At the official webpage of the USS New York (http://www.ussny.org/) you can read about how this new amphibious assault ship was built to include seven tons of steel from the ruins of the World Trade Center.

While it has become common to build memorials to 9/11 using remains from the destroyed buildings - even at locations very distant from New York - the tradition is of course even older. This is the kind of remembrance that conjures up authenticity from having a real, physical connection to the event. This is done with places - whether it be real like a battlefield or Independence Hall or even fake likeThoreau's hut which is at the right place - as well as with pieces of military equipment. Soviet memorials often feature a T-34 Tank. U.S. memorials do this too, like this artillery piece in Minnesota or these two guns below a doughboy statue in Maryland. The USS San Francisco memorial uses damaged siding from the battles the ship fought. In some ruins, like the sunken hull of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, the damage and the ruins make up almost the entire memorial. That is also the case when ruined buildings are left standing as they are in several European battle locations.

The difference here is its resemblance to the older form of this kind of "magic" - the use of holy relics. Much as a splinter of the cross (a sign of defeat tranformed theologically into a symbol of victory) could be carried into battle to defeat the enemies of Christianity, the World Trade Center ruins can be transformed into a weapon to avenge the perpetrators of that act of terror. The ruins here do not just work their magic through remembrance. They do not mobilize sentiment simply through memory in moments of ceremony or in a specific memorial location, but actually take on a new physical form and turn into a weapon. This reinforces the politically desired connection between 9/11 and any war that the ship might be involved in. It also builds on the local patriotism often felt for these ships in their patron states by infusing the state's trauma into the physical structure of the vessel itself.

There is now a bill before the United States House of Representatives to establish a new, official "Honor and Remember" flag to honor people who die or have died while serving in the armed forces. See the initiative at http://www.honorandremember.org/index.html.

There, it says:

Mission: To create, establish and promote a nationally recognized flag that would fly continuously as a visible reminder to all Americans of the lives lost in defense of our national freedoms. All Military lives lost not only in action but also in service, from our nation's inception.

Rationale: In our over 200 year history there has never been an official national symbol that recognizes in gratitude and respect the ultimate sacrifice made by members of the United States military in service to our nation. The Honor and Remember Flag was created for that purpose.

There is a petition to sign to support the flag initiative. They are aiming to get as many signatories as military dead throughout history: 1.6 million. The flag would fly over military cemeteries and other appropriate sites as an official U.S. flag. Also, each living parent of a military fatality (not only battle deaths) would get a flag.


Some comments on this initiative:

- It is purely symbolic. After World War One, the first time that lots of memorials were being built shortly after an American conflict, and again after World War Two, there were discussions about the appropriate material form of remembrance. In many localities, those who didn't want a symbol in a cemetery, but wanted something useful in a more prosaic sense won out. The result was that many cities and towns got memorial halls or memorial stadiums or memorial parks and other such things instead of the statues more typical of France and Germany. This flag initiative has no "practical" aspect to it at all: There is no "buy a flag and support veteran care" or "sponser a flag and donate in a the name of a veteran to some cause" aspect. It is purely symbolic.

- As such, without any civilian purpose, it is a form of military "cult" (I use the term the way cultural anthropologists use the term, not critics of wacky religions). It is another way to re-invigor the military spirit and increase the prestige of things military, but interestingly without any real additional sacrifice being asked beyond the possible aspect of its use as a recruiting tool.

- The claim that there has never been a national symbol to honor military sacrifice may be true in a narrow sense. But it gives the impression that no honor or gratitude has been offered while we have, in fact, arguably among the most pro-military service societies in the industrialized world. The flag combines several symbols from American memorial culture, demonstrating that such symbols are indeed already well established: the folded flag presented to bereaved family at memorial services, the eternal flame (associated with the unknown soldier in other countries), and the gold star. Nevertheless, the designers insisted on adding text along the bottom, banning all ambiguity, just in case people still don't get it: "Honor and Remember."

- Throughout the webpage, the message refers to military deaths as deaths "for freedom." This transports a justification for all our wars, all our missions, and indeed service in any time or place. Much like George W. Bush's dog - the same kind of dog as Roosevelt had - some of the mythos of moral clarity will hopefully rub off onto recent history which is understood to be somewhat ambiguous.

- It reminds me a bit of the "yellow ribbon" campaigns, at least in the sense of those campaigns which the Asylum Street Spankers make fun of. Nonetheless: The initiative began with the family of one of the men killed in Iraq, so it is unfair to dismiss it as a completely hollow gesture or one meant simply to raise our country's flagging military morale. It undoubtedly has significance for some of the families. Therein lies some critique from another angle, however: What is it about our society which gives so many people the impression that the fallen aren't being honored enough? Is a flag really the answer, or do we need to consider more deeply our whole relationship to things military?

The Folsom Disaster Remembrance Statue, designed by Keiko Totori, has been built in Folsom, California to later recall the names of those who will eventually be killed when the nearby dam breaks and floods the city. Space has been left on the memorial for the estimated 500-2000 people who are likely to die in the disaster. The larger number is only likely if the dam breaks during the annual jazz festival. Many of those at the dedication ceremony mourn their own deaths as they consider it likely that they will be among the victims.

Even though the dam is still intact and nobody is dead yet, one name, that of a man who works on the dam and will inevitably be killed, has already been etched in the memorial.

See the report at http://www.theonion.com/content/video/preemptive_memorial_honors_future

The 4th division memorial at Ft. Hood, Texas, is a new addition to the site. It has a touching statue of a mourning soldier and a small child.

The themes of children and mourning are also present in this memorial in Hamburg, Germany. The use of the motifs of children and mourning in these two memorials could harldy be more different, however. The German memorial is devoid of text and clearly an anti-war message. The weeping child kneels among debris strongly suggesting mass death in battle (bullet-hole-ridden helmuts) at the feet of an older statue glorifying war. The adult figure wages war, the child despises it; the child is a victim.

In the American memorial, on the other hand, the soldier might be having his doubts. His face is covered as he weeps and his thoughts are not of greater purposes. He is not in a heroic pose, but prostrate and sad. The child, however, remains uprite, unbowed, and almost moving forward. She does not weep, but brings flowers to the grave and comfort to the living - comfort to pick up and continue.



Interestingly, she is not quite touching the man's shoulder, however, suggesting perhaps a kind of blessing, much as a pastor blesses a couple at their wedding or a departing congregation with raised hands. Since the soldier is in combat uniform and the memorial he kneels before is an improvised field memorial, the child shouldn't really be there at all. Perhaps she is only in his memory or on his mind, something the not-quite-touching hand might also be meant to suggest: She is not "really" there at all. Is it the soldier's daughter or the daughter of the dead man who consoles him?

While the American child's posture and gestures might be interpreted as encouraging the mission, she is probably interpreted by most viewers and visitors as an unambiguous symbol of mourning, at least on a consious level. But while she suggests hope at the very least, the German child is clearly a symbol of dispair and hopelessness.

While the German child weeps, "Why are you killing, Daddy?" or "Why is my daddy dead?", the American child suggests, "Don't cry, Daddy, it'll be okay."

The text excerpt from the speech placed directly in front of the weeping soldier in the American memorial removes the ambiguity, however, combining themes of family and mourning with a clear justification of the sacrifice and suggesting a national consensus backing the war.

In an op-ed for the Miami Herald
(www.miamiherald.com/851/story/483609.html) the former chair of the psychology department at Florida International University, Marvin Dunn, addressed the state of Florida’s recent passage of an official declaration of apology for black slavery. Dunn expressed disappointment at the declaration, calling it “a meaningless act” that “cost the state nothing.” While recognizing the inherent difficulties involved in paying reparations to individual African-Americans, he suggests four ways by which the state may direct compensation to Blacks as a whole. His proposals are, first, that Florida create a comprehensive digital database of all public records relating to the practice of slavery in the state; second, that it underwrite production of a documentary on the history of slavery in Florida; third, that the state provide 1000 full college scholarships per year to Black students, and, lastly, that it should erect a monument to Blacks once held as slaves in Florida.

Certainly no historian (nor, indeed, any right-thinking citizen) could object to providing easy access to information about a subject as important as slavery. Similarly with the production of a film on the topic. Both can promote a wider dissemination and, one would hope, appreciation of the institution of slavery as it was once practiced in the state of Florida.

Dunn’s scholarship idea, by contrast, is problematic as it would seem to be merely a form of individual reparation payments offered under another guise. The idea of scholarships being awarded solely on the basis of kinship to a slave ancestor – even when those awarded such scholarships would have to meet all other admissions criteria – is still fraught with the same pitfalls as cash payments paid directly to individual descendants – and for those same reasons would be unlikely to garner the public support required for passage. In addition to the inherent unfairness of potentially awarding scholarships to those not in need of financial assistance (while the underprivileged go without), there is the larger question of just how Black a person must be in order to qualify. In an age of genetic testing, would some Whites also qualify, provided they could establish a certain degree of African ancestry? Not to mention the more likely problem facing Black state residents who, though possessing a long family history in Florida, lack any record of enslavement there. The payment of reparations in any form, it seems, is a solution whose time has long since passed.

The proposal for a slavery monument is an ambiguous one. A lot would depend on the form and intent such a monument would take. A monument meant simply as a statement of past shame – even one which, as Dunn suggests, honors the contributions made by slaves to “the early growth of the state” – would be little more than a codification in stone of the declaration of regret and apology already issued and likely would not attain much public resonance. In addition, there is also the not insignificant matter of Florida having been a Spanish possession until 1821, when it was ceded to the United States, effectively making the history of slavery practiced within its borders a shared responsibility. Moreover, any monument dedicated solely to commemorating slavery in Florida may be both too narrowly focused and too broadly defined to be of much use.

A monument modelled after South Carolina’s Black Heritage Memorial, located on the State House grounds, with its depictions of the Black (not merely slave) experience across the full length of the state’s history, might offer a better solution. The problem with monuments as such, however, is that they often serve as endpoints to the public discussion of an issue, and not as starting points. Museums and historic sites are perhaps better suited to preserving and promoting memories of the past. In any event, the core impetus behind any effort to deal in this form with the issue of slavery should be to nurture a greater measure of knowledge and appreciation of the complex history of race in America and how that history continues to have meaning for us today.

I stumbled upon an interesting account of a ceremony to commemorate the 6th anniversary of the 911 attacks near my home town. Read about it here: http://redondowriter.typepad.com/sacredordinary/2007/09/never-forget-an.html. There were probably hundreds of such ceremonies around the country on that day. This is a very good example of symbolic politics and perhaps what a sociologist friend of mine calls "hegemonic discourse."

The writer and attendee at the ceremony wrote that she felt like protesting that day, but it was a non-political, solemn event. I think it is a perfect example of how these solemn events are drenched in politics. If we step back for a moment, try to withdraw from the emotion and look at the ceremony as described, we see highly politicized symbolic discourse:

• The American flag marks the memorial and the event as something pertaining to the nation, a political entity. The terrorists certainly meant it as an attack on the United States and that is how we interpreted it. That is not controversial, but it doesn't have to be that way. We choose, as Californians, to care about New York and Washington, D.C. or not to care. National unity is an ongoing political project in every nation state and 911 is a symbolic event we use to forward our national project.
• Some attendees to the event wore symbols of their service to the state. These men - veterans - were not wearing symbols of being former teachers or senate interns, but war fighters. They mark this event as having to do with a war. Legally, it could be argued, it wasn't an act of war. But we all interpreted it as one and followed our political leaders in sticking to that interpretation. That interpretation is plausible, but again not necessarily the only interpretation.
• The event was held at a war memorial (http://www.emptychair.org/), not at some church or other public space such as a fire or police department or even a 911 memorial. Read here how the event was announced in advance: a war-memorializing event to happen on the 911 anniversary. Attendees were to bring a candle to remember those who died for freedom in all of America's wars. That firmly places the events of 911 into the war context (and all of our wars as campaigns for "freedom").
• They sang patriotic songs.
• An Iraq War veteran spoke, the names of the local dead from the Iraq War were read and the father of one of the fallen spoke. Here, clearly, is the evidence that we as a country do connect 911 and Iraq despite the total collapse of our leadership's claims of a formal, logical connection. Why weren't the names of the local Korean War fallen read to connect 911 to war in general? Why not local policemen killed in the line of duty to connect 911 to the nation state or to acts of crime? Because Iraq is now - as ever - symbolically part of 911.

Those who made the argument that Iraq is all about national survival in a "post 911 world" have clearly and decisively seized the symbolic center.

By doing so at a "solemn" event they

a) show that this interpretation has been internalized by the population. The event was organized locally in a "liberal" town, so nobody can claim that a bunch of Bush supporters hijacked the ceremony.

b) further solidify this interpretation in our hearts and minds by ceremonially and solemnly re-constructing it every year on the anniversary and

c) prevent protests against this interpretation because you can't hold posters and shout or even start a decent argument at an event like this.

Since it is a solemn event, you don't make waves and argue about the form of the ceremony, at least not once it is underway. But whoever determined the form of the ceremony made a conscious or unconscious decision to include certain elements and exclude others.

Here we can observe the same mechanisms at work that we see in churches: You may or may not agree with what the words mean in an intellectual sense, but ceremonially, you read aloud what is in the church bulletin as the response text for the congretation, you sing the words in the hymnal, you bow your head while the pastor speaks in your name to the deity, you listen quietly while all kinds of things are being said up front. The ceremonial structure of the event prevents dispute or public objection to the symbolic or textual particulars and all participants leave with a general sense that all this stuff is stuff that we all stand for in some way. Piece by piece, consensus is constructed in the public sphere without argument, without convincing anybody of anything in a "cerebral" sense.

I do not know how many people attended such events all over the United States on Tuesday. That, of course, might be an indication of how meaningful - or not - the symbolic solidification of 911=war=Iraq really is.

Yesterday was one of those days when memory bundles up into a package – but the pieces hardly fit together. It is the 24th anniversary of the space shuttle crash of 1985. It is also the anniversary of the airing of the final episode of Roots, a television event that arguably transformed America and its historical memory of slavery. Here in Germany, it is the 10th anniversary of the creation of a national day of remembrance for the Holocaust – the day being the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz by the Soviet Army in 1945.

This overlapping has made me very aware of my American identity despite 18 years of life in Germany, a time during which I have come to identify with Germany in various ways. I found I had rather little interest in the various wreath-layings on television and Auschwitz survival stories in the newspaper. Again I had the feeling that it has all been said already. The Holocaust sometimes has some emotional effect on me at sites, but this abstract date left me cold this time.

Not so with Roots. The NPR interview with LeVar Burton, the actor who played the leading role in the 1977 miniseries moved me. I remember watching the scene that NPR played back - the scene where he is whipped until he gives up his dignified African name Kunta Kinte and submits to being called "Toby," the slave. I remember making fun of the scene on the playground - we had all watched the film. That is when all we 10-year-olds suddenly learned about slavery. It had a generational impact on historical memory perhaps comparable to the airing of the mini-series Holocaust in Germany a few years later.

...into the wild blue yonder!

One of my students drew my attention to the fact that the Air Force Memorial, designed by James Ingo Freed, was dedicated in Arlington, Virginia this past weekend. I saw the memorial under construction while visiting the area this June (see photo or visit the Airforce Memorial at Sites of Memory). It shows three blue streaks aiming high and can be seen from a great distance.

There is an inforamtive article on the memorial in the Washington Post by Philip Kennicot (October 12, C1) . Kennicot admires the general idea of the memorial - three towering blew streaks shooting off into the sky. He also praises the restraint excersized: There is no museum and no gift shop, additions he describes as, "the twin Gorgons of tacky memorial thinking." The memorial fulfills the primary goal, which he argues is remembering "service and sacrifice."

He is highly critical, however, of the statue of the "honor guard" at the base of the statue. His criticisms on aesthetic grounds ("poorly conceived," "badly executed," "oversize," "like a 35-cent bride and groom figurine stuck on a $500 wedding cake," "little better than park kitsch") are less interesting than the implications for memorial design in general. For one thing, these figures were included in the design to give people visiting the memorial a photo op. For another thing, he argues, "The statues distract the visitor from the essential reflective duty -- to honor service and sacrifice -- and introduce the specifics of military life: uniforms, medals, discipline." He included the "B-minus verbiage" and "corporate boiler plate" rhetoric meant as words of inspiration which decorate a wall near the statue in his criticism.

I have argued that memorials are effective when the wording and subject of memorials are specific. When the wording is exact, referring to specific events or people, the memorial is more effective. But the builders of memorials often aim for inclusiveness: they make the symbols vague and the wording mushy so as to leave room for all visitors to find themselves in the memorial. It would appear that this memorial, much like the World War Two Veterans Memorial on the Mall in nearby Washington, D.C., manages the walk between inclusiveness and contour well on the level of symbols - the three blue streaks - but misses the mark on the verbiage, trying to include too much, but not risking precision enough to have any edge.

The statue, which Kennicot compares to the three soldiers at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall and the sailor walking across the map at the nearby Navy Memorial. They are, "silly and unnecessary accretions," "bluntly literal." I think Kennicot is right on the mark when he argues that they are a "sign that the people who design and build memorials don't trust the power of their best ideas. Or worse, they don't trust the freedom of the visitor to think and reflect without the presence of oversize G.I. Joes made of metal." I would add: They have learned from the experience of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that certain interest groups will not tolerate ambiguity and will insist on some imposition of patriotic kitsch. They have learned from places like the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin that people will not always come with the mood of reverance and awe that they want to impose. If Kennicot's analysis is right, their imposition of mood backfires.

There is an interesting article on the engineering challenges posed by this towering memorial also at the Washington Post.

I have now added the Navy Memorial to the Sites of Memory webpage. If someone wants to publish better photos of the Air Force Memorial than I currently have there, I would welcome them and publish them there under your name or anonymously, however you wish.

I am listening to an inteview on Radio Times. Marty Moss Coen is asking James Young, a member of the jury deciding on the memorial at "ground zero" in New York City, about the 9/11 project and about memorials in general. A few months ago he wrote an article about the competing interest groups trying to have their needs reflected in the site.

He is making a number of points about memorial culture that I would recommend to anyone interested in the subject matter.

• Memorials tend to have relevance, usefulness and appeal only as long as the generation that built them. When they die off and the events remembered fade, the memorial's relevance fades. Some memorials, like the Vietnam Memorial Wall, are examples of memorials going through periods of change as each generation comes to interpret the memory differently. Memorials should be more abstract and minimalist to be more accessable to that kind of re-interpretation. He points out that the Lincoln Memorial is an exception to this; it is monumental and not abstract, but works decades after it was built. The numerous World War One memorials scattered around Gemrany are good examples of outdated memorials, I think. The standing soldiers, like this one in Buehl near where I live, play almost no role in contemporary German culture.
• The proposed 9/11 memorial is a balancing act between the needss of the various families, the city, and the nation at large. In this particular case, the needs of the families are also very diverse and difficult to unify into one idea. There were the workers, the rescuers, the visitors, and others. The idea is to find something "underdetermined enough" to accomidate as many of these various needs as possible. We need to take the memorial out of the hands of politicians. Young points out that the Oklahoma City memorial was an example of a more homogeneous victim group agreeing almost immediately on a design.
• But every memorial is built in a political time and will be used politically. To that I would add that memorials are almost by nature political. To the extent that they relfect public memory, they impose interpretations, provide a location for common remembrance (a form of action). People are angry at President Bush for politicizing the event. But as a politician, can he speak to the event at all without it being a political statement?
• The flyers hanging around New York in the first days after the attack were the very first "memorials". They expressed the immediate fear and grief, they became sites for memorialization. He encouraged the mayor of NYC to consider the memorial as broadly as possible, to include things like the flyers to be part of the memorial.
• Memorials should be more than a place to mourn, but a place that you can integrate into your normal life. People should live near ground zero, visitors should be able to move on from there. It should not "block" normal life.

The image here shows a very small memorial to the 9/11 attacks on the lawn behind the Becker County courthouse in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. A large collection of 9/11 memorials is available at http://911memorials.org/usa/.

While in Washington, D.C. recently I ran across a project to erect a memorial to the victims of communism. The project can be found at www.victimsofcommunism.org. It was being promoted by an Estonian acquaintance of mine, so I took a brochure. As an historian of Russia I am well aware of the ghastly history of communist regimes, but something about the idea of a "memorial to the victims of communism" bothered me. I couldn't put my finger on it then. Now, with some weeks to sleep on it, I think I can say what it was.

It is too ideological for me. It is as if I want to say back, "isms don't kill people, people kill people." But that would be to deny the power of ideas. Nonetheless, this memorial doesn't sit right with me. It is a problem I sense also in the memorials to "the victims of National Socialism" which dot the European landscape.

While my politics are certainly "left" of mainstream America, I will be the first to admit that communism as practiced in Eastern Europe was not simply an abberation of an allegedly good idea. There are elements in the idea itself that have not been resolved, even in theory. You can't abolish private property in a modern, industrialized society without creating a powerful bureaucracy, for example. That will replace one source of power - wealth - with another kind. Fairness will not be the result.

But the implication of this memorial, that "communism" as such killed all of these tens of millions of people does not do justice to the myriad of persons, ideas and circumstances which are subsumed in the memorial.

I am not defending any of the cruelty committed by the various "communist" regimes (although some of the numbers of victims on the webpage are inflated). I would, however, plead for fair treatment of the "ism." Should we erect a memorial to the achievements of socialism? The Danes pay horrendous taxes for their social services, but they are statistically the happiest people in the world. Are they victims of communism? If communism is the opposite of liberty, why do so many free people choose to introduce elements of it into their societies? Should we erect a memorial to victims of "capitalism"? If so, should we count all those who were killed by soldiers called in to break strikes, by exhaustion and by starvation on the latifundias or the destroyed small farms of the world, by Hitler's or Franco's "capitalist" armies, by colonial conquest, colonial wars, by the "free trade" of slaves, in the coal mines? If one argues that these are "distortions of the system" and not inherent in the idea, I beg the same deference to "communism." If we understand "capitalism" only when connected to broader political ideas such as democracy and human rights as well, then give communism the same break. That is when we see the absurdity of making the idea itself guilty and throwing too many things into one box. Few if any of the early theoreticians of communism would recognize Stalin's regime or North Korea as a product of their own thinking. The fact that some would only adds to the complexity and does not clear the way for broad demonization.

Memorials to the "victims of National Socialism" are similar, but they are not as inherently vague. They avoid the difficult questions of naming perpetrators and sorting out groups of victims and naming them. That is a thorny political question that such memorials seek to avoid. But they do refer to a specific regime during a specific period engaged in specific policies universally associated with that regime and its ideology, even if the ideology is not entirely internally consistent. "Communism" and its history are much broader than Naziism in every sense and any memorial to all of its victims is ideological in its abstract attempt too discredit the whole concept at the expense of historical information. The need to use a female figure reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty as the centerpiece of the memorial is perhaps a clue. The designers cannot find or agree on a unique central idea of "anti-communism" in symbolic form.

Memorials to specific incidents are always more effective.

Like so many memorials, a memorial to the victims of "communism" creates simplicity where none can be found in the historical record. It paints over a complicated picture with broad, crude brushstrokes. On the other hand, perhaps it is a sign of recognition that the idea of "communism" is not dead and is still a threat to the established state-backed "capitalist" order and the possibly-emerging order of global corporate oligarchy.