Though Young wories about the role of monuments in our desire to forget and possibly deny the past, monuments do not necesarily imply a shirking of responsibility. Monuments are not necesarily a medium for forgeting; on the contrary, they can be a medium for the on-going and lively proces of producing, revising, and re-evaluating the meanings of the past. For example, the Lincoln Memorial has served as a framing device for a variety of memories over the years. Built in 1922, the monument commemorated the end of the civil war and the second founding of United States. The meaning of the monument changed, however, after Martin Luther King delivered his ?I Have a Dream? speech on the steps leading up to the monument. The staging of the event created an asociation betwen Lincoln in the background and Martin Luther King in the foreground, emphasizing not the unity of South and North, but the promises made by the Getysburg addres. Martin Luther King?s speech has served to revive and redefine the memories of Lincoln and give them a renewed meaning in today?s world. Furthermore, the delivery of the speech has become itself incorporated into the memories embodied in the monument. To walk up the steps to the monument means not only visiting the memorial to Lincoln, but visiting the steps upon which ?I Have a Dream? was delivered. In this way, the Lincoln Memorial has been far from an excuse for forgetfulnes, but rather a fertile ground for contestation, layering, and reviving memories. (Thomas 2002) Vicarious memory By putting the burden of memory on individuals rather than monuments, one is inevitably confronted with what Young has termed ?vicarious memory.? (Young 2000) For Young, -97- this is the type of memory that springs from experiences that we have not lived through, but which we fel are as vivid and important to our current life as if we had. Halbwachs uses the term ?historical memory? in a similar way to refer to memory that reaches us only through historical records and not through personal experience. Though both thinkers highlight memory that is informed by external sources, I prefer Young?s term ?vicarious memory? because it manages to simultaneously point to those who did experience the event and those who remember it. Our memory, therefore, is vicarious insofar as we experience it through others. There are interesting monuments that have approached the problems of vicarious memory, and many have dealt with it through a focus on memories of the Holocaust by the children of Holocaust survivors. A good example of the use of vicarious memory in monuments is the Oregon Holocaust Memorial, built in 2004 which was the product of eforts by the Oregon Holocaust Survivors, Refugees, and Families Commite. What is striking about this memorial is its didactic character and the incorporation of survivors? names onto the monument. The memorial is located at the end of a short path on which are strewn fragments of iron-cast items that were left behind by Jews rushing onto the trains, such as a damaged suitcase, broken violin, a menorah. The memorial itself consists of a wal of black granite on which there is a relatively lengthy summary of the war, and adjacent to it a collection of short quotes of Holocaust survivors. On the back of this wal are inscribed the names of Holocaust survivors along with the names of their family members who perished in the war. The ?instructional? text, designed to literaly addres a non-experienced audience, as wel as the transcription of survivors? testimonies, makes explicit the fact that the audience of the monument is not expected to have lived through -98- the Holocaust. On the contrary, the audience is asumed to connect with the event only indirectly, i.e., vicariously, through its survivors. The design of the monument focuses on enshrining the survivors? memory rather than some collective or national memory. By doing so, the monument engages directly with the isue of vicarious memory; it draws atention to what lies at the heart of vicarious memory?memory vis-?-vis the testimonies of the other. Memorializing absence The subtlety of vicarious memory becomes even more dificult when there is no other left from which to draw memories. This situation, most noticeable in the case of genocides, has opened the door to the problem of memorializing absence. Rather than memorialize an idea, hero, or event that is meant to live through the ages, one is confronted with the chalenge of memorializing that which is lost. The dificulty of memorializing absence is that the monument can no longer point to itself as a representative (however inadequate) of an event or person, but must now point to that which does not exist. Such a monument must deny its role as a safeguard of memory and instead afirm its role as a signifier of absence. Many of the counter-monuments that have looked at this problem have, once again, done so within the context of the post-World War I era in which entire cultures were swept away with few people, if any, left to tel its stories. An emerging design solution to this problem among counter-monuments has been the construction of negative-form onuments. The Aschrott-Brunnen Monument is a good example of this type of monument. It consists of an inverted underground replica of a fountain that was located outside Kasel?s City Hal Square. (Se Figure 10.) The -9- original fountain was funded by the Jewish entrepreneur Sigmond Aschrott and was destroyed by the Nazis in 1939. Horst Hoheisel, the artist who designed the new monument, writes that he ?designed the new fountain as a miror image of the old one, sunk beneath the old place, in order to rescue the history of this place as a wound and as an open question.? (Young 1992, 288) Hoheisel?s design points to the fact that the Jewish community is gone and, therefore, a monument cannot memorialize the community, but only the absence of the community. The absence of the community, captured in this and in other monuments, consists not only of the physical death of the individuals, but also in the death of the memories that these individuals caried. The absence that is memorialized represents the schism, the unsetling discontinuity betwen the past and the future. 7 Collected vs. collective memory The problematization of memory in the design of counter-monuments, whether by dealing with the burden of memory-work, vicarious memory, or the memorialization of absence, has highlighted the role of the individual in the proceses of memorialization. And, consequently, it has also brought a revaluation of the concept of collective memory. Collective memory has been the target of growing criticism since the term was 7 The memorialization of absence adreses isues of memory at its extreme limit?the total lack of memory. However, as the design of negative-form onuments make clear, the place of the audience at these memorials is also problematic. The underground space created by negative-form onuments is purposefuly unaproachable and beyond our reach. It makes gathering around and even viewing the monument dificult. By doing so, these monuments run the risk of making not only themselves but also the public invisible. The public is excluded from being in the presence of the monument and, though the intent of the negative-form onuments is precisely to point to the inacesibility of the past, this exclusion creates the od situation where we may have a public monument without a public. -10- coined by Halbwachs. Writers such as James Fentres and Chris Wickham criticized the term by writing that it is ?curiously disconnected from the actual thoughts proceses of any particular person.? (Fentres & Wickham 1992) Similarly, Alan Pred argues that the term is problematic because any conception of collective memory cannot help but be constructed through practices, which must stem from actual, non-abstract, individual practices. Without any grounding in individual experience, collective memory would be meaningles, at best, if not absurd. 8 Alternatively, Yael Zerubavel criticizes the notion that collective memory is on the decline. In her work on the historical monument of Masada in Israel, she has shown that despite the growing obsesion with historical documentation in modern society, Israel and other nations continue to construct shared memories of the past. Zerubavel reverses Nora?s claim that ?history besieges memory? by arguing throughout her work that ?memory can also besiege history.? (Zerubavel 1994, 73) Furthermore, the critique of collective memory puts at stake the conception of identity itself. Collective memory asumes that the individual is part of a collectivity from which he draws his sense of self, as wel as a shared past and future. In this view, the individual is thought to be born into a pre-determined path or destiny. An individual?s memory in this case is not sen as the product of his own creation but rather as hereditary. A critique, therefore, of collective memory implies a related critique of the conceptualization of identity. Those who have resisted the term collective memory are 8 This idea was sugested to me by Alan Pred in the spring of 206 when I participated in his graduate seminar ?Urban Modernities: Culture(s), Space(s), and Everyday Life? at the University of California, Berkeley. -101- concerned that the term renders ?the individual a sort of automaton, pasively obeying the interiorized collective wil.? 9 (Fentres & Wickham 1992) The use of the term risks losing sight of the individual qua individual and instead se him as merely a member of a group. The design of counter-monuments has distanced itself from the notion of collective memory and the view of the individual implied in this view. Counter- monuments have turned toward an emphasis on individual memory and experience. This emphasis has led many of the monument designers toward the idea of collected memories. (Young 1993) The idea of collected memories, as opposed to collective memory, is based on the understanding that there is no singular national memory, but a multiplicity of perspectives and memories. By emphasizing the plurality in the nation, counter-monuments are also making monuments more public insofar as they ?[preserve] the many perspectives through which [they are] understood.? (Donohoe 2002, 239) What becomes important here is a steadfast resistance to imposing a singular meaning. Following Hannah Arendt?s concept of plurality, Janet Donohoe argues that ?it is important for those who experience a monument to recognize that we perceive it diferently.? (Donohoe 2002, 239) The identity of the individual comes to the center of the discussion, where the asumption that we perceive the monument diferently is coupled with the asumption that individuals maintain a unique identity within the nation. 9 The colective wil, in this case, is diferent than the super-ego as discused by Sigmund Freud. For Freud, though our ego is presured by the super-ego (which consists of social norms and expectations), we are capable of wrestling with this presure and retaining our agency. In other words, for Freud, as oposed to Fentres and Wickham, the existence of the super-ego in the self does not imply that we become ?automatons.? (Freud 1989) -102- The individual does not get lost among the multitude but has an independent and autonomous presence. Participatory monuments In order to engage with the idea of collected memories, monuments have been designed to have the dual function of representing a collection of memories on the one hand, and addresing an audience composed by a plurality of memories on the other. To do so, many of the designs have an element of audience participation. The participation of the public is meant to work against the imposition of oficial (collective) memory from above and the distance that this creates betwen the monument and those viewing it. However, The use of the public in monument designs is a delicate mater because there is the danger in combining mased crowds and heroic architecture. For example, Michael North uses the example of Leni Reifenstal?s Triumph of the Wil to ilustrate the intrinsic danger of monuments. North argues that the integration of the public in the design of monuments could be dangerous if the public enters the monument only as ?mas-ornament? rather than as a collection of individuals. (North 1992, 16) To avoid the use of the public as mere ?mas-ornament,? the design of monuments has worked toward the integration of individual perception and experience. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Korean War Memorial in Washington, DC are interesting in this regard. Both share the use of reflection in their designs. Both monuments are made out of polished, shiny, black granite (another aspect that distinguishes them from any of the other monuments on the National Mal), which reflects the image of the viewers as they look at the monuments. By superimposing our -103- image with the names or etched faces of the dead, ?the dead and the living met.? (Se Figure 11.) (Griswold 1993, 91) This efect forces us to reflect on our personal relation to the memories captured in the monument. The miror efect in these monuments brings the public into the monument, thereby alowing, both literaly and metaphoricaly, for a multiplicity of meanings. In a similar vein, the participation of the audience is invited in such monuments as the Monument Against Fascism by the Gerzes and the Wal for Peace by artist Clara Halter and architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte. The Wal for Peace is located in Paris on the Champ de Mars, at the foot of the Eifel Tower. It consists of tal glas columns on which the word for peace is etched in several languages. At the center of the memorial, there is a structure that holds a scren and keyboard that welcomes visitors to enter a record of their thoughts or reactions to the memorial. 10 As in the Monument Against Fascism, members of the public are invited to add their individual experiences and integrate them into the monument. This type of interaction with a monument work in a similar way at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, individuals can trace over the name of their lost and dear ones and take the rubbing home. There is also a tradition of leaving flowers, notes, and personal artifacts at the base of the monument. 1 These activities make the monument interactive in a double sense: individuals give their memories to the monument, which in turn become part of the monument itself, and 10 The monument?s database is also open to contributions on-line at htp:/ww.alforpeace.com/ur.html# 1 The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Colection was created in 192. It is managed by the National Park Service and consists of the colection of artifacts left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A portion of this colection is exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. -104- individuals take the memory of their loved ones from the monument. The participation of the audience in these thre monuments reflects a growing concern with viewing the individual as an integral part of national memory. The individual is considered a participant in the construction of the memory that defines the boundaries and meaning of the nation. Conclusion Despite the transition in monument design from a representation of collective memory to collected memories, these new monuments cannot escape confronting the national context in which they are placed. The rejection of the term ?collective memory? must not blind us to noticing ?the diferent ways in which the ideas of individuals are influenced by the groups to which they belong.? (P. Burke quoted in Olick & Robbins 1998, 112) When an individual approaches ?participatory monuments,? he is presumed to have a personal connection and memory of the event at hand. But if this personal connection is severed in some way (most possibly by a generational gap), the individual cannot help but rely upon other sources to construct an opinion or memory of the past. In other words, ?participatory monuments? must reckon with the power of national discourse in the construction of memory, including the individual memories, of their audiences. National monuments, whether traditional, innovative, or counter-memorials, are subject to the discourses of nationalism because of their engagement with what is presumed to be a nationally significant past. National monuments refer to a past, or alternatively, they represent an interpretation of the past, that is meant to be significant to individuals as -105- members of the nation. 12 The contestation of what a nation is, what it stands for, or the nature of memory does not change the fact that national monuments are a national practice. Alternatively, if national monuments did not contribute to the construction of national memory, they would not be national monuments. A more substantial rejection of the legitimacy and justification of the nation (such as cosmopolitanism) would in fact make national monuments impossible. To some extent, national monuments must engage in collective memory because a nation is a collectivizing entity. If we strip the nation of any collective properties, it would cease to be a nation. Recal that a for Renan nation requires belonging. (Renan 1994) Regardles of what is theorized to join individuals together?whether race, ethnicity, language, teritory, or values?these elements create a sense of belonging, that is, they join us. By extension, therefore, national monuments must engage with collectivizing values and naratives that join us into the nation. Monuments are therefore active participants in the construction of both national memory and the image of the nation. The relationship betwen monuments and memory is an uneasy one and requires constant chalenges. The questions about the limits of memory, how it is formed, and what constitutes it can find a variety of solutions through diferent design ideas. However, what I have tried to show in this chapter is that these 12 Even an inovative memorial such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is meant to adres Americans, rather than say, Vietnamese. In a conversation I had with Steven Johnston, he wondered how, and why, the national meaningfulnes of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial would change if one constructed a paralel wal that listed the names of al the Vietnamese people who died during the Vietnam war. This, of course, would be imposible in practice since there are 58,195 Americans listed on the curent memorial, whereas one would ned space to list the 230,0 South Vietnamese and/or the 1,10,00 North Vietnamese kiled during the war. -106- tensions imply a confrontation with questions of nationalism as wel. The place of the individual in relation to the group, specificaly the national community, is constitutive to the definition of the nation, because it is in the nature of this belonging that the nation is defined. Therefore, the chalenges made to traditional monuments and memory must inevitably result in a critique of what defines and bounds the nation. The discourse of nationalism is articulated through and by monuments. -107- Chapter Four / Death and Dying in the Nation Michel Foucault wrote in his 1976 lectures that our society is no longer a society defined by death, but rather it is defined by life. In modern society, he argues, power is exercised through the extension of life, not the administration of death. Foucault ses the rise of bio-power as one of the main changes that distinguishes this episteme from its previous one, that is, the 16th and 17th centuries. (Foucault et al 2004) However, if we were to follow along with Foucault?s asesment, we would be surprised to find a dominant presence of the concept of death and dying in national naratives. National monuments in particular are overwhelmingly dedicated to memorializing the dead and not, as Foucault might predict, the celebration of the living. This chapter aims to examine the semingly unlikely presence of the dead in the national narative. I argue that the ubiquity of the concept of death and dying is not only necesary for defining the boundaries of belonging in a nation, but that, through the idea of sacrifice, it also guarantes the nation?s survival. Following Philipe Ari?s? notion that a nation is ?composed of both the dead and the living,? I look into how the inclusion of the dead in the imagined community is fundamental to creating a sense of belonging in the nation. (Ari?s 1974, 74) The idea of a ?national necropolis? (a term used by Ari?s) is, in other words, integral to the definition of the national community. -108- The chapter also explores the way in which the nation reinterprets the death of individuals as the necesary guarante for the life of the nation. I se the notion of sacrifice as the conceptual framework that alows for this transition (i.e., the death of the individual into the life of nation) to occur. Furthermore, I argue that sacrifice is crucial for linking the individual to the nation. Through the frequent presentation of death as sacrifice in national monuments, an individual death is not sen as final but rather as part of a continuous, national existence. This last part of the chapter aims to open up an examination, which continues in Chapter 5, about the way in which monuments of a liberal nation approach death and dying and how this approach fits in the context of liberal nationalism. I. National necropolis: Death defines the nation The sense of belonging to a nation extends back in time so that we are not only connected to our contemporary national peers, but also to those who have lived before us. By extending our sense of belonging backward in time, we necesarily make those who have died?and their death?part of the time continuum along which the nation exists. This creates a sense of the pasage of time, or more specificaly, a sense of history. Furthermore, the existence of an imagined past implies an imagined future as wel. Whether it is by thinking of the present generation as the ?future? of generations past, or by simply extending the life of the nation beyond our own life span, the nation extends its reach both backward and forward in time. In the future lies the constructed image of our national destiny. The imagination of destiny can take diferent forms: the national destiny can be redemptive with promises of glory and salvation, or it can be -109- simply a promise that the nation wil live eternaly. Whatever form it takes, the imagined destiny guarantes that the nation has a future towards which it is headed. And, more often than not, it is this vision of the future that needs to be defended from potential dangers. The link betwen the present and the past, along which the nation is thought to have ?lived,? often begins with a moment of founding. This is the point of reference for al future events in a nation?s ?life? both because it is the beginning of time, so to speak, and because often it is cast as a nation?s best, or most authentic, moment. This moment is important to the nation?s self-definition, because it emphasizes the pasage of time, and often the specifics of the founding moment provide a basis for the definition of the unique characteristics that are said to be shared by the members of the nation. The importance of founding moments in the national imagination is evident in the integration of historical monuments into the national narative. As I discussed in Chapter 2, historical monuments are places, such as old buildings or ancient ruins, that are conserved in the name of ?some national legacy at risk.? (Lowenthal 1996, 25) Yael Zerubavel discusses the role of Masada, a collection of ancient ruins, in the national Zionist narative. Zerubavel uses Masada to exemplify the sort of ?political spin? that nationalist movements apply to their interpretation of the past. (Zerubavel 2004, 234) Masada is set on top of a bute near the Dead Sea, which made it the perfect location for the last Jewish stronghold against the Romans in the years 66?73 C.E. Masada became part of the Zionist discourse beginning in the 1920s when members of the Zionist youth movements would make nocturnal, somewhat ceremonial, pilgrimages to Masada. These trips had the efect of asociating the contemporary Zionist struggle for an independent -10- state with the struggle of the Jews against the Romans. Later, after Israel gained independence, Masada became the location for military ceremonies which, once again, superimposed an event of the past on the current Israeli life. For Zerubavel, these activities are important to the way a nation approaches its past because they transform ?the story of the last stand at Masada from a final chapter of Antiquity that ends with death and destruction to a narative that leads to national renewal by inspiring the Zionist revival.? (Zerubavel 2004, 238) The appropriation of this historical monument helped the emerging Zionist nation expand its imagined community to include not only the Jews living today but also the Jews of the ancient past. However, the founding moments of the nation do not always imply the appropriation of historical places. Rather, much of what contributes to the emphasis on founding moments in national discourse is achieved symbolicaly. In particular, the construction and design of national monuments are key participants in linking the current nation to its (imagined) past. On the National Mal there are not one, but two founding moments that receive a central place in the layout of this ceremonial national space. The Washington Monument is located at the very heart of the Mal, making it central to this national space. The monument ?pays tribute to the birth of the republic. It speaks to an American ?in the beginning.?? (Johnston 2001) It is a monument that that marks the founding of the American nation. On axis with this monument, we find the Lincoln Memorial. (Se Figure 12.) Here the Lincoln Memorial marks a second founding. It interprets the Civil War as an event that ?constructed and consolidated the nation?s -11- founding.? 1 (Johnston 2001) The inclusion of the past as part of the national narative of the Mal, in the form of founding moments, is crucial to the way we imagine the nation? we imagine that it has a past, and it is a past to which we fel connected. It is important to notice that creating a sense of a past also gives the nation its legitimacy as wel as establishing the promises for the future. With a past, the nation appears to have always existed, or at the very least, that it is ?rooted in the remotest antiquity.? (Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983, 14) In doing so, the right of the nation to exist could potentialy be based solely on its long, ancient history. This alone is a reason for self-asertion. But the past is used by the nation to define its characteristics and destiny as wel. The Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, for example, do not only tel us that the American nation has a past, but also that the American nation stands for a commitment to fredom and justice. The past is therefore an integral part of the nation?s self-definition since it provides both its legitimacy and character. In order to strengthen our ties to the past, that is, to strengthen our sense of belonging to past generations, the nation also appropriates the wounds or humiliations of the dead. Isaiah Berlin, in fact, defines nationalism on the basis of such wounds. He characterizes national sentiment as arising from ?some form of collective humiliation.? (Berlin 1990, 245) For Berlin it is precisely our identification with the wounds of the past that gives the nation its powerful appeal. For it is the name of those wounds, of that pain, 1 It is this characteristic of the Mal, that is, the alignment of these two memorials, that made the construction of the National WI Memorial controversial. The critique went beyond an aesthetic concern over the unobstructed view from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. It concerned the place aloted to World War I in the way the American nation imagines itself. The curent, prominent place of the National orld ar I Memorial signals at least the posibility that the American experience in the war was akin to a third founding moment in the nation. -12- that we asert our national identity today. In a similar vein, Ernest Renan writes that ?common suffering is greater than happines. In fact, national sorrows are more significant that triumphs because they impose obligations and demand a common efort.? (Renan 1994) For both of these thinkers, the connection to the dead of the past is more powerful through an identification with injury than through victory. 2 I. Imortality in the nation: The national hero Precisely because we are made to fel the wounds of the past as though they were our very own, we should be careful not to consider the nation?s dead as lifeles. Rather, the dead in the nation are eternaly alive. The dead are literaly part of the life of the nation. They never cease to exist because they establish a past against which the present is defined. Without the dead, the nation itself would be without life. In other words, though the dead are indeed dead, they are nonetheles the life-blood of the nation. This strong presence of the dead in the imagined national community is important not only to the definition of the nation at large, but also to the way an individual thinks of his own death. In the case of the national hero, his death becomes imediately part of the national ?necropolis.? The personal death of the hero becomes fused with the dead of centuries past, and in so doing, his death is converted from a personal death into a grand, 2 The incorporation of the wounds of the dead into the national narative becomes particularly poignant in Yael Zerubavel?s discusion of Masada. She describes an od event: bones that were excavated at Masada were given an oficial military burial ceremony. Zerubavel is careful to point out that what makes this ceremony peculiar, but yet important, is that the burial of the bones was given the same treatment as the burial of falen soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. In this way, the terible death of the people at Masada was quite literaly integrated into the curent national practices and discourse. However, creating an imagined comunity that is based on shared pain is not unique to the nation. We find this, for example, in the Jewish celebration of Pasover. The observance of Pasover is meant not only to comemorate but literaly to renact the pain and humiliation of slavery in Egypt. -13- national life. This transformation of death into life is fundamental to the way the nation imagines itself because it implies that in the nation there is no actual death: there is only a change from life today to eternal life. 3 This metamorphosis from death to life is nothing short of a promise of imortality in the nation. Anthony Smith notes that the promise of imortality in the nation works similarly to that found in religion. He argues that individuals overcome the ?sense of futility? that arises from notions of absolute death by being linked ?to persisting communities whose generations form indisoluble links in a chain of memories and identities.? (Smith 1986) In this sense, Smith views nationalism as a ?surrogate religion.? But, precisely because the idea of imortality is not unique to the nation?we find this concept in both Grek philosophy and Christian theology?the question that must be asked is: How does the concept of imortality operate diferently in the nation? To start, we should point out that much of what is at stake with the imortality of man in both Grek philosophy and Christianity is the distinction betwen body and soul. In Grek philosophy, for example, we find Plato conceiving of the soul as being trapped in the body. For him, the soul is fre and eternal only once it is outside the body. 4 (Plato 1988) Similarly, in Christianity the soul and body are separate. But in Christian theology there is the added notion that the soul rather than the body bears the rewards and punishments of a virtuous, sinful, or repentant life. 3 This, one should ad, is also the case for the non-heroes in the nation. Through an identification with the hero, non-heroes live (and in this case also die) vicariously through him. 4 Aristotle, on the other hand, argues against the posibility of the soul existing without the body, since he regards the soul as a form of the body, and a form canot exist on its own. -14- The idea of the imortality of man in the national imagination operates diferently than in both these cases. As opposed to the Christian and Platonic views, the imortality of man in the nation is not literal. The dead in the nation are dead, but it is their memories that are kept up beyond physical death. The memory of the dead is enshrined in a variety of national practices?such as national anthems, calendars, symbols, myths, and of course, monuments. Therefore, what distinguishes the concept of imortality in the nation from that of Grek philosophy and Christianity is that what remains alive is not one?s soul, but rather one?s memory. 5 However, the idea of imortality in the nation stil begs the question of who deserves to live forever. In Hannah Arendt?s The Human Condition we find an argument about imortality in which she claims that men can become imortal through their actions. For Arendt, the ability of men to create something in the world which does not disappear once they are dead, alows them, ?their individual mortality notwithstanding, [to] atain an imortality of their own and prove themselves to be of a ?divine? nature.? (Arendt 1958, 19) Actions are, for Arendt, the key to becoming imortal. But in the nation, man?s imortality does not depend on his actions but rather on his belonging in the nation. It is sufficient for an individual to be part of the nation in order to enjoy the promise of imortality. This is especialy true of an ethnic- or racialy- based nation in which membership is defined by a biological trait. In such a nation membership does not depend either on beliefs or actions, but merely on biological 5 Although we know that memories fade, nationalism promises that they wil not. This is what makes nationalism, in Tismaneanu?s words, a ?fantasy of salvation.? (Tismaneanu 198) -15- composition. Imortality, in this case, is as predestined as the biologicaly-determined membership. However, imortality is also guaranted in a nation in which membership is based on shared values and choice. In particular, a liberal nation that is composed of members who share a commitment to liberal values, regardles of their ethnic, cultural or racial background, also holds the promise of imortality on the basis of belonging alone. So long as one forms part of the nation, one partakes in its history. The shared values bind us to the dead of the past and they bind us equaly to the generations of the future. In so doing, though we may choose to become part of the nation, once we belong, we are promised imortality. Imortality of the hero Imortality in the nation is particularly salient with regard to heroes. The hero?s imortality is conspicuous in the wide range of memorializing practices dedicated to him. He sems to preside over other members of the nation as someone who is particularly worth remembering. However, it is important to note that although the hero stands out among the multitude, his imortality is not unique. Al those who belong to the nation, heroes or not, are imortal. For this reason, what becomes interesting about the place of the hero in the national discourse is the way in which his imortality difers from that of the multitude. The imortality of the hero is granted a level of detail that is absent from that of common people. In whatever form the hero is being imortalized, his image (metaphorical or not) is filed with such details as his name, his physical appearance, or -16- his life story. These details set him apart from common people who are imortalized in more abstract ways. Common people are present in the national imagination merely as parts of a larger whole, i.e., the nation. The hero, on the other hand, is distinguished by the specificity of his memory. The hero?s imortality also difers in its function. The hero is imortalized because his actions or aflictions represent something that the rest of us must either emulate or admire. The common person, on the other hand, is imortalized only insofar as he identifies with the hero or, as I wil discuss later in the chapter, insofar as his death is linked to a national event or cause. The imortality of the common person strengthens the sense of continuity and shared destiny in the nation. But the imortality of the hero is sustained thanks to his function as an example for others. Although the role of the hero as an example is a primary justification for his imortality, this role is nonetheles problematic. Taking the hero to be an example can be ambiguous. It can mean, on the one hand, that the hero exemplifies certain national traits or experiences. This means that if indeed the traits are national in character, they are shared by everyone in the nation. To say, for instance, that George Washington?s commitment to republican values is exemplary, that is, that it represents the authentic national character, it means that we expect al other ?true? Americans to have a similar commitment. Though Washington, as a national hero, may stand out for the ease and the strength of his conviction, this does not change the notion that we expect others to share his commitment to republican values. But?and here is the problem?there is an unavoidable tension betwen taking a hero to be an example and taking him to be an exception. To raise a hero above the multitude, with the intention of making an example -17- out of him, must necesarily mean that this person is exceptional in some way. To deny any sort of distinctivenes would leave no justification for deeming him outstanding. George Washington serves, in fact, as a particularly good example for this tension. Kirk Savage, in his esay on the construction of the Washington Monument, argues that the tension betwen example and exception lay at the heart of the debates surrounding the design of the Washington Monument. The first design proposal for the monument followed the ?grand monarchical prototype.? (Savage 1992, 8) It was to be an equestrian statue with Washington represented in Roman dres. This design worked wel with the notion of Washington as an exceptional human being, who merited a monument depicting him as a loftier, almost sacred, person. Other design proposals sought to emphasize Washington?s republic legacy instead. Here Savage traces two monument designs that looked to Washington as an example of the common man. One monument, by John Nicholas, was a ?plain tablet, on which every man could write what his heart dictated,? and another, by George Washington Parke Custis, proposed creating a burial mound built by citizens from al over the country. In both these designs Washington?s legacy emerges out of the people, rather than towering above them. The contest betwen the diferent design proposals for the Washington Monument captured the problem of a national hero: ?Was Washington an example (the double meaning of the word example is significant), or was he an aberation?? (Savage 1992, 8) The imortality of the hero distinguishes itself from the imortality of other nationals in this inherent tension. Therefore, to imortalize a hero, for instance, by building a monument in his honor, means wrestling with the function of the hero as either example or exception. -18- In addition, the imortality of the hero is distinguished from the multitude by the level of detail alotted to his memorialization. Traditionaly, the heroes that were given this treatment in national discourse were great figures?such as founding fathers or liberators. 6 The National Mal includes such figures, with monuments dedicated to Lincoln, Jeferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and, soon, Martin Luther King as wel. These monuments bear the inscription of the hero?s name, as wel as acompanying texts and images that inform the audience of both the national ideals which they embody as wel as the acomplishments they bestowed on the nation. The monument that stands out, of course, is the Washington Monument which does not include his name, image, or any descriptive element. The monument, as it stands today, is a cut-down version of an original design by Robert Mils. After much delay in the construction of the monument, the current obelisk is atributed to the eforts of Thomas Casey, an engineer. Casey?s monument is more of an engineering feat than one of architectural design; it suffices to point out that its initial atraction was the steam-run elevator in its interior. (Savage 1992) The terse nature of the Washington Monument distinguishes it from the other hero monuments on the Mal. Its wordlesnes draws our atention away from Washington, the hero, and instead toward the character of the American nation. Its grandiose proportions elicit an image of the American nation as soaring upward, with literaly the sky as its only 6 Before the rise of nationalism, one could have also included ?rulers? as heroes. But, in the nation, the ruler is always identified with the people. He does not represent a rulership for the sake of a divine entity or power, but always for the sake of the people. Therefore, a ruler in the nation canot be imortalized simply because he is a ruler. Rather, he can be imortalized in a heroic maner only when he is perceived to have given or done something for, or in the name of, the nation itself. -19- limit. When we stand at the foot of the monument we can view the symbolic representation of the nation around us: with the Capitol to the east and the White House to the north, the Lincoln Memorial to the west, and the Jeferson Memorial to the South. The location, which remains true to L?Enfant?s original plan, emphasizes the glory and grandeur of the American nation in general. In a monument that lacks details of the hero it intends to imortalize, the memory of the hero disappears and instead we find a monument with a diferent purpose: the memorialization of the proclaimed virtues of the nation. 7 Imortality of the citizen-hero In addition to the traditional great figures of the nation, one can also find the imortalization of heroes who come from the multitude. Again, like most national heroes, these citizen-heroes are chosen because they represent certain national virtues, and it is on the basis of these virtues that they are imortalized as heroes (i.e., their memorialization is rich in detail and used as exemplary to others). 8 The imortalization of the citizen-hero is particularly prominent in the national practices rising after the Civil War in the United States, and World War I in Europe. In both these cases, nations were engaged in a war of imense proportions which required the active involvement of 7 The isue with the design of the Washington Monument is not the obelisk itself. There is a monument in the shape of an obelisk on Bunker Hil in Boston as wel. The problem is with the ?wordlesnes? of an obelisk in honor of national hero. The obelisk on Bunker Hil is not problematic in this sense because it is intended to memorialize the Batle of Bunker Hil in general, not a national hero. 8 The nation?s citizen-heroes are diferent than other folk-heroes, such as Robin Hod, because they represent strictly national virtues. For this reason, the existence of national citizen-heroes does not preclude the existence of other types of folk-heroes in the nation. It is simply a mater of the citizen-hero symbolizing a trait or experience that is specific to the national identity, and that other folk-heroes do not. -120- previously unthinkable numbers of citizens-soldiers. This resulted in the rise of monuments honoring the common soldiers, not generals or great commanders, and thus signaled an expansion of the concept of a national hero. (Borg 1991, Mosse 1991, Savage 1997) The new status of the national hero gave the common soldier a new and privileged position in the national commemoration practices. The soldier was no longer grouped with the rest of the multitude, but was sen, for the first time, as an example of a wilingnes to sacrifice oneself for the nation. In particular, the creation of the tomb to the Unknown Soldier is significant in this regard. The idea for the tomb appeared almost simultaneously in England and France in 1920, quickly spreading to other countries, including the United States in 1921. (Borg 1991, Mosse 1991) The tombs of the Unknown Soldiers were meant to represent al the war dead but have since come to symbolize ?the ideal of the national community as the camaraderie among members of equal status.? (Mose 1991, 95) With the tomb to the Unknown Soldier, the citizen-hero is granted, like the great figures, an imortalization of, in this case, not his name, but his sacrifice for the nation, that is, an imortalization of his patriotic act. Today the inclusion of the soldier-hero in the national pantheon is familiar to us. However, the way in which soldiers are imortalized has changed. For example, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial broke with the traditional ordering of the war-dead by rank. The listing of names in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is not unique. We find the listing of the names of the dead as far back as Roman war memorials and in many WI memorials. In the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, however, architect Maya Lin organized the name chronologicaly. For Lin, ?chronological listing is the heart of the memorial.? -121- (Mock 2003) It emphasizes the moment of a soldier?s death rather than his specific role in the war. By doing so, the memorial focuses on the topic of death (and, by extension, on the topic of loss) rather than patriotic zeal. 9 The recently inaugurated National World War I Memorial addreses the imortalization of the citizen-hero in a diferent manner. The National World War I Memorial combines a narative and symbolic style. It includes 24 bas relief sculptures that tel the story of the war, as wel as eagles holding a victory laurel representing American victory, and 56 pilars honoring the American states and teritories that participated in the war. More pertinent to the discussion of the hero, the monument also includes 4,048 stars representing ?more than 400,000 Americans who gave their lives.? 10 (Se Figure 1.) The design of the stars in the National World War I Memorial is unusual because as opposed to either the detail acorded to every name of American soldier in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial or the symbolism of one intered unknown soldier, the stars of the National World War I Memorial aim to be both specific and al-inclusive. The text in front of the stars, ?Here we mark the price of fredom,? makes us aware of soldiers? sacrifice for the nation (similar to the mesage of the tomb unknown soldier). But, because each star represents about 100 soldiers, any given star on which we may focus our atention does not connect us to the sacrifice made by one, unknown, soldier. Nor, on the other hand, does it connect us with all of the death caused by the war. The 9 Maya Lin?s design was criticized for being to abstract. It was argued that the austere listing of names did not suficiently represent the story, i.e., the wilingnes to die for the nation, of the soldiers. In response, Lin has said: ?The people who protested the design saw that it is formaly very abstract in nature, but they did not acknowledge how real the names are?more real than any depiction or representation.? (Lin 195, 41) 10 Se the National World War I Memorial website: htp:/ww.nps.gov/nwm/ -12- imortalization of the soldier-hero is problematic in this memorial because ultimately it does not give us the level of detail that distinguishes the imortalization of any national hero, whether soldier or great figure. 1 To further complicate the isue, the imortality of the citizen-hero and the great figures of the nation can be at odds with each other. In the Shaw Memorial in Boston, we can se an interesting example of the tension that these two kinds of hero memorializations can produce. In his book Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves, Savage uses the example of the Shaw Memorial to discuss the dificulty of designing a monument that acommodates our desire to honor, for example, both Colonel Robert Shaw and the individuals in his regiment. The memorial commemorates Colonel Robert Shaw and the 54th Masachusets regiment which he commanded. It seks to mark their famous atempt to capture Fort Wagner during the Civil War?an atack that was notably brave but il-fated with most of the regiment being kiled, including Shaw himself. The Shaw Memorial consists of a narative relief with Colonel Shaw in the center, riding his horse and heading toward batle, and beside him are his troops, who are acorded a detailed and individual representation. (Se Figure 13.) The monument fuses ?two apparently antithetical types?a monument to a famous officer and to the common soldier he commanded.? (Savage 1997, 194) In so doing, the monument suggests how one might represent the imortality of both the comon soldier and the great figure simultaneously. The citizen hero and the national hero do not need to stand in opposition 1 In adition, the memorial is unusual because it comemorates the war dead as part of a biger architectural complex, in which many diferent things are being memorialized (victory, states, teritories of the US, the home-front, etc.) In such an ensemble, the memory of the soldiers is at risk of being lost amid the larger grand-national narative. -123- to one another, but rather they can coexist. The Shaw memorial further suggests how infrequently we se such a synthesis. II. Sacrifice for the nation The presence of death in the nation connects the individual to the group, i.e., the nation. In contradistinction to how the dead are thought of in the nation, death, as a concept also receives a particular interpretation in the national narative. Death in the nation is never final. The untimely death of an individual, whether as the result of a heroic act or as a victim in a national war, is recast not as an individual death and loss, but rather as a sacrifice for the nation at large. This goes beyond our usual understanding of sacrifice in which death, despite its noble cause, is final. In the nation, death is transformed into life. This concept of sacrifice is crucial to the way the nation justifies the death of its members. It makes death a moment which strengthens the nation rather than weakens it. 12 The concept of sacrifice is only applicable in those cases in which an individual dies in the name of the nation. This could be either voluntary or involuntary (as in the case of a terorist atack). By virtue of their circumstances, these deaths belong to the nation, and it is therefore possible to position them within the national narative. These types of death should be distinguished from acidental deaths, such as from ilnes or automobile acidents. Acidental deaths do not depend on an individual?s belonging to the nation and they therefore lie outside the boundaries of the national narative. 12 This is contrary to Foucault?s argument that death signifies the limit of the state?s reach. -124- However, the distinction betwen a national death and an acidental death does not mean that the two may not overlap. A death that happened within a national framework can also be felt at the private level. The description of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which acompanied the work in its original presentation to the judges of the competition, oscilates betwen conceiving of death in these two ways. In the first paragraph, Maya Lin writes: These names, semingly infinite in number, convey the sense of overwhelming numbers while unifying those individuals into a whole. For this memorial is meant not as a monument to the individual, but rather as a memorial to the men and women who died during this war as a whole. (Lin 1995) Here, Lin points to the national context in which we understand the death of the individual. The death of the individual can only be understood insofar as he is a member in the nation. The individuals that are listed on the wal are there precisely because they belonged to the American nation and died for its cause. However, further down in her statement, Lin interprets the deaths in Vietnam as a private mater rather than a national one. She writes: ?For death is, in the end, a personal and private mater and the area contained within this memorial is a quiet place meant for personal reflection and private reckoning.? (Lin 1995) Lin makes explicit the dual characteristic of a national death. Though it may ocur within a national context, it does not cease to be a death in which an individual, not a nation, loses his life. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial aims to be both a national monument and a funerary monument?a -125- monument that encourages us to approach it as both individuals and members of the nation. 13 But, what exactly does a national death mean? A national death is a death that is understood as occurring in the name of the nation and which becomes conceptualized as a sacrifice for the nation. The nature of this sacrifice lies in the transformation of the death of an individual into the continued life of the nation. The death itself is denied and the life of the nation is emphasized instead. Such sentences as ?Fredom is not fre? (engraved in the Korean War Memorial) and ?Here we mark the price of fredom? (National World War I Memorial) refer to death but only as a price to be paid. That is, death is understood in terms of what was gained from it. Death does not exist other than as a contribution to the life of the nation?in this case, its fredom. 14 It is dificult for a nation to justify the death of its own members. The same entity that promises protection, a secured destiny, and imortality is the same one that may be responsible for our deaths. This problem is explored by Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle who apply Freud?s theory of totem and taboo to explain both the necesity of sacrifice in the nation as wel as its justification. They take up Freud?s scheme of the head of the clan (the totem figure), his right to kil, and the prohibitions (the taboo) on the rest 13 The ability of a monument to adres us as both individuals and as members of a nation wil be discused in the next chapter on liberal nationalism and national monuments. 14 Arguably both these monuments lok to fredom as a universal concept. One may interpret these inscriptions as meaning: these are American sacrifices for the sake of fredom worldwide. This may be particularly true in the case of the Korean War Memorial because it explicitly mentions al the other countries that participated in the war. However, I think that since most of the design is centered around the American nation, it would be prudent to understand ?fredom? as synonymous with ?America.? Notice that the main element in the Korean War Memorial are American soldiers walking through inclement weather in ful combat gear. -126- of the clan to appropriate this right. The authors argue that this scheme is at work in the nation where the nation is the totem which has the right to kil its own, while the prohibition to explicitly acknowledge this infanticide are the taboos. For Marvin and Ingle, the taboos in the nation are the mechanisms behind converting individual death into national life. In other words, the idea of sacrifice (i.e., death becomes life) is precisely the avoidance of acknowledging the terible truth: a nation may require the death of its members for its own survival. Marvin and Ingle also go on to discuss, although somewhat implicitly, the consequences of the idea of sacrifice in the nation. One of them (which has already been discussed) is the metamorphosis of ?individual bodies into social ones.? (Marvin & Ingle 1999, 13) Sacrifice alows the individual to be connected?at best?or subsumed?at worst?into the group. For this reason, one can go on to say that sacrifice figuratively ?creates the nation from the flesh of its citizens.? (Marvin & Ingle 1999, 63) The nation needs the occasional death of its members to guarante its own existence. When such an idea is in place, any atack on the nation constitutes an atack on the citizens who died in its name. The sacrifice of individuals for the nation legitimizes its existence and, more importantly, it legitimizes the necesity of ongoing sacrifice. Sacrifice is therefore conceived as necesary for the nation. Sacrifice is also useful to the nation because it helps create and define its boundaries. Those who have sacrificed themselves for the nation are imediately included in the nation. This can be sen in monuments that are inscribed with the names of the dead. In such memorials, the names of the dead mark them as members of the nation while those who are not mentioned are not members of the nation. This is most -127- obvious in the exclusion of enemy fatalities from war memorials, but it is more interesting to note that in the case of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, for example, the overwhelming appearance of Latino and African American names highlight their inclusion in the nation, particularly in the face of their under-representation in many social and political areas. However, the marking of boundaries by the dead does not mean that those who did not die for the nation are excluded from it. Rather, it is sufficient to be wiling to die for the nation, or at least to recognize the need for sacrifice to create such boundaries. The aceptance of the need for sacrifice in the nation is the only way that the nation can legitimize its existence. But sacrifice can also be sen as beneficial for the members of the nation. Through the metamorphosis from individual death to national life, the angst of death is lifted. Janet Donohoe argues that monuments which present us with the image of life after death in the form of national sacrifice ?appease our anxiety about death, distract us from the fragility of life, and prevent our atentivenes to the human condition.? (Donohoe 2002, 238) Donohoe is critical of the presentation of sacrifice in monuments because she would like us to ?be mindful of our own mortality.? (Donohoe 2002, 238) However, Donohoe overlooks the atractivenes of such distraction. Through sacrifice, we are promised to have life beyond our physical death. We are indeed invited to do what Donohoe fears: let go of the angst of dying. This promise of imortality may be particularly appealing in a world where, as Ari?s argues, death has become a taboo. (Ari?s 1974) Therefore, it should perhaps be no wonder that many monuments continue to reinforce the notion of sacrifice for this reason. -128- Cemeteries and funerary architecture Because the sacrifice of individuals in the name of the nation happens primarily in times of war, the interment of soldiers, i.e., their tombs, also becomes articulated in terms of the death of the individual transformed into the life of the nation. The first military cemetery in the United States is particularly interesting in this regard because it combines the Park Cemetery Movement of the 1830s with the transformation of soldiers? tombs into national monuments. The Getysburg National Cemetery (originaly the Soldiers? National Cemetery) was inaugurated by President Lincoln in 1863 following the Batle of Getysburg. This military cemetery is notable for its park-like feling. It is located on the slopes of Cemetery Hil and the layout of the cemetery follows the contours of the landscape. 15 This afinity with nature exemplifies the Park Cemetery Movement?s idea that cemeteries should invite contemplation of one?s natural environment. The contemplation of nature was supposed to ?elevate and strengthen patriotism, for the character of the landscape where one?s loved ones were buried and its appeal to the emotions would lead one to love the land itself.? (Mosse 1991, 41) The link betwen the nation and the land can be sen in how David McConaughy, founder of the Getysburg Batlefield Memorial, talks about the ?rich, sensuous descriptions of the heroic contours of [the Getysburg batlefield] landscape.? (Has 1998, 48) McConaughy refers to ?the masive rocks and wonderful stone defenses? combining a praise for the landscape with a praise for its utility in batle. 15 Cemetery Hil holds the Evergren Cemetery, a civilian cemetery established by the town of Getysburg in 1858. -129- The location of the Getysburg National Cemetery directs the appreciation of the natural surroundings towards a paralel admiration of those who died to protect them. The Getysburg National Cemetery is also famous for being the location of the Getysburg Addres. Lincoln asked that the ?dead shal not have died in vain.? This remark is important in the context of this discussion because in it Lincoln articulates for the first time what it means to die as members of the nation. (Has 1998, 52) The dead soldiers of the Batle of Getysburg were conceived as a guarante for the life of the nation. By ataching their death to a national cause, Lincoln?s words aimed to undo the literal death of the soldiers and convert it instead into a promise of ?a new birth of fredom.? The end of life?death?was presented as quite the opposite, its beginning: birth. In a similar but diferent way, the Arlington Cemetery in Virginia has also become incorporated into a distinctly national, not just funerary, landscape. Although separated by the Potomac, the Arlington Cemetery is part of the architectural scheme of the National Mal. It is an extension of the east-west axis of the Mal, located at the end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge southwest of the Lincoln Memorial. It is odd that the Arlington Cemetery is part of the National Mal because Arlington is not home to a monument honoring the American dead, but rather it is their actual resting place. Ari?s refers to the Arlington Cemetery as an example of a general change in the atitude toward death in the 19th century. Ari?s argues that the proximity of the cemetery to the nation?s monuments exemplifies the way in which ?today, the cult of dead is one of the forms or expresions of patriotism.? (Ari?s 1974, 75) The location of the Cemetery in relation to the Mal means that what the National Mal stands for and what it symbolizes can only be -130- acomplished in the shadow of a cemetery that is dedicated to the sacrifice of American soldiers. Furthermore, the case of the Arlington and Getysburg cemeteries reflects a blurring betwen national cemeteries and national monuments. War memorials in the 20th century are inspired by funerary architecture in their design, particularly Christian symbols that are traditionaly used at the gravesites. The most common Christian symbol is the cross, though it is also common to find angels and postures of crucifixion or resurrection. 16 The cross is especialy potent in the context of national monuments because it establishes a link betwen the Pasion and Resurrection of Jesus in Christianity and the way death is conceived in the nation. (Borg 1991, 7, Mosse 1991, 32) Using the cross in national memorials that commemorate war creates in particular a paralel betwen Christ and a soldier?s sacrifice. The death of Christ and the soldier?s death are sen as simultaneously necesary and painful. Also, the ultimate redemption becomes paralel to the life and triumph that a soldier?s death granted the nation. The most salient example of this type of monument is the Spanish National Memorial at Vale de los Ca?dos (the Valey of the Falen). The memorial is dedicated to al those who died during the Spanish Civil War and it consists of a cathedral built into the mountain with an oversized stone cross, 500 fet tal, on top of it. (Se Figure 14.) The funerary character of the Spanish National Memorial is further emphasized by the inclusion of the graves of Franco and Primo de Rivera within the structure. Such a 16 Alan Borg argues that ?croses were not widely used as war memorials before the 20th century, but this reflects the fact that individual or comunal war memorials were not themselves comon in mediaeval or early modern Europe.? (Borg 191, 9) -131- combination of grave and monument is not unique to Vale de los Ca?dos; one can find traces of it in the National Mal as wel. One of the early proposals for Washington?s Memorial on the National Mal was the construction of a public tomb (despite Washington?s desire to be buried in Mount Vernon), in the form of a ?huge outdoor mausoleum.? (Savage 1992, 10) The idea to incorporate Washington?s actual dead body with his monument made his death, and not merely his achievements in life, linked to the nation. The proposal, like the Spanish National Memorial, brings the grave into the monument similar to the way the Arlington Cemetery brings the monument into the cemetery. The appropriation of funerary architecture into national monuments can also be sen in the Jeferson Memorial. In the Jeferson Memorial, the interior and exterior dome miics the Pantheon of Rome, a structure that has been used as a tomb since the Renaisance. (Se Figure 15.) In the case of the Jeferson Memorial, the monument is also funerary without being an actual grave. The tendency to design monuments with funerary architecture has led Ari?s to refer to such monuments as ??tombs? without sepulchers.? (Ari?s 1974, 78) National monuments may encourage funerary practices as wel. Here, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is an exceptional example, because it was purposefully designed as a mourning space and not merely a memorial or national space. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is famous for the practices that have grown around it, most notably the leaving of objects by the wal. Kristin Has traces the memorial practices of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to American funerary traditions. Has argues that the memorial traditions of non-Anglo, non-Protestant groups, such as Latinos, African- -132- Americans, and Italians, have ?an active, ongoing relationship betwen the living and the dead.? (Has 1998) She shows how the diferent practices which already existed in these groups before the construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial found expresion in the current practices sen at the Wal. 17 Has? acount ilustrates how national monuments may be sites for practices that are not only unofficial and private, but ones that indicate a bluring betwen tomb and monument. Conclusion: Memorializing loss, not sacrifice So far we have sen how death in the nation becomes interpreted as an element of strength. Even death in war, which would sem on its face to be a tragedy, becomes recast as an asurance of life for the nation. It is not common to have monuments that commemorate a loss, as opposed to sacrifice, for the nation. A loss is often traumatic for the nation and therefore the nation and its members avoid an imediate confrontation with the event. For this reason, we find that ?people often avoid building monuments soon after an emotional upheaval.? (Halbwachs 1992, 16) Monuments that addres an event that was traumatic are not only uncommon but are often built when some time has pased after the event. This makes the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mal an unusual case. It was built only seven years after the end of the Vietnam War, and the proces for its approval by Congres began even two years earlier. 18 Though it aimed to 17 On a recent trip to the National World War I Memorial, I saw a rose and a note left near one of the monument?s fountains. Perhaps the practices that developed around the Vietnam Veterans Memorial have begun to inspire similar practices in other monuments, particularly ones that adres death and los. 18 In contradistinction, the National World War I Memorial was built 59 years after the end of WI, the Korean War Memorial was built 42 years after the end of the war, and the Holocaust Museum was built 52 years after the last extermination camp was destroyed. -13- distance itself from any political mesage, its temporal proximity to the war as wel as the political turmoil caused by the war made this monument unavoidably controversial. In her writings about the design of her monument, Maya Lin distinguishes betwen viewing death in a war like the Vietnam war as a loss and viewing it a defeat. She writes: ?[the memorial] was supposed simply to acknowledge the loss. I don?t think that it is about defeat, and I never wil.? (Lin 1995, 45) For Lin it is important to distinguish betwen these two terms because thinking of death as loss alows for mourning, ?personal reflection and private reckoning,? which is the focus of her design. Defeat, on the other hand, is problematic for Lin because it can invite such felings as blame, regret, anger, or shame which threaten the apolitical character that the guidelines for the monument?s design specified. However, despite Lin?s eforts to make the monument apolitical, the controversy that surrounded its construction demonstrates its failure to do so. Steven Johnston argues that the current memorial space of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which includes both Hart?s figurative Thre Soldiers sculpture and the Vietnam Women?s Memorial, represents the plurality of perspectives and approaches to the war. Johnston argues that the proliferation of monuments on the site ?does not mean [the Vietnam Veterans Memorial] is flawed; rather it points to the need for memorial multiplicity.? (Johnston 2001, 33) For Johnston, the memorial space of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial aptly represents the political divisivenes caused by the Vietnam War and our inability to offer -134- a unified, unchalenged interpretation of what the war meant for the nation. 19 Death, in this case, is not smoothly folded into a cohesive national narative. Rather, the concept of death remains contested and problematic, never setling down into a single national interpretation. The dificulty of addresing death in the nation when it cannot be reinterpreted as an honorable sacrifice is also present when the nation is responsible for the death of its own people in an internal conflict. This can occur either during a civil war or, for example, in the extermination of a minority group within the population. The case of a civil war lies somewhat outside our discussion because this kind of war de facto splits the nation into two separate nations fighting with each other. In this case, death can be interpreted as being the responsibility of the ?other? rather than of one?s own nation. However, the persecution of minorities within the nation does not split the nation itself but rather it aims to strengthen (or purify) the nation through an internal kiling (?cleansing?) of individuals. A nation that perpetrates a genocide among its own people, must confront the concept of death in an entirely diferent way. In the case of Germany, during the time of the kiling of the German Jews, their death was presented as a necesary action aimed at saving the purity and life of the German nation as a whole. (Lifton 1986) In this case, the concept of death was not problematic for the German nation because it was justified within the national narative. The problem arises when a nation like Germany recognizes after the fact that such actions are not only unjust but 19 Johnston does not, however, argue that an endles series of monuments would be the best way to represent the plurality of perspectives in a nation. Rather, he argues that the periodic replacement of monuments would be more fiting to a democratic comunity. -135- shameful. It is in the face of such recognition of wrongdoing that death is articulated in a new and diferent way. Germany has led the way in the construction of monuments that confront the dificulties that the Holocaust presents to the definition and integrity of the nation. 20 As I discussed in Chapter 3, the movement of counter-memorials has sought to chalenge the very possibility of memorializing such an event. Monuments that addres the isue of absence are especialy relevant here because they recognize the loss that the Holocaust has created in Germany. Death in this case is approached as something that ought to be mourned rather than glorified. This is diferent than the mourning that Lin seks in her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, because she is interested in personal mourning, while in Germany the monuments invite collective, national mourning. The way in which a nation addreses death, as in the case of the Holocaust, also depends on an ability and wilingnes to do so. In the United States, there has been a lack of memorialization of either the kiling of Native Americans or African American slavery. The absence of such monuments can be the result of either a lack of consensus about how these events should be memorialized or about whether these events should be memorialized at al. 21 However, whatever reasons lie behind the absence of such monuments, what remains clear is that the death of Native Americans and African Americans has not been easily articulated within the American national narative. To 20 This proces was far from being unified and fre of conflict. However, the proces has nonetheles set Germany apart from other nations confronting the moral consequences of the Holocaust. 21 There have ben eforts to memorialize these events through the recent inauguration of the American Indian Museum and the future construction of the African American Heritage Museum. These, however, are not monuments and they are not exclusively dedicated to the tragedies that these groups sufered. -136- addres these deaths would imply a wilingnes for not only introspection but also the potential for self-criticism. Such opennes may be especialy appropriate for a country that is commited to liberal values, and I return to this point in the next chapter. However, a confrontation with traumatic events, such as death that is a result of defeat or genocide, can unsetle a nation?s unity. Here I do not only mean that a confrontation is bound to be divisive. Rather, a wilingnes to include introspection and self-criticism in the way a nation deals with dificult cases of death in the nation can lead to a questioning of the merit of the nation itself. If a nation can be held responsible for unjust or unjustifiable acts, what incentive would one have to continue belonging to such a group? If a nation can be responsible for deaths that are not worthwhile, either for the nation or for our ourselves as members in the nation, why would one choose to link one?s life to the life of the group? A wilingnes to answer these questions can shake the foundations of belonging in the nation. Therefore, the chalenge of a nation aiming toward opennes and self-criticism is to acept responsibility for the nation?s actions without rejecting the nation as a group that is stil worth belonging to. This chalenge is partialy met by the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. The monument is composed of a field of square columns covering a large plaza near the Brandenburger Tor in the center of Berlin. What is significant about this monument is that while it acknowledges the German responsibility for the Holocaust, it does so without creating shame in its German viewers. The German responsibility is wel documented in the underground visitor center beneath the monument. But the centrality of the monument as wel as the prominence of its design reflect a confidence, if not pride, in the national reckoning with the Holocaust. The -137- monument stands not only for the aceptance of responsibility for the crimes commited by Germany but also for the eforts of a nation to make critical introspection a sign of strength rather than a catalyst for disintegration. The Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe shows how death that cannot be clasified as sacrifice (the usual interpretation of death within the national context) can, nonetheles, be made part of the national narative?in the case of Germany, a narative of opennes and responsibility. In the chapter that follows, I expand on this argument by looking into the way monuments can participate in the construction of an image of a nation that upholds liberal values. As the case of Germany shows, some monuments are able to reflect an alternative view of the traditional conceptualization of death in the nation, and by extension, alternative images of the nation. Therefore, this last chapter of the disertation is dedicated to examining, first, how monuments might be made more liberal without losing sight of their national contexts, and second, what these more open monuments tel us about liberal nationalism in general. The chapter aims to draw out the relationship betwen what is imagined, in this case a liberal nation, and how one might do so. -138- Chapter Five / Liberal Monuments So far we have sen how monuments function as national practices. They form a part of the national narative by contributing to the construction of an image of the nation. However, the particular image of a nation that results from these practices can vary considerably. Thus far, my discussion of monuments has not made this particular point explicit, that is, that monuments can construct diferent types of national images. In Chapters 3 and 4, I have aluded to this point by discussing, for example, the ways in which monuments can incorporate a more ?open? view of memory, thus making some monuments more responsive than others to the inclusion of personal memories in the national narative. Or, as I explored in Chapter 4, some monuments distance themselves from the traditional idea of death as ?sacrifice? and lean instead toward death as a basis for ?reckoning? and ?responsibility,? thus making the values upheld by the nation more open to debate. In this final chapter, I pick up on these threads and discuss the ways in which monuments may construct a particular image of the nation. Specificaly, I am interested in a liberal nation. At the heart of my discussion is the asumption that if monuments are national practices, they must operate not only in a traditional (e.g., ethnic) national narative, but also in a liberal national one. Like other national naratives, a liberal national narative is -139- also composed of a variety of national practices that both support and construct an image of the nation. In the case of a liberal national narative, this image wil be that of a liberal nation?a nation that melds together national and liberal values. The task of this chapter is to explore the ways in which monuments may operate as national practices in a liberal national narative. The chapter is guided by the following questions: What does it mean for a national monument to be liberal, as wel? What, indeed, would make a national monument liberal? How can such a monument speak both to traditional national values and to liberal ones? And, finaly, what does the discussion about these monuments tel us about liberal nationalism ore generaly? 1 I. The iliberal tendencies of monuments Monuments in a liberal context cannot be limited to fostering traditional national values, such as loyalty and belonging, but must also foster liberal values. However, the extent to which they can do that, and more generaly, the extent to which monuments can (at al) be national practices in a liberal context, is not without its problems. There are aspects in the construction and design of monuments that can make them fundamentaly antithetical to a liberal nation. As I have shown in previous chapters, monuments sem to be naturaly coupled with traditional nationalism: their masive structures atribute permanence and grandeur to the nation, the treatment of death subsumes the individual in the nation, and the creation of a national memory silences the multiplicity of personal 1 For the sake of simplicity, in the rest of the chapter I wil use the term ?liberal monument? to mean a liberal national monument. Likewise, I wil use the term ?liberal narative? or ?liberal context? to mean a liberal national narative and a liberal national context. Since the whole disertation is about nationalism, the reference to ?nation? should be understod. The meaning of a ?liberal nation? is based my analysis of liberal nationalism in Chapter 1. -140- memories. The place of monuments in a nationalistic environment sems almost intuitive, but the place of monuments in a nation that upholds liberal values alongside national ones is neither imediate nor obvious. In the following section I discuss the possible problems of monuments in a liberal context, namely their iliberal tendencies. Permanence The static nature of monuments sems to run counter to the dynamic nature of a healthy liberal state. In an environment that is rooted in the ability to debate, change, and negotiate, a monolithic monument can be incongruous at best, if not, as some have argued, downright dangerous. Monuments sem to be problematic in a liberal context because they require a certain degre of permanence. In order to serve as reminders, monuments must be able to exist long enough for us, the living, to remember the dead, and long enough for future generations to remember us. Therefore, most monuments aim to exist beyond a single generation and in so doing monuments give the ilusion of an eternal existence. This ilusion is not, however, fantasy: it is rooted in an actual permanence of the monument. 2 In a liberal nation anything that declares itself to be permanent and unchanging can pose a direct threat to the nation?s ability to enact the debate and self-reflection that its values demand. For this reason, Steven Johnston argues that ?given the likely fate of diminishing returns with each pasing generation? we should alow for the periodic destruction of monuments. (Johnston 2001) 2 It should be noted that this is precisely why the actual destruction of monuments serves as a direct political blow to the promises made by the nation that erected it. -141- Furthermore, the permanence of monuments can also be sen as a hindrance to the representation of pluralism in the nation. The physical structure of the monuments, which by its very esence is limited and bounded, cannot contain or reflect a plurality of ideas or identities. The monument is often restricted to one, often authoritative, representation of the past. As I discussed in Chapter 3, this aspect of monuments is especialy salient with respect to the representation of a singular national memory. A monument is traditionaly responsible for capturing a collective memory, a notion that asumes that memory is in some way independent from the personal memories of individuals. The problems of monuments and memory is based on Piere Nora?s argument that monuments are a last resort for the diminishing organic memory. Whereas organic memory alowed for personal reflection and interpretation, and was based on personal interactions, the monument frezes (if not archives) memory in monolithic form. Although monuments safeguard memory from total annihilation, they also fundamentaly transform it. Memory in monuments cannot help but be out of reach for the individual? memory must be kept safe, after al. However, by keeping memory safe, monuments disalow the type of participation and plurality that we would expect in a liberal nation. Resort to emotions Permanence sems to be one of the key chalenges that monuments pose to liberalism. However, there is also the mode through which monuments operate as a national practice that can trigger a suspicious eye regarding their place in a liberal context. Monuments, like nationalism, operate through an appeal to our emotions. As I have argued previously, national identity is born out of sentiments such as pride, fear, or humiliation. The role of -142- emotions in the national discourse is not new. Nationalism appeals to our emotions, not necesarily our reason. Similarly, monuments are predicated on our ability to have an emotional response to the object. If a monument makes us adequately sad or angry, for example, it means that the monument has been able to transport us to another place and time. Furthermore, the awakening of these emotions is important to monuments as a national practice, because these emotions ultimately serve to define, legitimize, and strengthen the idea of the nation. In so doing, the monument has the capability of harnesing emotions for the exercise of political?in this case national?power. The use of emotions in the operation of monuments makes sense if we think of them as strictly national tools. However, this aspect of monuments is particularly dificult if we want to think of them in a liberal context. Since liberalism asumes that individuals use reason rather than instinct or pasion to calculate their choices, the central role of emotions in monuments can be particularly unsetling. Themes In addition to the chalenges to liberal values posed by the permanence and the emotional appeal of monuments, one must also confront the traditional themes that they tend to represent. The representation of these themes can come into conflict with liberal values. The glorification of the hero, for example, is a routine subject of monuments. The memorialization of the hero atributes one person with the exemplary qualities of the nation, be it loyalty, sacrifice, or valor. It also, more importantly, elevates one person over al others as encapsulating the national traits that should be, if only imperfectly, characteristic of al the individuals in the nation. This type of memorialization is -143- problematic in a liberal nation, because the focus on an exemplary individual easily eclipses the importance, and voices, of al other individuals. This dificulty is wel exemplified in the case of the intents to memorialize George Washington. Kirk Savage argues that the commemoration of Washington led to the questioning of ?the very act of commemoration, for any monument?merely by signaling out the hero from the great mas?undermined [pure republicanism?s] basic asumption that virtue and power resided in the ordinary individual. The republicans were caught in a dilema: how to commemorate Washington without reproaching the people.? (Savage 1992, 11) The debates that surrounded the construction and design of the Washington Monument ilustrate the chalenges that the memorialization of the hero poses to monuments in a liberal context. However, there are other types of hero monuments that, unlike the Washington Monument, try to mitigate their iliberal tendencies by memorializing an anonymous but stil exemplary individual. Here I have in mind two monuments which I have also discussed previously: the monument to the common soldier and the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In both these cases, the hero memorialized is not specific to one person but rather through its abstraction any individual (at least any soldier) can se himself in the monument. While the monuments avoid commemorating one person at the expense of many others, they too, however, run the risk of being problematic in a liberal context. Since these anonymous-type monuments are based on a certain degre of abstraction, they risk becoming too abstract: that is, by memorializing everyone they could also be said to memorialize no one. What is mising from these monuments is an -14- atention to the particular individual voices of the nation. The abstraction that these monuments demand may overlook individual pluralism. Another important and common theme in monuments is the memorialization of war. Johnston argues that war memorials are particularly problematic in a liberal democracy because monuments to war tend to narate war and death in absolute terms. (Johnston 2001) In his discussion of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Johnston shows that war memorials tend to focus on how the war afected the nation?bringing victory or defeat?but they do not addres how the war afected the enemy. The memorial is singularly oriented toward the nation, leaving the ?other? entirely outside of its discourse. This quality of war memorials, exemplified but not unique to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is problematic in a liberal nation because, Johnston argues, a liberal nation has an obligation to reckon with its actions, whether at home or abroad. A traditional war memorial disalows this type of reckoning. The absolute-like character of war memorials also tends to overlook any disagrements that occurred before or during the war. Even a memorial such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial?known for the controversies surrounding it?does not addres in its design the anti-war movement that has come to symbolize the war era as much as the war itself. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial overlooks, as most war memorials do, the varied voices of approval or criticism that any war is bound to create. And this is precisely what makes war memorials problematic?at least as far as a liberal nation is concerned: they tend to enshrine war as a totalistic national action rather than as the sum of coordinated?and maybe contested?actions of individuals. An adequate representation of the later would be more than befiting to a liberal nation. -145- I. What justifies the discusion of liberal monuments? Monuments have iliberal tendencies because they hint at authoritarianism and invite closure. They sem to be completely misplaced in a liberal context. Why, then, should this chapter be dedicated to discussing them in light of liberalism? What justifies a discussion about liberal monuments if we know that, in some fundamentaly ways, they are iliberal? There are two answers. First, despite the iliberal tendencies of monuments, we do find monuments in liberal nations. Monument construction thrives today in liberal nations such as Germany, France, Israel, and the United States. Al of these nations claim to uphold liberal values, and yet they participate in the continual construction and design of national monuments. The existence of such monuments, deeply entrenched in a liberal environment, implies that the question we ought to ask is not whether monuments should exist in a liberal context?since they obviously do?but rather how do these monuments operate in a liberal nation? And, more importantly for this project, what does the presence of national monuments in liberal nations teach us about liberal nationalism ore generaly? The second justification for the study of monuments in a liberal context is based on the understanding that al nations need monuments. In Chapter 2, I discussed monuments as national practices. I argued that national practices such as monuments produce national meanings which are crucial for the definition of the boundaries and character of the national community. John Gilis draws a similar connection betwen commemorative practices and the construction of identity by arguing that both eforts are born out of ?an intense awarenes of conflicting representations of the past.? (Gilis 1994, 8) For Gilis, commemorative practices, in which he explicitly includes -146- monuments, are unique in their ability to construct meaning from the past. And although Gilis does not speak directly to national identity, he argues that the construction of identity is dependent on a representation of the past which gives meaning to the present. Hence, in the case of national identity, a nation needs commemorative practices such as monuments in order to frame the past and thereby define its particular national identity. Therefore, a liberal nation, like any other nation, is in need of monuments. Their task is to provide a boundary for the imagined community?a community that is as present in a liberal nation as in any other. However, what indeed distinguishes the role of monuments in a liberal nation is their distinctly iliberal tendencies. These tendencies sem to fundamentaly contradict the liberal values that the nation upholds. However, precisely because a liberal nation needs monuments, the potential threat that they pose to liberal values is not sufficient grounds to dismis them as irelevant. Rather, I would like to argue that what distinguishes the construction and design of monuments in a liberal nation is that they demand far more subtlety and care than monuments in other nations. Furthermore, the iliberal tendencies of monuments does not mean that they cannot serve liberal values. Monuments can fit in a liberal context in diferent ways and each way offers a diferent solution for how to resolve the inevitable tension betwen the iliberal tendencies of monuments and the liberal context in which they are found. This means that a liberal monument cannot be one that completely undoes or avoids the iliberal dangers. Rather, a liberal monument can only be a representation of a particular solution and, often, it makes the conundrum of monuments in a liberal context explicit? it generates an awarenes of the problem and subsequently demands caution. -147- II. Liberal monuments However, a liberal monument must go beyond being solely a representation of the tension betwen monuments and liberal values. Ultimately, a liberal monument must participate in the construction of an image of a liberal nation. To do so, liberal monuments need, first, to wrestle with defining a liberal nation, and, second, to match this idea with the design of the monument. Since I have already discussed at length (in Chapter 1) the idea of a liberal nation, here I expand my analysis to an exploration of the diferent ways that this idea is translated into the design of monuments. My analysis relies on the asumption that what a monument represents must afect how it is represented. So, in this case, I look into how a representation of a liberal nation (or at least, a contribution to its definition) has an efect on the design of liberal monuments. I have divided my discussion into thre diferent sections. Each section covers a diferent type of liberal monument. Naturaly, these are not strict categories but rather they should serve as a way to give some order to the diverse ways in which monuments can be liberal. The first section discusses monuments that represent liberal values. These are monuments that, although they can look like traditional monuments, their themes are quintesentialy liberal. The second and third sections describe monuments that move beyond the representation of liberal values. These are monuments whose design is a crucial component in their role within a liberal context. The second section discusses monuments that sek to embody liberal values by encouraging the actual enactment of liberal values, and the third section describes monuments that can acommodate liberal values by making the space around them also meaningful to the liberal context in which they are found. -148- Liberal monuments representing liberal values Monuments that represent liberal values are those that give a physical representation to liberal values. The monument works as a symbol that as such stands in for something else. That is, the monument is not a liberal value in and of itself, but rather it serves as a reminder (or a teaching tool) for the liberal values that define the nation. Unexpectedly, the design of these monuments may sem entirely traditional and sem, for al intents and purposes, iliberal. Take, for example, the Lincoln Memorial. The design of the Lincoln Memorial can be easily interpreted as iliberal. Its large scale, likenes to a temple, and its centrality on the National Mal make the monument speak in a single, potentialy authoritarian, voice about Lincoln. His image is untarnished, with no room for questioning his motives or the decisions he made in his political life. The design of the monument emanates absolutism. However, the content of what is being memorialized is profoundly liberal. Starting with the texts on the wals and ending with what Lincoln stands for (at least as he is shown in this memorial), what is memorialized are quintesentialy liberal values: equality and fredom. The Lincoln Memorial shows that despite the iliberal aura of the monument?s design, the values which it represents make it fit within a liberal context. In monuments that represent liberal values, the content (rather than the form) are the focus of the monument. What is central in these monuments is the themes that are memorialized and not the diferent designs that are used to convey these ideas. It is not surprising that a main theme in liberal monuments is liberty. The celebration of liberty, or fredom, is often made explicit through the text that is incorporated into the monuments. The Korean War Memorial and the World War I Memorial are the most obvious -149- examples?the word ?fredom? is a prominent component in both?but one can also find alusions to the concept in the Jeferson Memorial, the FDR Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and, as I mentioned before, in the Lincoln Memorial. However, the memorialization of the concept does not only occur through texts. Naturaly, it is much harder to make a representational sculpture of such a broad concept than to simply carve the words that describe it. But, Savage has shown that during the Reconstruction Era there was an efort, albeit a failed one, to memorialize the emancipation of slavery and, by extension, the concept of fredom itself. In particular, Savage discusses two examples of such eforts: one is a sculpture of Lincoln with an emancipated slave at his fet, and the other is of an African American soldier who sits high on a column while his emancipated family looks up toward him from the foot of the column. (Savage 1997) Both these monuments use representation to capture a particular moment in the history of the nation that is strongly linked to the idea of fredom and a nation?s wilingnes to defend it. 3 Liberal monuments embodying liberal values The proces Monuments that represent liberal values such as fredom tend to separate betwen their form and content. In them, the themes are liberal but the form can look remarkably similar to monuments in non-liberal nations. In this section I turn to monuments that do 3 Savage goes on to argue that the memorialization of emancipation was, in fact, problematic during Reconstruction. In a stil-divided nation, he shows that it was more comon to find monuments to the ?generic citizen-solider who had fought in the war on both sides? than to the emancipated slave. (Savage 197, 19) Civil War monuments, he argues, opted to memorialize loyalty over fredom. -150- not only represent such liberal themes as I have discussed above, but whose design itself embodies liberal values. 4 These monuments respond to Robert Musil?s cal that we should ?demand more of monuments.? (Musil 1986) Rather than ?stand quietly by the side of the road,? these monuments depend on the active participation of individuals. Just walking past them is not enough. The monuments discussed here cal upon the individuals to be involved in the proces of memorialization and by doing so, the monuments reflect the idea that individuals are active participants in the definition and creation of their nation. The quality whereby a liberal nation understands individuals to have control and choice over their national identity is therefore emphasized in these monuments. To start, the embodiment of liberal values in the design of monuments can sometimes be traced to the very proces that precedes their construction. This proces has often taken the form of public, open competitions. Competitions have been a popular way to choose a monument design because they tend to have a greater public presence and sem to enact liberal-democratic values. However, there has been criticism of the competition proces for being les than democratic. Some of the criticism centers around who is alowed to enter the competition. Far from being open, many competitions are limited to profesionals or architect firms. This limited participation weakens the sense in which the competition proces reflects an open engagement and debate among individuals in a liberal nation. Similar, the final 4 Furthermore, the themes in these monuments are not restricted to liberal ones. Their atention to design means that a monument, such as a war memorial (whose theme is not unique to a liberal nation), wil lok diferently in a liberal nation than in an ethnic nation. -151- choice of design is often closed to the general population and is limited to the ruling of a jury. Here too the jury is appointed by a commite and is composed of profesional or politicaly connected individuals. However, even if we concede that participation should be limited to profesionals only and that the jury should be thought of as a ?representation of the people,? the structure of the competition itself can be problematic. Acording to Shenglin Chang, the restriction of design proposals to the format of poster- boards, and the lack of actual conversation with the artist, makes design competitions vulnerable to shutting down communication betwen the artist and the jury who are judging his or her work. 5 In order to aleviate this problem, Chang suggests the creation of some kind of grasroots organization that could work with architects and designers. And, in a similar vein, Jack Nasar argues that ?competitions exclude the public and the users from the proces.? (Nasar 1999, 38) He therefore suggests that design proposals should be more atuned to the opinions and needs of those who are meant to use the proposed design. Therefore, by encouraging a real dialogue with individuals, design competitions can regain some of their liberal democratic character. Counter-monuments: a second look Beyond the proceses that precede the construction of a monument, one must look at the design of the monuments themselves. Here I want to discuss monuments whose very form cals for an engagement with liberal values. As I mentioned before, the themes that are memorialized in these monuments are not restricted to typicaly liberal themes, such 5 Prof. Chang made these coments in a conversation I had with her in Fal 207 in Berkeley. -152- as fredom, but can also be dedicated to, for instance, the traditional memorialization of war. What distinguishes these monuments is the idea that the design itself should reflect a commitment to, or celebration, reminder, or instruction of, liberal values. Many of these monuments have filtered this concern through a re-evaluation of memory and its relation to monuments. As I have discussed in Chapter 3, most of these monuments are part of the counter-monument movement that tackles such questions as the memorialization of collected memories, vicarious memory, and absence. However, the memory-related questions brought up by counter-monuments go beyond merely a discussion about memory. They ilustrate the possibilities of having monuments in a liberal nation. Some of the design solutions sen in counter-monuments work to emphasize the way in which liberal values can be enacted through a monument rather than simply being represented in it. For example, the incorporation of an interactive component in some counter-monuments makes the participation of individuals part of the monument. That is, in these monuments, the design of the monument relies on the participation of individuals?the monument cannot function without them. The possibility of interacting with a monument (through etching or the leaving of objects, for example) brings the individual to bear on the meaning of the monument. The individual does not only make the monument come to life, but he literaly gives it its meaning. This component of monument design can be thought of as the enactment of the liberal value of -153- deliberation and engagement. 6 The individual is not left to be subsumed by the nation, but he participates in its creation and definition. Or, alternatively, this design gives the individual control over the parameters of his identity. He is, in a sense, self-governing. Ambiguity Similarly, the ambiguity of an unsetling efect, which has been used in some counter- monuments, can work to enact a certain aspect of liberal values as wel. 7 Maya Lin describes the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as leaving ?open the possibility of asking a question.? (Lin 1995, 46) For Lin the ambiguity of the monument is diferent than how it operates in counter-monuments. Whereas in counter-monuments ambiguity is often asociated with the fluidity of memory, in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial the ambiguity is an invitation for an action: to question. This point is made explicit by Johnston who argues that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial represents an ?ongoing moral and political conflict over questions of American national identity and institutions.? (Johnston 2001, 47 Italics added) Johnston pushes this idea further to claim that keeping such questions ?permanent and perpetual ? befits a democratic polity.? The ability to question is important in a liberal nation because it makes explicit the idea that the existence and 6 Johnston argues that although the leaving of objects at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has lost some of its original ?authenticity? (because now it has become a self-conscious and non-spontaneous act), the deliberation involved in leaving an object continues to make this action (and monument) politicaly significant, particularly in a democracy. (Johnston 201) 7 Many counter-monuments avoid the over-use of text or recognizable symbols. They rely, instead, on the impact of the design itself. For example, the ?Versunkene Bibliothek? (?sunken library?) by Micha Ulman, an underground chamber lined with empty bokshelves, is acompanied by only a smal plaque with the memorial?s name and designer. The mesage of the monument and how one ought to read it are left vague on purpose. To some degre this ocurs at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as wel, but the adition of text at the center of the Wal and the adition of the Hart sculpture undo some of the original open-ended efect. -154- meaning of the national identity is a mater of individual choice. Therefore, a monument whose design is geared to raise questions about the nation and leaves them open to debate embodies one of the fundamental values in a liberal nation. Death and reckoning The way a nation relates to death is particularly interesting in this regard. Death, as I discussed in Chapter 4, is often memoralized as sacrifice. This conceptualization of death subsumes an individual?s life into that of the nation. Sacrifice goes beyond an honorable death for a justifiable cause; it signifies the melding of an individual?s life to that of the nation. Therefore, in order to avoid this subsuming of the individual, monuments must look for other ways to memorialize death in the nation. There are two ways I would briefly like to mention here. The first I have discussed previously in connection to Lin?s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In this memorial, Lin is concerned that the dead should be memorialized both as a public, national loss and as a private loss. The memorial plays the dual role of grieving for the dead as members of a nation and as individuals with close family members and friends. The wal, on which al the names are etched, serves as metaphor for the shared national belonging. And the individual names, which were purposefully etched so one can fel and touch them, alow for an intimate connection with the dead. A memorial that is able to capture both these levels of loss is able to distance itself to a greater degre from the total eclipsing of the individual by the grand national narative and instead cal atention to individual and personal suffering. Second, death can be memorialized in living memorials. These are memorials that serve a social function, such as freways, parks or cultural centers. This type of memorial downplays -15- the narative of sacrifice and emphasizes instead the service of those that died in order for our society to function the way it does. Here death is not converted into (national) life. Death is acepted as final but as valuable to the nation. In both these cases death is not denied, but reckoned with. This type of reckoning can be important if we are interested in critical thinking and the engagement of citizens. Experience In order to emphasize the centrality of the individual, some have argued that monuments must shed their materiality and be thought of as an actual experience. Recal, for example, Lin?s distinction betwen memorial and monument. She emphasizes the importance of designing a memorial space that alows for ?experience and for understanding experience.? (Lin 1995, 13) For Lin, experience is necesary to achieve a ?personal reflection and private reckoning.? (emphasis added) In other words, a ?memorial experience? is focused on the engagement of the individual rather than on keeping him at a distance as a pasive paserby. Such a monument relinquishes ?al appearances of objectivity, thereby forcing everyone to confront her or his own subjectivity.? (Gilis 1994, 17) The monument does not only put the individual at its center, but it also alows the individual to think for himself and to make and control his own life choices. This, arguably, makes a monument conceived as an experience be more appropriate to a liberal context. But, what would a ?dematerialized monument? look like? There are thre examples I would like to discuss briefly. The first is a hypothetical case introduced by Johnston. He discusses an episode from the television show Star Trek in which the shuttle -156- crew comes across a monument left behind by a now-forgotten civilization. The monument works through a virtual renactment of a batle scene which ended in a tragic masacre. The visitors take an active part in the scene either as victims or as perpetrators of the masacre. The monument memorializes the event by making its visitors live through the experience. Johnston discusses this memorial primarily to discuss the ways in which a nation confronts its own wrong-doing?the memorial is built not by the victims but by those who were responsible for the atrocity. He thinks that a nation should be able to exercise ?humility, self-efacement, [and] confesion.? (Johnston 2002, 204) However, what is equaly interesting about Johnston?s example is the idea that, as he phrases it, ?people do not visit this monument; the monument visits people.? The memorial works through experience. It asumes that in order to adequately memorialize an event we must first live through it. Naturaly, we cannot go back in time, so a virtual experience of the event works as a way to transport us to the past and therefore to gain a more complete understanding of what happened. Only through beter understanding can we actualy be said to memorialize the event. However, incorporating experience into memorial design does not need to take the form of a virtual reality. A good example for an alternative might be the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is both a memorial and a museum. It is designed so that the visitor travels through a series of exhibitions before ariving at the memorial hal. Walking through the exhibitions often goes beyond education about the events of the Holocaust; it also leads the visitor to experience some elements from the event: at one point the visitor walks through a train cart used to transport Jews to the extermination camps, and at another point the visitor walks through a narow halway built as a replica -157- of the collection bins of shoes, hair and glases collected at the camps. 8 The exhibitions are designed to make the visitor experience the Holocaust to a certain degre. It is this experience that later gives the arival point?the memorial?its depth. Experience, once again, is used to draw the individual, in a more personal way, into the proces of memorialization. 9 Finaly, the last example of a memorial experience that I would like to discuss does indeed lack any materiality (either virtual or physical). The experience here is one of debate. James Young argues in favor of thinking of monuments as ?the never-to-be- resolved debate? surrounding their construction. (Young 1997, 879) For him, the act of debating constitutes the real memory-work. Young is not the first to se the proceses that precede the actual building of a monument as the heart of the memorial proces. In Savage?s discussion of the Washington Monument, he quotes one senator who in 1832 asked ?Where is [Washington?s] monument? Our answer is, in our hearts.? (Savage 1992, 12) The idea that a built memorial is somehow inadequate, or at least incomplete, speaks to the understanding that in order to memorialize there needs to be active participation. And, furthermore, that participation can take the form of entering a debate. Encouraging and even enshrining debates about the event or person to be memorialized means that the individual has an opportunity to speak his mind, that is, he has a say about what and how his national identity is being defined. This makes the memorial-as-debate a memorial that uses experience as a way to enact liberal values. 8 The items in the bins are the original ones found at the camps. 9 To a certain extent one could argue that the FDR Memorial does the same. Walking through the thre spaces representing FDR?s thre terms is akin to ?experiencing? FDR?s presidency. -158- Liberal monuments accommodating liberal values The third and final type of liberal monuments that I would like to discuss are ones that work in a liberal nation not by virtue of their themes or design, but by virtue of the type of activities they alow or inspire. These monuments sek to mitigate some of the dangers of monuments (i.e., their iliberal tendencies) by encouraging an environment that, at the very least, does not get in the way of our living up to liberal values. What is striking about these monuments is that they do not necesarily chalenge the traditional themes and designs of monuments, but rather, they tackle the way monuments work in space. Monument multiplicity One of the chalenges of monuments in a liberal nation is that they tend to expres a single, self-contained narative about the event memorialized. This is problematic in a liberal nation because it goes against the idea that the nation is constructed by and through a plurality of perspectives. Therefore, one way to make monuments more liberal is to open them up to multiple interpretations. As I have discussed above, this can be done by building into them an ambiguity of meaning. However, in this section I want to discuss a diferent way of encouraging multiplicity, one that does not resort to ambiguity or vaguenes. A multiplicity of meanings can be represented in monuments by building several monuments to the same event. Rather than make memorialization culminate in a single monument (no mater how liberal), it can instead be memorialized by a variety of monuments. Here I do not only mean having multiple monuments to the same event throughout the country?for example, the many memorials to WI in the United States. -159- Following Johnston?s idea of simultaneous ?memorial multiplicity,? I mean here the construction of several monuments in the same memorial space?a memorial complex, if you wil. (Johnston 2001, 33) The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a good example of this way of representing multiplicity. Johnston argues that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial should not be understood only as Lin?s Wal, with Hart?s sculptures and the Women?s Memorial as tacked-on additions, but rather he argues that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial should be sen as a memorial complex that is constituted by these thre memorials together. (Se Figure 16.) The other two memorials are equaly crucial to the memorialization of the Vietnam War because ?each of the thre memorials offers a contending interpretation or understanding of the War, the nation that fought it, and its proper place in American memory.? (Johnston 2001, 27) By creating such memorial multiplicity, the monument (as a complex) can beter represent the nation as embodying these contested and conflicting views of the war. The memorial complex serves, in other words, as a sculptural representation of the many and varied voices in a nation. And, furthermore, by giving each of these their space, it also signals a wilingnes to hear these voices and respond to them. 10 However, even when we might manage to have a memorial complex that represents the plurality of voices in the nation, its permanence?like that of al traditional monuments?can once again threaten the liberal values for which it stands. Along with his discussion of simultaneous ?memorial multiplicity,? Johnston also argues in favor of 10 Johnston is not clear on the number of monuments that can exist simultaneously in one memorial space. He is also unclear on whether a limit should be placed and, if not, how to deal with the to potential over- crowding of memorial space. -160- sequential ?memorial multiplicity.? For Johnston the problem is not building monuments in a liberal democracy, the problem is leaving them in place for too long. He suggests that monuments can exist in a liberal democracy only if they are matched by a wilingnes to periodicaly destroy them: What if the legacy represented by the Washington and Lincoln, among others, might be beter served?and the milions alocated to their upkeep beter utilized?by taking to them the wrecking bal? ? A democracy ought to demolish, intermitently, the monuments and memorials it builds for and to itself, recognizing the paradoxical character of architectural designs conceived in singularity and permanence and aimed at remote futurity. (Johnston 2001, 10) However, Johnston?s suggestion does not make clear what continuity we might expect from one period of destruction to another. If there is no such continuity?that is, if there is complete renewal?then one might say that Johnston would like the nation to be completely reinvented every so often. This is not an entirely foreign idea. Thomas Jeferson argues that a nation should never be thought of as an entity that lasts for more than one generation. For Jeferson, ?we may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the wil of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.? (Jeferson 1999, 599) Therefore, whereas a simultaneous ?memorial multiplicity? would work to represent the current pluralism of a nation, a sequential ?memorial multiplicity? is more likely to reflect changes in the image of the nation over a period of time. 1 1 Asuming, of course, that we maintain some kind of record of past memorializations, against which we can measure such changes. -161- Traveling monuments However, the antidote to permanence does not need to be destruction. A traveling monument, for example, can also unsetle the traditional way in which monuments are fixed to one place and, by extension, to one meaning. The AIDS Quilt and the Traveling Vietnam Veterans Memorial are instances of such a traveling monument. 12 These monuments are present in any given place only temporarily. The memorialization proces that they entail is more fleting and therefore more precious. But, more importantly, because they reveal themselves, so to speak, rather unexpectedly, they achieve a startling efect?an efect that is very good at grabbing our imediate atention. In this vein, Robert Musil went so far as to argue that monument-building should learn from the antics used by advertisers: ?Why don?t the figures of a marble group rotate around each other, like the beter figures in store windows, or at least open and close their eyes?? (Musil 1986, 322) If monuments would ?make more of an efort? to grab our atention, then they could do their jobs beter?they would distract us from our daily lives in order to contemplate an event or value that is meaningful to us. The traveling monument is also an interesting liberal monument because, like the virtual memorial in Star Trek, the monument visits people and not the other way around. By appearing at diferent places at diferent times, the monument is more acesible to people. A wider exposure does not only mean that more people wil se it (though this is certainly true), but more importantly, in each new location, the monument is sen through 12 For a god discusion of the AIDS Quilt se (Crichton 192). For a recent article about the Traveling Vietnam Veterans Memorial se (Kim 205). -162- diferent eyes. The local environment afects the meaning that individuals take, and give to, the monument. The traveling monument ilustrates how the same monument can have diferent meanings depending on who ses it. Therefore, one can think of the traveling monument as responding to the local and cultural environments of individuals. These contexts are not only acommodated by the national narative, but are actualy integrated into it. It is this quality that makes the traveling monument work as a liberal monument. 13 Memorial public space The monuments I described in this last section on liberal monuments share the idea that what makes a monument liberal is not only, or necesarily, its content or form, but the responses that the monument alows. Here, I continue with this idea but rather than look at what monuments can alow, I look into the space around monuments. I consider this space memorial space because it plays a role in the memorialization proces of the monument. 14 It too, along with the object of the monument, constitutes a part of the construction of a national narative. Therefore, in liberal monuments, one could expect the space around them to equaly contribute to the construction of the image of a liberal nation. The space around a liberal monument can be simultaneously atentive to the individual and his relation to the nation. It is a space that aserts neither the individual 13 A similar argument can be made about counter-monuments that are placed in neighborhods. They to bring the monument to the people. But, whereas part of their motive for entering the neighborhods is unsetling the separation betwen the sacred and profane space that I discused in Chapter 2, the traveling monument does not necesarily do so. 14 I avoid the term ?monumental? space because it implies grandiosity. But if we could avoid that conotation, monumental space would, as far as my reading of the term is concerned, be as god a term as memorial space. -163- over the nation nor the nation over the individual. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial works, in this case, as a unique example. In Chapter 4, I discussed the funerary practices that surround the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. These practices are both personal?e.g., the leaving of things and the rubbing of the names?and national?e.g., wreath laying and official ceremonies. Lin was keenly aware that she wanted the space of the monument to be intimate (?the intimacy of reading?) but also that the space should operate as a national ground for remembering. (Lin 1995, 13) As one enters the space of the memorial, the silence that envelops the Wal makes one?s encounter with the memorial extremely personal. If one is looking for a relative?s name on the Wal, the sense of personal connection is augmented. But even as we focus on one name on the Wal, we are conscious of al the other names that are near it. The Wal alows for personal contemplation, but it does not close us off from the presence of others. As we enter the space around the memorial we enter both as individuals?individuals who have someone to mourn ?and as members of a nation?members who have something, maybe a shared loss, in common. But once we enter a memorial space, what do we do? Beyond our imediate reaction to the monument, there are the specific activities that the space around the monument alows or encourages. To begin with, monuments can create a public space that is conducive to public gatherings. Individuals can use the space to congregate and interact with one another. However, the character of these interactions is crucial to how the space operates in a liberal context. For example, North warns that the presence of people in memorial space can easily become a ?mas-ornament??such as the stylized and extremely choreographed marches in Nazi Germany. (North 1992, 16) He argues that -164- gatherings, or marches, around a monument can become themselves monolithic and serve as an extension of the already-existing iliberal tendencies. In other words, as mas- ornaments only our bodies mater, whereas North wants our minds to be engaged as wel. Therefore, North refers to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a succesful memorial public space because ?to view the piece is not simply to experience space but also to enter a debate.? (North 1992, 20) Johnston makes a similar point claiming that ?the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is more than a public commemorative space in a democracy,? the activity that the monument inspires on its grounds makes the ?space itself democratic.? (Johnston 2001, 35) However, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is not alone in hosting such a public space. The Lincoln Memorial, for example, has been the host of many political protests and demonstrations. It functions as a stage, if you wil, on which actors can put on any variety of plays. But, again, what is the character of these gatherings around monuments? Both North and Johnston imply, the former explicitly and the later implicitly, that these are public spaces in the Habermasian sense. They are places in which individuals can engage one another in critical communication. (Habermas 1991, 32) The discussion, either among individuals or of a raly as a whole, goes beyond commentary on the monument itself?it tackles larger political question about national identity, the nation, its meaning and boundaries. A monument that can host this type of public space, i.e., one that alows for discussion and deliberation about foundational questions about the polity, fits in a liberal context because individuals can enter this space as critical citizens. The public space that may surround monuments is diferent from other public spaces, such as public squares or gardens. The memorial public space links the meaning -165- of the monument with the activities that are done in its vicinity. Demonstrations or ralies are inspired by the meaning of the monument and use it to give weight or an added significance to themselves. For example, in Martin Luther Kings famous ?I have a dream? speech, he explicitly refers to the Lincoln monument that stands behind him. 15 The public space around a monument is never neutral, never meant to be neutral, and therefore any activity on its grounds necesarily comes into dialogue with the meaning of the monument. 16 However, it is not simply the activities in the memorial public space that are afected by the monument. The monument itself becomes richer and more complex when it alows for a public space in its surroundings. Take, for example, King?s speech once again. As I mentioned in Chapter 3, the speech itself has become part of the memories embodied in the monument. Today, the Lincoln Memorial stands for more than a memorialization of Lincoln, the Civil War, or the Emancipation Proclamation. Because of the famous speech delivered on its grounds, the Lincoln Memorial also memorializes the Civil Rights Movement. The example of King?s speech shows how the meaning of a monument can expand thanks to the activities that occur on its grounds. But this does not need to be the case. Johnston argues that in the case of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, official ceremonies held at the site can be in complete conflict with the original design competition criteria, e.g., that the memorial should remain apolitical. There can be an 15 ?Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow e stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.? (King 192, 102) 16 Granted, the ?true? meaning of the monument can be nebulous, especialy if it is a monument that sets out to be ambiguous. But, whatever meaning is read into the monument, it has an efect on the meaning of the activities that the public memorial space alows. -16- unexpected tension betwen the form of the monument and the space around it. But, for Johnston, ?perhaps this is as it should be.? He argues that precisely because ?the Vietnam Veterans Memorial ? is made and remade through myriad ritual practices,? it ?vindicates multiplicity and refuses monopoly.? (Johnston 2001) By alowing for a public space that encourages debate, the meanings of the monument become layered. Far from remaining static, the memorial practices of a monument in whose vicinity we find a memorial public space are continualy changing and evolving. In other words, the monument opens itself up to multiple interpretations and interactions by alowing for a memorial public space around it. 17 Conclusion There are diferent ways in which monuments can be liberal. Each way addreses, to some degre, the problems that monuments confront when they enter a liberal context. A liberal monument must respond, on the one hand, to the iliberal tendencies of monuments, and on the other, it must also contribute to the construction of a liberal national narative. As I have shown, liberal monuments can do so either by representing, embodying, or acommodating liberal values. In turn, each of these paths offers an aray of diferent solutions to the possibility of liberal monuments, whether it is through the selection of diferent themes and designs or through the configuration of space. The 17 And, consequently, this implies that monuments that disalow or at least discourage the creation or use of public space, have limited versatility. This is the case, for example, with counter-monuments that employ the efect of invisibility such as the Ashcrot-Brunen memorial. -167- diversity of liberal monuments indicates that a liberal nation is not a cohesive idea but that it can be interpreted (and practiced) in a variety of ways. However, despite their diversity, none of the liberal monuments I have discussed is perfectly imune to iliberal tendencies, and none can be considered to be a comprehensive construction of a liberal nation. A monument such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that in many ways opens up liberal possibilities remains a static memorial that risks losing its sense of intimacy and interaction in a generation or so, once those who knew the dead are no longer alive. Or, to give a diferent example, the Lincoln Memorial, despite memorializing liberal themes and offering a space for political deliberation, can easily be regarded as a traditional, if not an iliberal, memorial in another context. This chapter has sought to show, among other things, that there is not one perfectly liberal monument. Even as we expect monuments to cary meaning in a liberal nation, they are not foolproof to their own iliberal tendencies. Rather than reject liberal monuments because of their innate imperfection, the discussion in this chapter should convince us, I hope, that there are many tools that can help monuments mitigate their iliberal tendencies and, for this reason, alow them to function reasonably wel as national practices in a liberal context. Furthermore, the possibility (and reality) of having liberal monuments serves as a lens through which we can examine liberal nationalism. The tensions that I discussed in the first chapter of the disertation, that is, betwen national versus liberal values, take form in liberal monuments as wel. Monuments that are too traditional risk becoming inappropriate to a liberal context. Such monuments would, similar to iliberal nationalism, construct an image of the nation in absolute terms. The visitor would be -168- merely a spectator rather than an active participant in the proces of memorialization. His membership in the national community would be announced by the monument as a fait accompli rather than as a mater of choice and deliberation. These monuments would shut down discussion, their mesage would appear to be imutable, and finaly they would silence any personal or contesting voices in the nation. On the other hand, monuments that chalenge the iliberal character of traditional monuments are also confronted with chalenges. These alternative monuments would bring into question their own existence?by, for example, disappearing into the ground. By making us aware that a monument?s mesage is never absolute or final and that, consequently, memorialization must rely on people rather than objects, such monuments unsetle the very justification of having monuments at al. The monument becomes a vehicle for dialogue and deliberation rather than closure. However, such monuments, despite their eforts to open up possibilities, are stil bound, first, to the monument-form and, second, to the national community that they addres. A monument that no longer speaks to us through its articulation in space is no longer a monument. This does not mean that a monument must be built in order to afect us. As I have discussed before, the proceses that precede the construction of a monument (the negotiations or competition) can be sen as part of the monument itself. However, these proceses can only be considered as a monument if they continue to debate how the form of the monument and its articulation in space speak to the values being memorialized. If these questions are absent from the discussion, that discussion may be interesting (and important) but it is no longer an extension of what we consider a monument. Moreover, monuments that invite a debate about the character and nature of the boundaries of the nation must stil do so -169- under the asumption that the nation exists. If the very existence and legitimacy of the nation is chalenged, then the monument may be valuable but it is no longer a national monument. It may be, perhaps, an anti-national monument. Therefore, similar to liberal nationalism, liberal monuments must also tread the narow path betwen distancing themselves from a chauvinistic nationalism without at the same time undoing national belonging altogether. Although the tensions that I explored in Chapter 1 appear here in liberal monuments, they reveal to us something that the theoretical analysis did not: liberal nationalism can be practiced. If liberal nationalism is to be a nationalism at al it must have its own set of practices. These participate in the construction and maintenance of an image of a liberal nation. Liberal monuments are one such practice and although they do so imperfectly, their very existence has shown us that we can reconcile, or at least live with, the tensions betwen liberal and national values. Despite being theoreticaly oxymoronic, the overlap in liberal monuments betwen a nationalist and liberal discourse shows that at least in the practices that are situated in our everyday life?such as memorialization practices?there is a way both to atend to our national belonging and to secure our autonomy and individual liberty. This means that liberal monuments do not only ilustrate that liberal nationalism can be practiced; they also indicate that monuments have an important role in a liberal nation. Monuments are indeed a chalenge to liberalism but, in a liberal nation, they can alow us (if not encourage us) to live the lives of liberal individuals?in addition to the easier task of fostering a sense of national community and belonging. In other words, liberal monuments have the surprising capacity of representing and enacting liberal -170- values?an element that strengthens, rather than weakens, a liberal polity. Liberal monuments do so in a variety of ways, many of which I have outlined in this chapter, and others to which I have aluded throughout the disertation. Here, however, I would like to emphasize thre of these avenues through which monuments can, as Gilis puts it, ?remain useful? today. (Gilis 1994) First, a new and diferent approach to memory in the design and construction of monuments can give a venue for pluralism and introspection in the nation. By incorporating the notion that memories are not strictly social, as Halbwachs would have it, but that they are also intensely personal, monuments would respond to the individual need to remember and memorialize. Doing so would make monuments a practice that alows us to exercise our unique ?experiments of living,? in this case our unique ?memories of living??and that makes space for critical evaluation of our political and social surroundings. Second, a move away from a celebration of the past to a reckoning with the past would open the way to critical thinking and the taking of responsibility. A monument that approaches the past with room to question it, particularly the justification and legitimacy of death, can play an active role in alowing for self-criticism in the nation. By having monuments that self-consciously make us think and question the past, we would be encouraged to contemplate our actions?potentialy even do so using our reason?and avoid following blindly and irationaly the path set out by some superior (patriotic, perhaps) force. Finaly, monuments can be a vehicle for the expresion and exercise of pluralism in a liberal society. The most obvious way to do so is by integrating multicultural representation into monument design, as was done, for example, in Hart?s sculpture at the -171- Vietnam Veterans Memorial. 18 However, for Andrew Shanken this atempt ?to bronze multiculturalism? is insipid and quickly devolves into kitsch. (Shanken 2005) Its literalnes closes, rather than opens, the field of posibilities. However, monuments can give voice to pluralism in another way. As I have discussed before, Johnston argues that a memorial complex with numerous memorial structures to the same event can expres a plurality of views and interpretations. Such a proliferation of monuments does not need to be sen as an over-crowding or an obnoxious clutter. Rather it can represent, or more acurately be, an active playing field of ideas that is constantly changing and reinventing itself. This means that monuments can enact pluralism in a broader sense. They can provide us with the tools and the space ?by which individuals and groups come together to discuss, debate, and negotiate the past and, through this proces, define the future.? (Gilis 1994, 20) In this disertation, I have sought to show that liberal monuments capture the dilemas of liberal nationalism, and they articulate these dilemas in space. As a tool of liberal nationalism, monuments go beyond merely representing an image of a liberal nation; they are a valuable practice for it to remain both liberal and a nation. In other words, liberal nations not only can tolerate monuments: they can benefit from monuments. 18 The thre figures in the sculpture are each of a diferent ethnic background: White, African-American, and Latino. -172- Apendix Figure 1. The National World War I Memorial, Washington, D.C. a. Aerial view of WII Memorial. (Photo: J?rgen Nagel) b. The Freedom Wal: ?Here we mark the price of freedom.? (Photo: Aude Vivere) -173- Figure 2. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. Florplan of the USHM, with the Hal of Remembrance at the end of the permanent exhibit. (From USHM visitor?s brochure) Figure 3. The Euston Memorial and the Memorial to the Men of Hul, London The cros is a comon symbol both to mark a grave site and in memorials. (From Borg, 191) -174- Figure 4. Nixon at the Lincoln Memorial Nixon honoring Lincoln?s birthday, 1974. (Photo: Robert L. Knudsen) Figure 5. The Washington Monument from Arlington The obelisk, both as a funerary memorial at the Arlington Cemetary (foreground) and as a national monument (the Washington Monument is seen in the background). (Photo: Avital Shein) -175- Figure 6. The Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. ?In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.? (Photo: National Park Service) Figure 7. The Marine Corps War Memorial Monuments are sacred spaces which prohibit play. (Photo: Avital Shein) -176- Figure 8. The Monument against Fascism, Harburg The Monument against Fascism in 1986 (left) and 192 (right). (From Art in America, April 204) Figure 8. Stumbling Blocks, Berlin A Stumbling Block in Berlin. (Photo: Georg Slickers) -17- Figure 10. The Aschrott-Brunen Memorial Fountain, Kesel a. Looking down into the Aschrot-Brunen Fountain. (From Young, 194) b. The artist?s model of the inverted Aschrot- Brunen Fountain (From Young, 194) -178- Figure 11. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C. Reflections at the Wal. (Photo: Stephen Tobriner) Figure 12. The National Mall, Washington, D.C. The Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial located along the main axis of the National Mal, with the VM oriented towards both of them. (Photo: USGS) -179- Figure 13. The Shaw Memorial, Boston (Photo: Avital Shein) Figure 14. El Valle de los Ca?dos, Madrid (Photo: H?kan Svenson) -180- Figure 15. The Jeferson Memorial, Washington, D.C. 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