Liam Galvin

Professor Kaiser
Media, Memory and History
8
th
November 2011

The first point I found fascinating from the reading by Courtney Monahan:
Recollecting the Dead was regarding the abandoned sites in Argentina that contain
the bodies of both men, women, adults and children that were hastily buried during
the dirty war. The land is completely unmarked with no memorials at all, and Without
a memorial the deaths of hundreds of people seems removed from reality, as it is hard
to individualize the hundreds of bones piled up. The idea that there needs to be some
sort of memorial for us to be able to connect with the memory is fascinating. This
made me think of something I read about Che Guevara that after he was executed
the Bolivian government would not say whether he had been cremated or buried and
refused to say where to avoid his grave to become a shrine of mass morning, they
believed that without the physical memorial people would have not become a martyr.
I also thought further into the fact that these bodies are for the most part, due
to lack of dental records, unidentifiable and whether if there were just a small
memorial that referenced those who had disappeared during the war if there would
still be the consensus that they cannot relate these memories into their daily lives or
they would still feel the same as the memories of what happened are so extremely
painful.

The second point came from Victoria Sanford: Exhuming Popular Memory
that talked about a ceremony that took place 20 years after the 1978 Guatemala
massacre. It was all about the reclamation of the public spaces that were the sites of
the massacre and turning them into sites of memory for the Qetchi people. The
bodies that were inside the church were move into coffins, and shoes, clothes, and
personal items that the families provided were placed on to the coffins to help identify
the dead. This theme was prevalent throughout many of the readings, in the first it
was a factor that stopped people remembering the dead in their daily reality, and I this
it was used to held the families of the dead give their loved ones a proper burial so
they could not only try and move on but give them a place to remember there lost
loved ones.
I think this is a really important point because things like this should never be
forgotten to try and prevent them happening again, but also the people need a chance
to feel they can move and come to terms with what has happened and saying good
bye properly to your loved ones can help in doing this.

I often thing that a memorial needs to be an attractive place that is
aesthetically pleasing, but in Ruins of the Past Nancy Gates Madsen says the
opposite. The reading talks about the detention center El Club Athletico in Buenos
Aires, Argentina. The government suggested a plaque for the site but the families of
the dead said dead, feeling that the building should not be covered with more
memories and the bodies buried underneath should be uncovered. In 2002 they began
excavation on the site began and in the words of James E. Young sites of destruction
became places of memory (110) which is very similar to ground zero. The site was
covered with artwork but even so the areas of excavation are not vary attractive.
Madsen talks about the ugliness of the space making it a far more fitting memorial of
the atrocities that took place their than a beautiful plaque or plaza.
This point really resonated with me and made me think how sometimes
memorials will affect you more if they are more raw than perfect. A place this
brought to mind for me was Auschwitz. I have never been myself but my
Grandmother who has been there described it to me and she was so affected by it that
she started to tear just describing it to me. She told me of the rooms of shoes some of
them small enough for a child, this is not a memorial that took years to design and
build but it still effects people very much.

The forth point that stood out to me came from Louis Bickford:
Memoryscapes. He spoke about different types of memorials, and one of these
types one that really was fascinating to me was about reconfigured memorials. He
asks are lifeless statues or names on stones, the best way to remember struggle against
authoritarian future. He spoke of how in Russia art has been made out of old soviet
statues as a way to remember the soviets rule but to also discredit it. I like this idea of
using the symbols of those who are or were in power and using it against them and it
made me think of modern day street artists like Banksy or Shepard Fairy who use
images that are familiar to us from big corporations and change them slightly to give
an entirely different meaning to the image.
In the same piece about reconfigured memorials Bickford goes on to ask how
can public memorials acknowledge the countless, nameless, and faceless which to me
was a fascinating point which emphasizes the earlier point about El Club Athletico in
Buenos Aires and how the families didnt want a plaque on the building. A plaque
would not have made people remember and understand in the way a full-scale
excavation did.

The fifth point also comes from Bickford when he talks about spaces of
memory being reconstituted. Sites that have had considerably horrific events take
place on them can become sites of memory for people to morn, remember, and speak
to the dead. He gave the example of Santiago soccer stadium in Chile, and the
International Film Center Manila, Philippines. These buildings predate the regime but
have become symbols of the regimes terror because of the terrible things that
happened there. The example that came to my mind were from last weeks reading on
the World Trade Centers and the Oklahoma bombings, these sites have become
memorials at the place where something horrific has happened, although these were
not in relation to authoritarian rule they still are reconstituted grounds claimed back
from the clutches of terror and despair giving the people who have lost someone a
place to remember those they lost.

The sixth point I liked came from Janet Cherry: Traces. Cherry writes about
the Biko building in South Africa. This building was originally owned by an
insurance company, then became the security branch of the South African police and
in 1985 became a venue for interrogation and torture. Steve Biko, a man who was
fighting for black rights in South Africa, was beaten half to death in the building and
died when they took him away later. Inside the building there is only one plaque
behind the desk that has his name on it, the building is now student dorms and a
student occupies the room where he was beaten with no knowledge of the horrific
events.
It interested me how the fact that there is no major indication of the
significance of the building that is so important in the story of apartheid in South
Africa. I earlier used an example of Che Guevara and how even without a memorial
site he was remembered, this may down to the fact that he is now pop culture icon
with his image appearing on everything from posters to t-shirts, and Steve Biko is not
and that is the perhaps the reason why he is not part of popular memory in south
Africa.

An additional point that interested me and I feel really emphasized some of the
earlier points made about individualizing the dead and them not just being a number
or a pile of bones came from Cynthia Milton: Naming. The idea that the chapter put
forward about remembering the names of the people who were lost was fascinating. it
is a really important thing in making you realize that this was a real person who died
and not just a number which I believe it would feel like otherwise. You really get the
image of the dead being fathers, mothers, children all from a name, also someones
name is the most affectionate thing you can call them as it is what they have been
called there whole life and something only there friends and family know so to write
that gives the appearance of caring that they died I believe.

Questions for class
1) Do you believe a memorial is necessary in remembering or is pop culture
status more effective, like in the case of Che Guevara ?
2) Do you believe sites that remember the names of the dead are more effective
memory tools?