The Replacement of Statues to Democratic Museums
Revisiting Identity Politics and the Modern Antagonism
Name: Boudewijn van Werven Student number: 11350776
Place/Date: Amsterdam, January 26, 2018
Course: Master’s Thesis Philosophy in Relation to Another Discipline Supervisor: dr. S. Niklas
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Abstract
In this thesis, I seek to clarify one of the dominant challenges that occur within a modern democracy. With the pluralization of society, an increase of antagonisms arise concerning our heritage and collective identity. The debate centralizes around the representation of identities within monuments in the public space. In a time of further globalization and pluralizing pasts we, as a society, have begun to question some of our national memorials for being too provocative. I will argue in this thesis that these monuments are not simply a reflection of our history, but that they have a performative function. As a result, the power within the public space has an influence towards the collective identities and the narrative in which we participate. Therefore, I will claim that we have a form of responsibility towards the past and that, in order to live up to that responsibility, the museum has a fundamental role to play in the process of creating a more democratic society. I centralize my thesis around the case-study of the Civil War monuments in the United States, as they reveal a fierce debate about memory, national identities, racism, forgetfulness, and narratives.
Keywords: Identity, narrative, memory, forgetfulness, myth, hero worship, public space, democratic museum, antagonism, radical democracy.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction... 4
2. Identity and Narrative in the Monument Controversy ... 9
2.1. Introduction ... 9
2.2. Individual Identity ... 9
2.3. Struggle of Collective Identities ... 10
2.4. The Narrative Dimension ... 15
2.5. Conclusion ... 18
3. The Monument Controversy in Social Discourse ... 20
3.1. Introduction ... 20
3.2. Forgetfulness and the Idea of the Nation... 20
3.3. Myth and Hero Worship ... 22
3.4. Collective Amnesia ... 25
3.5. Performativity in the Public Space ... 28
3.6. The Democratic Museum ... 32
3.7. Conclusion ... 35
4. The Monument Controversy and Modern Democracy ... 36
4.1. Introduction ... 36
4.2. Social identities and the Public Space ... 36
4.3. The Monument Controversy as a New Social Struggle ... 38
4.4. Citizenship and Political Identity ... 40
4.5. The Museum in a Radical and Plural Democracy ... 43
4.6. Conclusion ... 47
5. Conclusion ... 47
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1. Introduction
On April 24th, 2017 the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, removed four Confederate monuments. One of the memorials was the Liberty Place monument, which commemorated the violent uprising by White Democrats against the racial integration of the city’s police force and the Republicans who governed Louisiana.1 The monument became a symbol for those who resisted the power of the North during the Reconstruction era. At this moment, it bore the message: “United States troops took over the state government and reinstated the usurpers but the national election November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.”
The drastic decision of removing four Confederate monuments did not appear like a bolt out of the blue but was the immediate consequence of a long and fiery debate. In the 1990s the new iconoclasm within the United States rose to the center of attention, which was mainly centralized around the removal of Confederate monuments, such as the Liberty Place, but also of Civil War ‘heroes’, such as the Confederate general Robert E. Lee and President Jefferson Davis. Moreover, an attack on monuments, the Confederate symbols, such as the Confederate flag was a thorn in the eye of anti-racism and left-wing activists.
The debate about removing the Liberty Place monument was solved by a compromise, which meant a displacement of the statue to a less touristy location. Furthermore, in 1993, the narrative of the memorial was changed, by adding a new message to the monument stating: “In honor of those Americans on both sides of the conflict who died in the battle of Liberty Place. A conflict of the past that should teach us lessons for the future.” With no clarification of what these lessons might be, the narrative of the monument remains opaque.2 Now decades later the monument has been removed, as critics interpreted the monument as a symbol of racism and intolerance, while supporters saw it as historically significant.3
In 1995 the discussion ignited in Richmond, Virginia, over a proposal for the ‘integration’ of a statue of an African American tennis champion and civil rights activist, called Arthur Ashe, at Monument Avenue, famous for the Confederate heroes memorials. The debate exposed an underlying friction, one that was about “race relations, identity, and power in Richmond.”4 In 1998 there was a
case in South Carolina about lowering the Confederate Flag from the State Capital in Charleston.
1Christopher Mele, “New Orleans Begins Removing Confederate Monuments, Under Police Guard,” The New York
Times, April 24, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/us/new-orleans-confederate-statue.html.
2Sanford Levinson, Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998),
50.
3Mele.
4Jonathan I. Leib, “Separate Times, Shared Spaces: Arthur Ashe, Monument Avenue and the Politics of Richmond,
5
Almost twenty years later in 2017, the conflict exploded, transforming Charlottesville, Virginia, into ground zero of massive violence between white supremacists and left-wing activists. Point of attention was the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
The controversies surrounding the Civil War monuments reveal a tension of contesting identities, both nationally, politically, and socially. For example, people reacted against the removal of the memorials with terms such as “cultural genocide” and “cultural death”.5 President Trump
responded to the Charlottesville controversy by stating that the removal of Confederate memorials was a sad affair because he saw “the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.”6 A
Civil War re-enactor reacted to the removal of Liberty Place by stating that “[w]hen you start removing the history of the city. (…) You start losing where you came from and where you’ve been.”7
Consequently, these reactions show a particular commonality. Firstly, they point out that the removal of the monuments from the public sphere leads to a loss of history and culture and with it a deprivation of identity. This means that there seems to be a relation between the history of a nation and the culture, but also between culture and memory, as the culture will disappear by forgetting the memory that the memorial commemorates. Secondly, it shows the glorification and almost idolatry that we, as a society, tend to have relative to our past, without being able to critically engage with it. These feelings coincide with the increase of nationalistic and patriotic sentiments, in which the statues are deemed to be vital to a national identity.
On the other hand, the protagonists argue that it is part of a new beginning of the future. For example, the mayor of New Orleans Mr. Landrieu responded by quarreling that it was a turning away from a dark page in the history of the city and the nation. He stated: “This is about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile – and most importantly – choose a better future.”8 Moreover, he argued that it was not a political act or a move of reprisal against a particular group. He believed that the memories of these events belong to the museum within a context and not openly in the public sphere.9 This idea exposes a vital debate about
the responsibility question pertaining our past. Furthermore, it sparks a debate about the role of the public space within an inclusive democracy, and the query if a democratic museum is a solution to solve the struggle of identities. The democratic museum is able to decolonize communities and to
5Levinson, 34.
6Terence Cullen and Larry McShane, “U.S. Culture ‘Being Ripped Apart’ with Statue Removal, Trump Says - NY
Daily News,” August 17, 2017, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-isn-blaming-people-charlottesville-controversy-article-1.3419281.
7Mele. 8Ibid.
9Nicole Chavez and Emanuella Grinberg CNN, “New Orleans Begins Controversial Removal of Confederate
6 memorize the oppressive pasts of minorities, hereby encouraging social justice.10 This means that although the repositioning of memorials seems radical, it is a possible solution to deal with the pluralizing pasts and the demands of various narratives, whereby the museum has a function of bracketing by which feelings of shame and pride are contextualized.11
The polemic about the Confederate monuments raises the main question: “Do we, as a society, have a duty to the past to continue to give pride of sacred place to monuments to our (…) own ‘Lost Cause’ of the Confederates States of America in spite of altogether persuasive arguments not only that this cause was racist at its core, but also that some of the specific monuments (…) leave nothing to the imagination in terms of their racism?”12 This question as presented by Sanford Levinson, an
American legal scholar, was a response to the 1998 South Carolina controversy. Nonetheless, this thesis tries to answer this question by a totally different approach than Levinson, as he tackled the question from a legal approach. In opposition, the approach of this thesis will be more ethical and normative by engaging with social and political discourse dealing with the status of democracy.
The controversy in the United States is not an isolated phenomenon but is also apparent in European countries, such as the Netherlands, France, and Germany. For instance, the Black Pete controversy and the re-introduction of the national anthem in Dutch schools, are evidence for the increasing awareness of thinking about identity and heritage. Furthermore, there have been uprisings of right-wing nationalist parties in France and Germany, which are evidence for a further attention of the national identity. Another example is Finland where people have raised questions about the use of the swastika within the air force, showing that the critique on historical symbols is not only occurring in the United States. Moreover, conflicts about memorials are also apparent in South African and the Netherlands. For instance, the statue of Cecil Rhodes in South Africa has been removed in 2015 as part of increasing racial inequalities and racial tension.
In this thesis, not all these controversies will be dealt with, but the case-study of the Civil War monuments will be used to provide more general claims about the status of democracy in the 21st century. In this paper, the possibilities by which society can take responsibility pertaining to its past, and imaginable ways in which we can live with a plurality of heritage and monuments will be analyzed. On the one hand, the case study opens up the relation between the narrative(s) and pluralizing identities. On the other hand, it shows how social and political identities are created through discourse, and how they become entangled in a struggle. Furthermore, it will test the status
10Annie E. Coombes and Ruth B. Philips, “Introduction: Museums in Transformation: Dynamics of Democratization and
Decolonization,” in The International Handbooks of Museum Studies, ed. Sharon Macdonald and Helen Leahy (Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd, 2013), xxxiv.
11G. J. Ashworth, B. J. Graham, and J. E. Tunbridge, Pluralising Pasts: Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural
Societies (London ; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2007).
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of our democratic system. This means that the case-study of the monument controversy is the common thread in this thesis, but it is not the main problem. In reactions to the memorials, activists reacted with slogans such as “[i]t’s not about the statues, stupid!” and “[s]tatues are not the issue.”13
These reactions are words of expression that the controversies are part of a more significant problem. What is at stake is that the discussion about the memorials discloses the ability of society to question its past and discuss the responsibility towards it. In this thesis, these larger issues, such as racism, nationalism, identity politics, memory politics, myth, and the status and role of our past and democracy will be discussed
The argument is that it is necessary that we, in a more plural and further changing society, should engage in a different manner with our history, by not only telling the master’s narrative but by also expressing the other narratives. This is not only a vision, which is applicable to the heritage of the United States but also to e.g., the Netherlands and South Africa. Nevertheless, it is not possible to easily compare these different cases one on one. This means that the monument debate provides a starting point for re-thinking representative democracy in an age of cosmopolitanism and pluralism. The question whether society should move to a multicultural, pluralist or radical democracy, shows that the framework of traditional liberal democracy is under pressure, mainly through the fact that the state has to represent more and more identities. The case-study of the Civil War monuments is therefore fruitful as it shows how different identities deal with the national narrative and the representation thereof. The point is that the idea to remove the statues and replace them to museums could be vital in the creation of a new society, as this can be a first step to the creation of a more inclusive democracy in which the museum serves as an arena where the struggle of identities, memory, and narratives is contextualized. This is on the basis of how identities are constructed and how forgetfulness can contribute to the creation of a country.
To construct this claim, this thesis will be divided into three chapters. Firstly, a chapter that deals with the themes of identity and narrative, by addressing questions concerning the power of identity, how are they created, but also what is the link between the monument controversy, narrative, and identity. Secondly, a section that analyzes the connection between forgetfulness, myth, and memory. This raises questions about the role of the past, with the relation between myth and memory, and how this in combination with forgetfulness can contribute to the creation of societies. Moreover, it will deal with the debate about the role of the public space and the democratization of the museum. At last, the monument controversy will be analyzed as a political problem. In other words, the last
13Ranjeni Munusamy, “It’s Not about the Statues, Stupid! | Daily Maverick,” April 9, 2015,
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-04-09-its-not-about-the-statues-stupid/#.WgGBPWjWzIU; David Olusoga, “Statues Are Not the Issue. These Are ‘history Wars’, a Battle over the Past | David Olusoga,” The Guardian, August 26, 2017, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/26/statues-were-not-erected-to-teach-us-history-but-to-exert-power.
8 chapter questions the status of modern democracy, with an analysis of the radical plural democracy and the increase and influence of new forms of antagonism.
This thesis will centralize around the work of Anthony Kwame Appiah and Chantal Mouffe. The reason for this is that Appiah provides a theory about the construction and demands of social identities, but he also links it to the construction of political identities. He delivers a thinking in identities, instead of cultures, which present the possibility to discuss the racial, social and national struggles that arise from the monument controversy.14 Mouffe advocates a radical and plural
democracy, in which the aspect of citizenship needs to be reformed. The old tradition of the modern social democracy, that “all human beings are free and equal” is in itself radically enough, only the radical scheming as such has not succeeded. The introduction of a radical and plural democracy is, she claims, the only hope for the left-wing project. The old ideals of the liberal democracy e.g., popular sovereignty and civic equality (with natural rights), constitutional government and the separation of powers, have been the fundament in the creation of new movements, which explored and developed new ideas on liberty and equality.15 The project of radical democracy should be aware of this tradition of liberal democracy, as the idea of radical democracy is a postulation of “the very impossibility of a final realization of democracy.”16
14Kwame Anthony Appiah, Identity against Culture: Understandings of Multiculturalism (Berkeley, CA: Doreen B.
Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California, 1994), 10.
15Chantal Mouffe, ed., Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, Phronesis (London ; New
York: Verso, 1992), 2.
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2. Identity and Narrative in the Monument Controversy
2.1. Introduction
“One problem with ‘identity’: it can suggest that everyone of a certain identity is in some strong sense idem, i.e., the same, when in fact, most groups are internally quite heterogeneous, partly because each of us has many identities.”1 Appiah reflects here that the thinking in identity is not evident, as people
consider themselves belonging to more groups than one. This problem has far-reaching consequences for gender, national, race, and class identities and makes it difficult to postulate a normative claim about the monument controversy. Therefore, the problems that embrace identity and identity politics must be exposed. By critically following the nominalist theory of social identities by Appiah normative conclusions can be drawn in opposition to the monument policy. Furthermore, this chapter provides key distinctions between our individual identities and collective identities. A crucial element, as it is one of most common mistakes in modern discourse. At last, this chapter deals with the narrative dimension that is crucial to our collective identities and how it shapes the monument controversy.
2.2. Individual Identity
The theory of Appiah is schematically a proposition that assumes that an individual, who identifies as an X, will have criteria of ascription. This means that people who identify themselves as X’s will have norms of identification of an X. The aspect of ascriptions means that we think of other people with a perception of stereotypical thinking, in other words, we ascribe to people peculiarities, which they have or do not have, by which we determine if they are to be called X’s or not. These traits are not the same for everyone, as people don’t agree on the exact qualities X’s must have. For example, the debate of placing an African American statue could lead into a controversy about the question if the African American is a real American? This results in the fact that boundaries are created to determine who is, and who is not. Moreover, these decisions affect the way in which an individual can live his own daily life, in the sense the he is able to wear religious clothes to a state school.2
1Appiah, “The Politics of Identity,” Daedalus 135, no. 4 (2006): 15. 2Ibid., 16.
10 Consequently, people don’t become X’s by only bearing the characterizations of an X, but they are identified as an X by other people.
Furthermore, in order to produce, what Appiah means by ‘social identity,’ is that people are not just seen as an X but that they behave and think as such. This form of identification means that people engage with other people because they have e.g., national identity in common.3 Furthermore, people are treated as an X, because they are an X. This can best be explained by the fact that people tend to behave correctly against someone who is included in their group and misbehave to those who are outside of the group.4
The use of the concept ‘social identities’ gives room to ascribe an identity to an individual, which means that in some cases their behavior can be predicted. This is possible because identities are entangled within norms, i.e., to be an X means to behave in a particular way as an X. As an X people avoid things because they seem inappropriate to do as an X and vice versa. This is more a practical consideration than it is a moral one, but it is a fact that can be seen in daily life. For example, men ought not to wear nail polish or men ought to pay dinner on the first date for women. The existence of these norms is not that they are compelling, but affects that being part of a specific social identity can influence the behavior of that person.5
2.3. Struggle of Collective Identities
The theory of social identity provides insight into the political aspect of identities. For instance, it is through identifications that politicians can influence and mobilize supporters through certain feelings, hereby politicizing the identities. This politicization of identities is not only connected with the identification with other people but also has political implications for the treatment of those people. Therefore, the treatment of kind/unkind is based upon a connection with the other, depending on the commonalities. Thus, if such commonalities lack, people can be excluded not only in a social manner but also in a political way, with extreme examples such as the segregation in the U.S. and the Apartheid system in South Africa.6
It is necessary to be aware of the political implications that surround identity politics because it opens up a broader debate about identities, not only for instance being national, but also racial, class, and gender. Furthermore, it advances the discussion about the consideration of our political
3Ibid. 4Ibid. 5Ibid., 17. 6Ibid., 16.
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lives, whether on a governmental level or our daily social lives.7 This means that the case of the monuments is not simply a debate concerning national identities, but it is much more complex, i.e., that it also encompasses the other aspects of society, such as race, class, and gender, aspects that cannot be left out of sight. It is precisely this type of argument that bell hooks tries to make in Yearning, as she argues that in most discussions it is always about race while excluding class and gender perspectives.8 By briefly taking a look at the controversy, it becomes clear that a variety of
identities are at loggerheads. For example, white supremacists and alt-right supporters claim a loss of racial and national identity, while women claim that the Civil War monuments glorify the masculinity and paternalistic society. Furthermore, anti-racist, left-wing and African Americans detested the statues for being the embodiment of white privilege.
A clear example of the struggle between identities is the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and an early leader of the KKK, in Nashville, Tennessee. This particular ‘hero’ includes a heroism that is quite clearly excluding a large part of society by telling and representing only one part of the narrative. The mayor of Nashville, Megan Barry, reacted to the statue by stating that it has a role in the museum, but that it should not celebrate the Southern heritage in the public space.9 By making this precise point she creates a tension between the public space and the democratic museum, which will be further explained in the next chapter. In Memphis, Tennessee, there is another statue of Forrest, one that has been placed during the primetime of American segregation, i.e. the Jim Crow laws (the state and local laws that enforced the segregation of the South).10 Consequently, the statue can be interpreted as a clear example of white privilege and therefore influences the racial identities of black and white, hereby it is crucial to understand that the concept of black and white are not evident.
The idea of race can be seen as a denominator that assigns a form of membership to people, which used to be free of politics and transcended state boundaries.11 In the course of history, humans
have divided people into a highly debatable number of races, showing that the concept of race is complicated and can be interpreted in different ways.12 For instance, the biological understanding
divides people on the basis of genetic differences, which separates people into groups as a result of
7Ibid., 17.
8See: bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015). 9Becca Andrews, “Holy Crap, This Is the Worst Confederate Statue We’ve Ever Seen,” Mother Jones (blog), June 23,
2015, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/worst-confederate-statue-ever-nashville-nathan-bedford-forrest/.
10Jim Crow, as a synonym for the segregation laws, refers to a minstrel character in a theater play, which embodied
expressive black stereotypes; For the Forrest controversy see: Cari Wade Gervin, “Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue Will Stay in Memphis — For Now,” Nashville Scene, October 13, 2017, //www.nashvillescene.com/news/pith-in-the-wind/article/20979209/nathan-bedford-forrest-statue-will-stay-in-memphis-for-now.
11Appiah, Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,
2014), 90.
12For the specific discussion about the development and the debate surrounding the numbers of race, see Appiah, Lines
12 physical traits, hereby group recognition was accomplished by recognizing themselves by skin color, but also by the recognition of the Other. This form of recognition seems to be very clear, but it implies a homogeneity, while for instance within the black community there are different complexions.13 Nonetheless, they are recognized as belonging to the black community, on the basis of i.e. their ancestral history or slavery experience. 14 This form of bonding is what we can call the “cultural imagination,” whereby people do not need to share the physical specifics but are recognized as an identity by a common heritage, culture or narrative.15
The concept ‘black’ or ‘negro’ is not simply referring to the color of the skin, but it is a social identity. W.E.B. du Bois explained this extremely provocative idea, as he wrote: “[b]ut what is this group; and how do you differentiate it; and how can you call it 'black' when you admit it is not black?" I recognize it quite easily and with full legal sanction: the black man is a person who must ride "Jim Crow" in Georgia.”16 It is the articulation of race as a social construction. The identity of the particular
groups is not founded on the premise of their skin color, but it creates a demand of identity that a black person has to behave in a specific manner i.e. to conform to Jim Crow laws.17 The concepts of black and white are not only a social category, but they can also be construed as a political reality. According to James Baldwin, the ‘negro’ was an invention of white America and it was hereby shaped as a political reality that was constructed through political discourse.18 The concept of ‘white’ is also a social construct, but this ‘whiteness’ has always been the dominant identity or the “privileged place of racial normativity.”19 As a consequence, the commemoration in the South has been dominated by
white Americans, by expressing their heroes, values, and identity into the public monuments. Therefore, the example of the monument avenue in Richmond must not be seen as just an avenue with Civil War heroes, but as an “exclusive symbol of Southern white history and culture.”20
The struggle concerning the statues embodies a conflict between the collective identities of white and black. In the sense that the perception of racial concepts, as socials constructs, reveals that they are often defined through their history, i.e. the negative definition of the Negro by the experiences of slavery and racism, or whites as the masters’ narrative, a narrative of domination.
13Du Bois argued that the most significant problem of the twentieth century would be the problem of the color line. See
also: W. E. B. Du Bois and Nahum Dimitri Chandler, The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century:
The Essential Early Essays, American Philosophy (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015); Maulana Karenga, “Du
Bois and the Question of the Color Line: Race and Class in the Age of Globalization,” Socialism and Democracy 17, no. 1 (January 2003).
14Appiah, Lines of Descent, 110. 15Ibid., 111.
16W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Superior Race,” The Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness 70, no. 4 (April 1923): 60; Appiah,
Lines of Descent, 113.
17Appiah, Lines of Descent, 113; Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2005), 68–
69.
18James Baldwin, The Fire next Time, 1st Vintage International ed (New York: Vintage International, 1993), 103. 19Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz quoted in Leib, 291.
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Narratives that are also expressed by the statues in the United States. They are an expression of power relations that have defined and still define U.S. society, which is an expression that has found its embodiment in the monuments of the Civil War.
The aspect of race is the fundamental point of difference for defining the US national identity. It has always been the concept that needs to be transcended, but it is still the concept that cannot be transcended, wherefore it is almost an impossibility for the American nation to form a substantial unity.21 The aspect of race needs to be separated from the concept of ethnicity, as race is a concept
that is socially constructed, while an ethnic group should be defined as “a socially distinct community of people who share a common history and culture, and often language and religion as well.”22
The monument controversy not only exposes a struggle between racial identities, it also brings to light the gut feeling of nationalism. The conflict shows that people feel offended by the removal of the statues because they sense that they are losing their heritage and their identity. The national identity is constructed upon the representation and recognition of the difference between us and the Other.23 The account of national identities is centralized around the ideas of representation and narration, hereby nations are seen as “cultural artefacts, ‘imagined’ by those they encompass.”24 The
monument is a prime example of the way in which memory is used to construct a nation, as it constructs a form of collective memory, which means that there is a memory that is somehow to be found and shared between different members in the national community, hereby memory is not used in the psychological sense, but it is instead a construction of reality, something that we use in order to better understand the world around us.25 Subsequently, collective memory is what binds the nation together, in the case of the monuments it is the ‘Lost Cause’ memory that in particular binds the South together, even if that separates them from the nation.26 This specific form of memory explicitly
excludes certain identities, such as blacks, from the narrative. This does not create boundaries between an ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ amid countries, but it does that on a social, racial, and ethnical ground. This is itself problematic as, within one nation, social groups are excluded from the overarching narrative. The problem, therefore, resolves around the representation of a homogeneous identity by the nation or if it should encompass the heterogeneity of the society.
In order to solve the problem, it is essential to understand what is meant by the concept of the nation-state, which has its origins in the 19th century Romanticism. According to Homi Bhabha the
21Jon Stratton and Ien Ang, “Multicultural Imagined Communities: Cultural Difference and National Identity in Australia
and the USA,” Continuum 8, no. 2 (January 1994): 135.
22Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge, 30.
23Duncan Bell, “Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology, and National Identity,” British Journal of Sociology 54, no. 1 (January
1, 2003): 64.
24Ibid., 68.
25John R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press,
1994), 3.
14 nation as “a form of cultural elaboration (…), is an agency of ambivalent narration that holds culture at its most productive position, as a force for ‘subordination, fracturing, diffusing, reproducing as much as producing, creating, forcing and guiding’.”27 Meaning that the nation is capable of creating
a culture, which is, on the one hand, oppressive and disrupting, while on the other hand a culture that is fruitful, productive and helpful. The nation becomes the active agent that depends on the lives of people, one that subscribes that narrative. In that case, the nation not only has a political power, but it is also enriched with cultural authority. Only the power of the nation must be seen as two-faced, as the problem of the outside/inside needs to be a process of hybridity. 28 This would mean that the nation should incorporate new people into the established collective of organized citizens. This can be accomplished by changing and creating sites of meaning, and within the political new locations should be created in which there can be forces for political representation.29
Nationalism, as a phenomenon, can create nations, in the sense that it can ‘imagine’ national communities where they don’t exist. This argument by Ernest Gellner shows that the nation is a social construct equal to concepts such as race.30 It is a social construct in the sense that it is created through cultural fixations, e.g., vernacular literature and history. Nationalism is founded on the basis of cultural ideals, hereby obtaining a political agenda. For this reason, we can speak of the fact that every nationalism is actually a ‘cultural nationalism.’31 Cultural nationalism is particularly interested in the
‘cultivation of culture,’ which means “the new interest in demotic, vernacular, non-classical culture, and the intellectual canonization process that constitutes such vernacular culture, (…) something which represents the very identity of the nation, its specificity amidst other nations.”32 One of the aspects by which culture can be cultivated is through ‘material culture,’ i.e. monuments and symbols.33 These monuments obtain a central place within the public space, by embodying the history
of the nation. This can be done with forms of propaganda, by the enlargement of particular narratives, with the aim of the construction of a collective national identity.34
Consequently, the fact that national identity is also a social construction means that society has to take responsibility for their use and abuse. The consequence of this is that the commemoration of fallen heroes, such as Lee and Forrest, is not safe from social and political interference. In the sense
27Homi K. Bhabha, “Introduction: Narrating the Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London ; New
York: Routledge, 1990), 3–4.
28Ibid., 4. 29Ibid.
30Ernst Gellner quoted in Benedict R. O’G Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism, Rev. ed (London ; New York: Verso, 2006), 6; Joep Leerssen, “Nationalism and the Cultivation of Culture,” Nations and Nationalism 12, no. 4 (October 2006): 562; Ashworth, Graham, and Tunbridge, 30. See also: Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969).
31Leerssen, 562. 32Ibid., 568.
33The other dimension of the cultivation of culture are language, discourse, and immaterial culture, see Leerssen, 569. 34Ibid., 569–71.
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that they are a product of “intense contest, struggle, and, in some instances, annihilation.”35 The problem, however, with commemorations is that they are often established by the ruling elite. For example, a lot of monuments in the U.S. have been built to represent the elite, but most important, the white elite. The national identity was shaped within this white elite master narrative, whereby the experiences of the African Americans have been forgotten, and a white national identity was constructed.36
2.4. The Narrative Dimension
The memorial debate not only exposes a struggle of different identities, but it also shows the way in which we reflect on our past and how we deal with it. This means that we have to think about the narrative that we want to tell about ourselves. This narrative dimension is what characterizes the aspect of identification. It is a universal and fundamental matter to create a sense of national identity. The story of oneself is essential to reflect and compare them within larger narratives.37 Nonetheless, it is the same with the social identities, that narratives are highly vulnerable for political use and abuse. The current situation demands a re-take on this use/abuse dichotomy, which automatically exposes the role of the state.
One of the primary principles of the nation was the liberal tradition, which roughly started since the Enlightenment, and was based upon the idea that no ethnic, religious or gender identities, should be given an advantage. It was founded on egalitarianism, meaning that every person had the right to be treated as an equal individual.38 This individual identity, here to say, has an uneasy relationship with collective identity. On the individual level, people tend to the collective for ‘scripts,’ a term that is highly influenced by narrative, which provides the person with a plan for their life and a story of heritage.39 These scripts have been a barricade for the accomplishment of equality, resulting in the fact that “[t]he demand for political recognition might be viewed as a way of revising the inherited social meaning of their identities, of constructing positive life scripts where there once were primarily negative ones.”40 This form of political recognition is what Appiah argues against because
it limits the individual to their scripts to which they have no authority.41
35Gillis, 5. 36Ibid., 9–10.
37Appiah, The Ethics of Identity, 68. 38Ibid., 70.
39Ibid., 108.
40Charles Taylor, Amy Gutmann, and Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton,
N.J: Princeton University Press, 1994), xi.
16 ‘Scripts’, as defined as “narratives that people use in shaping their pursuits and in telling their life stories,” is the reason for the fact that individual identities differ from collective identities.42
Collective identities are influenced by the demands of identity, that is to say, there is no particular way of behaving as a black or a white, but there is a certain mode of behaving, which is provided by the collective identity.43 Only collective identity creates scripts, which are a mode of being for individuality. The problem of this relationship and this demand is that groups of persons have been stigmatized and stereotyped according to the modes of being, either positively, but foremost negatively. This way of being oppressed on the basis of stereotypical identities and scripts is what is the main problem with today’s debate and should be overcome.44
Consequently, the discourse goes wrong by confusing individual identity with collective identity, which are conceptually different aspects. On the one hand, personal identity is fragmented by different identities, in the sense that a person has many identities, while collective identities are founded in scripts, and normative stereotypes.45 The misconception occurs when people start making demands by the presence of collective identities, such as race or sexuality, which are obviously part of the individuality of a person, but also underline the individuality of a person. In other words, although someone is black he is not therefore limited to live his life according to the dominant narrative, and therefore should live in a particular way.46
The problem of individual and collective narrative explains what is at stake in the case of the monument controversy, as it is an embodiment of a society in which the collective identity of the ‘white American’ has obtained the upper hand. The dominating narrative, in this case, is the “Lost Cause” narrative, which is crucial to understand the impact of the monuments within the United States, as it portrays the South as a courtly society that had entered the war to defend home and honor. The chronicle was eventually used after the Civil War to rebuild a prosperous Southern nation’s future.47 Crucial is that the narrative was a white narrative, one that envisioned the prosperity for
white Americans. At this moment the vision was linked with the later ‘Jim Crow’ laws that segregated the American South by skin color. The monuments that were built during this period include only an image of the heroic white South while excluding black Americans.48
The narrative that is being upheld by the Civil War monuments has consequences for the behavior of people with different identities. For instance, in the Appiahian sense, the images that are portrayed and the narrative that is expressed, provide ‘modes of being’ for white and black identities.
42Appiah, The Ethics of Identity, 108. 43Ibid.
44Ibid., 108–9.
45Appiah, “The Politics of Identity,” 15; Appiah, The Ethics of Identity, 199. 46Appiah, The Ethics of Identity, 109.
47Levinson, 32; Leib, 292. 48Leib, 292.
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They offer an insight of white hegemony that creates certain aspects of behavior with devotees. Only this is an example of a group that enables a positive position from their particular identity. African Americans illustrate a social identity that is negatively influenced by the narrative that is being transported.
One of the major traps with identities is that they are seen as homogeneous, which is also a problem that arises from the Lost Cause narrative and the statues of America, as the country is entangled in a struggle between homogeneous or heterogeneous national identity, with the risk that some people will be excluded from the narrative. The homogeneity of identity is often revered to as essentialism, which is problematic in the sense that it uses stereotypes to generalize a common identity of blacks, woman, workers, etc. Essentialism, a declaration of a characteristic being the ‘essence’ of a person or entity, is one of the reasons that the resistance against the domination of white privilege is undermined within cultural studies.49 For example, the Liberty Place monument, shows a clear view of white supremacy, although it was later enriched with a new narrative, it is still seen as a monument that encompasses the racist Confederate system. This raises the question if an upholding of such monuments has a role in the construction of identities, and if such monuments should be removed.
Firstly, essentialism is problematic, because it gives an uncomplicated generalized overview of people, who seem from an outsiders view connected, e.g., the Puerto Ricans who at first did not identify with Barack Obama, because he was not related to a past of slavery or the black community that is divided on the grounds of color and the use of black vernacular language. These are just some examples that show that to speak about a generalized black community is not evident, and is also problematic because there are some who are included and others are excluded.
‘Essentialism’ must be seen in line with recognition, which not merely refers to the existence of a person, but rather that the “African American identity is centrally shaped by American society and institutions: it cannot be seen as constructed solely within African American communities, any more than whiteness is made only by whites.”50 In other words, no subject exists prior to discourse
with the result that a subject does not determine his collective identity voluntarily.51 In general, this
means that the recognition of collective identities is based upon the identification from the other, while the recognition of the self, traditionally, comes forth from an individual development into an ‘authentic self’. However, this idea of an authentic self, in the Foucauldian sense, that the self should shape his life like an artwork, does not exist when we acknowledge that no subject is prior to discourse. Meaning that our identities are a construction that comes from a variety of options that are
49hooks, 107.
50Appiah, The Ethics of Identity, 107.
18 provided by our culture and society. This means that although the self can make an individual choice, he is always influenced by the society he lives in; the options to choose from are not offered individually but are collectively presented through culture and society. This means that the self is constructed in a dialogical way.52 Furthermore, our collective identities, such as African American
and whiteness, are shaped by society as a whole. The acknowledgment of being African American is also an ‘imagining’ of the collective identity of African Americans, which can be demonstrated by opposing the self against whiteness. The recognition of blackness becomes paradoxical, because on the one hand they oppose the self against whiteness in pursuit of respect, but on the other hand they demand recognition from the white others. This shows that collective identities are built upon the struggle between them.53
Appiah uses the term ‘Medusa syndrome’ to describe that identities become more or less frozen in stone by the observance of people. The identity becomes a fixed object due to the subjective perception of someone else.54 As a result, the “politics of recognition, if pursued with excessive zeal, can seem to require that one’s skin color, one’s sexual body, should be politically acknowledged in ways that make it hard for those who want to treat their skin and their sexual body as personal dimensions of the self.”55 The demand of identity is clear in the way that it influences how the
individual should organize his life around his identity, hereby losing a form of individuality.56
2.5. Conclusion
Consequently, collective identities influence the recognition of the self by supplying us with modes of being, which are constructed through culture and society but are also influenced by scripts, creating a form of narrative identity. Group identities have used these narratives to reconstruct a new, more positive identity. This vision of identity creates demands of identity, in the sense that there always will be proper modes of being black that demand a particular way of life for an individual.57 Evidently, this has consequences for the autonomy of the individual, which leads to the observation “whether we have replaced one kind of tyranny with another.”58
Thus, if we consider this theory of identity, which states that there are no universal singular identities and that they are foremost a construction by narrative and discourse than it must move us
52Appiah, The Ethics of Identity, 107. 53Ibid., 106–7.
54See also: Drake Bennett, “The Trouble with Identity,” The Boston Globe, February 6, 2005. 55Appiah, The Ethics of Identity, 110.
56Ibid. 57Ibid. 58Ibid.
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to reconsider the narrative, with its material culture e.q., the Civil War monuments. Especially when identity, which is constructed through culture and society, demands certain positions and forms of behavior from social identities. This means that collective identities are created by culture and society, which are created by individuals. In the following chapter, the creation of collective identities in modern social discourse will be the key element, as it gives us insight into the role of mythological elements that are exposed through the memorials in the public space.
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3. The Monument Controversy in Social Discourse
3.1. Introduction
“History should be seen as simply a ‘white mythology,’ as the ‘preposterous off-spring of a distorting egocentric illusion to which the children of a western Civilisation have succumbed like the children of all other Civilisations and known primitive societies’.”1 This conclusion by Robert Young comes from the view that has “brought about a new self-consciousness about a culture’s own historical relativity and thus a loss of the sense of the absoluteness of any Western account of History.”2 The monument controversy has exposed the “Western culture’s awareness that it is no longer the unquestioned and dominant centre of the world.”3 It has uncovered a re-thinking of dominant narratives, the role of mythology and heroes in modern society, and with that, ideas about our relationship with our heritage in the public space and aspects of forgetfulness and remembrance in the sake of a national identity. In this chapter, the necessity of forgetfulness in the creation of society with the leading example of the nation, the construction of myths and heroes, the pitfalls of collective amnesia are analyzed. Furthermore, the downside of non-neutral statues within the public space will be discussed with the invention of the democratic museum.
3.2. Forgetfulness and the Idea of the Nation
“Forgetfulness, and I shall even say historical error, form an essential factor in the creation of a nation; and thus it is that the progress of historical studies may often be dangerous to the nationality.” 4 This idea of forgetfulness as a primary substance in the creation of nations comes from the French theorist Ernst Renan in his lecture “Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?” from 1882. The idea of Renan captures the essence of the nation that can be found in the establishment of collective stories. The problem, however, is that in the process of remembering there are always events that are being forgotten. The question about the meaning of a nation has been a controversial and challenging dispute during
1Chiara Bottici, A Philosophy of Political Myth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 208; Robert Young,
White Mythologies: Writing History and the West, 2nd ed (London ; New York: Routledge, 2004), 51.
2Bottici, 208. 3Ibid.
4Ernst Renan, “What Is A Nation?,” in Poetry of the Celtic Races, and Other Essays By Ernst Renan, by Ernst Renan
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history. During the period of Romanticism, with the creation of bourgeois society, an upwelling of new feelings and ideas expanded within European societies. An increase of fascination with conquering heroes and engagement with folk traditions became central to this period, in which the thought of the true spirit of the people was expressed. This fascination gave rise to the development of vernacular languages, within literature, but also vernacular music and other forms of art.5
The idea of forgetfulness is further explored by adding that “[h]istorical research, in fact, brings back to light the deeds of violence that have taken place at the commencement of all political formations, even of those the consequences of which have been most beneficial. Unity is ever achieved by brutality.”6 For Renan, united nations are exclusively born from struggle, an argument
that is not an apriori given fact, but one that is underlined with empirical evidence, e.g., the union of Northern and Southern France.7 He admits that the essence of a nation is based on the fact that people have things in common, but he adds that there are things that have to be left in obscurity.8 The most prominent for the creation of a nation is the existence of the will to form a nation. Renan states that two things constitute a nation of which “[o]ne is the common possession of a rich heritage of memories; the other is the actual consent, the desire to live together, the will to preserve worthily the undivided inheritance which has been handed down.”9 Echoing these words, it is doubtful that the United States is a nation, as the monument controversy can be seen as evidence of a lack of commitment to live together. In other words, the exposure of racial, class, and gender tensions have put pressure on the preservation of the heritage of the United States.
In this context, Hannah Arendt argued that the United States was not a nation as it is “united neither by heritage, nor by memory, nor by soil, nor by language, nor by origin from the same… There are no natives here.”10 Arendt argues that the United States is not a unity that was created by
the native people, instead, the United States is a country, not a nation, which is instituted under the grace of the sacred Constitution. In most European countries the constitution has no sacred status but is seen as a normal piece of paper.11 Nonetheless, in the United States, it has become an overarching
narrative that is sworn as an important unifying instrument. Following this line of argument, the United States is not a nation in the Arendtian sense, but a country that is founded upon ‘myths,’ ‘narratives,’ and ‘heroes.’ The idea of forgetfulness, however, as a ‘nation-shaping’ act is problematic, as will be discussed later on in this chapter.
5Appiah, “Mistaken Identities: Country” (Reith Lectures, Glasgow, October 29, 2016). 6Renan, 66.
7Ibid. 8Ibid., 65. 9Ibid., 80.
10Hannah Arendt, Interview Hannah Arendt, interview by Roger Errera, YouTube, October 1973,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK3TMi9GqwE.
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3.3. Myth and Hero Worship
One of the explanations that it is possible to speak of the U.S. as a nation is the creation of common narratives, such as the belief in the Constitution. Another example is the ‘Lost Cause’ narrative that is apparent in the Civil War monuments, which thighs together the Southern identity. It is crucial to understand to what extent this historical narrative becomes a political myth and contributes to the creation of present identities.
Narratives are crucial to the construction of collective identities in the way that they provide a background story and bind together stories to form a social imagined collective. Historical narratives, such as the ‘Lost Cause’ narrative, are “the result of an ‘imaginary elaboration,’ of a performative speech-act through which the utterer of the discourse ‘fills out’ the place of the subject of the utterance.”12 The performative speech-act that comes forth from the historical discourse creates
“a new meaning that is extensive to all historical discourse and ultimately defines its pertinence and its reality itself.”13 In other words, the narrative creates a new form of reality that shapes and
‘imagines’ the collectivity of a nation.14 As a result, the historical narrative creates a reference point
to shape and experience the past collectively.15 The narrative “presuppose[s] a plot that organizes events: it is the plot that confers events with a meaning as part of a whole.”16
The real problem with narratives occurs when they are transformed into mythical thought, something that Ernst Cassirer described as the “most important and the most alarming feature in [the] development of modern political thought.”17 The power of mythical thought is mostly felt within our practical and social lives.18 The concept of myth is not easy, but to generalize the concept, we can pick a few key elements. On the one hand, there is an irrational element present in myth, which is the “emotional background in which it originates and with which it stands or falls.”19 However, this does
not mean that mythical thought is not in some way connected with our logical forms of thought, otherwise, we could not begin to understand myth.20 Consequently, myth can best be defined as the “desire of human nature to come to terms with reality, to live in an ordered universe.”21 Furthermore,
myth should not be demarcated as a failure of human thought, which presents the history of human
12Bottici, 206. 13Ibid.
14Bell, “Mythscapes,” 68.
15Ron Eyerman, “The Past in the Present: Culture and the Transmission of Memory,” Acta Sociologica 47, no. 2 (June 1,
2004): 162, https://doi.org/10.1177/0001699304043853.1
16Bottici, 209.
17Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (Hamburg: Meiner, 2007), 7. 18Ibid.
19Ibid., 16. 20Ibid. 21Ibid., 18.
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civilization as a product of the misunderstanding and misinterpretation of language.22 Instead, mythology must be seen as an instrument that we use to create an understanding of our complex world.23
If we extract the general characteristics, we are left with a concept that includes a (un)voluntary turning around of reality to obtain grip on the world and the history, while also the ability to make claims about them. The problem, however, with historical narratives and political myths is that it is always a construction of the past in the present. In this construction, elements are left out in order to create a less complex narrative. It is in this process that the narrative turns into a political myth, as they need to “provide significance here and now. ‘To be significant’ always means ‘to be significant for someone and under certain conditions’.”24 As a result, “myth is a narrative that
provides not just meaning, but also significance, and it does so by placing events in a more or less coherent plot.”25 The narrative, therefore, is what ties together myth and memory. In other words,
memory acts as either an individual ritual of remembrance or it can be recalled collectively, but this does not need to be the same remembrance that is privileged within mythology. The main difference between memory and myth is that memory has a more personal aspect to a particular incident. Furthermore, the narrative that arises from the remembrance of the event is complex and ambiguous.26 In the case of the narrative, this means that it uses the memory of the Civil War and their protagonists and ties them together as a founding myth of the South and the United States. It is in this thighing together that the narrative creates a ‘master’ narrative that is expressed within the Civil War monuments and wherein a ‘we’ is remembered and ‘they’ are excluded.27 It is within this conceptual
domain that the meaning of the Confederate statues can be deconstructed, as they include more aspects to the realm of myth than to commemoration.
For instance, if we consider the statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond or Charlottesville we perceive an honorable, pious gentleman. What is commemorated by the monument is part of the narrative that conceals it. This memory, however, is not an individual personal affair, but is instead part of the political ideology, exposing the mythological casing of the monument. It is this political ideology that creates an ‘imagined’ construction of a collective identity.28 The myth that is created,
the ‘Lost Cause’ narrative, represents the story of the South as a heavenly area, in which masculinity, paternalism, and white supremacy are key points of the creation of this mystically Southern culture.29
22Ibid., 25. 23Ibid., 51. 24Bottici, 216. 25Ibid., 115.
26Bell, “Agonistic Democracy and the Politics of Memory,” Constellations 15, no. 1 (March 2008): 152. 27Eyerman, 162.
28Bell, “Agonistic Democracy and the Politics of Memory,” 152. 29Leib, 292.
24 The problem with this form of remembrance is that it is exposed to political interference through a variety of institutions such as schools, museums, and governmental departments. The effect is that, often, they have been responsible for the funding and propagation of a highly one-sided exclusionary portrait of the past. This means that the ‘Lost Cause’ has gained a priority as a historical narrative within the community, without dealing with the more complex questions, e.g., slavery, white supremacy. It has found its way into the community through the communal values and beliefs, but by portraying only some myths, it has become a narrative that alienates minorities from American society.30
The point is that the narrative of the ‘Lost Cause’ is a mythological element, which is characterized by a return to an independent Southern identity with characteristics of racism. The problem is that the myth has become an instrument in constructing society. The narrative of the ‘Lost Cause’ can be seen as what Young criticized as ‘white mythologies.’31 In the sense that it represents mythological images of a decayed time. It has become a political myth in the sense that it is a story that “make[s] [its] more explicit in order to prompt political action.”32 Consequently, “myths rely on
figurative tools such as figures and images, but they do not necessarily do so at the service of any particular heroic content.”33 This means that everything can be the object of myth, but that it is always
presented as a narrative.34
One of the modern mythical political elements that the monument controversy reveals, is the worship of heroes. The theory of Thomas Carlyle concerning the worship of heroes concluded that it was within the nature of human beings to worship their heroes. The hero, in this case, was the person who was the liberator of an era, a man whose words had healing powers and in whom people could all believe in.35 This form of heroism is not applicable to the worshiped ‘heroes’ of the Confederacy,
foremost because they were not the saviors of their era because they lost the Civil War as rebellions. For instance, the statue of Robert E. Lee is a clear example of how the memory of a ‘hero’ is turned into myth. In the sense that it is not the complete memory of Lee and the Confederacy that is represented, but it is “[h]is status as exemplar of ‘true manhood’- combining physical beauty and moral truth- rested on a thinly disguised racism that placed the nonwhite outside the sphere of both beauty and truth.”36 The statue of Lee is evidence of how a complex memory is turned into a
simplified notion of myth, in this case ‘true manhood,’ and is imposed on society while
30Bell, “Agonistic Democracy and the Politics of Memory,” 156–57. 31Bottici, 215.
32Ibid., 216. 33Ibid., 112. 34Ibid.
35Cassirer, Lukay, and Recki, 276–77.
36Kirk Savage, “The Politics of Memory: Black Emancipation and the Civil War Monument,” in Commemorations: The
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(un)intentionally excluding minorities. The minorities are unable to identify with the ‘heroes’ of the Civil War, as, for them, they are not seen as heroes. Consequently, the problem of hero worship within a democratic society is, just as narrative, it is an elite affair. It is the elite, who “make history, their outstanding leaders are heroes or event-making figures even in a democracy.”37
The problem with the mythological elements of heroes and narratives, nonetheless, is not that they are present because they are inherent to the existence of human beings, but it is the way in which we use them that results in a problematic relationship with them. This means that myths can either be used for aggregation purposes, but they can also be abused for drifting apart humanity. This has to do with what is represented by the myth or memory. The point is that the memory of the Civil War has entered the realm of mythology by becoming or portraying a one-sided, political (ab)used narrative in the form of the ‘Lost Cause’. The problem is that we have foisted people with a national memory of the Civil War, without realizing that the memory of African Americans of the Civil War is radically different in opposition to the memory of white Americans. This means that the ‘national memory’ is an imagined form of collectivity, which includes not even all white Americans, but only a fraction, which supports movements, such as the alt-right movement or the KKK.
Theoretically, the concepts of ‘myth’ and ‘memory’ should be separated instead of being used synonymously. In this case, myth is a political construction; it is either intentionally or unintentionally manipulated and shaped for a political purpose, and constructed through art, vernacular literature, or national monuments. The narrative that is concealed in myth is univocal; it is a narrative that can be used to lose the complexities, the different experiences of different groups, and the “performative contradictions of human history.”38 This means that it is highly vulnerable for the exclusion of people
from the narrative, which makes it as a political instrument defenseless for corruption.
3.4. Collective Amnesia
A possible solution to strive for a more inclusive narrative could be collective amnesia, a term that can be found in the works of Benedict Anderson. It is in this process that we have to keep in mind the difference between individual and collective amnesia in the same way as we did with individual and collective identities. In the case of an individual, the narrative has a definite beginning and a clear end, but the beginning of a nation is opaque, and it’s ending, is not inevitable and not natural. The result is that the narrative of a nation is not written as a sum of procreatings, but rather the product of
37Sidney Hook, The Hero in History (New York: The John Day Company, 1943), 240. 38Bell, “Mythscapes,” 75.
26 a process that presents a more fashionable representation of events that are marked by deaths and are made rosier by adding myths to the narrative.39 It exemplifies the idea of Renan that nations are not only founded by what they remember but also by what they forget. The monuments of the Civil War are in that case a clear commemoration of in particular white Americans, while minorities such as Africans Americans have mainly be forgotten.40 It is in this case that “to serve the [Lost Cause] narrative (…), these violent deaths must be remembered/forgotten as ‘our own’.”41
Events were forgotten concertedly, to ensure the creation of new memories, only the motives are different from our own days. For example, after the American Revolution people had an absolute thrive for the commemorations of the ideological event, to radically break with the past. In this case, the people had political motives to forget the past and commemorate the events of the revolution.42 The point is that people in time can be distanced in such an extent, either economically or politically to the past that they “found it impossible to remember what life had been like only a few decades earlier.”43 As a result, the past turned blank and became a ‘tabula rasa’ that had to be filled in. This
same event can occur in a social/cultural manner, creating a situation in which the social or cultural differences are that radical, that people disconnect from the past, e.g., the end of slavery and the transition to complete segregation in the American South, are evidence of such an impact. These events, not only social but also political, were seized by white Americans to underline the dominant narrative and consolidate a white hegemony, through the establishment of ‘white’ monuments within the public space.
The aspect of amnesia and forgetting, therefore, can be applied to create new memories and new national narratives.44 However, according to Bhabha, one of the problems of the identification of a national people lies in the forgetfulness. He states that if the nation is constructed by forgetting, it is not anymore about historical memory, but it is preferably the “construction of a discourse on society that performs the problematic totalization of the national will”.45 Eventually, forgetting
becomes the base for remembering the nation, by which new confronting and liberating forms of cultural identification are created.46
The idea of forgetting is something that is reputed by philosopher bell hooks, as she states that it is important for African Americans and White Americans to remember what happened. This means
39See Anderson, 204–5.
40I am aware that there are memorials in which African Americans are remembered, e.g. the Robert Gould Shaw and the
54th Regiment memorial, but they are highly outnumbered. 41Anderson, 206.
42Gillis, 7. 43Ibid. 44Ibid.
45Bhabha, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the Modern Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi
K. Bhabha (London ; New York: Routledge, 1990), 311.
