Introduction
The construction of memorials is a well-established cultural practice, widely recognised and expected. We hear about them; how they are planned, designed, debated, altered, and sometimes removed. They are celebrated, inaugurated, and critiqued; and they become the focal point for anniversaries and forms of memorialisation through which accounts of events are staged. Memorials have become a part of our cultural toolkit. It is taken for granted that major events need memorials, and it has also become commonplace to see such memorials being recast and reinterpreted to suit changing social conditions and needs including the vagaries of ideologies. On our TV screens, we have witnessed the removal of statues of leading communist figures, first from countries within the former communist bloc of Eastern Europe and then throughout the former Soviet Union. More recently, the removal of the Rhodes statue from the University of Cape Town in 2015 not only became internationally debated through the Internet, it also inspired similar claims against monuments elsewhere.1 In various ways, memorials and memorialisation activities are attracting attention, and they often provide a confused mix of genuine emotive involvement, political propaganda, and media interests. It is within this complex node of interconnections that the raison d’être for this volume is to be found.
Some have seen this rise as a distinct form of contemporary cultural practice. Erika Doss, discussing the phenomenon in the United States in contemporary times, refers to it as ‘memorial mania’ and argues that:
Memorials of all kinds […] are flourishing in America today. Their omnipresence can be explained by what I call memorial mania: an obsession with issues of memory and history and an urgent desire to express and claim these issues in visible public contexts. Today’s growing numbers of memorials represent heightened anxieties about who and what should be remembered in America. (Doss 2010: 2)
The intensified presence of memorials and various forms of memorialisation activities are, however, not just one form amongst a range of modern cultural practices; instead, they are more distinct and specific in their agency. They are deeply involved with how we perceive and argue about the past and its significance for and influences on contemporary actions. For example, in 2009 on Armistice Day, the Champs-Élysées in Paris were closed off to traffic. The President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, stood side by side under the Arc de Triomphe and in front of France’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The speeches of the two leaders were somewhat predictable, but as a symbolic act, the event was forceful and eloquent. German and French flags lined the Champs-Élysées, uniformed German and French military personnel stood beneath the Arc de Triomphe, the French and German anthems were played, and a German and a French child accompanied the two Heads of State, symbolising a future of friendship. All of this took place in the presence of French veterans from World War Two. To conclude the ceremony the European anthem (Beethoven’s Ode to Joy) was played, and blue and yellow balloons were released (the colours of the European Union flag but likewise a colour each from the French (blue) and German (yellow) flags). These kinds of stage settings provide persuasive and impressive displays of selective memory at work, and they are highly affective. At this event, although each speech ended in ‘long live France, long live Germany, long live Franco-German friendship’, it was notable how both leaders seemed to move effortlessly from a representation of common suffering during World War One to a shared jubilation over the fall of the Berlin Wall with little mention of World War Two, the last time that German flags and uniforms were on display on the Champs-Élysées on such a scale. Moreover, the speeches avoided references to any sense of responsibility for the wars and the destruction they caused. The event exemplified how collective memories of shared events can be represented in a new light, given new significance, and used to overshadow, or silence, other memories. The unspoken or silenced, however, is more than an absence as it marks its own effects, including creating distance, misunderstandings, and resentment within communities.
At first glance, these cultural forms may appear straightforward, we feel that we understand their intentions and histories; yet, they are far from simple. Their complexity arises, in particular, from two features. The first is the ongoing battle for control over narratives, whether national or local, universal or particularistic, and the role that memorials and memorialisation activities have in providing a focal point for such narratives. The second feature is directly linked to this, for the continuously changing narrative sits in tension with memorials’ seemingly intrinsic character of stability and timelessness. Ontologically, there is no room for change, and to suggest that a memory of something, an event or a person, can change seriously challenges the very reason for memorials. Within memorials we thus have a struggle between the notion of ‘memory as truth’, on the one hand, and the practice of ‘memory as being negotiable’, on the other hand. This tension is especially explicit during periods of political transition when the past and how it is represented becomes more openly negotiated (see the chapters by Baillie, Comer, and Sahovic in this volume). Memory becomes salient in a different way when the generation that experienced events first-hand is no longer around. Scholars of cultural memory have argued that a shift occurs when those with living memory of events are no longer present to share the narrows and cemented official narrative (Assmann 2006, 2008a, b). In line with this, Geoffrey White’s (2016) two decades of observation at Pearl Harbour and the USS Arizona Memorial appear to indicate the effect of changing generations: as the witness generation disappears, spaces open up for previously unheard accounts. White argues that the loss of living voices allows the more nuanced lived experience to merge, and in turn, a diversification of the official (White 2016).
Memorials also leak meaning. They do not all, and not equally effectively, remain open for engagement and understanding. Simple matters, such as the choice of material, for example whether granite or sandstone is used, may at the time of their construction have had an obvious cultural connotation that was readily appreciated by the wider public, but that easy understanding may be lost with time. So, memorials can ‘die’, lose relevance, or become just a familiar sight within a public park without any perceivable associations, vacuous of meaning and intent. We pass such memorials, yet, we hardly notice them—they have been absorbed by their surroundings. But while they are active, memorials can be used purposefully in focussing public attention on certain events and can play dominant roles in ongoing struggles over the accepted versions of these events; alternatively, they may be used for new purposes, such as to build peace. As illustrated in this volume, memorials may be repurposed through debates about meaning and interpretations but also, sometimes, through modifications of their physical fabric. Overall, memorials and memorialisation are therefore significant, but unstable, parts of the cultural landscape.
In response to these developments, the last 30 years have seen substantial scholarship focussed on interconnected questions about memory, memorials, memorialisation, and anniversaries. New concepts such as memorialscape (Carr 2012), spontaneous memorialisation (e.g. Haney et al. 1997), grassroots memorials (Margry and Sànchez-Carretero 2011), and distributed memorials (Sørensen and Adriansen 2015) have been formulated to capture some of the qualities observed within these practices, and older discussions, in particular, Maurice Halbwach’s 1950 and 1980 reflection on collective memory, have gained new relevance. Out of this, a canon of central arguments and ideas has emerged, such as Pierra Nora’s concept of a lieu de mémoire (1984–1992, 1989), Jay Winter’s sustained analysis and reassessment of the memory effects of the Great War (e.g. Winter 1998, 2008) and Aleida Assmann (2006) and Jan Assmann’s (2008b) writings on communicative and cultural memory; in turn, these have become widely used, debated, and incorporated in cross-disciplinary discussions and analyses.
Despite, or in part exactly because of this burst of research, it has also become increasingly clear that we need more focussed analyses of the processes of change that these cultural forms undergo and mediate. To better comprehend them—their central roles and diffuse affects—we need, in particular, to understand the tension between stability and instability. How, for instance, are changes instigated, and how may the meaning of a particular memorial or memorialisation practice ‘settle’, move beyond change? We also suggest that the semiotics of memorials and memorialisation need to be analysed, as it is through these dimensions that they work on us. Memorials and memorialisation activities have a language and means of affect. We also see increased borrowing, or citation, between them; as their reach becomes ever more international, their most effective forms are copied. Understanding such trends better we may also begin to comprehend the ritualisation that takes place and the range of connotations that often arise around memorials as a result. The staging of memorialisation is clearly a powerful cultural and political tool, and the role of performativity in inducting social understanding is core to how collective cultural memory and claims are constructed, updated, and changed. These are some of the ‘tools’ through which communities construct their understanding of past events and through that their claims on the future. Understanding how such powerful claims are made and transformed is important. The short distance between ritualisation and sacralisation is also worthy of attention. The transformat...