Remembering experience: Public memorials are not just about the dead anymore

Abstract

This article considers a shift in public memorialization towards the remembrance of experience, rather than death. Drawing on research into Australian public memorials to lived experiences of loss and trauma from 1985 to 2015, I compare the trends identified in that research with similar memorial projects internationally. I have found that the emergence of memorials to lived experience is an expression, and an expansion, of the kinds of knowledge that can be remembered publicly, and is influenced by discourses of trauma, human rights and transitional justice.

Keywords

experience memorial memorialization memory transitional justice trauma

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Arthur

(2009) How ‘transitions’ reshaped human rights: a conceptual history of transitional justice. Human Rights Quarterly 31: 321–367.

Ashton

Hamilton

(2008) Places of the heart: memorials, public history and the state in Australia since 1960. Public History Review 15: 1–29.

Ashton

Hamilton

Searby

(2014) Places of the Heart: Memorials in Australia. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.

Atkinson-Phillips

(2018) Re-remembering Australia: public memorials sharing difficult knowledge. Coolabah 24–25: 76–93.

Atkinson-Phillips

(2019) Survivor Memorials :Remembering Trauma and Loss in Contemporary Australia. Crawley: University of Western Australia Publishing.

Buckley-Zistel

Schafer

(eds) (2014) Memorials in Times of Transition. Cambridge; Antwerp; Portland, OR: Intersentia.

Bulback

(1991) Remembering ourselves. Meanjin 50(2/3): 406–414.

Carr

(2012) Examining the memorialscape of occupation and liberation: a case study from the Channel Islands. International Journal of Heritage Studies 18: 174–193.

Caruth

(ed.) (1995) Trauma: Exploration in Memory. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.

10.

Craps

(2013) Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

11.

Crimp

(1989) Mourning and militancy. October 51: 3–18.

12.

Cvetkovich

(2003) An Archive of Feeling: Trauma, Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

13.

Damousi

(2002) History matters: the politics of grief and injury in Australian history. Australian Historical Studies 33: 100–112.

14.

Danto

(1985) The Vietnam veterans memorial. The Nation 31: 152–155.

15.

Doka

(1989) Disenfranchised Grief: Recognising Hidden Sorrow. Lexington, KY: Lexington Books.

16.

Doss

(2010) Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America. Chicago, IL; London: University of Chicago Press.

17.

Gigliotti

(2003) Unspeakable pasts as limit events: the holocaust, genocide, and the stolen generations. Australian Journal of Politics and History 49: 164–181.

18.

Gluck

(2007) Operations of memory: ‘comfort women’ and the world. In: Jager

Mitter

(eds) Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 47–77.

19.

Gomez-Barris

(2010) Witness citizenship: the place of Villa Grimaldi in Chilean memory. Sociological Forum 25: 27–46.

20.

Hamber

Ševčenko

Naidu

(2010) Utopian dreams or practical possibilities? The challenges of evaluating the impact of memorialization in societies in transition. International Journal of Transitional Justice 4: 397–420.

21.

Hamilton

(2011) Material memories and the Australian memorial imagination. Melbourne Historical Journal 39: 11–23.

22.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) (1997) Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Sydney, NSW, Australia: HREOC.

23.

Inglis

(2008) Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (2nd edn). Melbourne: Melbourne Universiyt Press.

24.

Kelleher

(2002) Hunger and history: monuments to the Great Irish famine. Textual Practice 16: 249–276.

25.

Kennedy

Wilson

(2003) Constructing shared histories: stolen generations testimony, narrative therapy and address. In: Bennett

Kennedy

(eds) World Memory: Personal Trajectories in Global Time. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 119–140.

26.

Klep

(2012) Tracing collective memory: Chilean truth commissions and memorial sites. Memory Studies 5: 259–269.

27.

Marcuse

(2010) Holocaust memorials: the emergence of a genre. American Historical Review 115(1): 53–89.

28.

Marland

(2018) Scottish university puts price on links with slavery as it moves to make amends for the past. Inews, 16 September. Available at: https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/scottish-university-slave-trade-507569

29.

Milton

(2011) Defacing memory: (Un) tying Peru’s memory knots. Memory Studies 4(2): 190–205.

30.

Murray

(2013) Memorial to child abuse victims to replace iconic statue. Irish Examiner, 1 May, Online ed. Available at: http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/memorial-to-child-abuse-victims-to-replace-iconic-statue-229941

31.

Naidu

(2004) Symbolic reparations: a fractured opportunity. Research report, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. June. Available at: http://www.csvr.org.za/docs/livingmemory/symbolicreparations.pdf

32.

Reconciliation Queensland Inc (RQI) (2007) Brisbane’s Response to the Stolen Generation 10th Anniversary of the ‘Bringing Them Home Report’ 1997-2007. Brisbane, QLD, Australia: Reconciliation Queensland Inc.

33.

Rice

(2007) Naming the money and unveiling the crime: contemporary British artists and the memorialization of slavery and abolition. Patterns of Prejudice 41: 321–343.

34.

Rothberg

(2009) Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

35.

Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee (SCARC) (2001) Lost Innocents: Righting the Record. Report on Child Migration. Canberra, CT, Australia: Commonwealth of Australia.

36.

Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee (SCARC) (2004) Forgotten Australians: A Report on Australians Who Experienced Institutional or Out-Of-Home Care as Children. Canberra, CT, Australia: Commonwealth of Australia.

37.

Sköld

Swain

(2015) Apologies and the Legacy of Abuse of Children ‘In Care’: International Perspectives. Berlin: Springer.

38.

Sodaro

(2017) Time and temporality: the national September 11 memorial museum. In: Historical Dialogue, Justice and Memory Network Conference, New York, 7–9 December.

39.

Stevens

Franck

(2015) Memorials as Spaces of Engagement: Design, Use and Meaning. New York: Routledge.

40.

Strakosch

(2010) Counter-monuments and nation-building in Australia. Peace Review 22(3): 268–275.

41.

Till

(2008) Artistic and activist memory-work: approaching place-based practice. Memory Studies 1(1): 99–113.

42.

VANISH Inc (2012) Senate Enquiry into Force Adoptions, Submission no 160 to the Commonwealth Contribution to Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices. Canberra, CT, Australia: Parliament of Australia. Available at: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Completed_inquiries/2010-13/commcontribformerforcedadoption/submissions

43.

Viejo-Rose

(2011) Memorial functions: intent, impact and the right to remember. Memory Studies 4(4): 465–480.

44.

Violi

(2012) Trauma site museums and politics of memory: Tuol Sleng, Villa Grimaldi and the Bologna Ustica Museum. Theory, Culture & Society 29(1): 36–75.

45.

Visser

(2015) Decolonizing trauma theory:Restrospect and prospects. Humanities 4(2): 250–265.

46.

Williams

(2007) Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities. Oxford; New York: Berg Publisher.

47.

Wofford

(2015) The memorial where slavery is real. POLITICO Magazine, 4 July. Available at: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/america-only-federal-slave-memorial-falling-apart-presidents-house-119731

48.

Young

(1993) The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press.