Petrina Dacres
Edna Manley College of the Visual And Performing Arts
Abstract
Sculpting History, Shaping the Nation:
The National Heroes Park and the building of a New Historical Consciousness in Post Independence Jamaica
Today, if one was to ask most Jamaicans to name important figures of their past they would readily recall names such as Marcus Garvey or Paul Bogle and recite their
importance to Jamaica’s history. These personalities have become part of the collective memory of Jamaica. Through the project of creating National Heroes which began in the 1960s a select group of individuals became recognised as historically significant and intrinsic to a conception of national identity. Moreover, their associative monumental imagery was essential to what Tony Bennett describes as “nationing history” and
“historicising the nation.”
By the end of the century, both figurative and abstract monuments to each member of the heroic pantheon were visible throughout Jamaica. And, each year on Heroes Day commemorative ceremonies and/or the laying of wreaths are performed at the sites.
Using the abstract public monuments in National Heroes Park, Kingston, this paper explores the multiple ways by which sculpture was appropriated in the construction of a new public historical consciousness in the years following Independence. The paper also raises questions about the inherent tensions and contradictions in such cultural initiatives and the spectatorial processes through which the new citizenry was constituted.
Sculpting History, Shaping the Nation:
The National Heroes Park and the Building of a New Historical Consciousness in Post Independence Jamaica
Commemorative monuments have been integral to the establishment of power in the Jamaican public-historical sphere. Visual displays are part of the social practices of memory that create and reinforce political communities.1 Indeed, in the late 1800s European states began to see history as a tutelary agent - an avenue through which citizenship could be forged and to promote regional integration.2 Increasingly in the nineteenth century political monuments were to play an important role in the construction of national traditions and as spectacles of governmental power. For the British the
didactic use of national history was also extended to the colonies. Prior to independence British colonial authority and history in Jamaica had been supported by a number of connected cultural sites such as exhibitions, the history curriculum, parades, and heroic monuments to such personalities as Queen Victoria.3
Britain provided the model of History for its colonies and, as Tony Bennett discusses in his research on Australian public history, its “Eurocentric lexicons of nationalism and history” would guide the colonial subjects in the judgement of their own history and consequently challenged the “representational possibilities” of their own historical experience.4 This may explain the commitment to British history and commemorative
1 Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past (New York: Colombia University Press, 1996).
2 Peter Burke, History and Social Theory, Second Edition (Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2005), 5-16.
3 John Aarons, “The Cultural Policy of the Jamaica Government Since Independence,” Jamaican Historical Review 20 (1998); Barry Higman, Writing West Indian Histories (London: MacMillan Education Ltd, 1999):213; Lesley Lewis, “English Commemorative Sculpture in Jamaica,” The Jamaican Historical Review IX (1972).
4 Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory and Politics (London:
Routledge, 1995); Richard Price, “An Absence of Ruins?: Seeking Caribbean Historical
monuments even at Jamaica’s Independence (1962) when there was a simultaneous project of constructing a new set of historical heroes and imagery.
By the 1940s, in the years leading up to independence, historians and a few politicians argued for the rethinking of Jamaican history and the need to recognise Jamaican heroes. But, it was not until 1964, under a new cultural initiative, that a
pantheon of heroes that has mostly consisted of black historical figures was established to ultimately usurp the authority of the British Queen.5 These Heroes were people who were involved in struggles against enslavement, and systems of racial and political or class inequalities. The meanings of their struggles were appropriated into grand, national narratives, which linked the rather peaceful transition into independence to other
liberation struggles and positioned its National Heroes as the martyrs or sacrificed body upon which the nation was imagined. This construction of a national memory developed in tandem with the fashioning of a new cultural imaginary based on a folklorised Afro- Jamaican culture. As a new and different model of achievement, the “ancestral” heroic figures and their attending monuments served to instill a sense of pride and confidence in the populace, which in turn gave legitimacy to the new state leadership. In addition, heroes provided an elongated genealogy of nationhood;6 each of their “choices” or
“revolts” led to the present “condition” of independence.7 Moreover, the selection of
Consciousness,” Caribbean Review 14, no. 30 (1985).
5 Marcus Garvey, the pan activist leader of the early 20th century, George William Gordon and Paul Bogle, leaders of the Morant Bay peasant revolt of 1865 were first celebrated in 1964 and 1965, respectively.
Nationalist activists and Trade Union leaders Alexander Bustamante, who was still alive at the time, and Norman Manley were inducted in 1973 and Nanny, recognized as the leader of the First Maroon War (1720 -1739) and Sam Sharpe, leader of the 1831 Christmas rebellion, the last major slave rebellion before Emancipation, were declared Heroes in 1975.
6 For a discussion of the lengthening of national time, see Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory and Politics (London: Routledge, 1995); and Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Tradition,”
in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
7 Sylvia Wynter, Jamaica’s National Heroes (Kingston: Jamaica National Trust
heroes allowed for an ordered narrative form in which a Jamaican national history was periodised and thematised.8
In Jamaica, the new heroic discourse emerged as Europe was challenging the very idea of memorial sculpture and the heroic nation.9 But while post WWII Europe and America are marked by monuments that are less celebratory with an emphasis on the commemoration of unknown soldiers and those missing in action, in post-colonial settings, distinct heroic personalities of the nation-state are often acclaimed.10
Nevertheless, in Jamaica the discourse of the heroic past was also elaborated through the vocabulary of 20th century international modernism evident in the abstract forms in National Heroes Park, Kingston.
Purchased in 1808 the parkland was primarily used as a horse race track between 1816 and 1953 when it was then known as the Kingston Race Course. In 1953 the race course was relocated and the park was officially born and named King George VI Memorial Park. Over a decade later in 1964 and 1965 new architecturally - inspired monuments to National Heroes were erected in an area of the park that is now officially called The Shrine. In 1973 the park then was re-christened as National Heroes Park when
Commission, 1971), 24-25.
8 For example, Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley and the rise of trade unions and national activism (1930s – 1962), Marcus Garvey and the struggle for black equality (early 1900s), Paul Bogle and George William Gordon and the meaning of freedom in the post-Emancipation era (1838-1865), and later Sam Sharpe and the struggle for Emancipation (1831) and Nanny and the maroon struggles against the colonisers (1700s). This sequential narrative is both a futurist projection of a utopic national development and a backward trace that extends the nation into a deeper, independent time. For a discussion of
periodisation see Eviatar Zerubavel, Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); John Borneman, “Narrative, Genealogy and the Historical Consciousness: Selfhood in a Disintegrating State,” in Culture/Contexture: Explorations in Anthropology and Literary Studies, eds. Valentine Daniel and Jeffrey Peck (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 215.
9 James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Sergiusz Michalski, Public Monuments: Art in Political Bondage, 1870-1997 (London: Reaktion Books, 1998); Andrew Causey, Sculpture Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Norman Manley and Alexander Bustamante, considered the “fathers” of Jamaican independence movement, were inducted into the pantheon of heroes and thereafter four more monuments were erected with the last two unveiled in 1999.
View of National Heroes Park on the pathway leading from the monument to Marcus Garvey. In the foreground are the monuments to Norman Manley on the left, Alexander Bustamante just beyond it and the Jamaican Cenotaph on the right. The monuments to Paul Bogle and George William Gordon and Sam Sharpe are slightly visible in the background.
The Jamaican Cenotaph (1922) was the first monument to be placed in Heroes Park and the image around which pivots the monuments to the National Heroes. It was moved to the newly created park in 1953 from its original location in downtown Kingston which was then the main market and commercial district. The cenotaph exemplifies the new heroic monumental forms that emerged in Europe in the 20th century which became internationally popular after WWI and was inspired by the massive death toll of
10 Richard Werbner, “Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun: Postwars of the Dead, Memory and Reinscription in Zimbabwe’ in Memory and the Postcolony, ed. Richard Werbner (London: Zed books 1998).
soldiers.11 The Jamaican Cenotaph, inspired by Edwin Lutyen’s original Cenotaph (1920) in England,12 has a minimalist aesthetic -lacking the many decorative, patriotic sentiments evident in such earlier monuments. It is simply inscribed, “in memory of the men of Jamaica who fell in the Great War, their name liveth for ever more” flanked by the dates “1914 - 1918” and “1939 – 1945” which was later added to its lower left and right, respectively. While cenotaphs in general represented a rethinking of the heroic form, both in its simplicity and its dedications to the dead rather than to the nation, the Jamaican Cenotaph was to enter into a new semantic arena in the decades following its
placement in the National Heroes Park as monuments to National Heroes were erected around it.
Errol Alberga, Monument to the Right Excellent Alexander Bustamante, 1979
11 Michalski, 79 - 80.
12 Edwin Lutyen’s Cenotaph of 1920 was a catalyst for such “semi-cultist” practices – such as the leaving of letters, flowers, and objects by visitors- that have now become regularised at public memorial sites.
The monuments to National Heroes Marcus Garvey, Michael Manley13 and Alexander Bustamante include mausoleums. These mausoleums, along with the cenotaph make material the rhetoric of sacrifice so evident in Jamaica’s heroic discourse. But whilst the cenotaph in and of itself belongs to a visual regime that reframes the body of the dead outside of the rhetoric of national triumph, the mausoleums and indeed the heroic monuments that surround the cenotaph re-possess the dead for the cause of the nation.14
The collection of monuments in the park reveals a local material preference for concrete and all of the commissions for the designs of the monuments in Heroes Park were won by architects whose works allow the viewer to enter the memorial space, reflecting a specific 20th century approach to monumental forms. While single figurative statues have been discouraged in the monument guidelines for Heroes Park, the
guidelines do not specifically prohibit the use of realism or figuration as a prominent stylistic technique. Yet most of the memorial forms on display are abstract, architectonic spaces with some of them including busts or other sculptural relief only as
complimentary images.
One of the most interesting examples of the works in the park is The Monument to the Right Excellent Norman Manley (1972), created by H.D. Repole in collaboration
with sculptor, Christopher Gonzales. Made of rough concrete, it has six rectangular, vertical columns that rise from a cavernous base and surround the burial vault centrepiece. The floor is situated below ground level to emphasise the height of the vertical structures while still allowing the monument to keep in scale with the other
13 Manley’s wife, Edna Manley, was also buried in his mausoleum in recognition for her contribution to national development through the visual arts.
works in the park. The tops of the columns are sandwiched between horizontal, double tie beams which also wrap the bases of six, complementary vertical columns suspended in the centre above the burial vault. The horizontal beams unify the outer and inner vertical structures and highlight the hexagonal axes at play in the monument.
H.D. Repole, Monument to the Right Excellent Norman Manley, 1974
The design envisaged what the architect viewed as the six aspects to the life of Manley: politician, advocate, athlete, soldier, statesman and farmer. He wanted to “evoke within the observer a conscious knowledge of the work, dedication and discipline
necessary for such achievement”15 (my italic’s added). Given Repole’s statement, we can argue that the preoccupation with discipline, order and self-control-which became evident in the state’s circulations and speeches about the heroes to affect the consciousness of the
14 Michael Rowlands, “Memory, Sacrifice and the Nation,” New Formations, 30 (Winter 1996): 13.
15 H.D. Repole, “Concept Proposal for Monument to the Right Excellent Norman Manley,” Jamaica
newly independent and increasingly urbanized populace-is built into the design of the monument. Indeed, the play of concentric columns creates a visual tension and the heavy concrete suspended over the heads of the viewer amplifies this tension; an idea of order however, is realized by the evocation of a geometric grid.
Christopher Gonzales, Sculptures for Monument to the Right Excellent Norman Manley, 1974
The tie beams point towards a circular, perimeter wall that encloses the space and acts as a backdrop for relief sculptures by Christopher Gonzales that were later added.
Initially, they were to be six sculptures to mirror the vertical lines and portray the different aspects of Manley’s life as outlined by Repole. However, financial constraints
National Heritage Trust, 1974.
limited the design to two. By the early 1970s Gonzales’ personal aesthetic, influenced by art nouveau with its curvilinear feel and, African art and spirituality and more
specifically, a Jamaican Rastafari aesthetics, was emerging and therefore, his two sculptures, which sits on opposing walls of the monument, are symbolic in order to
“encompass all the people of Jamaica” and “magnify the essence of the man, Manley.”16 The bronze sculptures capture a maternal and paternal figure. Both figures have sharply delineated African facial features and a Rasta influence visible on the treatment of their bodies. For example, the curvilinear lines above the head of the maternal figure create a headdress similar to the “tam”17 worn by both Rastafari men and women. Her tense shoulders resist the pull of her elongated arms and torso that extend downwards merging with the locks of hair from three protruding faces. The intertwining locks of hair at the base of the figure at once recall Rastafari bodily self-fashioning –the dread - and, its “roots” philosophy which emphasises an Afro-centric cultural and spiritual foundation of contemporary black identity and, its associated principle of the “natural” – which refers both to a lifestyle of eating and living in accordance to and respect for “nature”
(understood in terms of culture and the environment). The maternal figure becomes, as described by the artist, an “earth mother” whose children with their interlaced locks visualise an idea of an emerging, “united nation.” 18 The iconography of childbirth captures Gonzales’ conceptual ethos of new beginnings and hope and is repeated in the paternal figure.
There were some fears over the level of abstraction in Gonzales’ work but no
16Christopher Gonzales, “Artist Statement for Monument to the Right Excellent Norman Manley,”
courtesy of the Artist, 1974.
17 A crocheted hat made of soft yarn.
18 Gonzales, Ibid.
criticism levelled against Repole’s abstraction, which is telling of the different ways in which public sculpture was being pulled in the 1970s. While modernist commemorative designs were promoted, there was a clear preference for the body in public sculptural form to be represented realistically and this had to do with the late emergence of pure abstraction in Jamaican art in the 1960s and a particular investment in realism as a mode of celebrating the previously marginalized but heroic (Afro-Jamaican) body. 19
Criticism of Gonzales’ work may also demonstrate the latent anti-Rastafari politics of the period. While Gonzales’ inspiration from Rastafari illustrates the development of the movement since the 1930s when it was isolated in the ghettoes of Kingston- it’s adoption by middle class youths and its global spread through reggae musicians - it was not uncommon for there to be clashes between Rastafari communities and the police in the 1960s and early 70s. Its black consciousness threatened an elite idea which Howard Johnson argues was “carefully constructed since the 1950s, of Jamaica as a model of inter-racial fraternalism”20 but which, belied the material “dispossession” of the majority of Afro-Jamaicans.21 In addition, the ontological project of the Rastafari
“back to Africa” movement and the withdrawal to mountain communities by many of its members who also preferred to work outside of the controlling mechanism of the state would have been viewed with mistrust within the framework of the newly independent
19 The issue of Gonzales’s abstracted public figures came to a head in 1983 when he was commissioned for a statue of the late reggae icon, Bob Marley. His statue of Bob Marley, which has the figure’s heavy dreadlocks on top of his head spilling down and merging into a root-like base, was unceremoniously removed from its plinth the morning before it was to be unveiled because of public outcry.
20 Howard Johnson, “Official Constructions of the Past: The Creation of National Heroes in Jamaica,”
unpublished paper presented at the annual conference of the Caribbean Studies Association, Panama, May 24-29, 2003, 3.
21 Carl Stone, Class, Race and Political Behaviour in Urban Jamaica (Kingston: Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, 1973), 98.
state.22 Thus, while the National Hero project was based on a folklorised Afro- Jamaican culture and history, the hesitancy towards Gonzales’ imagery reveals the ambivalent ways in which race and (an urbanised) Afro-Jamaican culture were integrated in Jamaica’s memory politics.23
The Repole/Gonzales design was the third monument to be unveiled in the park and as it developed with more abstract monuments to older Heroes the nation was simultaneously projected to a modern present and future. Geographer David Dodman argues, modernist architecture and urban design were a specific elite response to the post- independence optimism of the 1960s. The “optimists elite” he argued “exercise their power” not only through a “new discourse and new representations of the nation” but also the “manipulation of the physical surroundings.”24 The use of modernism in Heroes Park must be contextualised within an ongoing discussion in the 1960s and 1970s among city planners and architects on the creation of a modern city. Dodman points out that the rhetoric of city officials was “to make right the neglect of the colonial years” through the improvement of the urban infrastructure and the erection of buildings through
international-style modernism.
Through periodisation, heroic discourse sought to map progress that McClintock suggests is a process that “depends on systematically inventing images of archaic time to identify what is historically new about enlightened national progress.”25 But, like
Dodman, Bennett argues governmental rhetoric of the “modern” and “progress” works in
22 Rex Nettleford, Mirror, Mirror: Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica. (Kingston: Collins 1970)
23 Homi Bhabha “Introduction” in Homi Bhabha (ed), The Nation and Narration (Routledge: London, 1990) p. 3
24 David Dodman, “Post Independence Optimism and the Legacy of the Waterfront Redevelopment in Kingston,” Cities 24, no. 4 (2007), 283.
25 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York:
Routledge, 1995), 358.
the service of the “exercise of power” because it places us “on a road which requires that we see ourselves as in need of incessant self-modernization if we’re to get to where we’re headed.”26 Thus, in the context of National Heroes Park, we can argue the collection of images provided the space to “practice” and “engage in an anticipatory futuring of the self”27 through the creation and visitor engagement with international (high) culture and more specifically, art/architectural history. Jamaican historical representations, fashioned in the style of international modernism, were instrumental in the shaping of the populace into modern citizens28 and, projecting the nation and giving it a stature, internationally.29
Crossing of the Guards in National Heroes Park, 2003
26 Bennett, 214.
27 Ibid. 217.
28 For a discussion of the role of parks in the shaping of the modern citizen see Bennett, 168-173 and 225;
see also John Kasson, Amusing the Millions, Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 15.
29 In 1965, the Acting Prime Minister , Donald Sangster was quoted at one of the commemorative events for National Hero, Paul Bogle: “To day we live in an international world. We have no outside power or authority guiding our destiny, and in that international world we have to seek a place and maintain a place, not only in politics and not only in other activities but in the arts.” See “Govt. Ministers Pay Tribute to
The Shrine area was renovated in the mid 1990s and a new tradition of the crossing-of-the-guards was created in front of the cenotaph. Every hour visitors are greeted with the Jamaican version of an older British tradition which seems radically out of place in the blistering sun. But given that this collection of monuments is new, both in time and aesthetics, the Jamaican guards provide an association with an old practice of older nations and therefore visually reduce the youthfulness of these symbols and the story of the nation they try to tell. The crossing-of-the-guard is also commonly done in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in many locations across the world and has become a major tourist attraction. Therefore, we can also read the Jamaican version as an example of the way in which the new history of the nation, which began in the 60s, has become aligned or shaped into touristic heritage practices by the end of the 20th century.
Martyrs of 1865” The Daily Gleaner October 13, 1965.
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