Conference Number 5: Washington, D.C.
November 21, 2009
The American Studies Association (ASA) Conference was held this year in Washington, D.C. (Nov. 5th – 8th, 2009), and I had the pleasure of presenting on a panel entitled, “The Courts of Public Memory: Trauma, Nation, and Reconciliation.”
The panel was chaired by scholar Lisa Yoneyama, and the papers were:
Robert Eap, University of Southern California (CA)
Rethinking Impunity: A Critique of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal
Naomi Angel, New York University (NY)
Memory, Nation, and Social Transformation in the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Zenia Kish, New York University (NY)
Remembering Ukraine’s Famine-Terror of 1932–1933: Post-Soviet Memory as National Politics
Julie Thi Underhill, University of California, Berkeley (CA)
Elusive Justice: Democratic Kampuchea’s Cultural Genocide of the Muslim Cham
Before attending the conference, I was worried that I was suffering from ‘conference-burnout,’ so instead of rushing around and trying to take in too much, I decided to attend only a few panels and focus on learning from my fellow-panelists. It was great to draw connections between questions of social and criminal justice and the politics of memory across diverse geographical and temporal sites, and to continue this conversation after the panel. I was inspired by the work of my fellow panelists, and thrilled to meet Professor Yoneyama.
2009 has been a ridiculous year for conferences. I presented at five this year, and although each provided a unique and valuable experience, I’ve decided that maybe one or two would be far more manageable in the future! For now, it’s time to focus on my dissertation proposal…
For a brief recap of the other conferences:
Conference #1: American Comparative Literature Association, Cambridge.
Conference #2: Canadian Communication Association, Ottawa.
Conference #3: Encuentro (Hemispheric Institute Conference), Bogota.
Conference #4: Eleventh Berlin Roundtables: The Politics of Memory, Berlin.
Above image (from left to right): Julie, Naomi, Robert and Zenia
Berlin! (Part 2)
November 9, 2009
As part of the Eleventh Berlin Roundtables on Transnationality, the Irmgard Coninx Foundation organized a city tour for participants. We traveled through the grey streets of Berlin to the Jewish Museum, the Stasi Prison, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and the nearby Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism. Given that the Roundtables focused on “The Politics of Memory,” the sites sparked a lot of discussion between participants. For example, the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted under Nazism was set away from the street, so it could not be seen unless you turned and walked away from the street in order to see it. The large block (pictured above and below) had a small hole cut out with a looped film running. The film showed two men kissing. (Apparently, this film alternates with two women kissing.) But you have to peer through the hole to see it. Again, there has to be effort on the part of the visitor to 1) see the monument at all, and 2) to see the film.
The memorial was striking in several ways. On the one hand, it used a similar form to many memorials. For example, the grey concrete structure was similar to the stelae in the memorial across the street, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (a memorial that I found very moving). On the other hand, certain techniques, particularly the use of film, set it apart from most memorials I’ve visited. I’m not sure what the memorial is communicating through the use of this looped film – Is it a gesture towards inclusion? A reminder of ongoing persecution? A provocation to understand the past and present in a new way? It remains unclear, but it’s stayed with me – perhaps this lack of clarity and the unanswered questions are the point.
Note: Berlin is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. The New York Times has a cool interactive feature focusing on images submitted by readers. Check out The View from the Wall for more.
“Witnessing the Future” Event
October 13, 2009
On Thursday, October 15th, the IRS TRC chair, Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair, the two commissioners, Marie Wilson and Chief Wilton Littlechild, and the Governor General of Canada, Honourable Michaëlle Jean will attend the “Witnessing the Future” Event where the future of the TRC mandate will be addressed.
Survivors of the schools, government officials and church leaders will be in attendance to share their stories. A live webcast of the proceedings will be broadcast at www.trc-cvr.ca commencing at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 15th, 2009.
A Fragmented Reconciliation Process?
July 9, 2009
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada continues to face obstacles. Delayed by one year, the Commission has now re-formed with three new Commissioners. The most recent debate involves the distinct groups that will be given voice through the Commission. In a recent Globe and Mail piece, Peter Irniq writes that the Inuit experience will not be adequately represented by the Commission. He calls for a separate Inuit TRC that will deal specifically with the Inuit experience in the Indian Residential School system, and writes that “The failure to appoint an Inuk to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a national disgrace.”
In a response piece a few days later, Bob Weber points out that there are Inuit members on the ten person panel that will advise the commission. The commission was not appointed through the Prime Minister’s office, as suggested by Mr. Irniq, but through an independent selection committee that included representatives from many of the stakeholders involved in the reconciliation process, including Mary Simon, head of the national Inuit group Inuit Tapirisat Kanatami. He also mentions that Mr. Irniq has actively started to raise support for a boycott of the commission.
Although I understand Mr. Irniq’s concerns that the Inuit experience will be marginalized in the national process of reconciliation, I don’t think that a separate Inuit TRC would solve this problem. The IRS TRC already fragments Aboriginal peoples experiences with assimilationist polices in Canada by focusing exclusively on the legacies of the IRS system. Further fragmentation will not promote reconciliation. Mr. Irniq’s concerns are valid, I just wonder if there isn’t a different way to approach this problem.
For example, I posted a few weeks ago on an exhibit at the National Archives in Ottawa, which focuses specifically on the Inuit experiences at the schools. The exhibit included testimonies from Inuit survivors of the schools. Some were in English, others were in Inuktitut, and the posters on the walls had translations available in French, English and Inuktitut. It’s important to recognize that cultural production of memory (through art, museum spaces, monuments, film etc.), and not just those discourses produced through commissions, play a vital role in raising awareness about this history, and can provide an outlet for survivors who prefer not to give testimonies to a commission linked with the state (even tangentially). It is also important not to get side-tracked by a focus on the three commissioners, especially since the commission will involve a large support staff including translators, administrators and counsellors from diverse communities.
The title for this post is “A Fragmented Reconciliation Process?” but perhaps this is misleading. All processes of reconciliation are fragmented, and in part it is through this fragmentation that questions are asked and dialogue is begun. The balance between fragmentation and a unified whole (however illusionary) is at the heart of these national processes of reconciliation.
To read Peter Irniq’s piece in the Globe and Mail, click here. For an article about these issues on CBC.ca, click here.
Visual Culture and the Politics of Reconciliation
May 23, 2009
One of the issues I’ve been exploring in my recent research involves the ways in which cultural memory is represented through visual culture. How is history communicated through art, architecture, museums and/or memorials to future generations? In the case of traumatic memory, what are the particular challenges involved in this communication? And how can artistic representation also incorporate issues of survival and resilience as well?
In the case of the IRS TRC in Canada, Coast Salish artist Luke Marsten created the “TRC Bentwood Box,” a box made from a continuous piece of red cedar bark. Marsten’s work incorporates both personal and collective narratives. The artwork carved into the wood pays respect to Marsten’s grandmother’s experiences as a student of the IRS and also represents different aspects from First Nations, Inuit and Métis students who survived of fell victim to the schools.
Once the Commission is re-established and begins to fulfill its mandate, the box will travel with the IRS TRC across the nation.
Image from the TRC website.
Recently Read: History After Apartheid
January 17, 2009
In History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa, Annie Coombs explores several specific sites of memorial in South Africa, highlighting the ways in which drastic political and social changes call for a re-negotiation of important historical sites. For example, Coombs explores the symbolic importance of Robben Island, as embodying both the troubled history of South Africa and the promise of a new future. Because of the central role it played in the discourse of political resistance under apartheid, the fate of the island during the shift to a post-apartheid society was hotly debated. It was eventually decided that the island should become open to the public as a tourist site. Former guardsbecame tour leaders on the grounds of their past incarceration. The site becomes a “living memorial,” where narratives continue to evolve.
Her comparison of the Robben Island Museum with the District Six Museum allows her to contrast the ways in which other categories of identity, including gender, enter the discourses of oppression, loss and memorialization. The discrepancy she notes between the two museums is indicative of the importance placed on the struggles of the prisoners at Robben Island (including Nelson Mandela) as opposed to the families displaced by the forced relocation of District Six residents. Written before the completion of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, Coombs can only speculate about the way in which the narratives understood through an examination of The District Six Museum and Robben Island are voiced in the new museum space.
Coombs’ work on contextualizing the implications of a changing history on the physical representations of these histories is interesting in the Canadian context. The Canadian TRC, in other words, is only one way in which this neglected history will be explored. By the end of the TRC’s five year mandate, museums, public spaces and existing and new artwork will have to be reinterpreted.
Dark Tourism and the Power of the Image
September 10, 2008
I attended a talk tonight at the Center for Architecture in New York called Memorial and Meaning. The panelists, Michael Arad (who designed the World Trade Center Memorial), Frederic Schwartz (architect of several 9/11 memorials including the Westchester Memorial), and Louis Nelson (architect of the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C), spoke eloquently and often emotionally about their work. But the highlight of the show came in the form of a photography exhibition that lined walls of the Centre for Architecture. The the work of Julie Dermansky, a photographer who has traveled around the world capturing images of memorials built to remember genocide and massacre in many different contexts, is both fascinating and unsettling.
The exhibit, entitled “Memorial Sites: New York to Nairobi,” contains an array of images that pointedly recount the story of atrocities committed by humankind around the world. Dermansky’s photos are often jarring: stacks of skulls in Cambodia and bloody clothes hanging on a wire in Rwanda. Others show more abstract images of human-caused tragedy: structures of steel or stone that represent loss and absence, that portray sadness and pain in conceptual form.
In her artist statement, she mentioned that there is now a term for this type of travel, for trips that take people to visit these memorial sites. “Dark tourism,” she explains, is becoming more prevalent.” A walk around the World Trade Center in New York can attest to this.
After the talk, I stayed behind to ask Dermansky a question. I thought her photos were amazing: simple in style yet burdened by the weight of their meaning. “How do these photos speak to the atrocities occurring now?” I asked. I suppose I was afraid that her project would perhaps be primarily about the past in a way that didn’t engage with the present or the future. She smiled and said, “Oh, it’s all about now. It’s about the Sudan; it’s about China.”
She explained further that current atrocities must be brought to the public eyes in different ways. People often feel overwhelmed, guilty, or don’t know what to do when faced with the enormity of international conflict and destruction. But the images she takes are a way to reference the present without pointing a finger. They allow people to ask how this violence can be prevented or stopped. It enables them to raise these questions themselves. No preaching, no blame, and perhaps a new awareness.
To see Julie Dermansky’s photos and read more about her work, visit: www.jsdart.com.
The Berlin Wall in New York
September 9, 2008
It was the Police Memorial that I saw first. It was standing against the innocuous background of the boardwalk in Battery Park City. It stood facing the absence of the World Trade Center. The piece of the Berlin Wall stood inconspicuously nearby – so inconspicuous in fact that I had trouble finding it. Eventually, I tapped on the window of the security booth located outside the World Financial Center. “I’m looking for the piece of the Berlin wall. I think it’s near here,” I said. The guard, a large man with a West African accent, pointed in the general direction of the water. “See that painted wall with the face? That’s it,” he said. As I walked away, he mumbled, “It’s just a wall, why would someone want to look at it?” and laughed to himself, puzzled.
I was glad though to have found it. The wall had been painted: on one side – a large green cartoon-ish face with deep red lips; on the other side – a more subdued but still whimsical abstract design in hushed nude tones. It represented several important moments in history: the construction of the wall after World War II, when it came down in 1989, and the years in-between where families and old friends were suddenly separated by both physical and ideological realities. There seemed to me something beautiful about this fragment of concrete. Perhaps it was in part that the wall had made its way to New York, that it stood here, not far from the Police Memorial as a reminder of a larger, global context.
As I raised my camera to take a picture, I felt the tension between viewing this site as a witness and viewing it as a tourist. The difference between the two subject positions is vast: one commands a position that is engaged, the other suggests a removed distance, an outsider observing but not acting. In snapping a photo, was I actively engaging with this history? Or merely collecting it for display alongside less emotionally and historically charged landmarks: the Empire State Building or Central Park. Leaving the question unanswered, I took the picture and continued walking south.
At this point, it had started to get dark and by the time I walked back towards the World Trade Center site, the sky had turned from light blue to pink, then to navy. I noticed people on the street, walking quickly past the site, engaged in their everyday lives. Others stopped and posed for pictures in front of the backdrop of cranes, fences and rubble. Again, I felt a sense of disruption: the tension between the everyday and the traumatic, the enormity of history, and the intersection of past and present.
