Keffie Exercise 1

Last Week: Memorialized

As discussed in class last week, collective memories need to be externally sedimented in the material world in order to continue to perform a social role—to carry on their memorial function. This will be my own little monument to the memory of class discussion; the inscription of what transpired in the classroom into words on a page (or, perhaps more appropriately, pixels on a wiki).

The four pieces on monuments and memory written for class were simultaneously disparate and similar. Claudia engaged in issues of the senses as they are tied to memory—describing her gelato pilgrimage in its many iterations through the city of Rome. Carissa also embarked on a pilgrimage, but this time as an eighth grader in the company of her classmates walking fifteen miles to the Shrine of La Salette in Attleboro, Massachusetts. Heidi addressed questions about proper comportment in mortuary landscapes and how that question becomes complicated when memories of these places of death become distorted or distant. Elisa called upon her experience at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial to engage with questions of how to behave at (what Lynn Meskell would refer to as) sites of negative heritage.

Claudia’s journey was an individual experience, while Carissa had her own experience and created her own memories but within the context of a large-scale group performance. Both accounts address the issue of control—Claudia is the architect of her own experience, while Carissa, in describing the reason for the pilgrimage, refers to the religion teacher who orchestrated it as a “nut”—clearly not the message with which the Nutty Nun had intended Carissa walk away (albeit with blistered feet). The Shrine to which Carissa trekked was constructed to memorialize the appearance of the Virgin Mary to two Shepard children in France; however in her description of it Carissa hardly mentions the shrine itself. Rather she talks about visiting it previously with her family, the lights illuminated every year, and the fifteen mile walk she had to endure to get there. Here we see a discrepancy between those intended memories (or messages) and those that are actually produced. Further, in Claudia’s account, the monument which pulls her to it with centripetal force is not one that was constructed to produce or induce memories. Her memories of that place are her own production. The same is true of the city through which she moves to reach her gelato shrine. Her memories of the city of Rome are colored by her desire for gelato and produced through constant but differing engagement with the space. Layers of experience and memory are accreted through the repetition of these actions.

These two pieces address the primacy of individual memories, even in the context of a regulated and directed experience. Is Claudia’s space sacred? To her it is. Did Carissa and her classmates leave the Shrine at La Salette feeling that they had walked on hallowed ground? From her rendition, I would venture to say: probably not. These questions are especially pertinent in light of the constructed experience and regulated space at sites like the Taj Mahal. Is what happens at the Taj a production of social memory? In part, as Ditchfield (2005: 189) said, whether or not social memory is produced is dependent on what you bring with you—whether or not you have cultivated the right attitude of mind. Carissa and her eighth-grade companions did not create a cohesive community through their shared experience at the Shrine of La Salette. The group all wearing the fluorescent pink hats getting off the bus at the Taj Mahal to snap a few photographs do not create a cohesive social memory. This is where the question that Ian posed to us a few weeks ago may come into play: Is Turner’s Model (of the dialectic between structure and anti-structure) a good model for us? If we think about the way in which ‘communitas’ is produced or reinforced by these ‘sacred’ places then we might be on to something. In this way the material world serves as a mnemonic for these communal memories.

In her piece written for last week Heidi struggles with what happens when the intended function of a place (specifically a tomb) is distorted in the collective memory, and how this distortion of memory has a strange effect on people’s behavior. Elisa struggles with how to behave at a memorial that commemorates massive death and destruction—a site at which even how to memorialize it is contested, and at which she is (by nationality) implicated in those memories.

Heidi brings up the issue of memorials for which something is forgotten (or, in this case, selectively ignored). Monuments are not only about remembering, but in this case also about forgetting. How is it that people can sit in the Ann Mary Brown Memorial, a tomb, and eat their bagged lunches and sip on drinks procured from the crypt? What happens when they are gently (or not so delicately) reminded about the actual nature of the space in which they are sitting? But is it our own (contemporary) discomfort with being close to death that produces these squeamish reactions? Does there necessarily need to be a conflict with this monuments’ intended purpose and its current use? In contrast, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial is uncontestedly a site of conflict. Elisa struggles with questions about how to mold her bodily practices (a la Focault) in this place of contested memory. To put it bluntly, her photo album from this trip does not contain a picture of her in the foreground jauntily pretending to grab the top of the dome. As she notes, both China and the United States issued statements about the dangers of memorializing this historical moment in a vacuum—the United States was especially concerned that this moment might be conceived in isolation of the events that led up to the bombing of Hiroshima. Elisa’s individual experience at this site, as an American, is wrought with guilt, discomfort, and sadness.

Both of these pieces deal with sites of conflicting or contested memories. This is relevant to the role of archaeology and archaeologists in these sites of contestation. Because memory is inscribed in the material world—exteriorized—archaeology is looked to as the arbiter in these disputes because of its authority to ‘read’ the material past (and the establishment of a right to the material past is often linked to original ownership of that past). In the case of the dispute between Hindus and Muslims at Ayodhya archaeology was used as the justification for the destruction of the mosque. This led us to the questions: What roles should archaeologists, as academics, play in instances where sites are contested? What role does archaeology play if people are going to believe what they want to regardless of what the material record indicates? Are archaeologists the producers of memory, or is archaeology only proficient at indicating places where memory was produced in the past? Do communities build social memory from the production of archaeological knowledge, or do they only use this material to bolster support for already held beliefs?

There are no easy answers to these questions. People have fought, killed, and died for their material presents and pasts. I suppose that is a poignant point to leave on. Memory is a powerful thing because ultimately it relates to individual and collective identity. Because memories have material corollaries there is always a physical, material aspect to them. As archaeologists, we need to grapple with the uncomfortable position we have (to some extent) put ourselves in as prophets of the material past. When it comes to sites of conflict or contention, what role do/should we play?