Critical Memory Studies: New Approaches 9781350230118, 9781350233164, 9781350230125

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CRITICAL MEMORY STUDIES

ii

CRITICAL MEMORY STUDIES

NEW APPROACHES Edited by Brett Ashley Kaplan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2023 Copyright © Brett Ashley Kaplan and contributors, 2023 The editor and contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: Julie Mehretu, Conjured Parts (eye), Ferguson, 2016 Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Photo credit: Cathy Carver All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kaplan, Brett Ashley, editor. Title: Critical memory studies : new approaches / edited by Brett Ashley Kaplan, University of Illinois, USA. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “Bringing together a diverse array of new and established scholars and creative writers in the rapidly expanding field of memory studies, this collection creatively delves into the multiple aspects of this wide-ranging field. Contributors explore race-ing memory; environmental studies and memory; digital memory; monuments, memorials, and museums; and memory and trauma. Organised around 7 sections, this book examines memory in a global context, from Kashmir and Chile to the US and UK. Featuring contributions on topics such as the Black Lives Matter movement; the AIDS crisis; and memory and the anthropocene, this book traces and consolidates the field while analysing and charting some of the most current and cutting-edge work, as well as new directions that could be taken”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022046912 | ISBN 9781350230118 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350230149 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350230125 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350230132 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Memory–Research. | Memory–Cross-cultural studies. Classification: LCC BF371 .C758 2023 | DDC 153.1/2–dc23/eng/20221213

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CONTENTS

L ist

of

F igures 

viii

A cknowledgments 

xii

Introduction Brett Ashley Kaplan

1

PART I  Race-ing Memory 1

Critical Black Memory as Curatorial Praxis and Collective Care La Tanya S. Autry

11

2

The Memory of Race Sonali Thakkar

25

3

The Memory of Racial Terror: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum Marita Sturken

41

PART II  Environmental Memory 4

Toward Slow Memory Studies Jenny Wüstenberg

59

5

Ecological Mourning: Living with Loss in the Anthropocene Stef Craps

69

6

Memory and Environmental Racism in the American Gulf States Lucy Bond and Jessica Rapson

79

7

Widow’s Walk Caroline Morris

97

PART III  Conceptualizing Memory Studies 8

Memory in Liquid Time Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer

107

9

A Case for Melancholy Angelika Bammer

125

10 Memory Images, between Discourse and Representation Philippe Mesnard

141

vi

CONTENTS

PART IV  Monuments, Memorials, Museums, Memoirs 11 Negative Spaces and the Play of Memory: The Memorial Art of Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz James E. Young

151

12 Spiral Memory: Mike Nelson’s The Coral Reef (2000), The Cosmic Legend of the Uroboros Serpent (2001), and The Amnesiacs (1996–) Helen Hughes

167

13 Hanka Miryam Sas 14 Breathe Me Home: A Remembrance via Thomas Andrew Dorsey’s “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” Amy Hassinger 15 Belonged Audrey Petty

185

195 205

PART V  Memory, Memoriam 16 Memory Sayed Kashua

213

17 Chasing Glowworms Steve Stern

221

18 Disappearer Dina Guidubaldi

233

19 In Memoriam Chase Dimock

243

PART VI  Enacting Memory Studies 20 Memory, Allegory, and the Plague: Albert Camus on Covid-19 Debarati Sanyal 21 Soviet 1960s Cinema and the Nuclear Catastrophe: Mikhail Romm’s Ordinary Fascism and Nine Days of One Year Lilya Kaganovsky

249

263

22 Mapuche Hunger Strikes as a Performance of Re-membering Ethan Madarieta

281

23 Hölderlin’s Memory, and Keats: Reading “Andenken” and “Mnemosyne” Jeremy Tambling

293

CONTENTS

24 When All Else Seems Lost, There Is Memory: Poetry and Politics in Kashmir and India Suvir Kaul 25 Sunny David Wright Faladé

vii

307 321

PART VII  Digital Memory 26 Digital Afterlives Julia Creet and Silke Arnold-de Simine

337

27 Cartographies of Suffering: Mapping Holocaust Memory Sharon B. Oster

347

A fterword 

365

Noni Carter W orks C ited 

374

C ontributor B ios 

402

I ndex 

409

FIGURES

1.1

Museums Are Not Neutral—La Tanya S. Autry, Mike Murawski, and colleagues, 2017

16

Museums Are Not Neutral with Don’t Shoot Portland—(from left to right) Mike Murawski, La Tanya S. Autry, Teressa Raiford, and friends, Portland, Oregon, August 2019

17

1.3

The Art of Black Dissent, Institute Library, New Haven, Connecticut, 2017

21

1.4

The Art of Black Dissent, Black Girl Project Sisterhood Summit, Brooklyn, NYC, 2018

21

Art of Collective Care & Responsibility teach-in, Black Liberation Center— event announcement featuring inset image of Samaria Rice, 2020

22

3.1

Legacy Museum—Soil collection

44

3.2

Legacy Museum exhibition view. Legacy Museum Slavery Evolved Wall 

47

3.3

Hanging columns. National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Corridor 3 

49

3.4

Duplicate markers in field by memorial

52

3.5

Nkyinkyim Installation, by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo

53

6.1

The Wildcatter’s Gusher Gamble, Weiss Energy Hall, Houston Museum of Natural Science, Texas

88

The Geovater, Weiss Energy Hall, Houston Museum of Natural Science, Texas

88

6.3

Inscriptions on the San Jacinto Monument, Houston, Texas 

90

6.4

Big Energy Exhibition, San Jacinto Museum, Houston, Texas 

90

6.5

San Francisco Plantation, River Road, Louisiana 

91

8.1

Students and teachers at the Wesleyan Newtown West Secondary School, Freetown, Sierra Leone, c. 1890

111

Steven Deo, “When We Become Our Role Models, No. 2,” 2004

113

1.2

1.5

6.2

8.2

FIGURES

ix

  8.3 Silvina der Meguerditchian, “Carpet Series: The Texture of Identity” 

115

  8.4 Silvina der Meguerditchian, “Marash School,” video still 

117

  8.5 Mirta Kupferminc, “Mendel Grossman, The Witness” (2019). Inkjet print and drawing on cotton paper

118

  8.6 Walter Genewein, “Schulauspeisung,” Lódz ghetto, Poland, 1941 

119

  8.7 Mirta Kupferminc, page from The Witness, 2019

121

  8.8 Mirta Kupferminc, page from The Witness, 2019 [Grossman’s lens sideways]

122

  9.1 and 9.2 Alfred Hrdlicka, Hamburg Countermemorial. Station I: Hamburg Firestorm, 1985 (detail)

126

  9.3 In this image, Richard Kuöhl’s 1936 War Memorial on the Dammtor Embankment [Kriegerdenkmal am Dammtordamm] is seen from the perspective of Hrdlicka’s 1985 Hamburg Countermemorial. The view of the war memorial is framed by the jagged contours of Hrdlicka’s countermemorial, in particular the Hamburg Firestorm section that juxtaposes the destruction of life and property wrought by war with the glorified memory of marching soldiers

127

  9.4 Richard Kuöhl, War Memorial on the Dammtor Embankment [Kriegerdenkmal am Dammtordamm], Hamburg, 1936

128

  9.5 Richard Kuöhl, War Memorial on the Dammtor Embankment [Kriegerdenkmal am Dammtordamm], Hamburg, 1936 (detail). The spray-painted graffiti says “Never Again Germany” [“Nie wieder Deutschland”]

129

  9.6 Alfred Hrdlicka, Hamburg Countermemorial. Station I: Hamburg Firestorm, 1985 (detail)

133

  9.7 Sol LeWitt, Black Form—dedicated to the missing Jews, Hamburg-Altona, 1987–89

134

  9.8 Anselm Kiefer, Lilith at the Red Sea [Lilith am roten Meer], 1990 (detail)

137

11.1 Horst Hoheisel’s proposal to “blow up the Brandenburger Tor,” submitted to the 1995 design competition for Germany’s national “Memorial for Europe’s Murdered Jews” 152 11.2 Original “Aschrott Fountain” in front of Kassel’s City Hall before it was destroyed in 1939 (left image). Negative-form memorial to the destroyed “Aschrott Fountain,” while under construction in 1986 (right image)

155

11.3 Visitor peers into the negative-form abyss of the Aschrott Fountain Memorial

155

x

FIGURES

11.4 Visitors touch the “warm memorial” at Buchenwald concentration camp, commemorating a wooden memorial obelisk built by liberated prisoners of the camp in April 1945

159

11.5 The “warm memorial” at Buchenwald concentration camp, in the winter

159

11.6 U.S. President Barack Obama lays a flower on the “warm memorial” at Buchenwald in June 2009, accompanied by survivors Elie Wiesel and Bertrand Herz, and by German Chancellor Angela Merkel

160

11.7 Permanent “Grey Bus Memorial” to the 300,000 victims of the Nazis’ mass murder of the disabled, in the so-called T-4 “euthanasia program,” located in Ravensburg

161

11.8 Mobile “Grey Bus Memorial” travels to other T-4 killing sites

161

11.9 The Eberswalde Synagogue set on fire during a lightning strike in August 1931. Reconstructed with the help of local non-Jewish townspeople, it was then torched and destroyed on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938

162

11.10 The “Memorial to the Destroyed Eberswalde Synagogue,” pictured with the artists Andreas Knitz and Horst Hoheisel, and the author

164

12.1 Mike Nelson, The Coral Reef, 2000. Installation view, Matt’s Gallery, 2000. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin

170

12.2 Mike Nelson, The Cosmic Legend of the Uroboros Serpent, 2001. Installation view, Turner Prize, Tate Britain, 2001. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin

176

12.3 Mike Nelson, Master of Reality, 1997. Installation view, Berwick Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1997. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin

180

12.4 Mike Nelson, AMNESIAC SHRINE or Double coop displacement, 2006. Installation view, Matt’s Gallery, 2006. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin 182 13.1 Lopaytn Well

189

13.2 Hanka from behind

193

16.1 Grandpa Ahmed

216

20.1 Kamel Daoud: “[I]t now spreads outside of the novel, invisible and sly, it leaps from page towards skin, its metaphor seeps towards the lungs”

253

FIGURES

xi

21.1 Hitler practicing before the camera (Ordinary Fascism, 1965; frame capture)

268

21.2 Woman and child, near Ivangorod, Ukraine, 1942 (Ordinary Fascism, 1965; frame capture)

269

21.3 Girl having her hair stroked (Ordinary Fascism, 1965; frame capture)

270

21.4 “The eyes of Auschwitz” (Ordinary Fascism, 1965; frame capture)

271

21.5 Cinematic modernism (Nine Days of One Year, 1962; frame capture)

273

21.6 Happily ever after (Nine Days of One Year, 1962; frame capture)

277

27.1 2022 University of Redlands student Storymap by Olive Manson, Brianna Martinez, Casey Gaitan, and Mary-Kate Shary, based on the USC Shoah Foundation Video History Archive interview with Anna Bergman, 1997

358

27.2 2013 University of Redlands student ArcGIS webmap by Katrina Ford and Lauren Zehner, based on the USC Shoah Foundation Video History Archive interview with Vera Laska, 1996

360

27.3 2022 University of Redlands student Storymap by Cristina Bayne, Chloe Rodriguez, and Brandley Simms, based on the USC Shoah Foundation Video History Archive interview with Eli Benyacar, 1996

362

27.4 2022 University of Redlands student Storymap by Kendall Bolock, Madeline Kildee, Gemma Lang, and Cy Mendoza, based on the USC Shoah Foundation Video History Archive interview with Diana Golden, 1997 363

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This volume came into being after Ben Doyle, editor extraordinaire at Bloomsbury, invited me to put together new and established voices in the field. I am grateful for Ben’s vision in asking for a new anthology and am so delighted to have read and edited these wonderful essays and stories. I could not have finished editing this anthology without the invaluable help of my student, Nobuto Sato, who worked diligently through a grant furnished by the Research Board at the University of Illinois, on the combined bibliography. My hope in having one bibliography for the collection is that this will showcase the wide range of scholarship in memory studies. I am so grateful to Julie Mehretu for granting permission to use her stunning painting on the cover: Conjured Parts (eye), Ferguson, 2016 Ink and acrylic on canvas 84 × 96 in. (213.4 × 243.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery Copyright: Julie Mehretu Photo credit: Cathy Carver Enormous thanks to my writing group, Anke Pinkert, Lilya Kaganovsky, and Justine Murison, for very helpful feedback on the introduction. Most of the contributions in this volume are new work. The few exceptions are: David Wright Faladé’s “Sunny” appeared in Witness Vol. XVII No. 2 (2003) and is reproduced in slightly revised form with permission. Audrey Petty, “Belonged,” appeared in Columbia Journal issue 55 in 2017 and is reproduced with permission. Marita Sturken’s essay is a shortened chapter from her Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era (NYU Press, 2022) and is included with permission. James Young’s essay is adapted from “Negativ-Orte und das Spiel mit dem Denkmal” and other sources detailed in the article, included with permission.

Introduction BRETT ASHLEY KAPLAN

Julie Mehretu’s multilayered, palimpsestic paintings insert memories of violence into politicized landscapes. There’s a work of unpacking that goes into experiencing these canvases as they swirl in and out of grids, colors competing with graffiti-esque spray paint, images conjured that fail to concretize. When confronted with her stunning canvases unexpected buried histories, underground maps, legends to infinite pasts begin to bubble to the surface, percolating, and insisting on remembrance. Mehretu’s 2021 mid-career retrospective at The Whitney in New York included Conjured Parts (eye), Ferguson (2016) which appears as the cover of this memory volume. Conjured Parts’ first layer consisted of a photograph of police bedecked in riot gear after Michael Brown was murdered in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014. That history steadfastly remains at the core of the image and viewers are invited to remember Brown and countless others as their memories escalate through the layers of the painting. I chose this powerful image for the cover of this multilayered collection because it offers a stunning visual memorial, and its complexity encapsulates the palimpsest of memory work that this book epitomizes. This volume brings together a diverse, multidisciplinary, group of thinkers, writers, artists, activists, and others to consider together how and why memory matters. Most of the contributions appear here for the first time. This anthology opens up memory studies to the larger global network. While no volume, no matter how comprehensive, can cover every aspect of a field as expansive as memory studies, and no volume, no matter how thick, can represent every part of the world, or every kind of writer, I am delighted that the contributors whose work you’ll read in this volume hail from, India, Belgium, Australia, England, the United States, France, Israel-Palestine, Canada, Russia, and other locations. Memory studies, as a discipline, emerged in Europe but now has spread to so many other parts of the world and is a truly global network of engaged thinkers, creative writers, artists, dancers, and others. In addition to national and identificatory diversity, this volume also boasts contributions from senior scholars, newly minted professors, independent writers, activists, novelists, short story writers, poets, and beyond. In bringing these voices together my attempt has been to offer the broadest possible interpretation of memory studies and to include subjects and writers who may not have previously been considered within the traditional bailiwick of the field. The subject invites such a wide brush because memory touches nearly every aspect of our lives. How we represent on both individual and collective levels relies upon memory; how we narrate ourselves, and imagine our futures, depends upon memory; and how we interpret the news varies radically depending on which axes of memory we access.

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CRITICAL MEMORY STUDIES: NEW APPROACHES

Memory has been described in terms of mnemonic aesthetics (Finley), as traveling (Erll), just (Nguyen), multidirectional (Rothberg), post (Hirsch), unbound (Bond, Craps, Vermeulen), connective (Hoskins), palimpsestic (Huyssen; Silverman), collective (Halbwachs), transcultural (Bond and Rapson), cosmopolitan (Levy and Sznaider), transnational (Assmann), prosthetic (Landsberg), and tangled (Sturken). All of these and more are discussed in this volume. Memory is treated here by theorists, activists, and fiction writers in all of its vastly flexible guises. Memory moves like a slow viscous liquid through so many aspects of lives lived through intersecting global traumas. And sometimes memory studies scholars become active engagers, catalyzers, of complex and deeply moving memory projects. Work such as the Zip Code Memory Project—not treated in this book but exemplary—draws on the realizations of memory studies scholars that memory is always fluid, alive, changing, grasping, that it can never be done, can never be complete. It’s a process, not an end game. Marianne Hirsch, Diana Taylor, Susan Meiselas, Lorie Novak, and Laura Wexler created the Zip Code Memory Project to “find community-based ways to memorialize the devastating losses resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic while also acknowledging its radically differential effects on Upper New York City neighborhoods” (zcmp.org). A diverse group of artists and activists working with the Zip Code Memory Project organized interactive, in-person, masked, workshops that used theater and performance tools maps and/or stories and photographs to process loss and generate connectivity. The Project also invited people to send in postcards answering the questions: “What have we lost and learned from Covid? How can we heal and grow together?” (zcmp.org). Throughout the Zip Code Memory Project place, the body, memory, and community become central motivators for opening both spaces of mourning and spaces of hope. One artist who participated in an online discussion of Covid memorialization, Karla Funderburk, of Matter Studio Gallery in LA, described how she began making origami cranes to memorialize the losses she saw all around her from the pandemic. Soon, people sent her boxes of cranes from all over the world, each one representing someone being mourned. The cranes flew in the gallery, their small paper frames marking a precarious spot of memory that formed communal space to visualize the enormity of global trauma. Art, as these cranes demonstrate, and fiction in all its myriad forms offers both space to see the messy complexities of memory and inspiration for scholars trying to grapple with the intricacies of its workings. Elif Shafak, at a Writers for Democratic Action (a group that gathers writers together to work toward expanding democracy in the United States) event, claimed that “The novel is one of our last remaining pluralistic, democratic spaces.” The novel itself has the capacity to offer multiple perspectives, multiple and sometimes competing versions of the same events; novels and short stories give us windows into how memory moves and matters. When memory studies scholars seek theories of memory, they turn to other theorists as well as to literary sources. French writer Marcel Proust’s distinction between voluntary and involuntary memory became the core of a theory of memory of trauma and was thought through and utilized by Holocaust survivors such as Charlotte Delbo, Jorge Semprun, and countless other thinkers, writers, and memory scholars, to explain how one can be overcome by memories that invade without warning or logical context. Voluntary memories are desired; involuntary memories invade willy-nilly, not bothering to knock on the way in. As I discussed in Unwanted Beauty, for some Holocaust survivors, a sense of being outside of time must have been particularly compelling. Proust builds the madeleine scene of his contemplative novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of

INTRODUCTION

3

Lost Time), during which Marcel’s memories of his childhood at Combray come flooding in unannounced, unanticipated, around the taunting suggestion that the secrets of this past remain encrypted. Proust privileges involuntary over voluntary memory because voluntary memory can never attain a certain level of vivid presence: “the facts,” Proust’s narrator explains, “which I should then have recalled would have been prompted only by voluntary memory, the memory of the intellect, and … the pictures which that kind of memory shows us preserve nothing of the past itself” (59). Proustian memory, the very idea of searching for a lost past, describes a mode of access to memory that pulls one back without any ability to resist. This is certainly not the only way of imagining how memory works but it has become a very useful way to describe the intense power memory can have over us. Fiction, then, is also theory, also theorizes memory, and makes its readers grasp in profound ways how sticky memory can be. In Love in the Time of Cholera, for another example, the Columbian magical realist writer Gabriel García Márquez, captures memory’s endlessness: “In her final years,” he says of Fermina Daza, “she would still recall the trip that, with the perverse lucidity of nostalgia, became more and more recent in her memory” (87). The further away in time, the closer in consciousness. Márquez’s whole novel is structured around another main character, Florentino Ariza’s, inability to forget a young love. We turn to these constructed universes to comprehend the intricate differences in how memory moves. In his remarkable novel, Rings of Saturn, to take another example, German writer W.G.  Sebald, referring to Chateaubriand, adopting, even, the perspective of Chateaubriand’s Mémoires d’outre-tombe, underscores the relationship between memory and writing: But the fact is that writing is the only way in which I am able to cope with the memories which overwhelm me so frequently and so unexpectedly. If they remained locked away, they would become heavier and heavier as time went on, so that in the end I would succumb under their mounting weight. Memories lie slumbering within us for months and years, quietly proliferating, until they are woken by some trifle and in some strange way blind us to life. (255) Here Chateaubriand via Sebald meditates on how involuntary memories stay encrypted and can be unlocked, released, unexpectedly and, in their melancholy versions, weigh one down. Writing, though, furnishes a way to swim against the drowning. It is this pluralistic space of fiction that motivated me to include fictional texts in this anthology. As a space for reflection between the more overtly scholarly parts of this volume, the fictional texts allow us to consider how memory profoundly shapes us. In her beautiful short story, “Widow’s Walk,” Caroline Morris crafts a character who undergoes what I might call, borrowing from another contributor, Jenny Wüstenberg, slow mourning. The character lives with, cannot, need not, let go of the memory of her dead husband and as the present presents itself to her the past is still there, testimony to Faulkner’s famous line: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” (92). Fiction in general and the fictional parts of this collection in particular manifest the presentness of the past, the struggle many of us have to move beyond certain pasts and the contradictory need to dwell in those memories while simultaneously living in the present.

4

CRITICAL MEMORY STUDIES: NEW APPROACHES

Dina Guidubaldi’s short story, “Disappearer,” metaphorizes memory and forgetting as spaces between billboards: a woman escapes her life, just for a spell, living outside of her normal spaces and normal temporal patterns. David Wright Faladé’s short story, “Sunny,” articulates how the “mind holds memories like a colander does water: just the residue of moisture,” and thus captures the sense of what is flushed away and what is preserved in the act of remembering. Audrey Petty’s memoir tells of the vision of her mother, who’d passed, the endlessness of mourning, and the need to stay with memory, not turning away. Chase Dimock’s moving poem similarly finds ghosts of the many people who died during the AIDS epidemic—an epidemic which is not yet over. These and the other fictional, poetical, or memoirist chapters demonstrate the fluidity between fictional and theoretical approaches to memory, a fluidity that has been present if not always manifest by the inclusion of fictions rubbing shoulders with theoretical, historical, and cultural studies texts, since the beginning of memory studies. This volume opens “Race-ing Memory,” with three essays that address memory and race. La Tanya Autry kicks off the collection by reflecting on her work as a curator and scholar within white museum spaces and describing the influence of critical Black memory on her development as a curator and activist. Sonali Thakkar then delves into a rich examination of the memory of race, focusing on blood and its many thick and multivalent histories in race theory and fiction. The part concludes with Marita Sturken’s analysis of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the long-overdue memorial to too many people murdered by lynching. Sturken calls on her long and important work unpacking memorials and memory projects to read this memorial and the discourses that have shaped and defined this important new addition to US national memory landscapes. As I was sculpting the volume and requesting contributions in 2020, many of us were protesting the murder of George Floyd. Millions spoke out against racialized murder, the continuation of the lynching that the National Memorial asks us to reckon with, the memories of slavery and its aftereffects still very alive as we shouted, masked but not muzzled, for justice. Race-ing memory was the urgent place to start. While the summer of 2020 was dominated by our justified anger and our necessary speaking out, the early spring of 2022, as I write, is dominated by a global outpouring of love and support for the innocent Ukrainian civilians murdered by the Russian invasion. This support stretches to almost all aspects of our lives: the buildings, bridges, and skyscrapers of many of the world’s cities illuminate in blue and gold, shining out solidarity with Ukraine. At Chicago’s Lyric Opera, before the swelling opening of Puccini’s Tosca unfolded, a choir sang the Ukrainian national anthem and the entire audience stood, heads bowed, most of us not knowing a single word but moved by the solidarity with Ukrainian David in his battle against the Russian Goliath. Less reported is the racism that prevents Blacks in Ukraine from fleeing the war; less reported are the thick strains of racism and antisemitism that still formed part of Ukrainian culture; less remembered are the many Ukrainians who were part of the Nazi killing machine. Both were present in the Second World War era Ukraine: complicity and fierce resistance. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum reports that Ukrainians are well represented among the righteous of the nations. A new half-Swastika has sprung up on Russian tanks and among supporters of Russia’s war against Ukraine, a “Z” that has now been widely interpreted as a fascist symbol that further warps the Russian propagandistic idea that they are somehow “denazifiying” Ukraine. The Z offers a new symbol of hate and antisemitism (see Nadeau). The Z stands as a reminder of the importance of memory studies epitomized in this

INTRODUCTION

5

volume and the need to recognize the symbolic traces of the past in the present, call them out for what they are, and strive to do the memory work that wasn’t done in the past. Race, then, even when seemingly not evident to white eyes, remains central. Memory and race intertwine in ways that thread throughout this volume from this opening part through to Lucy Bond and Jessica Rapson’s essay on environmental racism, through Amy Hassinger’s reflections on music, memory, and race in her family history, to race and ethnicity in Chile, as examined by Ethan Madarieta or in Kashmir, as thought through by Suvir Kaul. Indeed, the categories in this volume, like memory itself, are fluid and could have been re-shuffled in multiple ways. The second part, “Environmental Memory,” tackles memory and environment and explores the intersections of mourning, memory, and the threat of a dying planet. Stef Craps discusses the pattern of holding funerals for glaciers and thinks through how we transfer patterns of grieving from human to planetary concerns. Jenny Wüstenberg proposes that embracing slow memory as a means to counter the speed of environmental devastation and bring back into focus much of what gets lost in the lightning speed of our daily digitized lives. Slow memory is a much bigger concept, far beyond ecological concerns, and one which embraces all aspects of memory studies. Between fires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, warming, cooling, melting, species decline, and other aspects of environmental destruction, there are so many fraught questions about how we memorialize a changing planet. The fluidity of planetary stability makes for mournful and challenging memory work which this part begins to tackle. The third part, “Conceptualizing Memory Studies,” begins with Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer’s reflections on memory in liquid time and explores school photographs from diverse settings to see how these understudied group portraits both reveal and occlude memory. Angelika Bammer then makes a case for melancholy memory and echoes Wüstenberg’s understanding of slowness and memory. Philippe Mesnard’s chapter focuses on the aesthetics of images of the worst and seeks to move beyond the old paradigms to explore these issues in a new light. Taken together, this part contributes to thinking through how memory studies works now and where it might go in future. Part Four, “Monuments, Memorials, Museums, Memoirs,” opens with James Young’s riveting discussion of countermonuments as exemplified in the pioneering, out-of-thebox work of Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz. Hoheisel’s inverted fountain in Kassel, Germany, became an icon of countermonumental memory work that insists on reflection and resists the easy dismissal of a sort of “been-there-done-that” temptation viewers may experience in more monumental forms of memorialization. Young’s work has always insisted on memory as process and this article underscores that important message. Helen Hughes continues looking at sculptural arts by examining Mike Nelson’s large-scale, often walk-through installations to see how their versions of memory spiral. Miryam Sas’s “Hanka” anticipates the memoir turn in the following part and explores with great sensitivity her voyage to the lost land of her relatives; there’s no going back, as so many descendants of Holocaust survivors have experienced. Sas uses her nuanced approach to memory studies to unpack the emotions of inhabiting those lost spaces. “Memory, memoriam,” part five, features an important essay by Sayed Kashua, a novelist, TV screen writer, journalist, and memoirist who reflects on the disruptions to memory due to displacement as a Palestinian living in flux. Steve Stern, also a novelist, then delves into the rich and fascinating connections between Jewish storytelling and memory via a wide-ranging exploration that moves through Talmud, to Kafka, the Golem, and beyond. These two parts both theorize memory studies and offer concrete examples of memoirs

6

CRITICAL MEMORY STUDIES: NEW APPROACHES

that bring in subtle and important aspects of memory work to discuss displacement, migration, and aesthetics in new and moving ways. The sixth part, “Enacting Memory Studies,” showcases several examples of how memory studies scholarship performs and transforms our understandings of history and the present. Debarti Sanyal focalizes her examination of the traumas of the current pandemic through the fictional versions in Camus’s utterly relevant La peste (1947). Lilya Kaganovsky tackles another catastrophe through an exploration of Nine Days of One Year, a Soviet film that grapples with nuclear war through the love triangle between three people who ultimately illuminate the mechanisms of “thaw” cinema’s struggles to overcome the trauma of the past. Kaganovsky’s work tackles the relationship of Holocaust memory and the memory of fascism against the possibility of the threat of nuclear annihilation. Ethan Madarieta explores Mapuche hunger strikes as a way to grapple with—not exactly resist—but rather to make present against settler colonialist logics the continued existence of indigenous peoples in Chile. Jeremy Tambling and Suvir Kaul both turn to poetry—in different national and historical settings—to examine how memory and poetics intersect. From India to Chile to France to the USSR, this part exemplifies the global nature of memory studies and the diverse ways in which thinkers are now incorporating studies of the mechanisms of trauma and memory into myriad pressing issues. The concluding part seven, “Digital Memory,” offers two case studies of the crossroads between digital and memorial practices through digital humanities work. Julia Creet and Silke Arnold-de Simine examine what happens to our digital lives after our deaths? How will our digital presences remain as ghosts in the machines of our futures beyond death? Last, and certainly not least, Sharon Oster discusses the fascinating process of mapping the spaces of the Holocaust through digital technologies. She argues that while this sort of mapping can minimize some of the emotionality inherent in Holocaust studies, it also offers a way to envision the vast scope of the Nazi genocide and offers students a way to see through digital means the insane multitude of killing centers, deportations, displacements. Like memory studies, digital humanities is an expanding field which will continue to offer multiple means of bringing technology to the study of memory and other cultural questions. When the Memory Studies Association officially launched in Amsterdam in 2016, the field was becoming established and actively sought to move beyond Europe in terms of both its practitioners and their scopes of inquiry. It also aimed to “build bridges to, and offer a home for, our ‘sister fields’ such as heritage studies, oral history, transitional justice” (Olick et al., 492). This volume answers that call by expanding well beyond Europe and by inviting in numerous sister fields to this fold. When the journal, Memory Studies, launched in 2008, Andrew Hoskins, in the opening editorial, was able to claim that the field was “nascent.” By the time the Memory Studies Association emerged eight years later, as Olick et al. point out, the field was already well established. Its fantastic burgeoning continues. Memory work can be considered as part of providing the conditions of possibility for unheard voices to emerge (Tota and Hagen, 4). The field of memory studies grows by leaps and bounds: the Memory Studies Association and its annual conference have exploded in recent years. The international network, Mnemonics (the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies at the University of Illinois which I direct is a proud and active member), hosts a summer school/conference where graduate students from around the world meet to share ideas and learn from senior memory studies scholars. Mnemonics 2022, which took place in Sigtuna, near Stockholm, received more applications

INTRODUCTION

7

than any other year. The journal of the Memory Studies Association, Memory Studies, has become a crucial nexus for recent elaborations of memory in multiple fields and enjoys wide readership. Many other excellent anthologies and handbooks in memory studies, and works that take an eagle-eyed view of the field, have been published in recent years, including Memory Unbound (Bond, Craps, Vermeulen, 2016), Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies (Tota and Hagen, 2016), Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (Erll and Nünning, 2010), Handbook of Culture and Memory (Wagoner, 2017), Memory Cultures: Memory, Subjectivity, and Recognition (Radstone and Hodgkin, 2005), and The Ashgate Research Companion to Memory Studies (Kattago, 2020). This volume stands on the shoulders of, updates, and builds upon the wonderful work in these earlier collections by bringing in creative voices, expanding the geographical and disciplinary scope of memory studies, and addressing new crises as they emerge. As I write, millions of people around the globe have perished from the Covid-19 pandemic; when you read this, grievously, that number will have continued to swell. As I write, it’s almost two years since Black Lives Matter protests blossomed around the world as we said: enough with white supremacist murder of innocent Black civilians; there is still no memorial to the victims of police brutality. As I write, Russia is in the process of invading Ukraine and the memorial at Babi Yar has been bombed and damaged. As I write, it’s a little more than one year since a furious mob invaded the US Capitol and attempted to halt democracy on January 6, 2021; they failed to do that, but they killed, injured, and damaged physically and psychically the victims and democracy as it used to be known in the United States. How can—how will these and other traumatic events be remembered and memorialized? There is so much at stake in how memories of these histories unfold, so much to mourn and hold in memory. There is not yet a national or international memorial to the many victims of Covid-19, to the many victims of police brutality, to the many victims of domestic violence, transviolence, racism, and so many other preventable deaths. The memorial at Babi Yar that was bombed in 2022 was a contested site first because there was no memorial and then because plans for an elaborate memorial center provoked controversy (see Veidlinger). Where will memorial plans be amid the detritus of this unprovoked war? Many if not most memorials invoke controversy and that is part of the necessary arguments over how we memorialize lives lost. Memorials nearly invariably come late and fall short. How can any one trauma be properly encapsulated, contained, remembered? What forms of dynamic memory can be given to massive, global, losses such as Covid-19, slavery, the Armenian genocide, the killing fields in Cambodia, the genocide in Rwanda, the Holocaust, and so many other spaces of loss? Memory studies examines how memorialization can happen, what shapes it takes, and what it means. Memory studies grapples with how memory collides with history, with repressive structures meant to keep it down, with revisionism. Memory studies mines literature, art, music, and many other forms to find out how memory matters. Memory studies conversations, conferences, journals, organizations, programs, workshops, summer schools, networks, and ideas have been expanding at tornado speeds for many years and in multiple sites across the globe. Unfortunately, there has never been a greater need for our work.

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PART ONE

Race-ing Memory

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CHAPTER ONE

Critical Black Memory as Curatorial Praxis and Collective Care LA TANYA S. AUTRY

My studies of freedom thinkers and embrace of critical Black memory have sustained my curatorial praxis, my way of bringing together theory and action to change the world.1 Lessons from ancestral leaders, some of whom I have quoted in this essay—activists, novelists, poets, photographers, sculptors, painters, musicians, educators, theorists, and others—have inspired the ideas that I develop in exhibitions, programming, and cultural organizing as well as my methods of working and existing. As a Black woman from a working-class background, I wanted to make my education and labor benefit my communities. Because I found this orientation at odds with much of my formal training in art history and museums, I enhanced my studies by concentrating on racial justice and human rights texts. Opportunities to create exhibitions addressing pressing social issues interested me. However, understanding museums as a cultural form became paramount. I wanted to uncover the ideological and structural frameworks of museums as well as what it might mean to utilize museums for social change work. I recognized that my training as a curatorial fellow offered me a means to study museums from the inside. Through engaging in close attention to processes and behaviors, I examined how institutional cultures are shaped; how individuals support, cooperate with, or subvert measures; how visitors and other publics interact or intervene in museum spaces; and how racism operates through these institutions. After about two years, I came to realize that my embodied research in affluent, white-led and white-centered museums was a form of trauma studies. In those spaces, where anti-Black racism, sexism, elitism, ableism, and other forms of social violence are standard fare, my body, mind, and soul became more vulnerable. My body expressed this tension. Arms folded, back rounded and hunched over became my habitual seated position at the start of one meeting. I only noticed this protective mode when a coworker pointed out my posture and checked to see if I was alright. I was not. At other times, I found my pulse racing despite a previous long history of low blood pressure. Taking note of the institutional norms and dodging racist, sexist, class-biased comments and actions regularly had a physical toll that I had not anticipated. In some

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CRITICAL MEMORY STUDIES: NEW APPROACHES

ways, my experience resembled Frantz Fanon’s reflection in Black Skin, White Masks, “I came into the world anxious to uncover the meaning in things, my soul desirous to be at the origin of the world, and here I am an object among other objects” (89). Negotiating concentrated social violence frequently in museums caused my body to undergo wear and tear far more intensely than my work experiences in other sectors. Critical Black memory saved me. Around this time, I came across Leigh Raiford’s theory of critical Black memory: “… critical black memory emerges out of and is motivated by both survival (‘We keep our souls’; ‘the conviction that the future depends upon a realization by the race of what it is justly entitled to and a determination to secure it’); and failure (‘They [continue to] murder our bodies’)” (62–3, 212). I considered this practice of Black people engaging their history of struggles to shape their current moment as I remembered my calling and the long history of freedom fighters who have charted paths helped me realign and formulate my own resistance tactics. During this time, I activated my studies of the Black Radical Tradition by developing numerous self-initiated projects outside of the academy and museums. Focused on fighting systemic oppression, these activities have been one of my ways of saving myself and making it possible for me to continue learning how to write wall text and brochure copy, install objects, and use other exhibition techniques while researching museum functioning. My involvement in various para-institutional, collaborative initiatives—Social Justice and Museums Resource List, The Art of Black Dissent, Museums Are Not Neutral and the Black Liberation Center—taught me how to counter institutional violence, develop and uphold an ethics, and implement ways for caring for communities typically excluded in heteronormative, white supremacist, patriarchal, elitist, colonialist art museum spaces. In these alternate spaces, where I have possessed more power than I ever had in any of my museum positions, activists, artists, writers, and scholars of the Black liberation struggles are my mentors. From the work of Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman, my grandmother J. D., I have applied what I learned of “collective care” to my curatorial thinking. This Black feminist ethos acknowledges that the health and safety of all persons are grounded in shared opposition to antiBlack racism, gender violence, poverty, and other forms of oppression. In the past few years, my engagement with the scholarship of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and other Indigenous thinkers has strengthened my knowledge of decolonization and connections between Indigenous and Black freedom-making. These liberation leaders have provided crucial frameworks for my process of building a curatorial mindset grounded in actual care for communities. The conventional notion that curators primarily care for rarefied objects, and maybe rarefied artists, became insufferable the more I witnessed immense inequalities in the field. By this point, I had refined my study of museums and grounded them in critical Black memory. Instead of adhering to an observational approach, my research project became an active site of change. I wanted to know how I could make my work serve communities who experience racial, gender, and economic oppression, and how much change I could provoke in particular institutions and across the museum field. I reinterpreted my fellowships as opportunities to test methods of refusing antiBlackness, colonialism, and other forms of violence in white art museum spaces, the treasure chests of oppression. Here, in this essay, I consider my para-institutional projects to inspire more of us to imagine and grow more routes to freedom.

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SOCIAL JUSTICE AND MUSEUMS RESOURCE LIST Before I began studying museums, I had already been supporting various social justice initiatives. Encountering social justice as a buzzword in the museum field worried me. Knowing the gross disparities in the field, I doubted that most of the people talking about social justice believed in actual social justice, which entails redistribution of resources. I quickly learned that most likened discussions of social themes with social justice. They did not aim or work for structural change. They simply talked about social issues in superficial ways. Human rights activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s words echoed in my memory: “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them” (Schechter 89). As an educator, I felt that through sharing information I could expose that sleight of hand and encourage more people to engage with this work authentically. I had been building a reading list for myself for years. But in 2015 I made it public as a crowdsourced online bibliography (Autry et al. Social Justice and Museums Resource List). By welcoming others to contribute to the list, I hoped to create a more expansive snapshot of this genre. Ideally, this list would capture a fuller history of museums than many students encounter in their coursework. I wanted to support educators, students, museum workers, and others fighting oppressive practices. Shifting the field toward at least a more authentic use of terminology, if not actual social justice, felt necessary at this time. Just the year before in 2014, similar to millions, I witnessed an onslaught of Black death. Sitting at my desk in my Brooklyn apartment that July, I found my Twitter feed filled with video clips showing police officers killing Eric Garner. Less than a month later, again via Twitter, I learned that the police in Ferguson, Missouri, murdered Michael Brown and left the teenager’s body uncovered in the streets for hours. In October, Chicago police shot Laquan McDonald in the back multiple times. In November, Cleveland police murdered twelve-year-old Tamir Rice. While these killings of Black people had always been happening, that year they became mainstream visual culture via digital technologies. AntiBlackness became impossible to not see. Protests against antiBlack violence took hold across the United States. Activists filled the streets, educators organized teach-ins, some museums collected the protest signs and created related programming. But also, there was piercing stasis. At my workplace, Yale University Art Gallery, institutional leaders as well as rank-and-file workers exercised silence. At this white institution situated in New Haven, Connecticut, a city with a majority Black and Brown demographic, hardly anyone spoke a word about the mounting uprisings happening around us. That December, I came across “Joint Statement from Museum Bloggers and Colleagues on Ferguson and Related Events” (A. Brown et al.). In their appeal to everyone in the field to counter racism, the fourteen authors, all museum workers, stressed that responding to racial injustice did not belong solely to those employed at Black museums, history museums, or institutions located in specific cities that recently had experienced social unrest. In their words: “As mediators of culture, ALL museums should commit to identifying how they can connect to relevant contemporary issues irrespective of collection, focus, or mission.” I engaged that challenge even though my position as a curatorial fellow did not hold official power to steer institutional policy. But I always have known that each of us can lead. The Social Justice and Museums Resource List became one of my means for breaking through hierarchical, silencing culture. In addition to sharing the list with members in the reading club I formed at my workplace, I often posted links to it via my Twitter account.

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CRITICAL MEMORY STUDIES: NEW APPROACHES

People contacted me to add references or inquire on good resources on decolonization, neutrality rhetoric, museum controversies, gender equality, and other topics. Over the past six years, over 700 people have edited this Google document, which is now over sixty pages.2 Featured in conferences and educators’ classrooms worldwide, it reaches hundreds of museum workers at various stages in their practice. While the list does not, of course, indicate everything occurring in museums, I believe it is a crucial intervention. The Social Justice and Museums Resource List is a critique, a witness, and a catalyst.

THE ART OF BLACK DISSENT The Art of Black Dissent, my favorite initiative to date, brings together art, critical Black memory, and freedom dreams as it sparks community power and imagination. As part of my way of connecting my work with those rising calls for justice in 2014, I co-developed this roving pop-up exhibition and dialogue program. Through sharing various forms of visual culture from the early twentieth century to today—posters, photographs, artist books, zines, and other ephemera featuring imagery of Black people making freedom— curator and artist Gabriella Svenningsen and I co-facilitate interactive discussions with community members (Fig. 1.3). We construct spaces for learning from art and one another as well as collective imagining public art interventions to fight antiBlackness (Fig. 1.4). Since 2016, we have worked with various people, teens to senior citizens, at museums, high schools, and libraries. Our groups, ranging from six to thirty-five participants per session, have convened in New Haven, CT; Brooklyn, NYC; and Cleveland, OH. We start these immersive 60–90-minute workshops after introducing the program and our inquirycentered format. Using the International Sites of Conscience’s Arc of Dialogue facilitation model, we pose a series of questions as the participants view the artworks (Bormann and Campt). As a group, we consider visual strategies artists employ in relation to what we know and do not know about fighting antiBlackness. We encourage participants to envision creative modes for building freedom in their own community spaces. Witnessing people light up as they imagine ways to highlight Black freedom-making visual culture in their neighborhoods, schools, and other spaces is one of the most rewarding aspects of this project. Many of our session participants have never been welcomed to make decisions about their city landscapes and institutions as that power typically lies outside of working-class communities of color. Through The Art of Black Dissent many people begin to see new possibilities. Together we realize, as poet June Jordan noted, “… we are the one’s we’ve been waiting for” (45). One woman told me that she had never considered creating public art projects before attending our session. However, now she wants to see the ideas the group proposed installed at city bus stops to bring art featuring Black history to more people in her community. One high school student wants to challenge mass incarceration by installing an enlargement of one of the artworks, Chip Thomas’ screen print Criminal Justice Reform Now featuring a mugshot image of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the city courthouse. An elder, who had been reluctant to join one of our sessions, became the most active discussant offering numerous memories and insights from his own experiences of the liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. He summed up his thoughts on The Art of Black Dissent by stating, “It often feels like no one cares, but this is a balm.” Right then, I realized the soulful importance of our intervention. The strongly positive feedback we have received from participants informed us that The Art of Black Dissent operates on registers beyond strictly education. Being in dialogue

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with neighbors thoughtfully engaging pressing issues of social inequality disrupts cycles of silencing, ignorance, alienation, and despair. Because our sessions resonate with people on emotional levels that do not align with dominant curatorial practice, The Art of Black Dissent speaks to that reality Audre Lorde evokes: “For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive” (“Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 37). Our project tears at the white museum paradigm through centering and working alongside communities. This freedom energy sustains our souls too. Svenningsen and I have continued to offer The Art of Black Dissent over the years for free in community spaces. This initiative, in particular, helped me understand that my idea of curatorial work involves caring for people, not only objects. However, our humanistic project, which includes Black people in the rubric of the human, might not have happened. In 2015 when I originally pitched this idea, some staff in labeled it “political.” A coworker worried about responses from donors. Despite the fact that the institution regularly offers discussion programs on various topics and collects art featuring freedom struggles, they found The Art of Black Dissent too different, too troubling. I pushed for eleven months to hold our workshop at the gallery while protests against antiBlackness surged on campus and across the United States. In November 2015, soon after the campus protests hit the national news circuits, I finally got approval (Swarns). The following spring, we launched sessions at the museum for the general public and individual classes. Svenningsen and I extended this project beyond our workplaces to reach even more people. Now featuring artworks from own personal collections, The Art of Black Dissent “pops-up” at schools and libraries. Through this process I learned that many things never happen in museums because staff in key roles put up barriers. As they prioritize methods and subjects that conform to the institution’s exclusionary past projects, their gate-keeping ossifies museums. It means that, to borrow Saidiya Hartman’s expression, the “brutal asymmetry of power” forged years ago reigns (55). That orientation permanently restricts possibilities of being for those who do not adhere to the cultural norm, who have different training, interests, and needs. It labels those who do not conform as problems, disturbances. Indeed, one curator made this state of affairs abundantly clear. In response to my planning of The Art of Black Dissent, she retorted: “Why is there all this talk about Black stuff? Don’t they just want to be Americans?”

MUSEUMS ARE NOT NEUTRAL Many people reinforce oppressive practices and hide those actions through claiming neutrality. After years of finding that excuse, I decided to, so to say, turn up the dial in my cultural organizing work. Hearing claims that the museum had to remain “neutral” in response to my proposals at museums where I was the only Black woman, only person not white, in museum meetings for years in majority Black and Brown cities, hearing that certain cultural groups are not proficient at art making, being refused entry into meetings centered on my use of the word “segregation” in exhibition essays on Civil Rights issues, being silenced during one of my own exhibition presentations, watching people who have advanced degrees and are in leadership roles routinely concealing context and power dynamics became unbearable. This predicament led me to the maxim attributed to Angela Davis, “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” Observing, documenting, and responding to abuse did not suffice. I wanted to stop the conditions.

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CRITICAL MEMORY STUDIES: NEW APPROACHES

FIGURE 1.1  Museums Are Not Neutral—La Tanya S. Autry, Mike Murawski, and colleagues, 2017. Photo courtesy of La Tanya S. Autry.

In 2017 refusing the lie of neutrality became my primary changemaking strategy. That August, along with my colleague Mike Murawski, I created our Museums Are Not Neutral campaign. Murawski, a museum educator, had also hit the limit with that falsehood. We believed that once more museum workers and others respected the truth about museum histories and practices, deep structural change across the field could happen. Building on the “Joint Statement,” the Museums Respond to Ferguson movement spearheaded by Adrianne Russell and Aleia Brown, and catalyzed by the memory of decades of earlier activism from artists and museum workers, we issued our truth-telling work (Brown and Russell; Fletcher; Burns; Cahan; Cooks). Our initiative calls on everyone to acknowledge that museums possess socio-historical contexts. We urge everyone to dedicate themselves to transforming our institutions into agents of social change. Museums Are Not Neutral became a global initiative. Resonating worldwide, over the past four years we have raised over $20,000 for community organizations through proceeds from sales of our statement T-shirts. When museum workers and visitors,

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FIGURE 1.2  Museums Are Not Neutral with Don’t Shoot Portland—(from left to right) Mike Murawski, La Tanya S. Autry, Teressa Raiford, and friends, Portland, Oregon, August 2019. Photo courtesy of La Tanya S. Autry.

activists, artists, teachers, students, librarians, and others wear “MUSEUMS ARE NOT NEUTRAL” across their hearts at museums, conferences, classrooms, and elsewhere, they announce themselves as changemakers (Fig. 1.1). We refuse the neutrality lie and engage in thoughtful discussion. Together we are, as one student said, a “walking exhibition of change.” The shirt can operate as a sign, a bridge, to others who have felt ostracized in museums (Fig. 1.2). Elaborations of our message can be found in various publications by Murawski, myself, and others; syllabi; workshops; and conference panels (Autry “Changing the Things I Cannot Accept”; Autry et al. “Museums Are Not Neutral”; Murawski). However, perhaps the steadiest stream of this discourse exists on social networking platforms, particularly Twitter and Instagram. Through the #MuseumsAreNotNeutral hashtag thousands of people across the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Japan, and other places connect and build this change movement. Pushing back at neutrality, especially at this scale, upsets the social order. In that way, Museums Are Not Neutral threatens a lot of people. Detractors, who usually are entrenched in white museum ideology, obstinately argue that museums can be neutral or should be neutral. Oftentimes these people obscure or ignore that museums are products and purveyors of empire that operate through and as expressions and functions of power, money, and hierarchies. Others acknowledge the construct’s colonizing and plunder roots, yet maintain that today these institutions are objective, transcendental spaces.

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CRITICAL MEMORY STUDIES: NEW APPROACHES

They overlook domineering, commonplace practices in this field, such as stolen objects in the collections, racist exhibition texts, displacing communities through gentrification, operating on stolen lands, discriminating against artists and staff of color, targeted policing of visitors of color, etc. Their selective memory is purposeful and traditional. As poet Dionne Brand remarks, “colonial mythmaking is in constant operation of disappearing those bodies—Indigenous bodies and also Black bodies” (Simpson and Brand). The neutrality cloak legitimizes the colonization paradigm and conceals institutional violence. It decides who matters and who does not, which histories matter, and which do not. It is, indeed, not neutral. Against the reactionary backlash, some leading museum figures have joined us in refuting the neutrality claim. In 2018, Suay Aksoy, then president of ICOM, International Council of Museums, remarked: [M]useums are not neutral. They never have, and never will. They are not separate from their social and historical context. And when it does seem like they are separate, that is not neutrality—that is a choice. Choosing not to address climate change is not neutrality. Choosing not to talk about colonization is not neutrality. Choosing not to advocate for equality is not neutrality. Those are choices, and we can make better ones. Making Museums Are Not Neutral a global phenomenon, of course, has not eliminated institutionalized violence. Those who benefit from oppression work hard to maintain dominance. They have elaborate networks in place to keep everything as is, to not change in any substantive structural manner. Anticipating the various performative stunts in the field, Murawski and I shared our visions for creating an equitable field in our Museums Are Not Neutral Action Plan. Our nine-point proposal focuses on staffing, organizational structure, and funding as an intensive retooling of the museum. If professionals and community members engage and implement these practical core actions authentically, institutions and the field would experience important change: ●●

Create and seek out spaces for collective action and solidarity

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Ignite community accountability

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Address pay inequity, salary transparency issues, and abuses of labor

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Support staff organizing and unionizing

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Reform and change hiring practices

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Rethink and replace organizational hierarchies and leadership structures

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Meaningful reforms at the board level

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Prioritize equity in budgeting (budget is a moral document)

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Critically examine funding structures and how traditional philanthropy operates.

However, history and experience have taught me that it is difficult to get those in key institutional roles to engage multifaceted structural approaches. For decades artists, museum professionals, and others have devised plans for making museums better cultural spaces and better workplaces. Yet, for the most part, exclusionary and predatory actions have ruled as US museums remain controlled by an ever-resilient wealthy, white minority (Moore; Fusco; Harvey and Friedberg). Sociologist Zoé Samudzi’s admonition feels especially urgent: “[The museum] cannot be decolonized per se, but control over its day-to-day

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functioning can and must be wrested from oligarchs and made more firmly democratized and accountable to anticolonial publics” (Samudzi). While I counter that decolonization of museums would entail a series of actions that undo the institution resulting in other formations, I find Samudzi’s framing of change as “control” particularly crucial. As my knowledge of colonialism, decolonization, and the “afterlife of slavery” grows, I am realizing that most proposals for creating better museums, even equity-centered visions, are by nature harnessed to colonial thinking.3 We often sidestep the harder work of contending with the fundamental problematic objectives of the museum construct— the collecting, categorizing, displaying, and preserving of artifacts by ranked cultures.4 Suggesting that we can correct museums through an equity lens, that is to say, considering the situational conditions when distributing access to resources, does not address the immensity, the weight, of the brutality—theft of personhood, theft of land, genocide. Consequently, our proposals are primarily ways to make a violent paradigm somewhat less violent for some people while obscuring the stakes. For significant, collective care rooted structural change, we must organize for control. As long as US museums remain predominately controlled by rich donors, corporations, and foundations, deep structural change will never come to fruition. At this juncture, my approach to these complexities continues to progress through engaging the memories of and new developments in liberation movements.

BLACK LIBERATION CENTER My Black Liberation Center (BLC) became my way to make holistic, caring spaces for community members and myself after encountering antiBlackness at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, another white museum in a majority Black city. Audre Lorde’s wisdom showed me the way: “… I learned that if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive” (“Learning from the 60s,” 137). In fall 2020 I restructured my curatorial fellowship into a residency and launched the Black Liberation Center. I shook off the routine tokenism of the museum’s leaders by establishing my own values grounded in what I have learned of my ancestors’ freedom struggles—centering authentic connections through collaborations, deepening understanding, and providing tools for building thriving Black futures. In addition to bringing my organizing for change work inside the museum, I finally began to make my dream of one day running a community arts center grounded in Lorde’s scholarship a reality. For the remaining seven months of my residency, I produced a series of programming where I had full control over the content, budget, and messaging. I bent the institution to move resources into supporting Black people’s care. Through this trying, yet rewarding, experience I organized spaces to honor, share, rest, learn from, and listen to one another. My inaugural program Still I Rise, named after Maya Angelou’s poem, focused on Kelli Morgan. We discussed the centrality of collective care in her curatorial practice and how that orientation guided her escape from a violent, antiBlack work culture to foster her own health and well-being (Morgan). I continued this focus on caring for our development through my mentorship program To Be In But Not Of, inspired by a passage from Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s book, The Undercommons: Black Fugitive Planning and Black Study.5 Here I introduced emerging local artists to curators and mid-career artists working in areas across the United States.

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My most elaborate project of the BLC series, the Art of Collective Care and Responsibility: Handling Images of Black Suffering and Death, offered something especially life-affirming. Following that year’s global uprisings against the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, the rising death tolls of the pandemic, ongoing testimonies of racial abuse in museums, massive lay-offs across sectors, and other hardships, we addressed the moment with gravity, creativity, and love. Bringing together my studies of ethics, lynching imagery, and pedagogy, I partnered with individuals from a few groups to organize this five-day virtual teach-in. We spotlighted Black cultural producers, in particular Black feminist practitioners—activists, artists, writers, curators, and educators—to counter the rampant disavowal of Black life in visual culture methodologies (Fig. 1.5). Our cross-disciplinary intervention started with reflections from Ms. Samaria Rice, the mother of Tamir Rice, the twelve-year-old boy murdered by police in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2014. She forcefully expressed the weight of the condition when she stated: America had sold me a lie. I truly believed that I was an American citizen and that I was going to get justice for the assassination of my son. I did not want … to allow America to tell lies to our Black and Brown children. So that’s why I created the Tamir Rice Afrocentric Center. (“Opening/The ‘I’ or ‘We’ Who Care”) Speaking to us just weeks after learning that the Justice Department decided to close the inquiry into indicting police officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, who killed her son, Rice’s words exposed some of the horror of living through antiBlackness— lack of recourse, disillusionment (Savage and Benner; US Department of Justice). But her comments also conveyed eternal love and imagination in face of devastation. In her address she later also noted how artists and art institutions participate in and benefit from antiBlack state violence through appropriating and displaying images of Black people’s bodies being violated. Those remarks challenged the actions of both the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland’s leadership and artist Shaun Leonardo who just months before had been embroiled in a controversy about use of images featuring Black people being murdered, including her son, Tamir (Weber). Rice’s analysis highlights the antiBlack libidinal economy where images of torture and death feed fears and desires. In this zone, the arts partake in vicarious possession and consumption of Black people’s bodies. This insistence on our lives and our care remained throughout Art of Collective Care and Responsibility. In her keynote address, Christina Sharpe, author of In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, ruminated on tensions between the living and the dead in memorial forms and the various ways artists contradict the violence of the lynching archive by seeing otherwise. In the two roundtables, discussants Alexandra Bell, William C. Anderson, Kirsten P. Buick, Sheila Pree Bright, Kelli Morgan, Izetta Mobley, Teressa Raiford, Amanda D. King identified histories and power relations between artists, institutions, and Black communities, the importance of respect, consent, contextualization of subjects and imagery, and methods of care through annotation and redaction. Aimee Meredith Cox steered us in this complex navigation through meditative exercises. Musical artists Fay Victor and Case Bargé expressed the wavelength through sound. Curator and art historian Key Jo Lee joined me in moderating the roundtables and leading the workshop sessions. Our teach-in recognized the sensitivity some of us exude in our dealings with one another. This symphony of “beholding ourselves” was love in action.6 As hundreds joined us for this experience and numerous attendees lauded our innovative, cross-disciplinary

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approach, I realized that I can grow more spaces that actually care about our lives. The teach-in lives on via recordings available through the project’s website. It also forms the basis for a public art project and visual ethics curriculum that I am currently formulating. ***

FIGURE 1.3  The Art of Black Dissent, Institute Library, New Haven, Connecticut, 2017. Photo courtesy of La Tanya S. Autry.

FIGURE 1.4  The Art of Black Dissent, Black Girl Project Sisterhood Summit, Brooklyn, NYC, 2018. Photo courtesy of La Tanya S. Autry.

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Acting through an ethos of collective care, working in a manner that keeps involved communities who experience interlocking violence foremost in consideration, requires ongoing assessment, education, strategy, rearrangement, creation. When I started my studies of museums, I understood collective care generally. Life had taught me that caring for those most harmed is in itself an oppositional stance to much of US society. And my initial studies and experiences of and in white museums had informed me that they traffic heavily in antiBlackness and other social violence. But at that time, I did not value collective care as an ethical and rigorous practice that requires an enduring commitment. I did not grasp fully that those museum spaces are integral nodes for the projects of empire, white supremacy, and capitalism. Likewise, I did not realize, they operate as, what Dylan Rodriguez has termed, “low intensity warfare” (“A Conversation”). When my observationcentered research became untenable, I returned to my ancestors, to the paths and dreams they forged. Audre Lorde’s words: “How do you deal with things you believe, live them not as theory, not even as emotion, but right on the line of action and effect and change?” reverberated in my mind (“An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich” 107). Tapping into critical Black memory advanced my understanding, degrees of resistance, and belief in myself and collectivity. Embodied learning, my need for self-preservation,

FIGURE 1.5  Art of Collective Care & Responsibility teach-in, Black Liberation Center—event announcement featuring inset image of Samaria Rice, 2020. Photo courtesy of La Tanya S. Autry.

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and embracing the lessons from and memories of freedom fighters drove me to commit to principled actions. I realized that, for me, the only curatorial practice worthwhile involves praxis and collective care. Bringing together my lived experience and my growing knowledge of the Black Radical Tradition and decolonial scholarship has taught me a great deal about the textured conditions, capacities, and limitations of the museum.7 Fortunately the day-to-day trauma experiences are over for me as my embodied research in white museum spaces is now complete. My findings will be the basis of a future book project. My collective care curatorial praxis and grounding in critical Black memory continue to enrich my collaborations with kindred spirits who are also committed to liberation. Creating these para-institutional tactics, the Social Justice and Museums Resource List, The Art of Black Dissent, Museums Are Not Neutral and the Black Liberation Center, has broadened my perception of possibilities. Through memories and actions informed by memory, ethics, and persistent reflection, these projects have urged me to think and operate more relationally, to uncover and foster conditions for coalition-building, and to keep imagining otherwise ways for the sake of love, our lives, and freedom.

NOTES 1. Leigh Raiford’s conceptualization of critical Black memory informs my activism and studies. 2. Originally, I made the Social Justice and Museums Resource List an open, Google Document that anyone with internet access could edit. However, after five years of 700+ editors working in that space, the file became corrupted. To maintain the project, I limited the number of editors. In June 2020, I reissued a refreshed version of the list. I encourage interested parties to submit relevant citations to me, presently the sole editor, for inclusion on the list. 3. My use of the expression “afterlife of slavery” is informed by Saidiya Hartman. See Hartman Scenes of Subjection. 4. In the essay “Red, Black, and Blue: The National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of the American Indian,” Huey Copeland remarks: “One of the first things you see in the NMAAHC [National Museum of African American History and Culture], for instance, is a wall label that says, ‘Objects define a museum.’ And I thought, ‘Really?!’ What does it mean, given the history of black people as objects of property themselves, to say that material remains define a museum, especially since so much of black culture—to say nothing of black peoples—is literally and figuratively lost? How might we think about those terms differently, in working toward a radical museology that reckons with, rather than sidesteps, the imbrication of museum cultures in the maintenance and reproduction of antiblack ideologies?” 5. “To Be But Not Of” takes its name from the concept Stefano Harney and Fred Moten express in their book The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. “To abuse its hospitality, to spite its mission, to join its refugee colony, its gypsy encampment, to be in but not of—this is the path of the subversive intellectual in the modern university” (26). 6. The expression “beholding ourselves” thinks with Christina Sharpe’s discussion of how Black people beholding one another, seeing one another, is a form of communal recognition and embrace that alleviates some of the disavowal from other spheres. Sharpe suggests that beholding ourselves may be a path to freedom (101).

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7. The following are some of the key Black feminist, abolitionist, anticolonial references that have advanced my interpretative lens on museum cultures: “A Conversation with Sandy Grande, Stefano Harney, Fred Moten, Jasbir Puar, and Dylan Rodriguez”; Fanon The Wretched of the Earth; Harney and Moten; bell hooks; Audre Lorde Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches by Audre Lorde; Sharpe; Simpson; Simpson and Brand; Trouillot; Tuck and Yang; Walcott.

CHAPTER TWO

The Memory of Race SONALI THAKKAR

What is the memory of race? There is by now a vast body of scholarship in cultural memory studies concerned with the remembering and the forgetting, the incomplete commemorations and the enduring afterlives, of the racialized violence of modernity, from Atlantic slavery to the Holocaust, to other histories of injury enabled or justified by race thinking. Schematically speaking, much of this work has focused on racism’s traumatic fracturing of worlds and lives: the loss of both the continuity and lived integrity of cultures; the rupture of individual lives and its enduring psychic consequences, and the undesired but undeniable historical and intergenerational inheritance of ruination, dispossession, and the price of survival. Politically, such work in cultural memory studies has challenged consoling fictions about the curative power of time and the inevitability of progress and has insisted, in what many have called the key tenet of cultural memory, that the past is not past; it inheres in the present and is remade according to the needs of the present. Aesthetically, this scholarship has asked about the forms and figurations adequate to the representation of racial violence and suffering in literature, visual art, and other cultural forms. Often, it has questioned the very notion of formal adequacy, attending closely to aesthetic work by writers “enquiring”—in the words of Paul Gilroy assessing Black literary culture—“into terrors that exhaust the resources of language amidst the debris of a catastrophe which prohibits the existence of their art at the same time as demanding its continuance” (Black Atlantic 218). The sense in which I use the memory of race in this piece is closely connected to this project of registering racial terror and trauma, as well as to the project of excavating the politics of knowledge implicated in the making and governance of the racialized human. However, I want to try to demarcate a specific, though overlapping, area of inquiry that has produced its own questions and perhaps even its own archive. Race, as we know, is not a stable or fixed concept. It is changeable, subject to definition and redefinition; in Stuart Hall’s words, race is a “floating signifier.” The capacious and even contradictory meanings that attach to race are sometimes held up as proof of the concept’s inherent irrationality and emptiness. More usefully, that semantic and ideological malleability speaks to the highly variable ways in which racial meaning is made and racial value assigned in specific conflicts of power and exploitation, or in relation to other socially differentiating concepts such as caste, for instance, which put pressure on the meaning of race (see, for instance, Visweswaran). But the changeability of the race concept is not just a function of race’s incoherence, or a result of particular local or contextual inflections; the race concept also has a history.

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Let me offer an example. Though not the focus of this essay, much of my current research focuses on a mid-twentieth-century moment in which the concept of race was redefined in a highly self-conscious way. A liberal antiracist discourse institutionalized in new postwar international institutions such as the UN and especially UNESCO drew on the intellectual resources of the social and biological sciences to produce a new, supposedly authoritative definition of race—that is, a new racial ontology. This definition of race was meant to conform with an emergent antiracist consensus about the political and scientific illegitimacy of race thinking, and to amplify the universalist ethos and commitment to anti-discrimination that these same institutions were articulating in that same period in the register of human rights. The goal here was to delegitimize particular expressions of racism that were seen as especially dangerous to the prospects of human unity by delegitimizing the conceptions of race that undergirded them. Thus, for instance, UNESCO’s 1950 Statement on Race influentially argued that races were not fixed and immutable types but rather fluctuating genetic populations; notably, it proposed that the word “race” itself be expunged from everyday language. Scientists theorizing molecularlevel differences might legitimately speak about race as genetic populations, but vernacular descriptions of visible difference or cultural difference should better speak of ethnicity (UNESCO 31). The midcentury redefinition of race is especially striking for the sharp break it tried to produce in racial meaning; as the historian Michelle Brattain notes, it is a fascinating instance in which, seemingly, “race had once been one thing and now it was another” (1413). From the perspective of cultural memory studies, there is much that is interesting about this midcentury intervention. First of all, while the status of the Holocaust and of anything approximating “Holocaust memory” in the early postwar period is a much-contested historiographical question, Nazism’s racism and antisemitism were the galvanizing context for these efforts. While it would be neither correct nor especially useful to characterize this as a project of Holocaust memory, it raises questions about how this experience of exterminatory racial violence contributed to a shift in the regimes of racial meaningmaking. What is especially clear is that this was not a redemptive shift. In the broadest sense, as Alana Lentin has argued, the concept of race that emerged at midcentury was exculpatory; by insisting on race’s meaninglessness and even non-existence, such efforts sanctioned a political discourse that treated race as finished business, foreclosing political engagement or official acknowledgment of its enduring role in social relations by taking at its word the suggestion that race was better not spoken about (493–7). The race concept that emerged facilitated not just the strategic forgetting of racial violence past but also the management of racial violence present: as I discuss elsewhere, the concept of racial plasticity ascendant in that moment refused to reckon with, and in fact extended, aspects of colonial racism and biopolitical governance. Second, this midcentury configuration raises questions that speak directly to the preoccupations and methods of cultural memory studies. It should come as no surprise that such attempts at racial closure—marking the end of one racial regime and the shift to another—have been profoundly uneven and incomplete in their effects. Race’s associations with fixity and permanence have not dissipated; nor has the stubborn commonsense that we know race when we see it, in the flesh, been dislodged. Equally, as scholars in science studies have shown, a discourse such as midcentury population genetics—which promised a sanitized conception of race as unfixed, fluctuating populations rather than fixed types— has from the outset shared assumptions and frameworks with the delegitimized scientific racisms it was supposed to supersede (Reardon; Gannett, “Making Populations”; Gannett,

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“Racism and Human Genome”). The persistence of old, unmastered concepts of race in a new dispensation that is meant to break with the past, and the palimpsestic repertory of racial forms and figures that uneasily coexist despite their purported epistemological incompatibilities, is a familiar structure for scholars of cultural memory. These are not questions of forgetting, however, but of periodization. And while we might think of cultural memory as a practice and a politics that works against forgetting or strategic erasure, its methodological suppositions constitutively problematize periodization in those instances where the purported past not only interrupts the present but is reactivated and remade by it, conscripted to do new kinds of work and bear renovated meanings. Race, I am arguing, both demands to be periodized and confounds periodization. In the first part of this essay, I examine how theorists of race and racism have sought to periodize racial regimes or have problematized the logic of racial periodization—in the latter case, by attending to the persistence of racial figures that endure long after their supposed displacement and disenchantment in the domain of sanctioned scientific and social scientific racial knowledge production. Certain racial figures, such as blood, are persistent, even sticky; they retain a more than metaphorical hold on the way that racial identity and inheritance are imagined in cultural and political discourse. This unruly persistence disrupts racial periodizing, including antiracist efforts to constrain the baleful ways race shapes social relations by historically bracketing purportedly superseded regimes of racial sense-making. This part of the essay considers three works that speak to the promise and limits of periodization, by the cultural critic and sociologist Paul Gilroy, the cultural anthropologist Ashley Montagu, and the feminist science studies scholar Donna Haraway. These authors ask how the historical changeability of race’s “objects of knowledge” (Haraway 218) and organizing figures may be liberatory, as well as reckon with how the cultural memory of race’s prior meanings confounds such refashionings. Montagu and Haraway pay particular attention to blood’s excessive and enduring meanings in racial discourse, contending in historically and conceptually different ways with blood’s cultural and figural persistence for narrating relations of descent, genealogy, and transmission. Among my arguments in this section is to propose two related senses in which we might understand the memory of race: I use the term first of all to describe the way that the concept of race is historically characterized by both malleability and intractability. As I’ve suggested, technical and sensorial modes of racial meaning-making persist long after their supposed obsolescence, reanimating and recombining with the nominally sanitized discourses that succeed them. The tensions and contradictions that accrue in this process parallel the structure of cultural memory and so are illuminated by this analytic. The second sense in which I use the memory of race speaks to the way that racial figures, and blood in particular, continue to function as an influential idiom for formulating stories of selfhood, as individuals narrate and articulate a sense of communal belonging by way of descent and filial emplotment. Race thus becomes a way of articulating a connection to the past, and a medium of memory and communal recollection. In the second part of the essay, I turn to a contemporary literary text, the US writer Ellen Ullman’s 2012 novel, By Blood, which takes up periodization, racial figuration, and the multiple meanings of the memory of race in intriguing ways. The novel is interested in how an individual’s possibilities for autonomy or self-fashioning are circumscribed by inheritances transmitted figuratively—or is it literally? Ullman asks—by blood. The narrative comprises several improbably connected plots about families found and perhaps better lost; the novel’s through-line, we might say, is the bloodline. Set in 1970s San

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Francisco, its central drama is an unnamed young woman’s reluctant search for her origins. An adoptee whose official position on the mysteries of her birth family is insouciance— “I like not knowing where I’ve come from,” she announces to her analyst (By Blood, 14)—she is gradually drawn into a series of revelations about her lost Jewish mother; the violent circumstances of her conception and birth in Bergen-Belsen after the war, when the liberated concentration camp functioned as a displaced persons (DP) camp; and the racial intrigue of her adoption by a WASPy American family who practice the art of genteel antisemitism, denying and disguising all traces of her origins. Generically speaking, Ullman’s novel does many things. It draws especially on varied modes of melodrama (Holocaust melodrama, the maternal melodrama, the passing melodrama). It is also an archly gothic tale whose fizz and frisson derive from Ullman’s engagement with the mysteries of heredity and the occult domain of psychoanalysis, a science of both origins and the uncanny. Her reliance on genres often characterized as outmoded, historically vestigial, and associated with lurid excess—past forms that may embarrass present sensibilities, in other words—reproduces at the level of form the questions of periodization and supersession that cling to blood as a highly disreputable yet seemingly irresistible figure for describing racial and genealogical emplotment.1 Ullman explores the young woman’s pivot from a cultivated indifference about her origins to a headlong search for her lost mother. This shift is the consequence of the novel’s remarkable formal and narrative machinations: the woman relates her personal history to a psychotherapist but is overheard at every turn by the novel’s eavesdropping narrator, who is driven to intervene silently in her story, covertly directing her to historical details that reveal the circumstances of her birth amid the devastation of the Holocaust and its early aftermath. Ullman is interested in the forms and figures—blood chief among them—that her characters turn to in their attempts to understand their own genealogical emplotment and especially the relative determinism or contingency of who they are in light of what they believe they have inherited. In a 2009 New York Times op-ed published while she was writing By Blood, Ullman, herself an adoptee, mused on her own preference for the unknown over the known past: “I like mysteries. I like the sense of uniqueness that comes from having unknown origins (however false that sense may be).” She characterizes this penchant as historically out of joint, a sensibility derived from “the dense pages of 19th century fiction, where one’s origins—the exact mother and father—are not nearly as important as one’s ‘circumstances.’” In this piece, she argues that this attitude represents something of a romantic rebellion against a prevailing contemporary logic that incites individuals to socially discipline their sense of who they are by seeking out the determinative facts of their origin. The apparent intelligibility of such information, she cautions, is deceptive. The sanitizing rigor of a genetic conception of heredity—which as we’ll see is what Montagu in the 1940s optimistically prescribes as a corrective to the messy racial politics of blood—is equally an occult zone: “There are adoptive parents and biological parents, surrogates and donors—adults of all sorts claiming parenthood by right of blood, genes, birth, law and affection” (“My Secret Life”). Genetic facts, she implies, depend on interpretation and the ascription of meaning. In By Blood, Ullman considers not just how an individual claims or is claimed by particular progenitors but also the cultural, ethnic, national, and racial identifications in which such claims are embedded. The patient’s infatuation with an imagined portrait of her mother extends metonymically to a precipitous identification with her mother’s Jewishness, which she expresses in markedly naïve terms. I read Ullman to be asking

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how we contend with the supposed romance of bloodlines lost and found in light of blood’s centrality to ideologies of racial determinism and histories of racial terror. I also understand her to be obliquely engaging our own genetic present—a time when increasing numbers of people look to genetic genealogy and what the anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj calls “genetic history,” which allow individuals to affirm or newly claim ancestral identities seemingly legible in their DNA (Abu El-Haj 3). As Abu El-Haj suggests, such pursuits in the murky and consequential domain of genetic and narrative meaningmaking raise novel epistemological and political issues, activating enduring questions about determinism in new ways, as the genetic past is conscripted for projects of ethnic or cultural self-fashioning. Ullman, I argue, is interested in closely related questions about the historical determinism or contingency of identity beyond the mere fact of birth, as well as the long, imperfectly periodizable racial history of blood as a figure for heredity and belonging.

AGAINST PERIODIZATION? First published in 2000 (under its UK title, Between Camps), Paul Gilroy’s Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line self-consciously situates itself in a moment of historical transformation or crisis in what Gilroy calls “raciology.” We are in the midst, Gilroy writes, of a “profound transformation in the way the idea of ‘race’ is understood and acted upon” (11). These changes to the lived reality of race and to the politics of racialization are premised on what he describes as changes in the “underlying … mechanisms that govern how racial differences are seen, how they appear to us and prompt specific identities” (11). In other words, the ontology of race has shifted along with the technologies that make race visible, sensible, and knowable. Chief among these technological shifts is the “rise of gene-oriented or genomic constructions of ‘race’” (14–15). These developments have an ambiguous status in his argument. On the one hand, the genomic conception of race is implicated in raciology’s continued purchase and in new iterations of biological determinism. On the other, Gilroy ascribes to genomics the potential to undermine race, in large part through scalar transformations in the way we conceive and perceive the body: “at the smaller than microscopic scales that open up the body for scrutiny today, ‘race’ becomes less meaningful, compelling, or salient to the basic tasks of healing and protecting ourselves” (37). Gilroy’s assessment of the genomic present compels him to a statement about the “superseded” regime of old ideas about race premised on perceptible and especially visual taxonomies of difference. These, he writes, may now be “outmoded,” “anachronistic,” and “even vestigial”; “‘race’ should be approached as an afterimage” and the genomic may point, counterintuitively, “toward ‘race’s’ overcoming” (37). Gilroy’s characterization of a changeable—and changing—race concept in crisis constitutes the backdrop and counterpoint to his argument about the ethically necessary but politically difficult work of moving “beyond” race and especially the color line. Indeed, at the heart of Gilroy’s argument is a wager that “the dismal orders of power and differentiation—defined by their persistent intention to make the mute body disclose and conform to the truths of its racial identity—can be roughly periodized” (46). Against Race is an intellectual touchstone for the political urgency and erudition with which it maps the itinerary of the race concept in modernity. It is of special interest, too, in the context of cultural memory: such a genealogy of the race concept is necessitated in part, Gilroy argues, by the waning memory of twentieth-century fascism, which for a time seemed to mute or at least to muffle the unabashed articulation of race as a legitimate

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technology of social organization and a legitimate scientific or intellectual pursuit (25). However, Gilroy’s sharp periodization, and the finality with which he announces the end of what he describes as “intermediate” regimes of racialization, now “irrecoverably over” (47) is belied by the relative status of the epidermal and the visual, the cultural and the genealogical, and the genetic and the molecular, in the present. To periodize in the way that Gilroy does is to understate the extent to which supposedly residual racial formations endure, not just as vestiges or afterimages but as mutually constituting discourses that affirm rather than successively displace one another. Gilroy’s cautious hope that a genomic conception of the body will gradually undermine a prior racial anatomy through the dramatic difference it entails in scale and scopic technologies oddly repeats the midcentury aspiration, articulated at another moment of racial crisis, that a remaking of race as a population-level genetic difference would help render physical differences irrelevant by insisting that race was only meaningful at a molecular level invisible to the non-specialist eye. Gilroy shares neither this discourse’s serenity about the possibility of a pure “new” science untainted by the old, nor its simultaneous desire to retain a sanitized concept of race as a meaningful category of human differentiation, available for inquiry and speculation to a class of scientific experts. Moreover, his conviction that new modes of seeing and scaling the body might profoundly rearrange the priority and meaning of racial signifiers such as skin, which seem like natural, undeniable facts of the body we cannot not see (Tucker 7), is substantiated by the highly variable sensorial and political histories of the raced body and racial perception (Tucker; Cheng; Adrienne Brown; Wheeler). However, what I want to stress here are not the justifiable reasons to focus on the changing regimes of race which can be periodized, albeit in messier ways than Gilroy pursues, but rather the persistence of racial figures that endure as organizing metaphors that lose little of their rhetorical and figural power for being perceptually, scientifically, or discursively superseded. The power of these residual formations to hang on and even replenish the discourses that are supposed to supersede them is vividly clear in the case of blood. In 1943, in the midst of the Second World War, the American anthropologist Ashley Montagu published a short piece titled “The Myth of Blood,” which appeared, somewhat peculiarly, in the journal Psychiatry. Montagu, a student of Franz Boas, was an energetic figure in interwar and postwar efforts to make science an instrument of antiracism, and to organize biological and social scientists in support of this aspiration. Like Boas, he was born into a Jewish family (his birth name was Israel Ehrenberg) and experienced antisemitic discrimination. In the late 1940s, he would emerge as a central figure in the postwar efforts I’ve alluded to above, at UNESCO and elsewhere, to remake the science of the race concept. Already in 1943, he was a key voice in a liberal antiracist discourse that sought to move “beyond” race by demonstrating its incoherence, incorrectness, and immorality, all of which made race—per the title of his 1942 classic (now in its 6th ed.)—Man’s Most Dangerous Myth. In “The Myth of Blood,” Montagu sets out to demystify and decisively rebut the persistent notion that “blood”—“that most quintessential element of the body”— had anything at all to do with race and its transmission (15). With the air of a man professionally committed to elucidating racial facts to an intransigent public enamored of racial “myths,” Montagu patiently outlines how in fact blood is altogether unrelated to the “transmission of hereditary characters” (17). He strenuously refutes in particular the belief that the blood of the mother is transmitted to the child, and hence becomes a part of the child … Scientific knowledge of the processes of pregnancy have long ago

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made it perfectly clear that there is no actual passage of blood from mother to child. The developing child manufactures its own blood, and the character of its various blood cells is demonstrably different from that of either of its parents. The mother does not contribute blood to the foetus. This fact should for ever [sic] dispose of the ancient notion, which is so characteristically found among primitive peoples, that the blood of the mother is continuous with that of the child. […] Any claims to kinship based on the tie of blood can have no scientific foundation whatever. Nor can claims of group consciousness based on blood be anything but fictitious, since the character of the blood of all human beings is determined not by their membership in any group or nation but by the fact that they are human beings. (18) As we may surmise from the drift of Montagu’s argument, his clarification of the science of hereditary transmission and maternal reproduction is politically situated. His article is occasioned, he explains, by the war then well underway, and by the virulence of Nazi racial theories that have elevated the “blood myth” to a principle of history and a justification for racial terror. He is evidently keen to insist on the universality of the human (“the character of the blood of all human beings is determined … by the fact that they are human beings”) (18). But he must concede one point: Nazism is hardly alone in the conviction that blood is paramount in the making of not just familial lineage but national and racial identity. The power of blood as a racial figure is so central, its status as the imagined medium for cultural and familial inheritance so enduring, that “it is easy to understand how, with such a concept of blood, the community or nation would come to regard itself as of one blood, distinct, by blood, from all other communities or nations” (15, italics original). It is here that we gain some insight into why this strange little piece might have appeared in a professional journal of psychiatry, for as Montagu notes in his opening remarks, the demystifying facts about blood’s relationship to race stand little chance of persuasion against the occult power of words and the stories we attach to them: “It is Freud who said, in his Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, that ‘Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power’” (15). Remarkably, Montagu turns to one occult science, psychoanalysis, to explain the occult fascination or what he might call primitive magic of a racial science theorized in the blood.2 Indeed, he muses, in the lexicon of “Western man,” race has only recently come into its political and emotional freight, unlike blood, which has pulsated with “high emotional content” since “the beginning of recorded history” (15). Montagu proposes, in essence, that race is something of a metonymic vampire, drawing its power from its attachment to another figure, blood, whose apparently timeless association with stories of descent, inheritance, and transmission imbues it with strange power. His argument is thus about periodization and the temporality of racial meaning; the parasitic dynamic he describes disturbs not just categorization but also linear succession. The feminist science studies scholar, Donna Haraway, turns to precisely this figure of the vampire, and its contamination of categories and lineages, in her wonderful meditation on racial periodization, “Race: Universal Donors in a Vampire Culture.” Like Gilroy’s volume, Haraway’s essay (first published in 1995) is also a turn-of-thecentury attempt to take stock of and periodize race’s ontologies. In Haraway’s case, her anxiety about periodization leads her cheekily to adopt a device, the table or chart, that makes exaggeratedly visible the artificiality of her divisions among twentieth-century

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racial regimes. Like Gilroy, Haraway is interested in the jostling and displacement of “key objects of knowledge” (218) in the theorization of human sameness and difference; for her, these are race in its “old” taxonomic sense, which at midcentury is displaced by the genetic population, which in turn cedes priority at or around 1975 to the genome. For Haraway, vampires are gothic figures of category confusion and contamination; they are the “the vectors of infection that trouble racial categories in twentieth-century bioscientific constructions of universal humanity” (214). Much like Montagu, who must unwillingly concede blood’s undead and undying force, and who also observes race’s readiness to nourish itself on this elixir (in Haraway’s terms, blood and race are both “universal donors”), Haraway too is interested in the persistence of blood and the limits of periodization. Tracking the “Symbolic and Technical Status of Blood” across her three periodizing divisions, she observes a shift as blood seemingly changes status; once synonymous with kinship, race, family, and culture, its symbolic centrality appears to wane as it comes to function instead as a medium for other ways of engaging the body, for instance as the vehicle of DNA retrieval. However, as Haraway herself observes with fascination, blood courses through her rumination: “Sampling blood is never an innocent symbolic act. The red fluid is too potent, and blood debts are too current. Stories lie in wait even for the most carefully literal-minded. Blood’s translations into the sticky threads of DNA, even in the aseptic databases of cyberspace, have inherited the precious fluid’s double-edged power” (253). Blood’s power is its organizing role in the delineation of the reproductive norms and familial fantasies that determine kinship, descent, and inheritance. As Montagu ruefully reflects in 1943, blood interrupts the effort to periodize, much less transcend, a racial regime and the racial ontologies that animate it, thanks to its hold on our metaphorical imagination for conceiving, describing, and inhabiting familial relations and the forms of belonging (national, racial) that are cast as quasi-metaphorical extensions of the family. Indeed, these familial forms and their “dramas of identity and reproduction” cut across Haraway’s racial periods (265). The insight of Haraway’s piece is to show how important historical discontinuities and differences in the production of race as a biological fact and an object of knowledge, which demand and deserve historicization and periodization, nonetheless remain tethered to remarkably persistent stories of familial reproduction and genealogical descent. While these stories quite literally change their face—Haraway offers a paradigmatic “family portrait” that corresponds to each epoch—familial forms and reproductive practices are the enduring matrix from which emerge each period’s dominant model for conceiving human unity and difference, from the family tree to the universal family of man. If, as Haraway notes, “biology’s epistemological and technical task,” at least in the postwar period, “has been to produce a historically specific kind of human unity: namely, membership in a single species, the human race, Homo sapiens” (217), then her point is that the history of the race concept demonstrates that we have not yet learned to “produce humanity through something more and less than kinship” (265). This familial story of “ties through blood—including blood recast in the coin of genes and information”—unfurls across the periodizing differences and disjunctures in the biological, technical, and political life of race, emerging as the “braided narrative line” that holds them together (265). In the most general sense, Haraway highlights what we know from decades of feminist scholarship about race as a discourse of sexual hygiene (265). However, my interest in her method and argument stems from her focus, as a feminist science studies scholar, on the facticity (or, conversely, de-ontologization) of race as it is made and remade in

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the precincts of biological knowledge production. Through her meta-reflection on racial periodization, Haraway demonstrates how a supposedly superseded concept of race cathects to sexual and genealogical fictions of descent, inheritance, and transmission and so accrues, recursively, a kind of continuity of its own despite and against our desire to mark and demarcate its beginnings and endings. Race is not just one object of knowledge among others, superseded by the population or the genome; it is the name for the work of racialization that persists even as the priority of one or another concept of race shifts or gives way. Race is the vampire metaphor that holds together the categories. And it does so, Haraway argues, in part through its genealogical imaginaries organized “like sex, [around] the purity of lineage; the legitimacy of passage; and the drama of inheritance of bodies, property and stories” (213). The emphasis on race as a genealogical imaginary orients us to a second meaning of the memory of race. To recall, I have thus far been arguing that the memory of race is one plausible term for describing the character of the race concept as simultaneously intractable and plastic. It gets at the force with which certain racial figures persist and even animate the discourses that are supposed to have superseded them; as such, it names the difficulties of periodizing race. However, the memory of race is also a phrase with which to capture race’s role in the stories individuals and communities tell about themselves, as they explain their own genealogical embeddedness (or estrangement), and emplot their place in lines of transmission and inheritance. Such questions are enmeshed with the questions of racial epistemology and racial periodization that I sketched above. Racial meaning-making as self-fashioning and genealogical practice necessarily depends on the repertoire of concepts, figures, and technologies that give race its apparent purchase in any of its “periods.” Ullman’s novel takes up the unstable figure of blood in order to engage both senses of the memory of race that I have mapped here. As I will argue, she thematizes both its apparent archaism as a prior, purportedly superseded racial signifier as well as its enduring purchase thanks to what Susan Gillman has called its “excess of meanings within the terms of racial discourse” (46).

ON GENEALOGY Ullman’s title, By Blood, has multiple resonances. Most obviously, it implies the familiar phrase “related by blood,” a figure of speech that treats blood as the medium of kinship and genealogical filiation. Relatedly, it evokes blood as a distinguishing mark, for instance in the nominalizing way that someone might describe themselves, or be described, as belonging “by blood” to one or another ethnic, racial, or national community. The phrase also suggests blood as a semiotic secretion, producing meaning or confirming knowledge, for instance in the medico-scientific locution “determined by blood.” But the title also conveys something less tangible, more akin to a mood or atmosphere—a sense of heightened drama and even luridness. Such an atmosphere is decidedly at work in Ullman’s novel, and my discussion of the text has to begin with some consideration of its striking form, and Ullman’s canny mobilization of the generic conventions of melodrama and the gothic. Ullman’s novel is a tightly crafted chamber drama that concerns two chambers: adjoining rooms in a moodily dilapidated office building in San Francisco in 1974. One is occupied by a psychotherapist whose patient the young woman is. The other is occupied by the novel’s unreliable narrator, a former professor relieved of his position and under investigation for various infringements on privacy (voyeurism, stalking) and propriety

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(a homoerotic fixation on a student) to which he darkly alludes. When the therapist turns off the white-noise machine each session at the patient’s request, the disgraced but evidently unreformed narrator listens avidly to their every word. Eventually, he intervenes in the patient’s story, unearthing and anonymously communicating key archival fragments that set her on the path to reconstructing her genealogical history and recovering, perhaps, her lost mother. Even as the novel’s action grows increasingly complex, with far-flung travels of the roots-seeking sort, it is unvaryingly conveyed through this overheated and overheard perspective, as the dutiful analysand relates every twist and turn of her search to the therapist and, unwittingly, to the man closeted in the room next door. The therapeutic dialogue unfolding in the analyst Dr. Dora Schussler’s office takes on its own dizzying complexity, meanwhile, as the patient plays for Dr. Schussler recordings she makes of her conversations with the mother she eventually locates in Jaffa, in IsraelPalestine. The multiply mediated maternal voice (recorded, relayed, overheard, and related to the reader) is thus conjured in the room, provoking a set of questions about the naturalness or artificiality of the maternal function (Marder) that in turn speak to the novel’s preoccupation with what, if anything, the mere fact of birth means for a thick sense of relation, kinship, or cultural belonging. Each of these formal elements, not least the novel’s commitment to the psychoanalytic or therapeutic scene, also signals its indebtedness to melodrama. As Linda Williams nicely observes of Peter Brooks’s seminal account, The Melodramatic Imagination, for Brooks psychoanalysis is the “ultimate model of melodrama,” whose “payoff is in the final ability of the mode to speak the unspeakable, to express the inexpressible” (Williams 18, see also P. Brooks 4). However this quality, coupled with the element of sheer narrative and sentimental excess that Brooks pinpoints as the genre’s signature, makes melodrama a provocative choice for a Holocaust narrative. As John Zilcosky has observed in his work on Holocaust melodrama, melodrama’s formal impulse to reveal all and say everything would seem to run directly counter to longstanding aesthetic and ethical norms about Holocaust representation that insist on respecting the unsayable or unrepresentable (693– 8). Zilcosky theorizes Holocaust melodrama via a reading of W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, not incidentally another novel about a lost mother with a highly mediated narrative form, and a text I think Ullman implicitly engages. Unlike Austerlitz’s spectral mother who remains melancholically out of reach, the patient finds her mother and extracts from her a blunt acknowledgment of their biological relation—“I cannot say it more directly than this: You. Are. The. Daughter. I. Gave. Away. In. Belsen”—but finds herself burdened too with the weight and unruliness of her mother’s story, which introduces historical dimensions and moral ambiguities that challenge the patient’s desire for maternal recovery and psychic closure (330). The mother’s story encompasses rape and sexual violence, as well as sexuality’s instrumentalization as a strategy of survival. As such, it speaks to the highly gendered ways in which Holocaust victims experienced suffering and survival, a perspective that feminist historians and cultural critics have observed was only belatedly accepted in Holocaust scholarship and still demands more work.3 And yet here too melodrama’s excess and moralism, or what Brooks calls its “drama” of the “moral occult,” are at work (P. Brooks 5). The mother’s story reveals itself to be shot through with contradictions, deceptions, and intrigues that threaten to make her into a gothic figure of monstrous motherhood—one who, as she herself insists, the patient would be better off without. Indeed, the novel draws from the gothic as well as melodramatic registers. The narrator’s persona and voice are Ullman’s most visible gothic signposts. His crepuscular

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references to his “morbid and afflicted” imagination; the depth of his obsession with the patient, which leads him weekly to “crouch behind the wall” in the dark, sitting inhumanly silent and still; and the sinister crows he describes crowding his consciousness, shouting “Her! Her! Her!” and goading him toward violence, all lend the novel its pervasive atmosphere of menace (65, 17). The gothic blight from which he suffers is not merely a “nervous condition” or a moral defect but the result of an incurably tainted lineage: a family with “long bloodlines of mad people stretching back in time, suicides running in our veins the way blue eyes were passed down in saner clans” (17, 47). For the narrator, the gothic’s exemplary domain is the horrors of heredity: the threat that the “impulses” of one’s “darker nature” may “issu[e] from the cells as surely as saliva or blood or urine, and with as little conscious opportunity to intervene in their production” (19). But while the narrator’s persona is the most reliable indication of Ullman’s reliance on gothic tropes, the anxiety of inheritance troubles each of the characters. As we learn late in the game in one of the novel’s many generic (and perhaps genetic) conceits, analyst Dora Schussler is the estranged daughter of a high-ranking German Nazi, anguished by what she describes as an ineradicable historical and genealogical stain of inherited guilt (145). However, it is the patient herself who emerges as an especially poignant figure: the gothic child who finds herself drawn to the secrets of the past and who discovers there an apparent confirmation that the sense of unbelonging, even monstrosity, she has experienced as an adoptee may in fact be a matter of her flesh and blood, irremediably other and marked by a racial taint. This improbable trio’s relationship comes to mimic the parent-child triangle, as the analyst experiences unmanageable transference and the narrator takes to describing himself, ominously, as the patient’s father. They are bound together not just by the force of the Freudian family form but also by the allure of the Freudian family romance, with a shared yearning for “a possible release from the clammy hand of ancestry” (17). For the patient and both her devoted listeners, the appeal of unknown origins is the escape they offer from the burdens of familial inheritance and the constraints of genealogical emplotment. All adoptees, the narrator notes, have a special charisma thanks to this freedom. The patient is exceptional, however, for her defiant incuriosity about her own history, her seeming immunity to any longing for origins. Much of the drama of Ullman’s novel concerns the tension between two discursive modes of liberal intelligibility that the anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli calls the “autological subject” and “genealogical society.” In Povinelli’s account, the “autological subject” is a figure of purported self-determination and self-making, committed to the exercise of its sovereign freedoms. Such pursuits, in turn, necessarily put the autological subject at odds with “genealogical society,” which names practices and imaginaries of belonging and constraint that are given and inherited, preceding the individual’s arrival in the world and delimiting individual sovereignty according to the compulsions of the filial, the collective, and the cultural. In By Blood, this opposition is heightened and even hardened, taking on for the narrator the character of an absolute distinction. In his view, the patient is the “very mode[l] of self-creation,” well-versed in “the art of being parentless”; even as he furthers her search he silently exhorts her to abandon a project that will trade such singular freedom for “the banality of blood” and the punishing “weight of inheritance” (16, 30, 41). The truth of the patient’s family story is weighty indeed, and brings with it the promise and peril of not just parental claims but historical and communal ones as well. The patient, it emerges, was born to a Jewish mother shortly after the war in the Bergen-Belsen DP

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camp and surrendered to a Catholic adoption agency that spirits her to America. As the patient learns all this, the novel shifts into the melodramatic register of the passing narrative. As Daphne Brooks has argued, melodrama’s logic of “exposure” enfolds the raced body, which is reliably made to perform or express its racial truth (32–7, 52). But if melodrama is concerned with the revelation of the unspeakable truth, “what happens when that revelatory spectacle derives from the figure of the racially liminal body?” (D. Brooks 37). In Ullman’s novel, the patient repeatedly articulates her enduring feeling that she does not fit her family. She describes a subtle sense of what David Eng, in his work on transracial adoption, has described as an adoptee’s perceived “aesthetic discontinuity” with the adoptive family, which bespeaks the “racialization of intimacy” and the precarity of the adoptee’s “feeling of kinship” (150). Eng’s work on the fractures of racial kinship assumes that racialized difference is a visible or epidermal difference. In By Blood, the specter of racial difference is not manifestly visible in this way: “From the outside, we seemed such a well-matched family. […] And there I am: blond, too. Well, ‘dirty blond,’ Mother was sure to point out; perhaps we should fix that, she’d say. And then there were my hazel eyes. Don’t squint so, she’d always say. It makes your eyes go dark” (34). Upon discovering her birth mother’s Jewishness and her parent’s distaste for the history they have hidden from her, the patient returns to these differences of face and feature, but now in a way that registers the “dirty” blond of her hair as a racial epithet: “Me, with my eyes gone dark and my dirty blond hair—dirty! All I could think was: I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew, I’m a Jew” (100). The patient repeatedly draws on the language of racial marks and taints and “racial hatred” to name the feelings she had all along of her own difference and unbelonging (55). More specifically, she draws on figures of racial undecidability that Brooks notes cling to mixed-race or otherwise racially ambiguous characters, and which Brooks argues are especially suited to melodrama, with its plots of excess and exposure. Yet as the patient learns more about the circumstances of her birth and encounters objects that move her, such as photographs from the DP camp and a recording of Bergen-Belsen’s newly liberated prisoners singing the Zionist (and, later, Israeli) anthem Hatikvah, she finds herself identifying in novel ways with a people she now imagines she might claim, and who might claim her in return. As she describes the photographs and recording to Dr. Schussler, she exclaims with great emotion: I looked at the women preparing food, at the babies. One of them might be me! […] And I wish I could play for you the cassette I received … I have never heard anything so … heartbreaking in my life. If one of the voices was my mother’s, I couldn’t be prouder of her than if she’d been—I don’t know who, the Queen of Sheba. Do you understand? I come from these extraordinary people, I realized I am … overwhelmed with … Oh, God. I can’t explain it. (176) In this striking moment, the patient is gripped by the possibly that she once was—and may again be—enfolded in such a scene of community. Moreover, she is unutterably moved by the thought of that community’s survival or rebirth, in the form of the natal promise of the children born in the DP camp. At the same time, her recourse to cliché to express her awe (her mother as the Queen of Sheba) and her inability to fully articulate or complete her thought signal, respectively, the precarity of this new identification and the difficulty of reinserting herself into this genealogical history.

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Ullman probes an organizing tension: on the one hand, this broken line of transmission suggests that for the patient, the possibility of any thick identification with Jewishness has been destroyed by the circumstances of her birth and surrender in the crucible of racial terror and genocide. On the other, the patient and those around her are compelled by the half-formed conviction that her Jewishness is a given, an inarguable and inviolable fact of her birth. Indeed, Ullman plays with the conceit that Jewishness may impose an especially strong version of genealogical society, in part through a literalism about the status of blood.4 As the patient narrates to her analyst how she has wrested from her adoptive mother the truth of what she describes as her racial origins, the narrator laments that his vision of the patient as a “self-created individual, freed from the ownership implied by the inheritance of one’s parents’ genes” is now threatened by the fleshly claims that attend “the physical facts … the blood and guts of birth” (182–3). “Now there was a body, a mother to whom a physical debt was due,” the narrator muses. “And not just any mother,” he continues, “but a Jewish one. The patient was thereby lashed not only to Maria G. but, through her, to an entire tribe, thousands of years of history, familial relationships going back in time—if one believes it—all the way to Avram …” (183). As Povinelli emphasizes, genealogical society describes not just the constraints purportedly imposed by custom or cultural fidelity but also describes the supposed facticity of race or ethnicity as the sticky, bloody matrix that establishes “the truth of the body” that exists “behind, or before, the individual,” generating “a material legacy beyond the control of a person or a society,” and circumscribing the possibilities of newness that the autological subject introduces into the world (201–3). For the patient, both her initial horror and subsequent fascination with her Jewish origins turn in part on what she apprehends as the implacable facticity of an identity inscribed in her flesh and blood. However, the (first) climactic scene of the novel’s maternal melodrama upends this identification. When the patient locates her mother in Jaffa and appears on her doorstep, among the first things her mother communicates is that the patient was surrendered for adoption because “I wanted to make sure you would not be a Jew” (219). There is much afoot in this moment, which echoes Daniel Deronda, as one critic has noted (Kirsch). As the patient’s mother, Michal, tells it, she is motivated by the desire to spare the patient not just the memory of trauma (i.e., the burden of inheriting a history of racialized violence) but also the stigma of racialization. But later she tells a second story as well, in which her renunciation of her daughter is a refusal to make the child available for what she describes as the natal politics of a Zionist project of territorial settlement and reproductive nationalism (319–21). The novel’s meditation on Zionism is ambiguous. While Ullman restages the moment in Daniel Deronda when Daniel’s mother tells him that she sought to spare him the stigma of Jewish origins, she troubles the denouement of Eliot’s novel, which ends with Daniel sailing for Palestine, properly emplotted now into a Jewish national project. At the same time, the patient’s mother’s critique—“I refused to let you be a pawn in the Zionist cause. I saw no future for anyone … I had lost my illusions about the Zionists”—is paired with a long, wounded lecture she offers on the vulnerability of Israel, besieged by embittered Palestinians, prevented from being “a normal country, with good and bad … like everyone else,” and set upon by a global movement that has made Palestinians “the current cause célèbre of anti-imperialism” (326). Such clichés lead the reader to wonder if this is merely Daniel Deronda redux, with the threat this time posed by the twenty-first-century critic of Zionism rather than the nineteenth-century European antisemite, and the patient’s mother (and perhaps Ullman herself) only too eager to conflate the two.

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I think the novel can be read in a more complex way, though perhaps against its own grain. It is worth noting here that Ullman’s novel follows, up to a point, the trajectory of now canonical roots-seeking texts such as Alex Haley’s 1976 Roots, which have been a mainstay of contemporary American diasporic cultural practice. Williams reads Roots for its racial melodrama and observes that the text situates the lost and now-recovered home as a “space of innocence.” Haley’s tears at his homecoming are the “melodramatic recognition of his own racial virtue as it is linked to the virtue and suffering of his ancestor and all the generations in between” (223). By Blood, in contrast, refuses emotional catharsis or the psychic closure of kinship recovered and recognized. The patient’s mother acknowledges their biological tie even as she rejects any felt or future bond with her daughter, whom she sends away with the words “do not look for me again” (331). And while the patient argues that she is if nothing else Jewish like her mother, insisting “I am the daughter of a Jewish woman” and so “a Jew is something I am … everyone believes it is [inherited]!” her mother refuses even this identification, declaring “You are not a Jew just because I bore you. […] It is not inherited. […] That is some nonsense made up by racists and old rabbis” (330). The patient’s mother rejects her daughter’s claim that the mere fact of birth, or of blood in its literal or figurative senses, secures any thick claim to identity. Equally, she challenges a kinship melodrama in which the daughter is resutured into filial or communal relation by her willingness to receive her mother’s story of racial persecution and trauma, and so share her moral suffering. What I find especially significant is the way that this startling insistence on purposefully sundered filial and communal ties highlights the complexities of postmemory and its transmission. On first finding her mother in Israel, the patient promptly purchases a tape recorder and insists that mother and daughter enact the exemplary scene of postmemory: the transmission, often belated, difficult, or repressed, of one generation’s experience of historical trauma to the “generation after” (Hirsch 3). As Marianne Hirsch has argued, postmemory names a structure of feeling, describing the second generation’s relationship to a past they themselves did not experience and so do not remember, even as its spoken or unspoken presence entails the “risk [of] having one’s own life stories displaced, even evacuated, by our ancestors” (5). I read Hirsch’s theorization of postmemory as an aspect of “genealogical society” in Povinelli’s sense: an inheritance that binds the present to the past in such a way as to delimit the second-generation subject’s horizon of possibility for pursuing a life story that is self-authored. However, Hirsch also insists that postmemory is not an identity but a “generational structure of transmission embedded in multiple forms of mediation” (35). If postmemory is genealogical it is metaphorically so, open to what she describes as affiliative memory not constrained by either biological relation or the strictly “oedipal and heteronormative reproductive form of social organization” (39). Hirsch notes that the mother-daughter scene of postmemory’s transmission is especially prone to collapse into sameness and appropriation, since the pull of an assumed bodily relation is so powerful (79–97). As such, one way to read the patient’s mother’s response to her daughter’s wished-for identification is as a rejection of the purportedly natural lines of not only biological but also historical transmission. Indeed, in the novel’s closing pages, the patient makes a final visit to Israel where she finds a sister who confronts her with an overwhelming experience of recognition: “She looked like me. Exactly like me. […] Eyes, mouth, chin, cheekbones, shape of the head—the same, the same, the same, the same” (355). However, the shock of sameness and the impression of uncanny, gothic doubling are tempered by the profound differences that quickly become apparent in the two sisters’ life stories, and in their differing relationships to Jewishness, to the Israeli

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nation-state, and to their mother. Ullman’s choice to place her final emphasis on a sororal rather than maternal figure shifts our focus away from the real or wished-for continuities of linear transmission and instead draws our attention to a branching or splitting off, and the difference and contingency that this entails. By Blood also speaks to the questions of racial periodization I discussed in the first part of this essay. In a brief review of the novel for the journal Adoption and Culture, the sociologist and gender studies scholar E. Kay Trimberger observes that “the central question of the novel—how important is one’s genetic heritage, one’s blood?—is not one of that earlier era” when Ullman’s novel is set. “In the 1970s, many in the adoption community, as well as most social scientists and feminists, would not ask this question for they believed nurture was everything,” Trimberger writes (257). However, Ullman’s 2009 New York Times essay makes clear that she is closely attuned to questions provoked by contemporary practices of genetic meaning-making for the purposes of individual and collective self-fashioning. Among the most salient such developments today is the growing scientific and popular investment in the field of genetic genealogy, which demands historicization as part of a longer story of the twentieth-century itinerary of race science and the race concept. In her 2012 book, The Genealogical Science, Abu El-Haj focuses on the popularization of genetic ancestry testing among Jews and Jewish communities. As the authority of the natural sciences and of the master code of the genome appears to empirically verify and lend credibility to narratives of common ancestry and unbroken Jewish descent, she considers the entangled implications for the politics of epistemology, the problem of racial periodization, and the formation of cultural memory. She shows, for instance, how population-level studies pursued in Israel in the 1950s sought evidence about the common or disparate genetic origins of various Jewish communities as part of an effort to manage the biopolitical life of the population and legitimize the new state. Her analysis echoes the important critiques of midcentury population genetics I cited earlier, which have shown how population genetics at times relied on and reified the racial precepts it was supposed to make obsolete. Abu El-Haj’s work (like that of Alondra Nelson and Kim TallBear) highlights the difficulties of periodization that I discussed earlier, and the incompleteness of the epistemological and political ruptures in the race concept. It also helps to explain the enthusiastic turn to genetic history on the part of communities who have profoundly suffered the consequences of scientific racism, and the kinds of cultural work these emergent technologies enable. Specifically, Abu El-Haj stresses that the “social felicity” of genetic history today depends on subjects who are not just consumers of genetic ancestry technologies but also seekers of the authentic connection to the past that these technologies seem to promise (20). There is determinism at stake in the practice of genetic genealogy, she explains, but it is not quite the “old” biological determinism that some fear, in which a (racial) destiny is written in our genetic program (144). The genome as it is construed in genetic anthropology or genetic history has no biologically causal properties. Genetic history’s “determinism” emerges as a postfacto one. My true “cultural” self is legible in my genome. Upon learning who I have always already been—say, a Christian who discovers I have “Jewish markers”—I now desire (or should desire) to learn more about my culture … I desire to become or to come closer to being that which I truly am. Choice and essence are re-sutured in an a posteriori determining logic of choices made in light of knowledge of who I have always already been. (25)

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In other words, not just the future but the past is at stake. As Abu El-Haj describes it here, such projects of individual fashioning are about the recovery of a past through emplotment in a genealogy written in the body, or what she calls the existence of “a bodily memory” that is “not just a record of biological processes and facts” but rather of cultural practices that leave their trace in the genome (60). Although it is not a term Abu El-Haj uses, what she describes here might be characterized as a project of cultural memory—one deeply implicated in the biopolitics of diaspora and return, as her own work and Noah Tamarkin’s recent work on Lemba claims to Jewish ancestry have demonstrated. In my reading, By Blood questions blood’s enduring purchase as a figure for articulating genealogical inheritance and cultural filiation. Equally, it challenges the view—which we see in Montagu’s essay of the 1940s as well as in certain popular and scientific discourses of our own time—that a properly modern and sanitized commitment to the apparent certainties of genetic facts can move us beyond the stickiness of blood as a racial-cultural discourse. Much like the supposedly anachronistic formulations of race and heredity organized around blood, Ullman suggests, contemporary attempts to find or remake racial, ethnic, and cultural meaning in the genes are also among race’s occult sciences.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Brett Ashley Kaplan, Marianne Hirsch, and Zachary Samalin for their thoughtful engagements with this piece and their helpful suggestions, and to Samriddhi Agrawal for careful proofreading. My thanks also to audiences at Columbia University and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where I presented very early versions of some of this material.

NOTES 1. On melodrama’s perennially archaic or vestigial status, see especially Williams (11–12). 2. I draw inspiration here from Susan Gillman, who includes psychoanalysis among the early twentieth-century sciences that inflected race thinking and produced what she calls the racial occult (6, 48). 3. For a recent reflection on these methodological debates, see Farges et al.; on the gendered experience of Holocaust survivors in DP camps and in Germany after the war, see Grossmann. 4. For theoretical reflections on this trope, as well as on the centrality of blood as a marker of Jewish-Christian theological difference, see especially Biale as well as Anidjar and Hart.

CHAPTER THREE

The Memory of Racial Terror: The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum MARITA STURKEN

In the history of the United States, terrorism has been defined as a force that comes from elsewhere, a foreign attack on the nation. Within the myth of American exceptionalism, terrorism is narrated as actions that threaten the “American way of life,” that attack “our freedom.” Within this conceptual framework, the attacks of 9/11 were experienced as the quintessential terrorist attack, narrated as coming “out of the blue” to terrorize an innocent nation. Such formulations not only erase the long history of US imperial violence, but also the history of terrorist acts within the United States and its history of state terrorism. Erika Doss has written that in US history, terrorism has thus been reduced to the narrative of demonic foreigners or evil misfits, allowing it to remain outside of everyday American life (Doss 122; Sturken ch. 3). Yet for decades Civil Rights activists have advocated for a recognition that the history of racial violence in the United States is a history of racial terrorism. Civil Rights figures such as Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois and organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) spent many decades demanding that the practice of lynching be understood as a practice that terrorized whole communities. The definition of lynching as explicitly a form of racial terrorism, one that is foundational to the project of the United States, has more recently emerged into a broader public engagement (Hasian and Paliewicz Racial Terrorism 5). This is due in no small part to the opening in April 2018 in Montgomery, Alabama, of the Legacy Museum, a museum that connects slavery to segregation, lynching, and mass incarceration, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial to those killed in lynchings. The memorial and museum were created by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a nonprofit founded by lawyer Bryan Stevenson in 1989 that pursues legal advocacy in Alabama and beyond for death row inmates and those wrongfully accused or receiving

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excessive sentences. EJI began researching the history of lynching in 2010. Building on the work of the NAACP and other organizations, which had kept lists of lynchings, they were convinced that the numbers of lynchings had not been adequately counted. They eventually amassed an archive of over 4,400 lynchings in thirty-five states.1 According to EJI’s Lynching in America report, these “racial terror lynchings” “were carried out with impunity, sometimes in broad daylight, often ‘on the courthouse lawn.’” As Sherrilyn Ifill has written, the courthouse lawn lynching demonstrates the state sanctioning of lynchings at the local and state level. EJI has been working in the heart of the racist and unjust criminal justice system of Alabama, one of the worst states for legal representation, with inhumane prison conditions and high rates of incarceration for Blacks, including teenagers. In this context, in racist courtrooms and in a city filled with Confederate monuments, Stevenson came to understand that EJI’s legal project could only go so far without a broader change in the culture and its telling of history. Working with fellow attorney Sia Sanneh and a team, Stevenson began looking at the memory projects that have taken place in Germany in relation to Holocaust memory, in South Africa after Apartheid, and Rwanda after the massacres, and, as he has often narrated, he began to understand that in the United States there was a need for truth and reconciliation to deal with the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial injustice. In defining racial terrorism as a form of state-sanctioned terrorism, the museum and memorial specifically engage memory to bring the role of racial terrorism into public discourse. Terrorism alters everyday life through fear. It constitutes an unmaking of the world. Lynching in particular was a truly effective practice to this end. The terror of lynching, augmented through its spectacle, resulted in Blacks fleeing after potentially threatening encounters (in what are termed “near lynchings”), families who fled in the aftermath of lynching, and Blacks who lived with the constant fear of lynching as a terrorizing force in daily life. The Great Migration of 6 million Blacks out of the American South beginning in the early twentieth century was an exodus away from racial terrorism and the threat of violent death, a migration for which the terms forced exodus and refugees would be more accurate (Mock).2 Moreover, understanding lynching as terrorism requires turning the story on the white crowds, including white families, who watched those lynchings, to show that they were engaging in terrorism when they celebrated torture and murder as a public spectacle. Most importantly, the designation of lynching as terrorism demands a consideration of how terrorism has been at the heart of the US nation’s story, that white supremacy was incorporated into the nation’s founding (with an affirmation of slavery in the US Constitution), and has enabled centuries of white resistance to racial change that haunts the country’s major institutions and social structure, from the educational system, to housing and human welfare, economic access and opportunity, and criminal justice. In other words, this means to recognize that the “American way of life” (so often defended against foreign terrorism) has been and continues to be one of racial terror. In this essay, I argue that the lynching memorial and museum created by EJI do more than memorialize lynching victims. They constitute a radical intervention into the memory culture that has emerged over the last few decades in the United States. They do this through innovative forms of memorialization, and with the intent to use memory to resist national narratives. As projects of memory activism, they offer challenges to the largely nationalist aims of US memorialization in the “memory boom” since the early 1980s. The Legacy Museum and National Memorial of Peace and Justice stand in particular in sharp

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contrast to the national story told by the 9/11 memorial and museum in New York, and as such, I would argue, help to demarcate the end of the post-9/11 era, an era preoccupied with memory and the threat of foreign terrorism. With uprisings and protests over racial injustice and the domestic terrorism of the attack on the US Capital on January 6, 2021, there has been a shift to a public recognition that the dominant threat to the nation is from within, from domestic terrorism and white nationalism, sanctioned by many with power in the US government. These two memory projects in Alabama signal a new era in US relationship to race and social justice, one that has cracked open the discourse about race as the shaping force of US society and conflict. Significantly, memorialization, rather than legal strategies, has been the primary strategy for their intervention into public understanding of racial injustice.

EJI’S COMMUNITY REMEMBRANCE PROJECT The proliferation of monuments to the confederacy in the American South and at sites like the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which were built over many decades long after the end of the Civil War ended in 1865, has long been a source of tension for advocates of racial justice. As Stevenson states regularly, “this landscape is littered with the iconography of the Confederacy,” with fifty-nine monuments to the Confederacy in the city of Montgomery alone. EJI initiated the Community Remembrance Project in response to this landscape in 2013. Rather than advocate to have the monuments removed (as many have done), EJI advocated for the insertion into the cityscape of Montgomery (and in other southern locations) a parallel history of slavery and racial violence. This began very simply with the erection of plaques throughout the downtown area that told the story of Montgomery’s history as a major slave port, where enslaved people were brought in by ship on the river, warehoused, and sold. According to Stevenson, in 1860, three-quarters of the population of Montgomery was enslaved people (EJI Legacy Museum). EJI also undertook one of its most extraordinary projects, the Soil Collection Project, at this time. In this project, volunteers collect dirt from the sites of documented lynchings, and place them in jars with the name of the victim and the date and place of the lynching. The jars of dirt are on display in the Legacy Museum and at the memorial pavilion next to the memorial. Simple in its initial aims, as a means to emphasize the actual sites of lynchings in the landscape, the Soil Collection Project evolved into a project of powerful material memory. The dirt is highly evocative—it ranges widely in color, from dark red hues to different shades of brown from light to dark. The variation is remarkable enough to evoke not only the individuals killed but also the landscape and the geography of the South. The soil is alive (some jars seem to have organic material growing in them). The dirt is evocative of the fact that the bodies of victims of lynchings were usually left on display for days as a form of terrorism, thus the soil in the jars is narrated as the bloodsoaked ground beneath hanging bodies. It is also a reminder of the crucial struggles over land (and the soil to grow crops) that were central to racial repression in the South, even to this day. In a certain sense, the jars are claiming a different kind of ownership over the land, to say that the dirt is owned by those whose sweat and blood saturated it, who own it through the comingling of the dirt with their bodies. Remarkably, participants often invoke DNA as a code for the potential trace of the victim in the dirt. One of the volunteers, Anthony Ray Hinton, who was released through

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FIGURE 3.1  Legacy Museum—Soil collection © Equal Justice Initiative/Human Pictures.

EJI’s advocacy after thirty years on death row for a crime he did not commit, speaks to the dead man when he gathers the dirt, “I came here today to hope that I can get your DNA and take it to a place where you will be respected, and not leave your DNA on this roadside in Montgomery, Alabama.”3 The gathering of the dirt is about ritual and speaking to the dead. In this sense, it is a multiply reparative process. The activity of digging the dirt together has been narrativized by Stevenson and others as a way to come together through shared labor. He tells one story in particular of a Black woman who was joined while digging by a white man who was so moved by the story, and wondered if his relatives had been among those who watched the lynching, that he brought the dirt with her back to EJI (Klein). The Legacy Museum displays several videos of gathering the dirt, and many of them depict moments when the volunteers feel compelled, as Hinton did, to speak to the dead. In one scene, former magistrate judge Vanzetta McPherson, digging the dirt for John Temple who was lynched in Montgomery, prays Our father in heaven, we pause so very briefly this morning to remember and to mourn a man who we did not know, but in so many ways a man we do know. We pray that the sacrifice that he so involuntarily made strengthens us, edifies us, and helps us to move forward in a way that will prevent this ever from occurring again.4 The soil project declares that the memory of those lynchings has been there, in the dirt, all along; by gathering the dirt and naming it, the project honors the soil as memory. It is also a powerful example of the ways that mourning a stranger can be a radical act—in her words, saying, we knew him, we recognize him.

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THE LEGACY MUSEUM: FROM ENSLAVEMENT TO MASS INCARCERATION The 2018 opening of the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice was the culmination of EJI’s remembrance projects. Both have received an extraordinary amount of attention and succeeded in bringing large numbers of visitors into Montgomery in the years since, to date 750,000. Montgomery was already one of several sites of Civil Rights Movement tourism, regularly featured on tours that go through Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery, given its important role in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 to 1956, which was instigated by Rosa Parks’s arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus for a white man. Stevenson is often asked why he didn’t want to build these memory projects in Washington, DC, given that they are defined as a national memorial and museum, not a local one, and he has stated that he wanted people to make the journey to Montgomery.5 The Legacy Museum is situated in a gentrifying downtown area, a few blocks from EJI. The Legacy Museum has as its primary argument that, as Stevenson often states, slavery in the United States did not end with the Emancipation Proclamation, it evolved, and that its racial oppression can be traced through several subsequent eras, of lynching/ racial terrorism, segregation, and finally, to the mass incarceration of Blacks in the present day. Rather than simply narrate a history, the museum makes an argument; as one commentator notes, the exhibit is structured “like a great legal argument” which “relies on both emotion and an accumulation of evidence” (Hobbs and Freudenberger). Stevenson’s persuasive rhetoric, legal reasoning, and racial philosophy suffuse all aspects of the project. The museum’s narration reveals a powerful belief that representing this history will have an enlightening effect on visitors and the national conversation about race, an effect that remains debatable (EJI Legacy Museum). It is Stevenson’s life story of working in the trenches of the Alabama criminal justice system, one that is told in his best-selling 2015 book Just Mercy and in the 2019 film made of it, that provides the intellectual framework of the exhibition and also its refusal to sugarcoat history (Stevenson Just Mercy). The museum’s narrative trajectory is segmented into four eras: Era 1: Slavery in America; Era 2: Racial Terror; Era 3: “Segregation Forever”; Era 4: Mass Incarceration. The museum intends to have visitors arrive at its final section understanding the “legacies” (hence the museum’s name) handed down over the decades from slavery to present-day mass incarceration. In this sense, the museum is, in the words of Jake Barton, whose firm Local Projects designed the exhibition, an “activist museum” that has as its primary aim not to tell a history, but to make an argument about the present, and, in its most ambitious aim, to transform visitors into those who will act.6 Part of how the museum achieves this is to refuse in many ways to tell a story of uplift. As Alison Landsberg writes, “To dismantle the widely accepted triumphalist narrative that moves from slavery to abolition to Civil Rights, the visitor is asked to see what has remained constant throughout these four periods instead of what has changed.” Landsberg argues that the museum’s focus on the present as the primary temporal narrative mode means that it is effectively rejecting the conventional notion of the history museum, which is that history is in the past and separate from the present. For these reasons, Landsberg argues that the Legacy Museum is a memory museum, rather than a history museum, and this strategy is because history “has not been successful at fueling political change, for advancing social justice around race.” Memory, she argues, can be deployed in the museum to actively encourage visitors

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to see racial violence within the present as existing on a continuum with histories of slavery and lynching. She states, “Memory with its porous temporal boundaries tends to collapse the division between past and present. To remember enslavement, racially motivated violence, and dispossession would be to feel its ongoing presence in the present and in so doing to open debate about who we are as a nation.” The Legacy Museum tactically situates visitors in relation to the present through a series of technological strategies that deploy memory to blur distinctions between past and present. Upon entry into the museum, visitors are confronted with a series of dark cells, like the cells where enslaved people were warehoused in nearby buildings before they were auctioned. Here, ghost-like figures on life-size video screens come to life, moving from a hazy view into focus, as if they are holograms, when one leans toward the wooden bars of the cell, and they begin to talk directly to the visitor. One woman pleads, “Help me find my children!” Several sing hymns, two children call out, “Momma! Have you seen our momma?” There is a significant amount of artifice here that asks viewers to engage in a different mode than many museum displays, although the words are derived from actual enslaved people narratives. The form of direct address to the visitor is a confrontation—one feels obligated to stay through their speaking, not to turn away. The aim here is to create empathy by inserting contemporary visitors via technology into a time frame of the past, asking us, what would you have done if confronted with an actual enslaved person pleading for help? From the beginning, then, the museum display situates the past explicitly within the present and signals that it will demand that visitors engage at the level of complicity with the exhibition content. The museum also signals that it will create different kinds of subject positions for visitors according to race and nationality. White visitors’ responses to the animated figures are likely to incorporate a sense of guilt, discomfort, and empathy, whereas for African American visitors, these displays speak to much more specific legacies of pain and the deep familial memories of violence. The museum exhibition narrates the trajectory of slavery, lynching, segregation, and mass incarceration through an onslaught of information and media, with a timeline extending across the walls and floor on the left and corresponding exhibitions on the right, including multiple interactive video screens with deep historical information, art work and sculptures, videos by artists such as Molly Crabapple (whose watercolor images are seen being painted on the screen), documentary photographs and videos, posters and signs, and various displays that allow visitors to make choices on content. It is hypermediated and dense. Each era is in effect rescripted and narrated differently from its more conventional historical narrative. Slavery is recoded as “kidnapping,” a characterization that disavows the legality of the slave trade (Landsberg). Similarly, lynching is re-coded as racial terror, emphasizing not only the terrorization of all Blacks in the wake of lynching, but also a connection to a contemporary experience of terrorism, one that, because of 9/11, most white American visitors will have experienced from the subject position of potential victims. As the exhibition moves into the more well-known history of segregation (defined here as white supremacy by law) and the Civil Rights Movement, it presents the struggle and nonviolent protests. Yet, unlike most Civil Rights museums, it downplays any upbeat message regarding civil rights success, juxtaposing these positive depictions with a large wall of racist Jim Crow signs and photographs that capture white hatred in the anti-desegregation school protests, and videos of racist speeches from members of the White Citizen’s Councils and major elected officials. What hasn’t changed, as Landsberg notes, is the narrative.

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FIGURE 3.2  Legacy Museum exhibition view. Legacy Museum Slavery Evolved Wall © Equal Justice Initiative.

The museum’s final section, Mass Incarceration, brings the atrocities of white supremacy full circle and is potentially its most devastating. Here, the presentness of the crisis is rendered with urgency. The exhibition emphasizes the cruelty of family separation of incarceration on an historical continuum with the family separations of slavery. The exhibit presents the injustices of the criminal justice system and the brutal conditions of US prisons, with conscripted labor and overcrowding, and the cruelties of juvenile detention. One wall displays a selection of heartbreaking letters from incarcerated men and women to the lawyers of EJI, describing appalling injustices and pleading for help. Reading these letters is wrenching, and they remind visitors of the EJI’s immediate and ongoing role as an organization of legal intervention. In this final section, interactive technologies are used to render present those who are incarcerated, to bring their personhood out of the prison and into the museum. Visitors are invited to sit in four replicas of a prison visiting booth, next to a list of rules about allowed behavior, before a still video image of an incarcerated person across from them. As the visitor picks up the phone, the video is activated and the incarcerated person begins to narrate their stories in prison and in the courts, speaking directly to the visitor. This is a primary manifestation of what Stevenson has narrated as the aim of the museum to have people “experience directly” racial oppression. The display is designed to keep visitors from easily moving on—one does not want to hang up on an incarcerated person telling a devastating story of brutality and injustice (there are seven stories, two of which are women). These are “simulated” prison visits, with the men and women wearing prison uniforms; all of these are former incarcerated people that EJI has successfully secured releases for, some of whom were convicted to life sentences as juveniles. The day I visited the museum, one of those former incarcerated people, Kuntrell Jackson, who had been sentenced to life without parole at the age of fourteen and been released from prison after Stevenson won his case in the US Supreme Court, was standing by silently watching visitors go through the museum (Jackson).

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As a memory museum, rather than a history museum, as Landsberg argues, the Legacy Museum is situated in relationship to memory as a politics of the present. As scholars of memory museums have noted, memory museums aim to engage with the present more than history museums. Paul Williams has written that memory museums around the world usually have a charged relationship to the site where they are situated, that they often have constituencies they are beholden to with pedagogic missions that have moral considerations, and they are frequently aligned with truth and reconciliation commissions and human rights organizations (21). Thus memory museums are often charged with much more immediate goals toward engaging with violent pasts. Amy Sodaro writes, “By showing the catastrophic effects of intolerance, exclusion, repression, and dictatorship, they [memory museums] work to promote an opposite set of values that the visitor will take away from the museum with her and apply to her everyday life” (5). As an activist museum, the Legacy Museum takes this aim one step further, aiming to transform museum visitors to citizens actively opposed to mass incarceration. Along these aims, the museum has a number of interactive displays at the end, asking a set of questions: What will you do with what you have learned here, how will you carry the museum’s message forward? Through these various forms of political address, from the life-like enslaved people asking for help to the incarcerated people telling us their stories directly, the Legacy Museum asks that visitors wrestle with and confront stark historical and contemporary realities and the ongoing legacies of racist terror. The aim is that the emotional trauma that visitors can feel on exiting the museum is ideally put into service in some form in relation to the current crises of police brutality and mass incarceration. It is an open question, of course whether or not this or any other museum could succeed in transforming museum visitors into actively engaged political subjects (Hasian and Paliewicz Racial Terrorism 216–17). The conventional artifice of the museum’s final section which asks visitors this directly may not succeed in doing so, but the museum can certainly be said to have raised awareness about the injustices of mass incarceration. Where that awareness leads is an open question.

THE NATIONAL MEMORIAL FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE The National Peace and Justice Memorial sits on a hill above the downtown area where the Legacy Museum is situated. The memorial has been the primary draw of EJI’s memory projects and the subject of an enormous amount of positive press attention, in particular when it opened. While there was some anecdotal coverage in the media of negative feelings among locals, and the Alabama Governor did not attend the opening ceremonies, the memorial has been largely embraced by visitors. While the Legacy Museum has a complex narrative trajectory, the memorial, which is colloquially often called the “lynching memorial” has a simple clarity that has aided in its public embrace. The memorial names over 4,400 victims of lynching who were killed between 1877 and 1950. Visitors enter the memorial space through a security checkpoint (a reminder that it is not uncontroversial) and are then confronted with a figurative statue of a slave family. They then climb a low hill to the memorial. The memorial consists of a large open pavilion from which hang 805 corten steel markers, which are six feet long. Each marker is specific to a county, so for some counties there are many names, listed smaller in order for them to fit. The marker with the largest number of names is for Phillips County, Arkansas, with 245. The memorial includes lynching victims from as far north as New

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FIGURE 3.3  Hanging columns. National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Corridor 3

© Equal Justice Initiative/Human Pictures. York State and as far west as Oklahoma but the vast majority of the names are from the deep South. At first the markers are at eye-level, resting on the ground, so that visitors must navigate between them, yet gradually the path begins to descend, and the markers to rise, so that they are eventually hanging over visitors’ heads. At this moment, they hover somewhat ominously, looming over visitors, and they begin to look like hanging bodies. As the journey of the  memorial continues and the steel markers rise, it intentionally places viewers in subject positions that create discomfort, a discomfort that visitors are challenged to make sense of. Toward the center of the memorial journey, there is a listing of some of the names with the “reasons” why they were lynched: William Stephens and Jefferson Cole were lynched in Delta County, Texas, in 1895 after they refused to abandon their land to white people. A Black man was lynched in Millersburg, Ohio, in 1892 for “standing around” in a white neighborhood. Henry Patterson was lynched in Labelle, Florida, in 1926 for asking a white woman for a drink of water. Elizabeth Lawrence was lynched in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1933 for reprimanding white children who threw rocks at her. This list of petty excuses brings the crime of lynching down to its most small and cruel elements. It makes utterly clear that these lynchings had nothing to do with crime; they were about the “crime” of Blacks participating in everyday behavior, the “crime” of owning businesses and demanding rights, the “crime” of living while Black, even if, as is likely, many of these excuses are untrue. Many of these lynchings were motivated, as

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these statements make clear, by minor social transgressions or the assertion of basic rights (Stevenson). The resonance is unmistakable with contemporary incidents in the United States of white people calling the police on and the police harassing and killing Blacks who are participating in everyday activities, such as jogging, birdwatching, and having a barbeque, brought to particular public attention in 2020 through social media and sparking protests over police brutality. The journey of the memorial guides visitors through a narrative sequence inspired by what Stevenson and EJI refer to as the “stages of transformation”: Identity, Discomfort, Proximity, Transformation, and finally, Hope. Identity is the first stage, in which visitors enter the memorial and engage with the markers face to face, on an equal ground plane. As the floor descends, the markers remain at a fixed elevation, their hovering creating discomfort for the visitor in the second stage. In the third stage, with the markers consolidated overhead above an amphitheater, visitors are “invited to sit and pause in close proximity to their discomfort.” The transformation of stage four is imagined as visitors walk past a water wall dedicated to all the unknown victims of lynching. Finally, in the last stage, as visitors are encouraged to climb the hill at the center of the memorial, where they are above the markers, in hope. For the memorial design, EJI collaborated with MASS Design Group, which is nonprofit architecture firm based in Boston co-founded in 2008 by Michael Murphy and Alan Ricks. Its name stands for Model of Architecture Serving Society, and the firm’s stated aim is to build architecture in partnership with local communities “that promotes justice and human dignity.” The firm originated when Murphy began working with Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health, to build a hospital in Rwanda, and here Murphy came to ascribe to a key set of principles about nonprofit architecture working with local labor, sourcing materials locally, and building with dignity and health as primary goals (Murphy). In many ways, MASS was an ideal symbiotic partner for Stevenson and EJI, given that in its ten years of existence, it had developed a philosophy around justice and the idea of good design being in service of justice and beauty (Pasnik et al. 2019). One of MASS’s primary slogans is, “Architecture is never neutral, it either heals or hurts.” The design of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice deploys the vocabulary of modernism and minimalism to embody the presence of those killed by lynching. By design, the Corten steel (which is a favored material of minimalist sculptors such as Richard Serra) will rust in streaks as it ages, giving it a textured and aged quality. As Regina Yang of MASS states, “The materiality and physicality of Corten forged a visceral, emotional connection to the lynchings …. This natural process of weathering” will “create over 800 unique tonal expressions, reflecting the diversity of Black people in America.”7 The memorial evokes the codes of minimalism in its spare lines and metallic aesthetic. New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman wrote a much-cited essay in 2002 about how minimalism “of all improbable movements of the last 50 years” had become the aesthetic of contemporary commemoration. He notes that minimalist abstraction “in all its allegorical pliancy, turns out to function in a memorial context as the best available mirror for a modern world” (Kimmelman). Minimal abstract forms have thus become a means through which trauma has been negotiated in terms of design. The original intentions of the minimalism of modern art, which aimed for pure form with clean lines and a repetition of geometric forms, deliberately devoid of emotion and artistic expression, are transformed when it is deployed in the service of memorialization. The aim of minimalist memorials is not formalism but affect, the creation of forms to mediate loss. The columns of the lynching memorial are rendered allegorical by their

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role as keepers of the names of those killed. In other words, modernism’s high abstract language becomes something else in memorials, what Kimmelman calls its rhetorical opposite, something “sentimental, narrative, populist.” This is precisely because the open language of modernism’s forms, as a turn away from the limits of traditional figurative representations, allows for ambiguity, ambivalence, and forms that evoke loss and renewal. Scale is an important feature of the memorial’s design, as a way of conveying the enormity of the loss. EJI attorney Sia Sanneh states, “going through these archives, you get overwhelmed by the loss. We wanted a place that was physically large enough and a design that was imposing enough physically so it would help people experience the scale of the loss.”8 The memorial’s counting has a deliberate relentlessness in its naming of the thousands who were killed emphasized by the repetitive form of the markers. The steel markers demand to be noticed, they insert themselves in our vision and space. This monumental scale demands a paying attention, a tallying, a reckoning. As part of that journey, the memorial also actively creates subject positions for viewers that demand a position of complicity. As the markers rise over us, they ask us to look up at them, which on one hand makes us feel potentially threatened or vulnerable, and on the other hand places us within the position of the lynching spectator, looking up. Lynchings were not just killings, they were spectacles, which attracted large crowds. Victims were hung high in trees even after they were dead, or they were hung on platforms, so that their brutalization could be seen. Stevenson states, “The people who carried out this violence … actually lifted up the bodies because they wanted to terrorize. They wanted the entire community to see it” (Kennicott). In this sense, when visitors are encouraged by the design to look up at the hanging markers, they are, depending on their race, asked to see themselves or their relatives in and as those markers or as spectators. The memorial’s most radical strategy is its aim to propagate a whole range of local memorials. To this end, as part of its original design, the memorial has duplicates of each of the markers laid out, almost like a line of coffins, in a field next to it. EJI has put out a call for the counties that are listed on these markers to come and retrieve them and place them within the county, proximate to where the lynchings took place. This strategy is a provocation, demanding a site specificity to memory like the soil that was collected from these sites, and an ownership by these counties and towns of these histories of violence. This is narrated by Murphy and others as a healing. It is also intended to be a shaming, as more markers are retrieved, those that remain will mark those counties as refusing to acknowledge their complicity, what Stevenson calls a “report card of which communities have claimed their histories and which haven’t” (Gladstone). According to Sanneh, more than a hundred are in discussion about doing so, working through EJI’s Community Remembrance Project—the process is complex and delicate, and different in each case, with the demand for a lot of local engagement. The potential of the duplicate markers to move out into these counties, and to disseminate further the message of the memorial, that these victims must be recognized, named, and mourned in order for any progress on racial inequality to move forward, is a key element in the intended dynamism of the memorial, that it will, in Murphy’s words, not be static or stand still. In this, the memorial can be defined, like the Legacy Museum, as an activist memorial that aims to deploy the memory of those mourned as a means to change the contemporary situation of mass incarceration, policy brutality against Black and brown people, and the “presumption of guilt” that Stevenson and others define as haunting Black life (Stevenson Just Mercy).

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FIGURE 3.4  Duplicate markers in field by memorial © Photo by author.

The abstract understated aesthetic of the memorial’s design is contrasted with the figurative sculptures that are placed on the grounds surrounding it. As visitors enter the memorial space, as I noted, they first see a figurative group of bronze statues, depicting a family of seven enslaved figures, held together by chains. The presumed patriarch of the group stands in defiance looking out, as the others appear tortured and desperate, one woman reaching out toward him while holding a baby, and one set of shackles lying empty. This work, Nkyinkyim Installation, is by Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo and the name refers to an African proverb that talks about resilience and resistance to oppression. EJI states that it was important to actually depict slavery at the memorial. According to Stevenson, “for many people it’s the first time they have ever seen a sculpture with human beings about slavery” (Gladstone). The second statue, Guided by Justice, by Dana King, represents a group of anonymous Black women, standing and looking forward as a tribute to the Black women who were central to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The sculpted women are life size, and portrayed as ordinary, wearing bulky coats, holding purses, one hunched over. They appear to be walking forward, as women who were honoring the boycott would have been. Here, there are footsteps in bronze next to the women where visitors are presumably invited to stand with them (K. Jones). Finally, on the hill below the memorial is the sculpture Raise Up, by Hank Willis Thomas, in which Black figures stand with their arms raised as their bodies appear to be encased in a rising tide of bronze—of the three, this one is the most ambiguous—are they raising their arms in surrender, in protest, or are they rising out of the metal, or drowning

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FIGURE 3.5  Nkyinkyim Installation, by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo © Photo by author.

(Picard)? Willis Thomas states that the work is based on a photograph by South African photographer Ernest Cole of thirteen South African miners as they undergo a humiliating medical examination in the nude. He intends the work to reflect on police brutality and the racial injustices of the criminal justice system, and it also evokes the raised arms of protesters against police violence, who enact the words and gestures of those who have been killed: “Hands Up Don’t Shoot!” These statues, all made by Black artists, bring figural representation into the aesthetic realm of the abstract and minimalist memorial, and they are intended to evoke actual bodies as opposed to the abstract hanging columns of the memorial. Yet, in many ways the awkward coexistence of these statues with the memorial actually ends up affirming the power of the modernist representational mode of the memorial itself. This is largely because these statues, in particular Akoto-Bamfo’s and Willis Thomas’s works, present the humiliation of Black bodies. These works thus place viewers in the voyeuristic position of gazing upon pain and dehumanization. The history of lynching is one in which the voyeuristic gaze created a dehumanizing spectacle of death, with the circulation of numerous photographs and postcards of the crowds watching the brutality of the violence with thrill and fascination. Gazing upon the Black body in pain has thus been coded in the context of this history as a violent act itself. The 1999 book and exhibition Without Sanctuary of lynching photographs and postcards was criticized for replicating the violence of the original lynching by continuing to circulate the images for readers and gallery visitors (J. Allen; Markovitz 138–41; Hasian and Paliewicz Racial Terrorism

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103–11). These debates wrestled with the question of whether one could gaze upon a lynched body without participating in a violent gaze. The Akoto-Bamfo slave figures have circulated widely in the media, perhaps because they photograph more powerfully than the memorial markers. Can one gaze upon these desperate slaves without participating in voyeurism of their violated state of being? As one enters the memorial, a sign states that visitors may take pictures of the sculptures, but not with them. This is a revealing restriction that conjures up potentially offensive picture-taking practices—no selfies with the statues of the enslaved people or of men with their arms up, no posing with these representations of Black bodies, as those lynching crowds once did. Debates about modernism and figuration have long shadowed memorial design. While modernist memorial forms have been critiqued for being elitist, too abstract, and even cold, I would argue that the design of the lynching memorial actually resolves this aspect of modernism while mediating the potential voyeurism on the figure. Visitors are asked to gaze upon the markers, and also to see those markers as standing in for the bodies of the dead. Stevenson states that the terror of lynching can’t be understood “without replicating the dynamics” of the lynching spectacle, the looking up at the suspended bodies (Gladstone). The memorial replicates those dynamics, yet it achieves a balance precisely because it is not deploying figuration to represent those lynched. Finally, I would argue that the memorial is about gravity—emotional gravity, gravitational pull, and temporal suspension. The memorial creates a pull toward the ground with gravitational force. The steel markers are hanging. When we enter deep into the memorial, they are hanging above and over us. There is a tension here, a spatial dynamism, because the columns are hanging down toward us in ways that can feel threatening. One cannot help but imagine them falling. This tension is also a temporal one. Because the columns are suspended, they are never at rest. In this, they seem to convey something out of place. Like the body of the lynching victim, they should not be hanging. One wants to bring them gently to the ground, to put them at ease. This spatial tension also extends to the replicas of the markers that are lined up in a field next to the memorial, which Murphy describes as in a state of “purgatory.” Here too, time is suspended—the markers are, in the parlance of many commentators, “waiting to be claimed.” Time waits, the markers hang, gravity pulls downward, gestures wait for answers, objects and time are suspended. One could argue that even after all the markers are claimed by the counties, and laid to rest in sites around the country, the memorial will still refuse closure precisely because of the markers that will continue to hang, looming over visitors and reminding us of those bodies hanging. This refusal of closure is the means through which the Peace and Justice memorial demands something of the present and, by extension, the nation. Those markers will continue to hang, as a reminder that the fight for racial justice is never over. This is memory activated in the present. The memorial is a radical intervention into US memory culture not only because of its activist strategies, such as demanding that counties retrieve the duplicate markers of those killed there, and its demand that the nation rewrite the script of its history as one that includes terrorism, it is also a radical intervention in this aesthetic and spatial-temporal dynamic. Through this it will never be at rest, it will never provide closure to this history of racial terrorism. In understanding racial terrorism as state terrorism, as part of the story of this nation, this memorial and museum engage with human rights, a discourse that has long been absent from cultural memory in the United States. The memorial and museum effectively state that those accountable for racist terror and its effects, both perpetrators

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and beneficiaries, as well as the US state itself, must recognize how this legacy is enacted, legally, economically, culturally, socially, in the present. The Legacy Museum rejects an uplifting narrative of racial progress in order to demand that visitors see the brutal social impact of mass incarceration and a racist criminal justice system. Similarly, the hanging markers of the memorial offer testimony to the limits of healing and the impossibility of closure. To understand slavery, lynching, and racial violence as state terrorism is to see how what the state has done and sanctioned cannot be repaired through memorialization alone. This is the position from which reparation is transformed into social justice activism. As the hanging markers of the memorial will never, by design, come to rest on the ground, the memorial points to this future of ongoing struggle. In the years ahead, we shall see if the public discourse about racial justice that the memorial and museum aim to enhance will continue to strengthen. Stevenson’s words, and the work of EJI to confront these violent histories, are also one of hope. As Stevenson states, “I want to talk about this history of enslavement and of native genocide and of lynching and segregation, not because I am interested in punishing America. I want to liberate us. I really do believe there is something better waiting for us” (Klein).

NOTES 1. EJI would later go on to archive an additional 2,000 lynchings during Reconstruction, 1865 to 1876, a brief period between 1865 and 1876 after the Civil War, when Blacks gained many rights only to be subject to further repression; a list of lynchings after 1950; and a list of lynchings of Mexican Americans and Mexicans along the border. 2. EJI’s interactive lynching website shows the shifts in populations from the South to the West, Midwest, and North from 1910 to 1970, lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore/ migration. 3. From a video in the exhibition of the Legacy Museum. 4. From another video in the exhibition of the Legacy Museum. 5. Stevenson made a strategic decision to not apply for public funds for the museum and the memorial; they were paid for by private donations, with budgets of $15 million for the memorial and $8 million for the museum. 6. Interview by author with Jake Barton, New York, June 24, 2019. All quotes from Barton are from this interview. 7. Email correspondence with Regina Yang of MASS Design Group, July 24, 2020. 8. Phone interview by author with Sia Sanneh, July 14, 2020. All quotes from Sanneh are from this interview.

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PART TWO

Environmental Memory

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CHAPTER FOUR

Toward Slow Memory Studies JENNY WÜSTENBERG

Almost two years into a global pandemic, we find ourselves in a moment of human history that is replete with contradiction and unevenness. We are more aware than ever of the integrated and fast-paced pathways of business, social interaction and communication, partly because the closure of borders and workplaces has stopped some of these processes in their tracks and sped up others. Some of us have had our horizons involuntarily reduced to a small radius while working, teaching (kids and students), and socializing from home, while some have been exposed to disproportionate amounts of vulnerability and danger, forced to be out in the world due to their indispensability or precariousness. Although environmental campaigners have long known this, Covid-19 has driven home the ineptitude of humans to act globally to counter a common threat, epitomized by the failure to provide vaccines across the world. The pandemic has also rendered more visible our (sometimes toxic) reliance on virtual communication, the effects of the short-term news cycle, as well as the precarity of bonds of community and public health systems. Even our commemoration has sped up, with websites and physical sites remembering those who died emerging mere months after the virus first appeared. This perceived acceleration of life combined with its uneven spatial restriction has led to a renewed focus on slowness. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the experience of being “locked down” has caused many people to struggle with blurred perceptions of time (Kattago) and space, and to re-evaluate their fast-paced habits. Pandemic practices of nurturing sourdough and baking bread have become metaphors for the desire to slow down and rediscover “old” ways of living. The notion of slow memory studies seeks to capture, historicize, and open debate about these contradictions at the core of current society and politics: the growing (but uneven) awareness of a “Great Acceleration” in economic and social relations, in communication, and in environmental change (McNeill and Engelke, Colvile)—and even commemorative practices—combined with the recognition that we need to slow down our thinking, living, and remembering. We need this in order to prevent missing out on the very experiences that make our lives meaningful and indeed in order to address the most pressing threats facing human, as well as nonhuman, beings. As such, slow memory seeks to undertake a reframing of how the past is made meaningful in the present, with implications for how we as memory scholars conceptualize memory, which methods we employ, and how we work together as a community of scholarship and practice.

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Slow memory is an emergent concept and research program that is being developed collaboratively in the context of a European Union-funded “COST Action” entitled “Slow Memory: Transformative Practices in Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change”1 and that will run from 2021 to 2025, with the goal of creating an open network to spur innovative thinking and practice on this theme. As such, the Action provides the opportunity to explore the concept of slow memory, especially in relation to five core areas (work, welfare, politics, conflict, and the environment). As the Chair of the Slow Memory Action, I lay out the key considerations for slow memory (studies) here, and offer a potential framework for further discussions. As indicated in the qualifier “slow,” one of our core objectives is to rethink the temporal premises of memory studies, by shifting attention from “eventful” and “sited” pasts to those that are slow-moving. These are often without clear location or disregard established border regimes—but they are no less important or transformative for human (and nonhuman) lives. Bringing together insights from writings in what Stef Craps has called the “fourth wave” of memory studies (Craps 500) and from the “slow movement,” I argue that slow memory studies can fruitfully be considered in terms of the three entangled realms: in memory theory (to attend to the need to study and remember slow things), in methodology (understanding and practicing remembrance slowly), and in academic practice (doing memory studies with less time pressure).

MEMORY OF THE SLOW As a field that has been fundamentally shaped by scholarship and cultural practice in response to wars and genocide, and the Holocaust in particular, memory studies has so far revolved primarily around how individuals and communities—local, national, transnational—make sense of extreme or unusual past events in the present. Robin Wagner-Pacifici goes so far as to argue that memory studies should be reconceived as the study of events (Wagner-Pacifici). This framing of remembrance as eventful has helped us develop an understanding of how memories serve as anchors for collective identity and how remembering can perpetuate or break cycles of conflict. The link between memory and the possibility for peace, reconciliation, and democratization has acquired the status of an unquestioned mantra among memory scholars and policy-makers, despite the fact that—as Sarah Gensburger and Sandrine Lefranc have contended—the empirical evidence for this link is tenuous at most (Gensburger and Lefranc, see also David). And indeed, as Gensburger points out elsewhere, people today often do not pay much attention to what happens with monuments in their vicinity (Gensburger)—notwithstanding the currently ubiquitous calls for tearing down statues and renaming places (Gensburger and Wüstenberg). Is it possible that conventional memory politics and rituals are ineffectual in part because they ignore the slower things that people care about and want to remember about their individual and collective pasts? Slow memory studies first means thinking through which “pasts” have a meaningful impact on our present(s). The conventional focus on discrete events and sites of memory— even when these have transnational reverberations as the third wave of scholarship shows (Erll)—has made the field less concerned with “slow moving,” dispersed and event-less developments, such as climate change, deindustrialization, the hollowing out of welfare states, gentrification, shifts in gender relations, or the creeping rise in disinformation (though as the present volume shows, this is now changing). Some of these transformations gradually (or sometimes with sudden bursts) produce outcomes that are just as disruptive

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and traumatic as wars or authoritarianism, while others herald improvements and joy for people. What they have in common is that they cannot be easily “pinned down” to have taken place on a particular date or in a place and often the victims, perpetrators, and beneficiaries are not easily identified. However, particularly in societies that have not seen armed conflict or dictatorship for decades, slow-moving transformations are in fact the most fundamental “pasts” in terms of their impact on human experience. And even where violent conflict has persisted or re-emerged, the impact of hostilities is entangled with the effects of environmental, economic, and cultural change. In other words, slow memory studies must attend to the slow things we do (or should) remember and how. The most insightful and well-known argument for attending to the slow is Rob Nixon’s concept of “slow violence,” defined as “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all” (Nixon 2). For Nixon, how violence plays out across various temporal dimensions—beyond the spectacular moment that facilitates media representation and policy capture—is crucial to understanding both human and nonhuman suffering, as well as enabling effective responses. While Nixon is not a memory scholar, the language of remembrance is palpable in his framing of slow violence: Attritional catastrophes that overspill clear boundaries in time and space are marked above all by displacements - temporal, geographical, rhetorical, and technological displacements that simplify violence and underestimate, in advance and in retrospect, the human and environmental costs. Such displacements smooth the way to amnesia, as places are rendered irretrievable to those who once inhabited them, places that ordinarily pass unmourned in the corporate media. (Nixon 7) There is a strong sense here that not only do victims of slow violence go unrecognized by memory politics, but conventional means of what we might refer to as “fast” commemoration—building monuments, marking dates, naming places—seem woefully inadequate to help us make sense of the complexity and multi-scalar displacements that slow violence wreaks. Even more fundamentally, Nixon points to the fact that casualties of slow violence face almost insurmountable representational barriers—and if they are not seen or cannot command public attention, then the question is not how to best remember their experience, but whether it can be done at all. For this reason, and as I argue below, the demand to remembering slow violence—and slow nonviolence—is directly linked to memory activism (Gutman and Wüstenberg). The encounter of the humanities and social sciences, and of memory studies more specifically, with scholarship on environmental change has led to renewed consideration of the temporalities and scales of human remembrance. The “Great Acceleration” of human-driven ecological impact has prompted natural scientists to suggest that we have moved from the Holocene into the Anthropocene, where humans have become the primary geological agents whose activities will be visible in the Earth’s geology after humanity has disappeared (McNeill and Engelke). Notwithstanding disagreements over when this epochal shift occurred (Craps), it has happened largely without concomitant human awareness—and of course such awareness remains relatively sparsely and unevenly distributed even now. As Amitav Ghosh has pointed out, the climate crisis is also a “crisis of imagination” that challenges some of the fundamental assumptions of modernity and

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its resultant cultural production (Ghosh 9). And if it is difficult to make sense of how what has happened in the past impacts us, then it is also a crisis of memory. Dipesh Chakrabarty’s work can help us figure out why the shift into (awareness of) the Anthropocene is a challenge for memory studies: If all this and much else about human impact on the planet suggest to Earth system scientists that the planet may have passed the threshold of the Holocene and entered a new geological epoch, we can then say that as humans we presently live in two different kinds of “now-time” (or what they call Jetztzeit in German) simultaneously: in our own awareness of ourselves, the “now” of human history has become entangled with the long “now” of geological and biological timescales, something that has never happened before in the history of humanity. (Chakrabarty 7) In other words, the problem is not one of merely taking into account a longer timespan, but rather to reckon with the clash between different drivers of change and what they mean for human identity and purpose. For Jennifer Wenzel, to “grapple with the discrepancy between these two timelines is, in effect, to re-remember human history, modernity, and the past’s futures it promised in a radically new way” (Wenzel 503). Taking stock of this work, Stef Craps writes that it can be argued with some justification that what we are witnessing now is the advent of a new, fourth phase in memory studies: a phase prompted by our growing consciousness of the Anthropocene that takes the gradual scalar expansion characterizing the previous phases to a whole new level – traveling memory on steroids – while calling into question the humanist assumptions undergirding these phases. For memory studies to start to think ecologically (rather than merely socially), the field may need to break with the persistent humanism that can be seen to prevent it from adequately addressing the vast spatio-temporal magnitudes of the Anthropocene. (Craps 500) Slow memory indeed is fundamentally influenced by this “scalar expansion” and the particular sensitivity of “fourth wave” scholarship to temporality. However, slow memory seeks to do more than adding the ecological to our social conceptions of memory, or thinking in terms of nonhuman agency (although both of these moves are of course momentous and challenging). Studying the memory of the slow means taking the insights of ecology in order to better understand human remembering of the longue durée (whether deep or not so deep time) and of non-eventful, un-sited or multi-sited developments. It means understanding the social and political differently, moving from attention to lieux de mémoire to milieux de mémoire, to everyday experiences and practices. Thus, slow memory scholarship also wants to go further to understand remembrance processes that are not shaped by the linear progression of human generations and by reference to event and place (however constructed), and the “pastness” of history. Nixon is again insightful here to help us transcend the idea that memory happens after (post) whatever deserves to be preserved as meaningful: For if the past of slow violence is never past, so too the post is never fully post: industrial particulates and effluents live on in the environmental elements we inhabit

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and in our very bodies, which epidemiologically and ecologically are never our simple contemporaries. Something similar applies to so-called postconflict societies whose leaders may annually commemorate, as marked on the calendar, the official cessation of hostilities, while ongoing intergenerational slow violence, (inflicted by, say, unexploded landmines or carcinogens from an arms dump) may continue hostilities by other means. (Nixon 8) Ongoing slow environmental violence does not lend itself to commemoration by conventional means in order to achieve “closure” and neither does colonial dispossession, cultural genocide, domestic abuse, institutional neglect, or any other process that does not have a clear beginning, end, or place. As Glen Coulthard (Dene) has pointed out, the problem with mainstream and settler colonial regimes of reconciliation to address historical injustice is that it requires Indigenous people to “get over” the past, to move on to remembering it as “past,” despite the fact that “structural and symbolic violence (…) still structures our lives, our relations with others, and our relationship with land” (Coulthard 109, see also Betasamosake Simpson). Similarly, though the #Blacklivesmatter movement resulted in countless memorial sites commemorating (or de-commemorating) particular individuals and was galvanized by events such as police murders, court verdicts, and funerals of victims, this event-focused memory of course does not fully encapsulate the longue durée of white supremacist violence and structural racism. This past is not over and slow memory would seek to find creative ways of remembering the main accumulated and invisible injustices and instances of resistance. Beyond our shift in understanding of violence, slow memory seeks to address “uneventful” transformations more generally, whether they are negative (such as how the imperatives of modern work life make themselves felt in our minds and bodies), positive (such as how the gradual expansion of women’s or workers’ rights led to new horizons and pleasures), or located somewhere complicated in between. Emphasizing the (unequal) positive is crucial, as slow memory should not be reduced to nostalgia or neo-Luddism. It also means opening up to ways of knowing and remembering that are outside the Enlightenment traditions in which memory studies grew up and which are premised on specific temporalities, including Indigenous understandings that challenge the principles of extraction and mastery of nature that lie at the heart of the modern project. Slow memory, then, requires a fundamental shift in temporal and spatial perspective for which the toolbox of memory studies must be expanded to include methodologies and theories not just from environmental sciences, but from political economy, Indigenous studies, peace and conflict studies, and more. Moreover, we must learn to recognize slow or uneventful processes—even when they do not take the form of slow violence—and how they are remembered in both conventional and unconventional ways.

SLOW REMEMBERING The second prompt for slow memory studies is to consider slow practices of remembering—of both events and processes. Thinking about slow memory has been inspired in part by the “slow movement,” including “slow food” and “CíttaSlow,” which rejects the standardized and imperialistic nature of “fast food” and “fast living” (Knox, Heitmann, Robinson, and Povey). The scholarship on slow food, urbanity, and tourism also critically examines the fact that “slow” has become a valuable brand in the heritage

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industry that uses “sense of place” as a marketing tool (Knox 7). In any case, these movements are premised on the juxtaposition of speed (connoted with homogeny, mass and artificially manufactured appeal, and ignorance of cultural specificity) with slowness and deliberateness in social and ecological relationships. They address above all modern societies’ sense of time scarcity. What would it mean to consider fast and slow modes of memory? One possible approach to remembering slow things is to make them fit the mold of tried and true rituals of remembrance—the building of memorial sites, the celebration of anniversaries, the holding of funerals—in order to drive home their significance for culture and identity. It means constructing eventfulness and emplacement where it does not necessarily exist. Such commemorative practices are “fast” in the sense that they are limited in space and duration, and clearly plannable—indeed, a whole host of experts now exist who can be hired (or who are already civil servants) to implement a defined range of memory policies. One outcome of this is that there is a growing standardization in remembrance across the globe, with a potential for the creation of mnemonic “non-places,” as I have argued elsewhere (Wüstenberg 376). Such fast remembrance measures do not by necessity lead to longer-term engagement with memory communities and social, economic, or environmental legacies of the past—although they do sometimes accomplish this. History is actually full of instances where environmental change has entered our cultural and political consciousness. But environmental disaster has mostly been remembered in terms of events—floods, earthquakes, storms—and with familiar mnemonic rituals. Thus, Joanne Garde-Hansen and colleagues describe the marking of river floods through commemorative plaques (Garde-Hansen et al.), Clara de Massol de Rebetz recounts the performance of “Lost Species Day” as a funerary rite (de Massol de Rebetz), and the activists of the MEMO Project seek to build an epic memorial to extinct species in southern England (https://www.edenportland.org/). These important projects are no doubt the outcome of attempts to wrestle with the “crisis in imagination” and to persuade humanity to care by tapping into recognizable cultural codes. They respond to what Nixon identifies as the problem of representation that hampers responses to environmental violence, and the “tragedy of the commons” more generally. However, employing such conventional remembrance runs the risk of becoming mere lip service to what is being remembered, rather than triggering active engagement with a slow-moving process and its ongoing relevance. This is not a new critique of “fast remembering”: one of the commonly voiced fears during the construction of Berlin’s central Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was that it would turn into a mere Kranzabwurfstelle (wreath dumping location)—a place politicians could perform the Holocaust memory that has become a compulsory part of mainstream symbolic posture without actually leading to a meaningful engagement with this past. What slow memory practices hope to achieve, instead of replicating fast rituals, would be making the non-eventful past knowable in new (or more often actually old) ways. The concept of “daylighting” or “deculverting” of rivers from the field of environmental engineering is a useful guide here. It entails rediscovering rivers that have been made to flow underground and allowing them to resurface (Wild et al.). While the term is meant metaphorically to underpin the notion of close listening and valuing of forgotten, marginalized, or silenced practices, slow memory would indeed also regard the river itself as an important mnemonic pathway. I have already discussed Chakrabarty’s explanation of the clashing timescales that happen as we become aware of the Anthropocene. Similarly, according to Thomas

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Hyland Eriksen, the concept of scale is fundamental for understanding the multiple crises of globalization: “Scale can be conceptualised in terms of space, social organisation, cognitive worlds and temporal horizons, and in all areas, scales clash more powerfully and effectively in this overheated world than before” (Eriksen 132). Most crucial in any attempt at slow memory is to attend to the clashes in scales, to contradictions and unevenness, and to the desires and dislocations these might evoke. This means not so much rejecting speed for the sake of slowness, but to make the time it takes to work with those individuals and communities affected by slow and fast change in the past and present. This approach stands in fundamental contradiction to modern epoch’s constant need for dynamism, as understood by Hartmut Rosa. For the sociologist, a modern society can only be stabilized and its status quo maintained through constant economic growth, technological acceleration, and cultural innovation. With this comes the drive to make life controllable in all its facets and, in tandem, a strong desire to experience that which Rosa calls the “Unverfügbare” (that which is not possible to control). In his recent writing on this, Rosa provides the example of the joy of the first snowfall of a season or the “letting go” that enables us to sleep (Rosa). Coming to terms with some of the most meaningful and fundamental parts of human experience, in other words, requires us not to regulate or contain how we represent the past, but to create circumstances where which is “unverfügbar” has space and time to emerge (or not) and where we can figure out how to remember it. Slow remembrance practices, especially slow remembering of slow things, must therefore attend to the suffering and dislocations caused by modern contradictions and clashes in scales, to eventless violence, but also to the pleasures of “ordinary” processes and advances.

DOING MEMORY STUDIES SLOWLY The third way to consider slow memory is as a practical matter. Methodologically, slow memory studies foregrounds oral history and co-production with stakeholders, in addition to seeking insight from the slow movement and disciplines that are not ordinarily named in the line-up of contributors to memory studies. Over the four years of the COST Action, we will study but also facilitate settings in which slow remembering can happen. The irony of using relatively short-term EU funding in order to support practices that may not have immediately obvious or measurable outcomes is not lost on us. The European Union’s scientific research programs have been key drivers of the neoliberalization of knowledge production and academic life more generally. All of us daily feel the pressures of producing research and “impact” that is defined in terms of metrics that are at loggerheads with any attempt to slow down. Indeed, the imperative to apply for one grant after the other does much to hamper the kind of theoretical and practical engagement with slow-moving change and with communities. Nevertheless, we hope that our work on slow memory can contribute to the project of resisting (especially in the academy) what Nixon calls the “era of enclaved time,” which has become a “selfjustifying” ethic (Nixon 8) and which obscures slow violence, but also slow solutions. Our own constriction by “enclaved time”—the way we practice memory studies—and how we understand “memory” are closely connected, because the way we work and live our lives creates powerful blinders. Actively remembering and operating slowly means resisting both the neoliberal imperatives for knowledge-creation (ever faster, ever more impactful, and distinctly measurable) and our own contributions to ongoing slow violence (as those benefiting from colonial dispossession, as those who continue to consume unsustainably,

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as those who look away). This is why slow memory studies must attend to how we work (together) and why it can be a form of activism. Closely related to the arguments of the “slow movement,” Isabelle Stengers’ “slow science manifesto” critiques those same imperatives of producing findings and impacts quickly or within defined cycles (such as the UK’s Research Excellence Framework), which leads to rushed or incomplete knowledge. Instead, she advocates a science that engages openly with an interested public and takes seriously the public’s concerns, without promising that science can solve all of humanity’s problems (Stengers). Indeed, the dilemmas of slow-moving change, especially of environmental catastrophe, are clearly not ones that can be addressed solely by science, but require a shift in human ethics and socio-economic notions of justice. Memory studies is a relatively new field that has recently experienced rapid institutionalization, including the creation of journals, research centers, degree programs, and professional coordination efforts (Dutceac-Segesten and Wüstenberg, https://www. memorystudiesassociation.org/about_the_msa/). On the one hand, this means that memory scholars probably feel the pressures of neoliberal academia as acutely as (if not more than) colleagues who situate themselves squarely in established disciplines such as history or sociology. They must speak to multiple academic audiences, meet different markers of excellence, and show the flexibility that is expected in avowedly interdisciplinary research, while also speaking to their “home” disciplines as fallback positions. And, like everyone else, they must meet the demands of neoliberal employment situations. As Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber argue in the Slow Professor, “Corporatization has compromised academic life and sped up the clock. The administrative university is concerned above all with efficiency, resulting in a time crunch and making those of us subjected to it feel powerless” (Berg and Seeber x). On the other hand, the newness of memory studies can be taken as an opportunity not to replicate the power structures and behaviors we have learnt in our academic training. Ruramisai Charumbira, in an essay written as a prompt for debate about racism, discrimination, and what she calls “transformative inclusivity” within the Memory Studies Association, has recently argued that the “idea is not to be perfect or to try to be everything to everyone” but to “to build a global association that does not reinvent old power structures in the name of scholarship or professionalism” (for her full essay, see https://www.memorystudiesassociation.org/thoughts-on-transformative-inclusivity-inthe-msa/). To do memory studies slowly, we can therefore put in place mechanisms to engage stakeholders early on in research projects so that they can shape methods and concepts of slow remembering and so that we can change the way we work together. We can endeavor to share workloads to prevent burn-out, and we can normalize speaking about stress, overload, insomnia, fears about job security, and the emotional burdens of studying “difficult pasts” and “ecological grief.” We can organize our in-person meetings differently from conventional conferences: factoring in time for preparation, traveling together on trains, walking to talk about our research, inviting artistic interventions, and more. We can combine the principles of slow tourism—including engagement with the places we gather and getting there as mindfully as possible—with standard conventions of scholarly meetings, while being careful not to make them accessible only to the privileged few. All of this—I hope—can help us resist academic corporatization and the speeding up of research, while we simultaneously allow ourselves the space/time we need to develop slow memory as a concept and framework for future research together.

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It is important to stress that researching “slowly” does not necessarily mean simply rejecting speed. Instead, slow memory studies can employ various kinds of temporalities, including “unhasty time, deccelerative and accelerative moments conceived as a critical resource for academic work and as an explicit political demand and an ethical principle” (Heather Mendick in O’Neill et al. n.p.). Indeed, confronting ecological disaster is of the utmost urgency and needs fast action. Luke Martell argues that it is vital that “we do not fetishise slow in relation to universities and instead calls on us to examine the social processes behind the increasing pace and speed and the moves towards slowness” (O’Neill et al. n.p.). It remains to be seen whether the slow memory research program can successfully make use of neoliberal structures in order to break out of (or at least help to challenge) its priorities. In conclusion, Slow Memory Studies aims to study slow-moving change and how it is or can be remembered, to consider how remembrance practices can slow down and reject “fast memory,” and to rethink how we work together as memory scholars and practitioners. Ultimately, slow memory is a response to the moral imperative to recognize slow violence and its victims, to honor “uneventful” and quotidian experiences, and to make sense of clashes in temporal scales that are “unverfügbar” (unattainable) via our conventional (sometimes “fast”) commemorative rituals. Slow suffering must be met with slow modes of healing and redress. In order to address this ethical challenge, we need to learn from and “daylight” past practices, rethink our methodologies and our ways of working together, taking into account our own needs as academic humans to slow down. In this sense, the call for a slow memory studies is simultaneously a call to memory and academic activism.

NOTE 1. Natalie Braber, Steven Brown, Sara Dybris McQuaid, Orli Fridman, Joanne GardeHansen, Sarah Gensburger, Saygun Gökariksel, Chris Reynolds, and Joanna Wawrzyniak made the fantastic group that co-wrote the COST Action proposal and developed slow memory as an evolving concept. All of them—and many other insightful colleagues (including Stefan Berger, Frédéric Clavert, Deniz Gundogan Ibrisim, Vjollca Krasniqi, Vjeran Pavlaković)—are now involved in the Action. https://www.cost.eu/actions/ or https://www.slowmemory.eu/

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CHAPTER FIVE

Ecological Mourning: Living with Loss in the Anthropocene STEF CRAPS

The Anthropocene, the new geological epoch defined by the transformative impact of human activity on the planet, has seen a dramatic increase in the pace, scope, and severity of various kinds of environmental degradation, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Moreover, according to a plethora of bleak scientific reports, these trends show little sign of abating, boding ill for the future of humanity and life on Earth in general. The experience and anticipation of environmental loss—whether of plant and animal species, ecosystems, landscapes, or an inhabitable planet—cause profound sorrow, which is being felt more and more acutely by a growing portion of the world’s population as we move ever deeper into the Anthropocene. However, as yet, we are somewhat at a loss as to how to adequately navigate the affective terrain of environmental breakdown. Lacking standard protocols and procedures, we do not quite know how to make sense of, channel, or cope with its psychological impact. This essay will explore how literature, and art more generally, serves as a cultural laboratory for articulating and dealing with grief related to environmental loss, which remains largely unspoken and unrecognized. The act of naming the often disenfranchised and marginalized forms of grief arising from environmental loss is a major step in bringing them to public awareness and granting them social acceptance and legitimacy so that they can be processed more effectively. Coming to terms with ecological grief can inspire efforts to work through it and reinvigorate practices of environmental advocacy in the face of the daunting ecological challenges confronting global society in the twenty-first century. The essay consists of three parts. First, I will explain why the very idea of ecological mourning meets with strong resistance in some quarters. I will go on to discuss the phenomenon of glacier funerals, which has helped ecological mourning overcome that resistance and go mainstream in recent years. I will end by discussing a newly published novella that offers a profound meditation on its perils, pitfalls, and possibilities: The Impossible Resurrection of Grief by Octavia Cade.

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AGAINST ECOLOGICAL MOURNING Despite its prevalence, there is in fact a widespread reluctance to accept or even acknowledge ecological grief, which has been defined by Ashlee Cunsolo and Neville Ellis as “the grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change” (275). As Lisa Sideris puts it, ecological grief often seems “strangely muted or suppressed” (2). She identifies a range of responses to the ecological and climate crisis that adopt “a kind of defensive humanist posture that privileges human civilization and seeks to insulate it, to fortify it, against the shocks of climate change and related disasters” (2). By implicitly treating the planet and non-human beings as inanimate matter, this defensive stance “disavows nonhuman nature as truly mournable” (2). Firmly in this camp stand what Rob Nixon calls “command-and-control Anthropocene optimists”: ecomodernists, ecopragmatists, and other believers in the possibility of a “good Anthropocene” (“The Anthropocene”). These include the geographer Erle Ellis, who claims that “we must not see the Anthropocene as a crisis, but as the beginning of a new geological epoch ripe with human-directed opportunity.” This mindset of Earth mastery is shared by the science journalist Mark Lynas, author of a book with the telltale title The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans, and Ronald Bailey, who predicts that “[o]ver time, we will only get better at being the guardian gods of Earth.” The lesson Anthropocene optimists take away from the realization of humanity’s geological agency is that, as Stewart Brand has put it, “We are as gods and HAVE to get good at it” (Whole Earth Discipline 1). Indeed, “What a marvel we have become,” exclaims Diane Ackerman in her book The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us (308). Brand makes the rejection of grief and vulnerability implicit in much techno-utopian thinking explicit in a TED talk marveling at the promise of de-extinction, the process of resurrecting extinct species through genetic techniques, where he exhorts: “Don’t mourn, organize.” Elsewhere, he laments the fact that the environmental and conservation movements have “mired themselves in a tragic view of life” and speculates that the return of the passenger pigeon, whose extinction in 1914 “broke the public’s heart,” could “shake them out of it” (qtd. in Rich). Sideris also detects varying degrees of humanist defensiveness, fortification, and resistance to grief and mourning in the journalist David Wallace-Wells’s lack of concern for the fate of the non-human world in his influential article “The Uninhabitable Earth,” the Sunrise Movement’s tendency to rally around the preservation of human civilization, and the global elite’s survivalist preoccupation with escapism and literal fortress-building (6–8). The dearth of feeling for a living planet and the emphasis on protecting our way of life that unite these otherwise very different responses to environmental breakdown make it difficult to imagine profound change emerging from such approaches. They remain beholden to the mindset responsible for the ecological and climate crisis, which sees the natural world as a mere object to be controlled, dominated, and exploited. Somewhat paradoxically, though, resistance to ecological mourning can be seen to underlie even the renewed appreciation for nature sparked by Covid-19, an unexpected side effect of the pandemic. We collectively experienced a “silent spring” in 2020, of a very different kind than the one Rachel Carson envisaged in her eponymous 1962 book that launched the environmental movement by explaining the adverse effects of pesticides on the natural world. In the spring of 2020 it was not the birds that went silent but human society, as the economy came to a standstill and billions of people around

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the world were confined to their homes. Many people reconnected with the sights and sounds of the natural world during this global pause. They found solace and delight in the resurgence of wildlife, as animals in urban areas took over emptied streets and waterways. The best-known example is a report of dolphins returning to deserted Venetian canals, which went viral on social media, with people celebrating this supposed evidence of nature bouncing back as a silver lining of the pandemic. However, many of these positive, feel-good stories, including the one about dolphins swimming in the newly crystal-clear waters of Venice, turned out to be fabricated or embellished. As the psychologist Susan Clayton commented, “I think people really want to believe in the power of nature to recover … People hope that, no matter what we’ve done, nature is powerful enough to rise above it” (qtd. in Daly). The American humor site the Onion mocked our gullibility, which originates in an inability or unwillingness to face up to the extent and irreversibility of the environmental damage we have caused. It poked fun at the viral phenomenon with a satire piece titled “Thousands of Formerly Endangered White Rhinos Flood City Streets Mere Days after Humans Quarantined Indoors.” Paying quiet tribute to Eugène Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros, which is set in a small French town overrun by rhinoceroses, and Terry Gilliam’s film 12 Monkeys, which features a scene in which zoo animals are released into the streets of Philadelphia, the Onion article reports that “[a]fter just a week of human isolation, this once-dying species has come back with a vengeance” and is now “multiplying exponentially” across New York City. It goes on to note that white rhinos would be omnipresent if it were not for “the resurgence of Bengal tigers and polar bears,” two other formerly endangered species, with whom they are said to be competing for urban space. As is often the case with Onion articles, the satire was lost on some readers, including one who in a comment on the site’s Facebook post exclaimed: “What an amazing miracle. Nature finds a way!!!!” The widespread celebration of nature’s “recovery,” “return,” or “healing” that we have seen during the pandemic encourages the idea that centuries of environmental degradation at the hands of humanity can easily be reversed. It is tempting but dangerous to assume that nature has an automatic capacity for renewal and will simply flourish again if we humans just stay indoors for a while and let it run its course. Rooted in a refusal to acknowledge and mourn the fact of massive and irreparable environmental loss, this belief can induce complacency and inaction, and entail an evasion of responsibility, which are the last things we need in the face of the ecological and climate emergency.

GLACIER FUNERALS For a radically different take on environmental loss, we will now turn to the story of the funeral for a dead Icelandic glacier in which many aspects of ecological mourning converge, and which has become something of a focal point for the phenomenon. It will illuminate both the obstacles ecological mourning entails and the potential for proenvironmental action it holds. Furthermore, this story also points to the key role of aesthetic mediation in the process of coming to terms with ecological grief. The official demise of Okjökull, the glacier atop Iceland’s Ok volcano, was marked with a memorial ceremony and the installation of a memorial plaque warning of the impact of climate change at the site of the former glacier in August 2019. Attended by “about a hundred scientists, activists, dignitaries, farmers, politicians, journalists, and children” (Johnson), the event was covered by news outlets around the world, and

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photographs of the plaque even went viral. Evidently striking a chord with many people, the funeral for Okjökull—the world’s first memorial service for a glacier—was followed by similar funerals for other glaciers, including the Pizol glacier above Mels in eastern Switzerland just one month later (Baynes), Oregon’s Clark glacier and the Trient glacier in the Mont Blanc massif in 2020, and the Basòdino glacier in the Lepontine Alps in 2021 (Starovoitov). Commemorative practices for dead glaciers have also been reported in Chile, Colombia, and Nepal (Stein). These funeral rites for vanished glaciers extend our conception of what counts as mournable entities. Conceived by the American anthropologists and energy humanities scholars Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe, the funeral for the Icelandic glacier involved the presentation of an official death certificate by a glaciologist listing “excessive heat” and “humans” as the cause of death (Howe and Boyer). The implication obviously was that the glacier had once been alive, an idea reinforced by the documentary about Okjökull created by Boyer and Howe together with an Icelandic filmmaker. Not Ok, as the documentary is called, is narrated in the personified voice of Ok mountain—“a mountain who has been observing humans for a long time and has a few things to say to us,” as the accompanying website announces. In fact, anthropologists have documented numerous instances across cultures of glaciers being afforded personhood (Cruikshank; Gagné et al.). As Sideris points out, the perception of glaciers as sentient, living beings can be seen to be shared by glaciologists. After all, the vocabulary they routinely use is suggestive of animacy: glaciers are described as moving, crawling, and growing and as having toes; they are said to have calved, like an animal giving birth, when ice breaks off at their terminus; and they are considered repositories of memory as they store a record of past environmental conditions (Sideris 9). Even so, the idea of a glacier funeral caused a sensation, as non-human entities are traditionally regarded as being outside the realm of the grievable in Western cultures. As Cunsolo and Karen Landman note in their introduction to Mourning Nature: Hope at the Heart of Ecological Loss and Grief, we tend to associate grief and mourning with human losses, not with more-than-human ones. The funeral for Okjökull undid this conventional separation between entities that can and cannot be mourned, which appears to be taken for granted by famous theorists of mourning such as Sigmund Freud and Judith Butler. Freud’s 1917 essay “Mourning and Melancholia” has served as a baseline for a century’s worth of critical theory on mourning and the adjacent concept of melancholia. Freud claimed that, in mourning, an individual gets over the death of a loved one by working to break the attachment of the mourner to the deceased and replacing it with an attachment to a new love-object. In melancholia, however, this reinvestment never occurs, and the melancholic individual becomes trapped in a self-punishing cycle of personal diminishment. It has been argued that Freudian mourning “propounds an anthropocentric mode of responding to loss,” “centraliz[ing] the human through a framework of hyper-individuated subjectivity” (Ryan 122). As such, it “constrains the emergence of environmental mourning based in connectivity and interdependence” (Ryan 124). Freud was writing about individual human subjects in a therapeutic context, and was hardly thinking about entanglement and enmeshment with more-than-human ecosystems. The idea of mourning the non-human does not feature either in Butler’s influential work on the political and ethical implications of theorizing loss. In her books Precarious Life and Frames of War, she explores how certain lives come to be figured as “grievable” while others do not, a question that became particularly urgent for her in the context of the

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events of 9/11 and the ensuing “War on Terror.” Butler insists on the need to imagine new forms of community, grounded in “an apprehension of a common human vulnerability” that emerges with life itself (Precarious Life 30). Her imagined community presupposes that the “we” united by a sense of shared vulnerability is made up exclusively of human subjects. Animals or other more-than-human entities do not enter into the discussion of what constitutes grievable life. “Perhaps … it should come as no surprise that I propose to start, and to end, with the question of the human,” she writes, “as if there were any other way for us to start or end!” (20). While emphasizing the inclusive potential of loss, Butler’s theorization of mourning yet fails to transcend human parochialism. Glacier funerals expose and counter this striking omission, calling on us to go beyond approaches to mourning that privilege human bodies. They dramatically scale up the magnitude of the kinds of losses to be mourned, both spatially and temporally. They extend grievability to geological features that not only occupy vast territories but whose demise is the result of long-drawn-out processes that transcend the duration of a single human life. This grief is dealt with, however, in the same way the loss of human life is—that is, through funerals. Vanished glaciers are treated as lost lives, environmental bodies deserving a mourning process mirroring those usually reserved for human lives. A scientist familiar with the Pizol glacier who attended the ceremony in which it was declared dead was quoted as saying: “It is like the dying of a good friend” (Baynes). The same analogy is used by the journalist Dahr Jamail in The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, a non-fiction book following the author’s journey to the frontlines of climate change chronicling the catastrophic consequences of the loss of ice for both nature and humans. The End of Ice testifies to the emotional and spiritual turmoil Jamail experiences as he confronts the evidence of climate disruption across the planet. He explains how the book arose from his realization of “the need to share my grief with others about what was happening to nature” (212). In the concluding chapter, Jamail likens his experience of witnessing environmental collapse to the intense moments he spent at what he thought was his friend Duane’s deathbed: “Reflecting on what is happening to the planet, I realize that the intimacy I shared with Duane when I thought I was losing my best friend is the intimacy we should have with the Earth” (215). Venturing that, “[i]n an analogous way, we may be watching Earth dying” (215), he suggests that regaining an intimate connection with the natural world could help us begin to know, love, and care for the planet. An important obstacle to ecological mourning, which sets it apart from mourning for the loss of a loved one, is the fact that grief over environmental decline is often intermingled with feelings of guilt or shame. As Nancy Menning explains, Ecological losses differ in important ways from human deaths. In particular, we are often complicit in these losses, if only by virtue of living in the Anthropocene. We must mourn not only what we have lost, but also what we have destroyed. … When one feels complicit (directly or indirectly) in the loss being mourned, guilt entwines with sorrow, complicating the grieving process. (39–40) Together with the overwhelming nature of grief over the full extent of non-human losses, the awareness of human responsibility for or implication in them may account for the prevalence of denial and avoidance of the work of ecological mourning.

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The inscription on the plaque installed at the base of Iceland’s Ok glacier during the funeral ceremony confronts the present-day reader with their responsibility for the environmental loss being commemorated. Entitled “A Letter to the Future,” the plaque reads: “Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it” (qtd. in Howe and Boyer). Followed by an imprint of Earth’s CO2 levels as of August 2019 (415 ppm), the plaque calls on passers-by to acknowledge the disappearance of a major geographical feature while implicating them as part of the human collective responsible for the glacier’s death. At the same time, the plaque posits a future, unknown observer as the evaluator of our time’s efforts to mitigate the environmental crisis. The plaque’s subtle shift in tenses asks us to take personal account for present losses resulting from collective human activity on our planet while demanding that we uphold the promise and possibility of a future in which such an observer can exist to measure our species’ success—the only scenario in which a future observer would be guaranteed. This orientation toward the future points to the activist potential of ecological mourning, which is seen as a politically and ethically transformative practice. To quote an opinion essay in the New York Times by the prime minister of Iceland, published on the eve of the Ok glacier funeral: “On Sunday, we pay tribute to Ok. At the same time, we join hands to prevent future farewells to all the world’s glaciers” (Jakobsdottir). The hope, if not the conviction, that pain and sorrow can be mobilized for positive action for the environment is a common thread running through much work on ecological grief, not least the essays gathered in Cunsolo and Landman’s collection. It is also worth noting that the inscription on the commemorative plaque erected at Okjökull’s funeral was written by Andri Snær Magnason, an acclaimed Icelandic writer (Magnason). Moreover, the funeral ceremony included not only speeches but also a poetry reading (Starovoitov). It is through the use of literary language, then, that the passing of the first of Iceland’s named glaciers lost to climate change managed to capture the popular imagination around the world. Howe and Boyer, who had invited Magnason to write the inscription, have spoken eloquently of the key role to be played by literature, art, and culture in addressing the climate crisis: Climate change is the defining civilizational challenge of the twenty-first century. There are no guarantees of further centuries if we cannot find a less ecocidal trajectory. Climate science must become the basis of social policy at a global level, but getting there is going to involve more than just finding better ways of communicating climate science. Equally important to changing our ways of being in the world is the power of language and poetry, ritual and ceremony, symbolism and collective actions. Art and culture can help reshape our sense of time, place, and responsibility. There has in fact been no shortage of artistic responses to the loss of ice as one of the most sensitive indicators of climate change and a source of profound ecological grief. A well-known example is the temporary installation Ice Watch by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, which consisted of giant blocks of glacial ice extracted from the waters surrounding Greenland that were installed and left to melt in public spaces across London. One also thinks of the online video “Rise” by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner and Aka Niviâna, in which the two poets travel to the latter’s home of Greenland to recite a

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collaborative poem on a disappearing glacier that threatens the former’s home nation of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Other literary treatments of glacier melt include Marybeth Holleman’s poem “How to Grieve a Glacier” and Helen Mort’s poetry collection The Singing Glacier. In the same spirit as Jetñil-Kijiner and Niviâna’s poem, New Orleans photographer Tina Freeman’s book Lamentations pairs photographs of the wetlands of Louisiana and the glacial landscapes of the Arctic and Antarctica in a series of dyptichs that invite the viewer to reflect on climate change, ecological disturbance, and the connectedness of disparate places. “Elegy for the Arctic,” in turn, is an evocative online video in which the Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi performs a melancholy piece on a grand piano sitting atop an artificial iceberg as an Arctic glacier crumbles into the ocean behind him. In the same vein, the album Glacier Music by the Alaskan-born composer Matthew Burtner is a collection of electro-acoustic compositions recorded on top of melting glaciers, capturing the sound of glacial demise. Visual evidence of glacier retreat inspired the Portland-based artist Daniela Molnar’s series of watercolor paintings New Earth, which depicts new landscapes formed by the melting of glaciers. Two documentary films that should not go unmentioned, finally, are Jeff Orlowski’s Chasing Ice, which follows nature photographer James Balog across the Arctic as he deploys time-lapse cameras, and Cunsolo’s Lament for the Land, which examines how climate change is affecting Inuit communities both culturally and emotionally.

A PANDEMIC WITHOUT A VACCINE Glacier remains also feature—albeit not quite so prominently—in the recently published novella by the New Zealand writer Octavia Cade that I would like to discuss next. The Impossible Resurrection of Grief is a strange, genre-defying tale with elements of sci-fi, fairy tale, and horror that plumbs the emotional depths of climate change and biodiversity loss. Written during the Covid-19 lockdown, as the author states in the acknowledgments (75), the novella tells the story of a mysterious pandemic that is slowly spreading among the global population and for which “there was no vaccine” (19). Cade takes the phenomenon of ecological grief and turns it into a lethal contagion known as “the Grief,” a debilitating mental illness linked to global ecological disaster that manifests in different ways in different people. All those who suffer from Grief—defined as “the undermining upwelling of loss in response to ecosystem devastation, the failure of conservation” (6)—are afflicted with unbearable feelings of guilt, which are brought on by the species extinctions that humans have caused through colonization, hunting, and environmental destruction. For most, the Grief leads to bizarre behavior and ends in suicide. Some are driven to recover the losses, through de-extinction efforts or by creating replacements such as lifelike robot birds or holograms of lost habitats. In a near-future climate-ravaged Australia, we meet the marine biologist Ruby, who is passionate about jellyfish—one of the few creatures who “flourish in a warmer ocean” (71)—and deals with the fallout of her colleague and friend Marjorie’s succumbing to the Grief. Marjorie is less fortunate than Ruby in that her research object, the Great Barrier Reef and its inhabitants, is not thriving but dying as a result of climate change. In despair, she falls victim to the global pandemic, reinvents herself as the Sea Witch from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” and moves into an abandoned saltwater swimming pool. Ruby tries to save her friend by supplying her with plastic bags and research papers that Marjorie uses to create jellyfish of her own, but cannot satisfactorily

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answer her question, “Can you bring it back?” (4). After Marjorie’s apparent death by suicide, Ruby struggles with the ramifications of her loss and her fear of descending into Grief herself. She follows a trail of clues left by her friend that takes her to Tasmania and New Zealand in an effort to better understand Marjorie and the psychological condition that led her to want to take her own life. In Tasmania Ruby finds an elderly woman infected with Grief (“Granny,” she calls her) who has secretly managed to bring the famed thylacine or Tasmanian tiger, which had gone extinct in 1936, back to life through genetic engineering in an isolated facility. De-extinction emerges here as a mad and sinister attempt to assuage environmental guilt. Rescued from a threatening situation (the prospect of being served as bait to the thylacines) by her soon-to-be-ex-husband George, Ruby travels on to New Zealand, where she meets another Grief sufferer, an artist friend of her husband’s who uses artistic means (animatronics and hologram technology) to resurrect another extinct animal species—the rock wren—as well as a kettle hole, that is, “a small lake, sometimes only a pool, left behind when glaciers departed” (56). These are the glacier remains I was talking about. Ruby sees a pattern emerging: “This recreation of an ecosystem on the brink [i.e., the kettle hole] was the wrens all over again. It was opportunity wrapped up in regret, an attempt to absolve the shame of negligence and indifference by restoring as far as possible what had been lost” (60). Once again, there is an element of madness and menace in these resurrectionist endeavors, with Grief leading to vengeful bloodlust instead of “mere” self-destruction, as in the case of Marjorie. Clearly, resurrection is not the way to handle Grief—as the novella’s title already implied. In fact, The Impossible Resurrection of Grief expects little good to come from Grief, no matter what response it provokes in those affected. In marked contrast to the proponents of ecological mourning mentioned in the previous section, Cade’s novella does not appear to view Grief as a potential catalyst for positive action on climate and environmental issues. Conceived of as a disease in need of a cure or vaccine, both of which are nonexistent, Grief is framed in strictly negative terms, as a purely destructive force that causes one to either direct violence inward and commit suicide, or turn it outward toward others on whom one takes revenge: “Grief had turned resurrection into something that had smacked of murder” (49). Either way, then, it “end[s] always in death” (27; see also 72). The notion that grief might serve as a basis for collective political activism is not given any credence in the narrative. As far as Ruby is aware, “the Grief-stricken never worked together”; after all, “[t]hey lacked the capacity to focus, because they were locked in on themselves and their experience of loss” (36–7). While Marjorie’s reappearance at the end of the narrative suggests that there must be at least some degree of coordination between the few Grief-stricken individuals we have encountered, this is not actually spelled out, and the impression we are left with is that of a bunch of isolated people “forg[ing] [their Grief] into weaponry” (73) largely by themselves. At the same time, The Impossible Resurrection of Grief is merciless in exposing the denial and avoidance behavior of the unafflicted, like Ruby, as a no less dubious response to the demands of the Anthropocene as an age of environmental distress. Ruby admits that “Grief was never something [she] was comfortable thinking about,” which is why she “acknowledged it as little as possible” (6). “[W]e were practised at looking away” from climate change, she observes, having “ignored [it] for so long” (7). Grief, by contrast, is said to involve “an unshrinking look at the inevitable” (30). Those who do not look away from environmental devastation and yet do not fall prey to Grief come off as ethical monsters. A refrain running through the narrative is this damning question,

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which Ruby, to her shame and horror, realizes she has to answer affirmatively: “Can you watch something die and let it die?” (32; passim). “I’d managed to distance myself from loss,” she confesses, “I’d become inured to loss” (67). The ability to maintain one’s sanity and composure in the face of ecological breakdown is not something to be proud of or celebrated. Indeed, Marjorie, who turns out to still be alive after all, harshly diagnoses Ruby’s equanimity as a case of “[m]onstrous self-interest masquerading as emotional stability” (70). The word “monstrous,” which Ruby had earlier used with reference to the obsession of Grief (50), reappears here to characterize her own value system. What sets Ruby apart, according to Marjorie, is her callous egotism: “Grief was never about the loss. It was about the killing, the sheer culpable scale of it. You’re selfish enough to survive the knowledge, that’s all” (72). Through the protagonist’s husband, a New Zealander of Maori heritage while she is a descendant of white settlers in Australia, the novella also repeatedly highlights the fact that the Grief brought on by climate change and biodiversity loss does not affect all communities equally. Indigenous people are said to be especially vulnerable, as for them “[t]he experience of watching the world change around them, the loss of land, was an old wound kept open” (20). This observation is reminiscent of the philosopher Kyle Whyte’s point that “[c]limate injustice, for Indigenous peoples, is less about the spectre of a new future and more like the experience of déjà vu” (88). The wreckages of climate change dreaded by white people are not so different, after all, from the hardships Indigenous people have already endured for centuries due to colonialism. Or as Elizabeth DeLoughrey puts it, “catastrophic ruptures to social and ecological systems have already been experienced through the violent processes of empire. In other words, the apocalypse has already happened …” (7). According to Ruby, the higher rate of Grief in Indigenous populations is a metric people did not want to acknowledge “lest it highlight their own culpability and continued privilege” (7). The fact that the characters we see wrestling with Grief all occupy positions of power or privilege further complicates the morality of their ecological mourning. In the Tasmanian episode, George reminds his wife that “Tasmanian tigers weren’t the only living things that went extinct here. … There’s a long history of hunting on this island” (33). His allusion to a suppressed history of Indigenous genocide prompts Ruby to ask an awkward question: “Had the destruction of Tasmania’s first peoples ever induced someone like Granny—someone like me—to Grief, or was it only the absence of those so little like us that was memorialized in this way?” (34). This question, like many others in this disquieting and thought-provoking novella, is left hanging, and the ending—a scene in which Marjorie urges Ruby “to take up murder” to pay back the agents of environmental destruction (72)—remains tantalizingly unresolved. A probing exploration of the emotional resonance of climate change and extinction, The Impossible Resurrection of Grief shows us that there are no easy answers to facing the climate and ecological crisis and the accompanying feelings. Like an increasing number of literary texts and other artistic works these days, it performs an important service in opening up a space in which the disenfranchised and marginalized kinds of grief associated with environmental loss can be acknowledged, expressed, and, perhaps, channeled in constructive ways—even though the text itself refrains from providing clear pathways for turning grief into positive action and change. Grief being the flipside of love, making sense of environmental emotions, as texts such as Cade’s novella allow us to do, can help foster greater attunement to and interconnectedness with the more-thanhuman world, a task of whose urgency the unfolding crisis continues to remind us.

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CHAPTER SIX

Memory and Environmental Racism in the American Gulf States LUCY BOND AND JESSICA RAPSON

INTRODUCTION The last decade has seen a significant expansion in the nascent field of environmental memory studies (Crownshaw; Groes; Bond, de Bruyn, and Rapson; Craps). Scholars have drawn on existing work in the environmental humanities (Nixon; LeMenager; Yusoff) to propose models of memory fit for the era of the Anthropocene and climate crisis. Such accounts typically question how conventionally anthropocentric paradigms of memory might conceive of more-than-human mnemonic processes; how the relatively short timespans of cultural and communicative memory might be adapted to incorporate geological deep time; how the localized spaces of lieux de mémoire might be expanded to consider the extended spatiality of phenomena like toxic drift, desertification, oil spills, and global warming; and how each of these considerations raises new ethical challenges, complicating conventional binaries of victimhood and perpetration. However, discourses on environmental racism have not been explicitly taken up within memory studies to the same extent as those of anthropogenic climate change. As climate change itself has a differentiated impact on unequal subjects, and race is frequently a factor underpinning environmental inequalities, we argue for more engagement with issues of environmental racism: specifically, on the connection between its past and present forms. Furthermore, much of the rich work within environmental memory studies to date has been focused on reading texts, most notably literary works. Examinations of environmental consequences of conflict are also emerging, but often from a historiographic, rather than a mnemonic perspective (Pearson et al.; Małczyński et al.)1. We attend instead to public memory, heritage, and activism, situating ourselves within the realm of memory rather than history. This is not to invalidate the importance of the interventions outlined above, but to argue that memory studies must also attend to real-world entanglements of lived experience and environmental catastrophe to understand how past and present modes of social and ecological violence intertwine A rare attempt to consider memory and environmental justice together can be found in Phaedra Pezzullo’s examination of toxic tours. Like Pezzullo, we engage with community activism, which itself underscores the fact that groups and individuals disproportionately affected by the effects of climate

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change or pollution are not “merely” passive victims, but frequently mobilize strong civic agency even when politically or economically disadvantaged by hegemonic power structures. However, we extend Pezzullo’s focus in this chapter by including a discussion of heritage institutions, building on the current remit of environmental memory studies within the context of two key states central to North American petrocapitalism: Texas and Louisiana. The ways in which various US minoritized communities have been disproportionately impacted by pollution have been explicitly addressed in the ground-breaking work of environmental justice scholars (Bullard Dumping in Dixie, Quest for Environmental Justice, “Dumping on Houston’s Black Neighbourhoods”; Lerner; B. Wright; B. Allen). However, as Carl Zimring has argued, although there has been thorough documentation of “how environmental racism [has] affected the lives of particular communities at particular times,” “Less well understood are the historical factors shaping environmental racism” (2–3). Bearing this in mind, we highlight the past-present connections that exist between the historic exploitation of people and landscapes and contemporary forms of environmental racism. Beverly Wright acknowledges that “A history of human slavery spawned [US] environmental racism,” which is “also a by-product of the racial segregation and discrimination” of Jim Crow law (87). As she also explains, “A colonial mentality exists in the South, where local governments and big business take advantage of people who are politically and economically powerless. This mentality emerged from the region’s earlier marriage to slavery and the plantation system—a brutal system that exploited both humans and the land” (88). Yet, in addition to this crucial acknowledgment of the historical factors that have influenced present forms of environmental racism, more attention needs to be paid to how these histories are being remembered—or as is more frequently the case, forgotten—in the present. One of the most significant barriers to acknowledging the endurance of environmental racism is the deliberate whitewashing of Southern history perpetuated by the petrochemical corporations that dominate the regional economy. The Gulf States are responsible for 66 percent of US oil production and the environmental impact of these industries is overwhelmingly suffered by minoritized communities. Petrochemical dollars saturate every aspect of Southern life, pervading politics, education, media, and the law. Corporations have heavily invested in cultural institutions, sponsoring heritage and tourist sites across the Gulf States. These sites promote exhibits that negate the detrimental social and environmental impacts of the extractive industries, celebrating their social responsibility, economic, and ecological benefits. The same petrochemical corporations are responsible for managing sites of historic injustice, such as former plantations and colonial battlegrounds. Here, narratives of racialized violence are neutralized in favor of a nostalgic view of the Old South. This two-pronged approach to cultural sponsorship serves to mask the ways in which minoritized groups have been exploited and abused throughout history. This chapter draws a direct correlation between contemporary examples of racial and environmental injustice and the region’s long history of structural racism, demonstrating how environmental racism is perpetrated at the same sites and upon the same communities as past atrocities, and examining the complex palimpsests of violence that arise accordingly. Through an analysis of two case studies, the San Jacinto Monument and Museum in Houston, Texas, and the San Francisco Plantation in Garyville, Louisiana, we explore the marginalized memory of environmental racism in the Deep South: from the racialized violence on which the Gulf States were founded (settler

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colonialism and slavery) to the structural and environmental inequities which mark the legacies of these struggles today. Ultimately, we argue, dialogue between environmental justice activists and memory scholars might help to produce a historicized approach to environmental racism that is able to challenge implicit and explicit forms of cultural forgetting in the Deep South and beyond.

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM, MEMORY, AND HISTORY The term “environmental racism” became widespread after its use by the United Church of Christ’s (UCC) Commission for Racial Justice in 1987. As UCC explained, following a 1986 survey “to determine the extent to which African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and others are exposed to hazardous wastes in their communities” (ix), environmental racism can be defined as “racial discrimination in environmental policy making and the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of people of colour communities for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poison and pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of colour from leadership in the environmental movement” (cited in Zimring 1–2). Elaborating on the historical factors that shape contemporary instances of environmental injustice, Zimring states: Although racism has been a structuring factor in creating environmental inequalities concerning waste, American constructions of race, of waste, and of their interactions have evolved since the nation’s founding. Increasing scientific definitions of waste as hazard and of racial categories in the immediate antebellum period established a foundation for later racist constructions that posited that white people were somehow cleaner than non-white people. This assumption defined white supremacist thinking. Its evolution shaped environmental inequalities that endure in the twenty-first century. (3) Zimring here draws a clear connection between environmental injustice and the South’s history of racism and white supremacy, rooted in plantation slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation. We use UCC’s definition of environmental racism to foreground the connection between historic and contemporary forms of racial and ecological injustice. We argue that environmental racism was an established factor in racialized practices such as convict leasing, which was prevalent in many Southern states after the abolition of slavery as people of color were forced to labur in toxic conditions to establish the South’s early twentieth century industrial economy (Blackmon). However, such terminology is generally not applied to historical suffering. The legacies of these injustices are still visible today in the siting of majority Black prisons on toxic land and yet environmental racism is often viewed as a contemporary phenomenon rather than a practice that has determined race relations and land-use patterns for centuries. Following Zimring’s call to examine the historical factors shaping environmental racism, we extend our discussion further back in time to the early days of plantation slavery and settler colonialism, where the logic of white supremacy that continues to structure American life in the South was firmly entrenched. As in other parts of the United States, those impacted by “slow violence” (Nixon) are often direct descendants of communities historically subject to other forms

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of violence. Whilst not necessarily exposed to toxic waste, poison, or pollutants, Native, Latinx, and African American people’s engagement with every aspect of the land has been regulated by exploitation and disenfranchisement from the beginning of European colonialism. We posit these histories as the starting point of a continuum, which evolved across the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

OIL HISTORY IN TEXAS AND LOUISIANA As Matthew Huber argues, over the course of the twentieth century, oil evolved into America’s “life blood”—a form of “black gold” (Olien Black Gold) that saturated all aspects of private and public life. Over this period, he expands, “oil became constitutive of a specific cultural politics of life in the United States” (Huber xii). The equation of oil and life naturalizes contemporary petrodependancy (Huber xvi). As we will see, public memory culture in Texas and Louisiana contributes to the invisibilization of the negative environmental and social effects of oil as cultural institutions, funded by Big Oil, celebrate the virtues of fossil fuels and dismiss the potential of renewable energies. This process is facilitated by the cultural and economic reach of petrochemical corporations across the Deep South. Heavily nostalgic interpretations of the past are manipulated to maintain the ideological and economic influence of petrocapitalism and to shore up continuing slow violence against minoritized groups living in close proximity to petrochemical infrastructures. It is hard to overestimate how much the petrochemical industries have shaped the history of Texas and Louisiana over the past 100 years. As Christopher Hallowell notes, “most of Louisiana, a good deal of Texas, and much of the Gulf of Mexico float on an unimaginably huge hydrocarbon reservoir” (70); the process of extracting, refining, and selling these abundant natural resources has fundamentally transformed economic, political, social, and cultural life in both states. Although Native Americans had been utilizing it for centuries, the first Europeans to record the existence of oil in Texas and Louisiana were members of Hernando DeSoto’s disastrous 1539 expedition down the Mississippi. DeSoto’s explicit aims were to govern Cuba and colonize North America for Spain (B. Allen; Olien “Oil and Gas Industry”). One might thus say that Euroamerican encounters with oil were intrinsically tied to an imperial project from the outset and it is not coincidental that oil remains fundamentally entangled with the settler imaginary in Texas. In Louisiana, petrochemical production is intimately tied to the legacies and memory of plantation slavery. In both cases, therefore, contemporary petrocapitalism is imbricated in longer histories of violence. The evolution of the petrochemical industries occurred almost simultaneously in Texas and Louisiana, albeit in very different ways. In 1901, Anthony Lucas’s discovery of a large gusher at Spindletop, near Beaumont, ushered in the Texas oil boom. In 1902, the Spindletop oil field produced 17,500,000 barrels of oil, catalyzing a desperate search for new reserves that would persist well into the next three decades. As Spindletop transformed the Texan economy, petroleum began to displace agriculture as the state’s major industry (Ramos). At this time, Texas’s economy was geared toward the small farmer and similar individualistic principles informed the nascent oil and gas industries. The state’s constitution ensured that no wealth derived from natural resources could be concentrated in a single group or individual, meaning that, in its infancy at least, oil “remained, primarily, a local enterprise greatly enhancing and thus diversifying the local economy” (B. Allen 10). The early oil industry was dominated by small companies and

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individual wildcatters, who would quickly establish settlements around a new well, often dispersing as soon as reserves were exhausted. Louisiana’s oil age also began in 1901, when W. Scott Heywood discovered the first gusher in the state. At this time, Louisiana was still dominated by plantation culture, and the sugar economy was increasingly populated by large corporations. Although slavery had been abolished by the end of the Civil War, many formerly enslaved persons and their descendants continued to labor in near servitude as sharecroppers. Moreover, the state was ruled by a strong planter-merchant “Bourbon” alliance, which ensured that “during the early development period of oil, there was no opposition between the planter classes and outside industrial interests …. Both wealthy elites and the state government forged alliances with big oil in its early development” (B. Allen 11). In contrast to Texas, where small prospectors characterized the market, in Louisiana petrocapitalism was driven from the start by big companies and powerful elites. Nonetheless, oil rapidly became big business in both states. In Texas, throughout the 1920s and ’30s, the “discoveries of oil fields led to the founding and flourishing of numerous … towns, to the establishment of companies that have become multinational conglomerates, and to the amassing of vast personal fortunes” (Ramos). Meanwhile, by the 1920s, large-scale drilling had begun in most of Louisiana’s sixty-four parishes and by the 1940s, when petroleum reserves were discovered off the Gulf of Mexico offshore drilling started in earnest (Hallowell). However, the infrastructures that facilitated the expansion of petrochemical productions were remarkably different. As Mary Ramos notes above, oil was literally responsible for the formation of much of modern Texas—new towns were built where wells and refineries were established. Oil fuelled the adoption of the motor car, which in turn led to a whole new transport network. In Louisiana, by contrast, the petrochemical industry developed directly from the old plantation economy. Throughout the first decades of the early twentieth century, leading sugar producers diversified into oil and natural gas. In the 1950s and ’60s, Louisiana’s Governor, Edwin Edwards, led a push to sell former sugar plantations on River Road to petrochemical companies, realizing that these enormous sites offered the space that was needed for increasingly large and complex refineries and processing plants (B. Allen). As a result, as Barbara Allen notes, “from 1964 to 1968 … petrochemical growth in Louisiana outpaced all other states including Texas” (12–13). Despite these inaugural differences, in both Texas and Louisiana, the second half of the twentieth century was the era of Big Oil. Following the unprecedented discovery of the East Texas Oil Field in 1930, Texas’s petrochemical economy shifted away from the independent wildcatters and oil men toward the powerful corporations we see today (many of whom began as small firms in the early 1900s). By 1940, the Baytown plant of the Humble Oil and Refining Company (later Exxon) had become the largest installation in the United States, with the capacity of 140,000 barrels a day (Olien “Oil and Gas Industry”). In 1951, Texan companies produced 15,581,642,000 barrels—a historical high point. And, by 1992, “seven refineries had individual capacities [of] more than 200,000 barrels a day: Amoco (Texas City), Exxon (Baytown), Chevron (Port Arthur), Mobil (Beaumont), Lyondell Petrochemical (Houston), Star Enterprise (Port Arthur and Neches), and Shell (Deer Park)” (Olien “Oil and Gas Industry”). Similarly, “By the early 1970s, Louisiana was producing over 800 million barrels of oil each year and around eight trillion cubic feet of gas. Over 50 percent of the state’s revenue came from oil and gas leases, taxes, and royalties” (Huber 74–5).

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These developments came at severe environmental and social costs. In Texas, companies self-regulated well into the 1970s and were therefore able to set their own “acceptable” levels of pollution. By the 1960s and ’70s, federal government laws were introduced to address the pervasive smog. However, even the new guidelines of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act could not change the fact that the Texan oil industry was supported by local governments who espoused “low taxes, weak unions, and very limited regulations” (Melosi and Pratt 9). The failure to adhere to Environmental Protection Agency standards, and, until very recently, an almost complete lack of prosecution of companies that transgress them, has created a state-wide pollution crisis. The concentration of industry in certain landscapes has led to intensive contamination in areas which are predominantly inhabited by communities of color. Louisiana’s lucrative oceanic petrolandscape has also had deleterious consequences. Its substantial offshore oil wells are connected to the mainland by 20,000 miles of pipelines and service canals, which have proved enormously destructive to the area’s precious wetlands, displacing Cajun and Native American communities and leaving south Louisiana more exposed to Hurricanes and storm surges. Moreover, as the second largest producer of oil in the United States, Louisiana is one of the most polluted regions in the nation (Hallowell). The extent of the pollution is a direct consequence of lax law enforcement and government corruption. As Beverly Wright argues, “Petrochemical companies have made significant economic contributions to the state for decades … Corporations have been absolutely shameless in using their power to ensure their interests are fully represented in the state legislature” (90). The price for oil is overwhelmingly paid by communities that emerged from the plantation system, presenting “A clearly discernible pattern of discrimination” (B. Wright 95). In both states, the damage caused by petrochemical production has been unevenly distributed, concentrated in contained areas largely inhabited by minoritized communities. Houston’s Ship Canal is one such topography. Today, Houston is “the self-proclaimed energy capital of America.” The city is also described as “the de facto ‘oil pollution capital of America’” (Melosi and Pratt 3). Melosi and Pratt outline a city faced with a “triple dilemma of dealing simultaneously with mounting oil-related pollution from the exhausts of gasoline-powered automobiles, the production of oil and chemical products from local plants, and myriad urban pollutants” (8). In the early 1960s, “Houston’s urban core, save downtown, was becoming ‘largely negro and poor’ and Mexican American, whilst the surrounding areas were ‘predominantly white and affluent’” (95). Robert Bullard’s work demonstrates that unofficial zoning in the urban core “allowed for an erratic landuse pattern. The NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) practice was replaced with the PIBBY (Place in Black’s Backyard) policy” (“Dumping on Houston’s Black Neighbourhoods” 209). Large garbage incinerators, landfills, and solid waste sites are predominantly sited in Black and Latinx neighborhoods, and “from neighbourhood ‘snapshots’, one can see the impact of Jim Crow segregation in shaping black Houston” (214). One such neighborhood is the area founded by formerly enslaved people as Freedmen’s Town, in the Fourth Ward. Displacement has impacted this community; in the 1940s a large area was destroyed during “slum clearance” and the original habitations were replaced with a white public housing project. Podagrosi and Vojnovica chart a series of displacements that continue to this day, despite attempts to safeguard this heritage landmark for Black Houstonians against encroaching development and gentrification. In Louisiana, pollution is concentrated in “Cancer Alley,” the 100-mile stretch of the former River Road that runs between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The communities in

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this area are majority African American, many living on the land their ancestors acquired at Emancipation. They also tend to be low income and high in unemployment, with most residents not possessing a college education (Dorceta Taylor 22). In this area, “more than one hundred firms manufacture sulfuric acid, ethylene, fertilizers, petrochemicals, and vinyl chloride” (Markowitz and Rosner 264), causing abnormally high rates of several cancers among local residents. Another aspect of the oil industry’s presence in Louisiana, and its impact on communities of color, is their role in the displacement of townships established in the post-slavery era. In the late 1980s, the temporary tightening of environmental regulations under Governor Charles E. Roemer led many companies to conclude that buying out vulnerable communities might be an easier way of dealing with their responsibilities than reducing emissions or cleaning up polluted land. The well-documented case of Diamond (a community housing largely African American residents of the former Diamond Plantation) saw a long battle between residents and Shell Norco to cover the costs of relocation necessitated by their own pollution (see B. Wright; Lerner). As Beverly Wright puts it in discussion of three other such locations, Morrisonville, Reveilletown, and Sunrise, all “intrinsically tied to African Americans’ freedom from slavery,” a “sinister consequence of the growth of the corridor has been the loss of historic lands and communities” (102). The history of oil in Texas and Louisiana thus reveals implicit and explicit ties to the states’ colonial and plantation pasts. Focusing on commemorative practices in the Houston Ship Canal and the River Road, the next sections will unpack how the heritage industry is complicit in both marginalizing historic modes of racialized violence and masking contemporary forms of environmental racism in petrochemical landscapes.

HERITAGE NARRATIVES AND OIL SPONSORSHIP IN TEXAS AND LOUISIANA Both Texas and Louisiana have strong public memory narratives. In Texas, the tourist industry thrives on the commemoration of pioneer life and the romance of the frontier. In Louisiana, plantation heritage presents a nostalgic view of the antebellum South, focusing on the family lives of plantation owners and their lavish possessions. The official memory culture of both states marginalizes historical violence: in Texas, settler colonialism is routinely presented as a heroic battle for independence and freedom; in Louisiana, plantation museums frequently elide the horrors of slavery. This whitewashing of the past is often accompanied by a greenwashing of the present and, we will argue, both of these elisions can be explained by petrochemical corporations’ widespread sponsorship of museums and tourist attractions. In Texas, the valorization of the frontier is predicated on the celebration of white settler identity. As Frederick Jackson Turner wrote, the frontier has long possessed a particular resonance in the American imagination as “the meeting point between savagery and civilization” (1893). In Texas, the frontier is celebrated as the crucible of Texan identity, and pioneer life is coupled resoundingly to a nostalgic re-enactment of the Texan War of Independence (1835–6). The Texas Historical Commission runs the Texan Independence Trail, which covers hundreds of heritage sites. Their website encourages visitors to: Experience Texas’ struggle for independence and its years as a sovereign republic …. We encourage travelers to find the spirit of Texas …. The larger-than-life images of

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explorers, heroes, and settlers such as Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle, Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston and Davy Crockett resonate throughout the state, U.S. and beyond as visitors can relive this dynamic history. (“The Texas Independence Trail Region”) As in Turner’s formulation this publicity material implicitly pits the “civilized” white Anglo-American colonialists against “savage” Mexicans, recounting how Houston, Austin, and others fought bravely for their claims to Tejas, “an enormous Mexican territory—far from civilization.” Similar stories are told at tourist destinations across Texas, where a burgeoning heritage industry recreates romanticized impressions of early colonial life at sites like Pioneer Towns (Wimberley), Pioneer Museum (Fredericksburg), Pioneer Village Living History Center (Gonzales), and Pioneer Farms (Austin). The sanitized narratives produced at these sites negate colonial violence and marginalize the memory of Mexican, Native, and African American peoples. In Louisiana, white antebellum culture has historically not so much been defined in opposition to African American identity, as by its absence. Plantation heritage, significantly clustered around River Road since the 1970s, has been rigorously critiqued by scholars of heritage and memory as an industry that whitewashes antebellum history (see Rapson). Even given the more recent tendency of plantation stakeholders and curators to include representations of the enslaved, researchers note the exploitation of slavery for commercial purposes (Adams Wounds of Returning 63), the ongoing privileging of white experiences (Rahier and Hawkins) through the “discourse of ownership” (Modlin 164), and the silencing of stories of their enslaved workers (Buzinde and Santos). Both guidebooks and tours generally pay close attention to notable furnishings and household objects such as ceiling moldings. Modlin’s research evidences various ways in which the handling of such objects on plantation house tours frequently contributes to the “dehumanization” of the enslaved and the superiority of their owners (161). As Modlin suggests, the master heritage narratives of Louisiana, and Texas also, we would argue, are premised on the dehumanization of the white South’s historical Others: in Texas’s pioneer attractions, native Mexicans are portrayed as savage and uncivilized; in many of Louisiana’s plantation museums, enslaved African Americans are either erased from the scene or tacitly demeaned. In both instances, minoritized communities are likely to remain largely anonymous, in contrast to the heroic white protagonists whose biographies are individualized and exhaustively narrated. However, this racialization of memory is not the only characteristic shared by heritage sites in these two states; also remarkable is the extent to which cultural attractions are sponsored by petrochemical corporations across Texas and Louisiana. In Texas, the oil industry’s influence on tourist attractions is very explicit. As William R. Price and Catherine L. Ronck assert: Texas is the state most associated with oil and natural gas in the United States. In addition to its significant production levels and connection with well-known global companies, oil and natural gas have in the last century become a prominent part of  Texas’s cultural heritage. Reflecting this, there are a number of oil and natural gas-based tourism attractions in the state. (440) Noting that Texas contains more oil and gas museums than all European nations combined (442), Price and Ronck survey nine of the state’s most prominent institutions, varying

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significantly in size and wealth, and opened between the years 1933 and 2012. Some, like the Spindletop-Gladys Boomtown Museum, are site-specific memorials to key moments in Texan energy history; others, like the Ocean Star Museum, are located on former refineries; and others still are part of larger institutions like the Perot Nature and Science Museum, Dallas. Nonetheless, all of these museums are sponsored, in whole or in part, by Big Oil. Price and Ronck identify six recurrent themes: a nostalgic retelling of Texan energy history from the boomtowns to the present; a fascination with the biographies of wildcatters and oilmen; the fetishization of extractive technologies; a celebration of the social and economic benefits of oil and natural gas (coupled to the rejection of renewable technologies); displays of petrochemical products and statements underscoring their indispensability to modern life; and recruitment processes for the oil and natural gas industries, with exhibits showcasing different industry careers (445–51). In Louisiana, Big Oil’s investment in culture tends to be a little more covert. In the New Orleans-Baton Rouge area, oil and mineral extraction companies have, in the name of caring for their communities, been aligning themselves with both local and “high” culture for decades. Investment in heritage and tourism in this area dates back at least as far as 1948 when Standard Oil commissioned and sponsored Robert Flaherty’s documentary Louisiana Story, which showcased the landscape as unspoilt despite the influx of oil infrastructure (Barnouw 216). In the twenty-first century, as Ann Hackett notes, oil and gas companies sponsor a vast range of institutions from museums and arts centers to parks and zoos. Shell also supports the city’s famous Jazz festival, underscoring, in their words, a “shared heritage with, and commitment to, Louisiana … we are woven into the fabric of the state” (“Shell’s Sponsorship”). While Ramos praises the philanthropism behind such investments, they also seem to indicate a strong ideological agenda. One major exhibit not explored by Price and Ronck is the Weiss Energy Hall at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The Hall is sponsored by numerous major petrochemical firms, with each display attributed to a particular company. The exhibits tap into familiar narratives. There is a repeated conflation of biological life and the carbon economy: as one caption notes, “life as we know it is carbon-based, and all life requires energy.” The extractive industries are also explicitly framed as pioneering: as another display reads, “Energy powers our exploration and fuels our curiosity: where will energy take us next?” This energy theme park, with games and immersive experiences such as “The Wildcatter’s Gusher Gamble,” encourages visitors to try their hand at oil prospecting. The exhibits pursue the search for oil far into the future: in the Geovator (a mock-up of a deep-sea fracking machine), the quest for energy is presented as a journey through time and space. Technologies of exploration and extraction are naturalized with no nod to their social or environmental costs. Alternative energies are seen as costly and ultimately ineffective; by contrast, fossil fuels are portrayed as liberating, equalizing, and inexhaustible. There is clearly a propagandist element to the Weiss Energy Hall, made all the more concerning given its location in the supposedly “scientific” and “objective” surroundings of the Natural Science Museum. A similarly ideological bent can be seen at the Gulf of Mexico exhibit in New Orleans’ Audubon Aquarium, jointly sponsored by BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Kerr-McGee, and Tenneco, where marine mammals and fish occupy a derelict, offshore oil rig. The accompanying text reads: “The Gulf of Mexico has been home to oil rigs for decades. Energy companies are an important part of the culture and infrastructure in South Louisiana, employing thousands of people and contributing to the state’s economy.” The Aquarium’s Louisiana-related exhibits blame levee-building, nutria, and exotic plant species for the destruction of the wetlands and man-made coastal

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FIGURE 6.1  The Wildcatter’s Gusher Gamble, Weiss Energy Hall, Houston Museum of

Natural Science, Texas. Photo by author.

FIGURE 6.2  The Geovater, Weiss Energy Hall, Houston Museum of Natural Science,

Texas. Photo by author.

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land loss but fail to mention the roles played by oil and gas companies, whose patronage directly shapes the narratives of its cultural partners. Thus, we might argue Big Oil’s investment in cultural exhibits across the Deep South is intended, on the one hand, to celebrate the virtues of oil and to denigrate renewable technologies and, on the other, to greenwash the reputation of petrochemical corporations. Coupled with the whitewashing of history highlighted above, we suggest that tourist and heritage sites are tacitly involved in marginalizing past and present forms of racial and ecological violence. In so doing, they minimize the histories of colonialism and slavery while occluding their own symbolic and economic ties to the contemporary petrochemical corporations responsible for polluting minoritized communities with deadly toxins. Expanding upon these points, our last section will explore two more pernicious examples of the way in which heritage institutions, sponsored by petrodollars, are implicated in the perpetuation of environmental racism.

HERITAGE, OIL, AND ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM IN TEXAS AND LOUISIANA Our final case studies are the San Jacinto Museum and Monument in Houston, Texas, and the San Francisco Plantation in Garyville, Louisiana. Located on the edge of Houston’s chemical corridor, the Monument was built to commemorate the centenary of the decisive Revolutionary Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. Bombastic inscriptions tell of the heroic war that Texan troops fought against “unscrupulous,” “unjust,” and “despotic” Mexicans. In turn, the Museum recreates the familiar narrative of Texan frontierism. Inside the obelisk, friezes present a nostalgic view of pioneer life, while paintings depict the victorious Texan troops standing peaceably over their exhausted Mexican foes (with no acknowledgment of the fact that hundreds of Mexican soldiers were massacred after the battle was won). This whitewashed account of colonial settlement is accompanied by a triumphal history of oil. One half of the ground floor is given over to a Big Energy exhibition, sponsored by Shell. The interactive display celebrates Texas’s petrochemical past while positioning the extractive industries as the key to both the harmonious functioning of contemporary civil society and the success of the global future. Petrochemical corporations—and Shell in particular—are positioned as bastions of the community. As one exhibit reads: The birthplace of Texas is home to Shell’s largest integrated refinery and petrochemical plant. Since the establishment of Shell in Deer Park in 1929, the company and the city have grown up together and have forged a special bond that continues to this day. Through the years, the people of Deer Park powered progress locally by building a strong community and creating an environment for commerce to thrive on a global scale. Throughout the Museum, extraction and refining are continually greenwashed. At the top of the obelisk, visitors can look out across Shell’s mammoth Deer Park facility—just one of twenty-nine refineries lining the Houston Ship Canal. From this vantage point, visitors can see flares periodically shooting hundreds of meters from chimneys into the sky. The curators are at pains to provide reassurance that this petrochemical landscape is both natural and safe. As one piece of exposition reads “When you see flaring, please be assured that flares play a key role in keeping both the plant and the community safe.”

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FIGURE 6.3  Inscriptions on the San Jacinto Monument, Houston, Texas. Photo by author.

FIGURE 6.4  Big Energy Exhibition, San Jacinto Museum, Houston, Texas. Photo by author.

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However, visitors may have been less reassured by this claim in March 2019 when one of several major fires to hit Houston’s refineries that year broke out in Deer Park. The fire burned for four days, enveloping the San Jacinto monument in toxic smoke and evacuating schools in the area. Indeed, for the minoritized communities who live in the shadow of San Jacinto, the reality of Big Energy is more a recurring nightmare than a dream of progress. A report published by the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (t.e.j.a.s.) in 2016 reveals the less publicized and palatable aspects of the petrochemical economy. Houston is the largest refining area in the United States, producing 2.6 million barrels of crude oil per day (Greater Houston Partnership 2021). The refining processes and technologies so celebrated inside the Monument, and throughout Texas’s energy museums, emit air toxins that cause cancer, asthma, kidney and liver damage. These pollutants have a disproportionate impact on the Black, Latinx, Asian, and immigrant communities that live in south-central and south-east Houston (t.e.j.a.s. “Environmental Racism”; “Air Toxics”). A similarly disturbing scenario can be seen at the San Francisco Plantation in Louisiana. San Francisco Plantation house was saved from dereliction by millions of dollars of investment from Marathon Oil, which started the “San Francisco Plantation Foundation” after purchasing the land in 1974. Whilst the Foundation, rather than Marathon, now owns the house, Marathon continues to run a refinery on the land which currently produces 556,000 barrels of oil per calendar day (the fourth largest refinery in the United States). Marketed for its distinctive “Steamboat Gothic” architecture and Creole layout, San Francisco tours tell the story of its once prosperous owners, in this case the “gracious” Marmillion family, and their struggle to maintain the plantation during

FIGURE 6.5  San Francisco Plantation, River Road, Louisiana. Photo by author.

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the Civil War (San Francisco Plantation Foundation). The official guidebook, Return to Elegance, urges visitors to imagine going back in time to experience their own visit to the hospitable Marmillions in the plantation’s heyday of 1860 (implying an anticipated white tourist, as presumably the Marmillions were not frequently found dining with African Americans). Summarizing San Francisco as “a site of spectacular failure” “from which issues of slavery, if not racism, have been largely excised,” Jessica Adams’ account identified it as representative of plantation museums in the first decade of the twentyfirst century (“Local Color”). In February 2017, Marathon announced a research process “aimed at bringing greater prominence to the lives of those who helped build the nation’s economy of [the plantation] era,” namely slaves, and to tell this story in greater detail at the plantation itself; a “a response to employees and others who felt that the plantation was celebrating the period of slavery” (“Putting History into Focus”). A number of additions have since been made, including designated slave cabin exhibits, although as Modlin puts it, “This spatial and social segregation … indicates to tourists that lives of the enslaved were simple and self-evident—possibly even boring—when compared to the planter’s house, which needs an expert in order for it to be interpreted,” which was certainly our impression of the site when visiting in 2019. The addition of slavery has not mitigated the segregation and distancing of enslaved lives from the privileging of those of their owners. One distinctive feature of San Francisco is its frank celebration of the oil sponsorship that maintains it: The San Francisco Plantation was purchased by Energy Corporation of Louisiana in 1973 as the site for an oil refinery …. The chairman of the corporation, Frederick B. Ingram, urged restoration and the building and seven acres were donated to the foundation …. Marathon Oil Company, long active in Louisiana oil and gas development, agreed to underwrite the cost [$2,000,000] … the plantation house was first viewed by the public during the dedication of Marathon’s Garyville refinery in April [1997]. (San Francisco Plantation Foundation) The guidebook goes on to explain that as admission fees do not cover the site’s necessary expenses, “Marathon Oil foundation, Inc provides a substantial donation to cover the deficit.” Despite these acknowledgments, critics have shed doubt on Marathon’s genuine commitment to heritage, given the company’s decision to bulldoze nearby Welham plantation overnight just three days from the start of 1979 National Preservation Week. Up until Welham’s destruction, Marathon had secured “regional and national kudos” for its generosity in restoring San Francisco (Hutcheson). Whilst their handling of the plantations appears contradictory, statements by Michael Russo, Marathon’s manager of press and publications, implied that one house should have been enough: “we assumed an obligation to restore San Francisco, which cost us $2.5 million”; “We thought we made a significant contribution … but we can’t respond to every incident” (Hutcheson). Whilst New Orleans representative, Ben Bagert, argued that Marathon had “stripped away its veneer of questionable concern, cooperation and progressiveness, to unmask what must be called a sordidly tarnished corporate name and reputation” (cited in Hutcheson), tour guides continue to emphasize Marathon’s association with the house to visitors. Fundamental to a broader understanding of San Francisco is how the plantation functions as a site of erasure of Black lives and memories in both plantation past

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and industrial present. In 2002, Denise Strong and Kathy Allen Hobbs reported that communities around Garyville were: surrounded by sources of air pollution [with] an oil company refinery [Marathon] on one side and on the other, a grain elevator. Residents tell of dust from the grain elevator infiltrating their homes every day and bad odors from the oil refinery … communities have concerns about the railway track that allows transportation of railway cars that are sometimes carrying hazardous substances. Amongst these communities were the displaced members of the original settlement of Lions, founded by former slaves (Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN)). As LEAN report: The Marathon refinery is located between Lions, a community founded by former slaves, and Garyville, a racially mixed community on the upstream side. Refinery operations and multiple accidents contributed to an unhealthy and noxious environment; residents from both towns were relocated with Lions being entirely displaced. The cemeteries of the historic settlement are the only remnants of the community and now completely surrounded by the Marathon refinery. (“Lions”) According to The Times Picayune in 1984, amongst Lions’ original residents were those who had originally been enslaved at San Francisco; their bodies were interned in the cemetery which is now “buried deep” within the refinery, visited by friends and family “escorted by guards, to pay their respects.” Marathon kept the cemetery maintained for further descendants to be buried, at the request of the sellers. The article concludes: “every once in a while, a funeral procession weaves its way through the busy oil refinery, bringing someone else to be buried beneath the oil tanks” (Gilger). The community of Lions, and its cemetery, is invisible and unacknowledged at San Francisco plantation. As the architecture of slavery and the plantation kingdom gave way to the infrastructure of the extractive industries, Marathon saved San Francisco; and in doing so, they took custodianship of the memories of those who occupied it, as well as its historical remnants. The community displaced by their own strategic environmental racism is ignored in favor of rehearsing the familiar River Road plantation narrative that takes every opportunity to deny the existence of structural racism. As Pezzullo’s discussion of similar patterns elsewhere on the River Road suggests, “Just as former slaves lived on small plots of land adjacent to the sources of their oppression, so, too, do their descendants live on land connected to the industries that both demean the value of their lives and jeopardize their survival” (240). As such, San Francisco stands now as a testament to elite white power, of both the plantation past and the petrochemical present, and the racist logic that enabled them to come into being.

CONCLUSION As is evident from Pezzullo’s research on Toxic Tours in River Road, Louisiana, it is in local community activist narratives, rather than mainstream heritage, that histories and memories of environmental racism emerge. Accordingly, we have interviewed a number of activist groups, including t.e.j.a.s. and LEAN, over the course of our research.

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Since 2005, t.e.j.a.s. has been run as a non-profit organization, providing tools such as environmental and legal education for vulnerable communities. The service is largely staffed by volunteers from Houston’s Latinx community and run by husband-and-wife team, Juan and Ana Parras. In 2021, Juan Parras was selected as an advisor for President Joe Biden’s White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. t.e.j.a.s. carries out important advocacy work and monitors air and water pollution levels, fires, flare-ups, and unusual emissions across the Houston area. However, they also run donation-only toxic tours for academics, journalists, politicians, and other environmental activists which show the importance of broadening the temporal frames of environmental justice work to reveal the historical precursors of contemporary environmental racism. They also provide a clear indicator of why instances of environmental racism should be of central concern to scholars of memory. We participated in a tour run by Juan Parras in July 2019. The itinerary wove between sites of contemporary injustice—such as the residences, schools, and play areas most affected by the toxic pollutants emitting from Houston’s Ship Canal—and markers of historical violence—such as Confederate and African American cemeteries, the former immaculately preserved, the latter (containing graves of the enslaved alongside the inhabitants of the first freedmen’s towns) largely derelict. The tour also takes in the San Jacinto Monument—emphasizing how this celebration of the brutal defeat inflicted on the Mexican army by white Euroamerican settlers is nestled in between the very refineries that are today polluting Latinx and African American communities. This oscillation between sites of past and present suffering offers a profound indication of how historic violence is fundamentally tied to contemporary environmental racism. One of the most illuminating stops on the tour were two large murals on the side of Shell storage tanks located along Highway 85. Measuring 40 by 140 feet, these tanks have been painted with scenes depicting the Texan “victory” at San Jacinto (Hagerty). According to the San Jacinto Historic District, who commissioned the murals, the artworks are intended to promote “strategic economic development focusing on untapped historical resources” (Handy). As Harris County Commissioner, Sylvia Garcia, who ran the “Project Stars” initiative of which they were part, remarked the murals are “a great cause for celebration because as we keep doing these things all we are doing is restoring our own history” (Handy). In tying contemporary economic development to the “recovery” of a white-centric history, Project Stars provides a perfect illustration of how contemporary petrocapitalism appropriates an exclusionary cultural memory to mask its imbrication in ongoing forms of racialized violence. In highlighting the connections between the heritage and petrochemical industries in the Deep South, this chapter aims to underscore how the whitewashing of the past is fundamentally connected to greenwashing and the denial of environmental racism in the present. In making this argument, we conclude with three related points. First, the remit of environmental memory studies needs to be broadened beyond literary and cultural representations of climate change to engage more fully with real-world environmental justice scenarios. Second, that environmental justice work should conceive of environmental racism not only as a contemporary phenomenon, but as a much older form of historical injustice. Recognizing the long imbrication of racial and ecological violence upon which the Deep South was founded, we position settler colonialism, slavery, convict leasing, lynching, and segregation as direct precursors of what we today recognize as environmental racism. Finally, that attending to the above concerns will make it easier to identify the ways in which the heritage industry, and official cultural memory more

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broadly, is complicit in negating historical injustice and perpetuating, or at the very least, eliding environmental racism in the present, as we have demonstrated here in respective discussions of San Francisco and San Jacinto. Given the paucity of representations of environmental racism at even the most progressive heritage institutions in the Deep South (such as the Whitney Plantation Museum on the River Road or the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama), this feels like very necessary work if racialized environmental injustice is to be brought to wider public attention.

NOTE 1. See also “The Environmental History of the Holocaust,” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 22, no. 2, 2020.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Widow’s Walk CAROLINE MORRIS

September was fading. The tourists had gone. From our windows, the beach stretched empty east and west, broken only by the lighthouse high on the bluff and the channel that tied the sea to Sesachacha Pond. Daisy could race on the beach without a leash. The waves, after months of calm, resumed their pounding. Newspaper delivery stopped and the beach houses, save ours, were shuttered against the chill. Like the expanse of sand and saltwater, the days belonged to Daisy and me entirely, free, uninterrupted, desolate. Amid the quiet, renters moved into the Hummingbird House. The cottage is the only one on the pond, sheltered from the gales of the open beach. An enviable spot, maybe the best on all Nantucket, and always a rental. We tried to buy it once, before Brendan retired, for the girls to use when they had their own families. But the girls stopped coming and the house is now owned by a Manhattan mercenary who fills it with tourists who pronounce the pond’s name, Sesachacha, the way it’s spelled. People who know better, locals and us old time summer people, say Sackacha, with a heavy emphasis on the sack. On our evening walk, as I shooed Daisy from a decaying seagull in the path, masked by sea grass, I watched a young couple shoulder pregnant duffle bags and laden hangers inside. Though my eyes were no longer sharp enough to make out their features, I could see their silhouettes move from window to window as they stowed their gear. They were Brendan and me decades ago at the beginning of the season, unpacking with nautical precision before he allowed us to relax into a cocktail and the sound of the ocean. I remember the corn-blond hair on the backs of his bowed calves, and the boyish sag in his shorts. He would spend a weekend getting the girls and I settled and provisioned, like we were shipping out for months, before he returned to D.C. on regular rotations for work with the rest of the men who commuted all summer. The Navy man in Brendan would have judged the couple harshly for their packing: a weathered football, rainbows of books, and fishing gear were strewn like jetsam along the road. I retreated. The ocean roiled white in the dusk, and the lights from the rental cottage glowed like talismans against the flat chill. Daisy dashed up our deck stairs, her toenails castanets against the aging wood. She still trusted Brendan to be there each day when we returned from our walk, his face to the water, eyes narrow against the wind. Before the planks had buckled and grayed, Brendan taught the girls to dance on this deck. I watched from the doorframe, conscious of the shape of my body, the weight of my hair. “You’ll always be my girls,” he said to us. He chanted the pond name, mispronouncing it with abandon. “Se- sa- cha- cha- cha,” as he backed Gigi around the wicker furniture. “1,2, 1-2-3 … Se-sa- cha-cha-cha.” He heaved her over his shoulder, keeping the rhythm, hips swaying as he grabbed my waist. We all chanted in unison, “Se-sa-cha-cha-cha.”

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No such commotion remained. Not even the structured busyness of the last few years. We came here for privacy, so Brendan could fail out of view of his fellow officers, only me as witness. Taking care of him, or the husk of him, was like having young children again, but without the small victories in which mothers take pride. The same rigid adherence to routine—meals, bedtimes and the brushing of teeth. The help, a rigging of competent women who smelled of talcum and rubber gloves, kept us aloft. I was ready for him to go when he did. The tedium of his slow retreat had rubbed me smooth as sea glass. I lost him each time he smiled as politely at me as he did at the nurse, with no more recognition or affection. As the warp and weft of our years together morphed from canvas to cheesecloth to a spidery skein like Miss Havisham’s veil, I lost him, thread by thread: when he couldn’t recall that, to us, Ike wasn’t Eisenhower, but a reminder of the annual fights we had about my using a name for what he called “a miscarriage, not a baby,” when he didn’t know we’d been grade school sweethearts in Charlottesville, married in Annapolis or honeymooned in Naxos for only four days before his first deployment. At the end, there were no abrasions of grief, simply formalities, untying of lines, undoing of knots. A drifting away. He and the help left overnight and all at once, allowing me to go slack, to stay in my bathrobe until three, or walk and walk and walk the beach, in all hours and all weathers, as if someone had ordered me to do so. The day after the renters arrived, the phone woke me before ten. My shoes, still on my feet, had left a swath of sand across the sheets. Unable to sleep, I’d walked under the thumbnail moon until I could feel nothing but an ache in my hips. Daisy, who blended in with the beige carpet, lifted her head, ears perked at the phone’s repetitive toll. Gigi, my eldest, called every morning on her way to court. If I didn’t pick up, she’d keep calling or, worse, summon the authorities to check on me. She’d given me a watch that tracked and shared my step count, heart rate and sleep patterns with the family. I claimed to have been unable to get it to work, which because I’m getting old, everyone believed. “I’m alive,” I said, “which I consider a victory at my age.” My voice sounded rusty. “77 is not that old.” I heard her get in the car, and her words grew muffled. As the responsible daughter, she scheduled this call daily on her way to the office, 8am Los Angeles time. Claire, who was born when we were stationed in Naples and now ran a restaurant in Rome, was more Italian in her approach to communication and, well, everything else. “What are you up to today?” Gigi asked. “Not much to report. Daisy and I keep ourselves busy.” “Are you eating?” “Lobster and chocolate cake for every meal.” These were her favorites. “I sent you a link to a tai chi class in town at noon.” She always emailed me suggestions for how to make my life look more like hers. Trips to Tanzania, the grandchildren’s school plays, cooking classes, grief groups. “You know this is your time to do anything you want.” The charitable part of me recognized the worry in her voice, her guilt at being busy and far away, but every time she said this I felt the pressure of the dream we all have about showing up for an exam in a class you haven’t been attending. I asked about Zeke and the children and, of course, they were all fine. Zeke was busy on a big trial and there was a controversy about a third-grade teacher. Gigi talked faster as the demands on her time increased. I was one more thing to juggle. Our fifteen

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minutes were almost up and I signed off cheerily, assuring her that I too was fine. And of course, I was. I had enough money, enough food, adequate shelter. My brain and body still worked. Daisy, next to the bed, nosed the crook of my elbow, relentless in her demand to be walked. Outside, the sky was utterly blue, no hint of white. Daisy sprinted up and down the beach, wary of the ocean, but tempted by its slow hammock sway. I lagged behind, not spilling my coffee. There was a strong easterly breeze, the sort that Brendan would’ve routed us out early for, banging on the upstairs walls, shouting, “Heave out and trice up, all hands on deck.” As we rounded the spit to the pond, the sunfish halyards clanged sharp and metallic against their masts. The sun stung my eyes and exposed the deep channels separating the veins of my hands. The Hummingbird House couple were at the edge of the pond, holding mugs, kicking at the lapping water. His laughter reached us long before hers and echoed back across the water. He stood with the unearned confidence of large men. He dwarfed her, but kept their faces level by standing in an S shape, his shoulders rounded, his stomach concave, knees half-bent. She was slight and struck me as the kind of person who found eye contact vital. In contrast to his slouch, her shoulders were back and neck straight as if she might carry one of their books around the pond on her head. The girl saw me, and when we were within the range where politeness required a greeting, she reached her hand out to Daisy, who nuzzled it and murmured a well-trained “Good morning,” the kind reserved for old ladies who have come to resemble their dogs. In the glare off the water, the couple shimmered like a mirage. Their teeth were so white, their eyes so blue, I had to turn away, disoriented, as if I had stared too long at the sun. I fled past them, toward the uninhabited beach, toward home. In front of our house, fishermen kept driftwood racks for their poles and nets. The gnarled gray limbs tied with fraying line looked like ancient totems. Brendan told the girls that witches made them long ago to warn children from going into the sea at night. Daisy walked right past them to water, right to the point where waves threatened to swallow her paws. Three months before, while I was inside freshening my drink, Brendan left a final footprint in the sand at that precise spot, before he surrendered and let his lungs balloon with seawater. Daisy now stood guard at the water’s edge, waiting for him to bound out of the breakers, his rounded chest ruddy. She barked at length from her sentry post, either in anger or in salutation. The benign lapping of the water chafed like the bright sun, rubbing me raw. I turned my back on Daisy’s watch and retreated to the cool chintz of our living room, hoping for bills to pay. The Navy buried him with full honors. The service was in the Naval Academy’s domed, marble chapel where we’d married. At twenty, as we’d walked into our lives under a canopy of crossed swords, I’d felt anointed by the grandeur of the building and the Navy’s rites, like the nation’s ancient mariners were blessing our union. But as the I sat in the soft summer air, flanked by my daughters and their daughters, as Brendan was lowered into the ground, as I endured the nineteen-gun salute, the triangle of flag in my lap, all the epaulets and medals, the pageantry turned my gut to lava. Where had they been when he fell apart piece by piece? For years, I’d been with him all alone and now, here they all were again. Looking at all the younger officers, the ones who were already grey and chomping at the bit for a promotion, and the ones who still had pimples and shimmering mirages for futures, I wanted to yell. It was easy for the Navy to hallow its men, who served with such devotion and diligently climbed the ladder built long ago, reaping rewards at each rung. I wanted to shriek at them that there would come a day when they could no longer rise. I wanted to warn them: institutions cannot love you back.

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When we were stationed in Turkey, the third of fourteen posts during his career, which he referred to as ours, we’d left the girls, little then, with their bakcisi and spent the day at the mud baths at Dalyan. He’d piloted the small boat upriver while I’d lain in the sun. There, he solemnly striped my cheeks and the bridge of my nose like war paint. I caked his face and hair gray so that he looked like a marble bust, as eternal as Agamemnon who, according to legend, had his bath house on the site. Why remember this as I watched the uniformed, white gloved men bury my husband? Why keep dreaming of what I’d have preferred: to smear his ashes on my naked body, walk the beach all night with my hair wild, swim naked in the waves at dawn, one last intimate moment together? I want to scream at the Navy men, who I’d once believed were family, that he was mine, but it wasn’t true. His tombstone had his name, the dates, and one understated word: sailor. Maybe he was always the Navy’s first and mine second. To whom then did I belong? The next afternoon it was raining, a cold, persistent drizzle punctuated by heavy gusts. Daisy proved a reluctant walker and soon sat, wet dog in wet sand, and waited for me to turn towards home. On the deck, the wind had upended one of the chairs and when I went to open the door, I found it locked, though I hadn’t used the key in months. I tried the back door. I tried the front door. I tried the reachable windows and the car. All were locked. I hadn’t brought a phone. I considered smashing a pane with a rock, but I pictured the broken glass, the potential injury, the explaining to Gigi that I’d brought neither key nor phone. Gigi wanted me to come live in California so things like this wouldn’t happen. I walked towards the rental. The downstairs lights were on. The car was in the driveway. A sinew of smoke came from the chimney. I was drenched to the bone and Daisy was worse. I knocked. The girl came to the door and smiled while I explained myself, wiping the water from my face. “Of course,” she said. “Come in. Let me get you a towel.” No invitation was forthcoming for Daisy, so I left her, forlorn, on the front stoop. The man was on the couch in front of the fire, reading. Two pairs of wet socks hung on the fire screen. He stood up and shook my hand. “I’m Sam,” he said. “Happy to try and get the door open for you.” “I’ve tried everything but breaking windows. If I could just call the locksmith, please.” He looked up the number and showed me to the kitchen phone. The round breakfast table was littered with large black and white photographs of roof walks, or widow’s walks, as Brendan and most people preferred to call them. Two cameras, a laptop and a large printer occupied the bookshelves. On the phone, I explained to the locksmith in town what had happened, feeling like an old fool who hadn’t taken proper precautions. The girl came back with towels and put a kettle on. “Have some tea while you wait,” she said when I’d hung up. “I won’t have you out in this weather.” “This is Julia, by the way,” Sam said. She laughed. “I’ve forgotten your name, sorry.” “Me too,” I said, but then realized they thought I was senile rather than joking. “I’m Charlotte Burke. We live around the spit.” “Does someone else have a key?” Sam asked. Gigi had suggested some system or other, but there were no year-round neighbors and I’d failed to ask anyone in town. “No, it’s just me.” They took my coat and poured me tea and once the logistics were settled, I asked about the photographs.

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“I’m doing a book on Widow’s Walks,” Sam said. He worked for some magazine or other. “They call them roof walks here, honey,” Julia said. “So everyone keeps telling me. Takes all the romance right out of it.” He crossed his arms and sighed. “Sam likes the idea of sea captain’s wives standing up there at all hours pining for their men.” She rolled her eyes playfully and winked at me. “Like we don’t have better things to do, right?” Something about this felt like a papercut, not a real wound, but a sharp, unexpected pain from a benign source. I wondered if I had, mostly, spent my time, if not pining for Brendan, at least orbiting around him like he was the center of the world. “I was a Captain’s wife, actually, well, first a lieutenant’s wife, and then so on and so on. My husband spent his career in the Navy. He was away a lot but there was always plenty to do, with children and so on. And we moved around.” These were things I used to be able to say to strangers and rely on their being broadly accepted, even admired, but Julia looked at me with that same polite pity my daughters often did. “I’m a relic, I know.” “It must’ve been a fascinating life,” Sam said. “It was.” My voice was small enough to be swallowed by the wind outside. Julia looked at the photographs and pointed at one of a whaler’s house in town near the ferry terminal. “Actually, most houses, even way inland, had these for the very practical purpose of putting out grease fires when people still cooked on the hearth. You could climb up there and dump buckets of sand down and save the day. Originally, they were known as scuttles.” “No one, however, will buy a book called The Scuttles of New England.” Sam laughed and rested his hand on her knee. “Surely, some woman, somewhere went up to the roof to await her love’s return.” “Or to escape her children,” Julia said. “Or her husband while he was at home.” They flirted merrily as we all watched the road for the locksmith’s headlights in the gloom. When I left, they were holding hands. The last time Brendan and I made love was a warm spring night not long after we’d moved to the island. We still hadn’t needed the help the way we would in the years that followed. The only things he’d lost back then were car keys and directions and the names of important places: Tonkin, Dhekelia, Hormuz. On a sunset walk, Brendan stripped naked in the dusk. I wondered if it was the disease, but no one was around and we’d swum naked in every place we’d ever lived. “Dare you.” He winked at me like had had the first time we’d done this at 18 in the Severn River after a Naval Academy dance. As I stripped, aware of the scar on my left breast from long ago surgery and the crepe of my stomach, he stared openly. “A proper girl like you!” We raced as well as our seven decades allowed into the cold water and lay, bellies up, to the racing clouds that pulled inexorably toward Sankaty Head. On the beach, he wrapped me in a towel. On a blanket, we had the slow, gentle sex we’d become accustomed to. After, he took my cheeks in his chilly hands and looked me squarely in the eye. “This isn’t how all our adventures were supposed to end.” He looked out at the water, where the departed sun streaked the towering clouds red. “It might drag on and on.” I closed my eyes, kissed his forehead, and concentrated very hard on not releasing the sob I felt building over the humiliations that awaited him. He pounded the sand once with a closed fist. “I’d so much rather have walked the plank,” he whispered.

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The next day when Daisy demanded her afternoon walk, the weather had shifted. The wind was gone, fog had set in. The air was warm and soggy like exhaled breath, recalling the stranding of the Ancient Mariner. The only noise was the flap and raspy squawk from the hordes of seabirds clustered on the narrow spit where the ocean funneled into the pond. The guano stank without a current to bear it seaward. The decaying seagull from the path was at the peak of its rotting. The fog deadened the lap of the waves, and made gravity seem touchable, doubled in force. It disappeared the houses and the horizon. I trudged one step at a time. The fog made of the beach an immense terrarium, cut off from the rest of the world, like the glass bubble those scientists lived in to mimic life on Mars. Daisy appeared and disappeared, always checking on me. Like all good dogs, when I slept, she was at the foot of the bed, when I swam, she was at the edge of the water, when I ran errands, she waited at the door. I had been like that, alert and loyal, a trained companion. Good wives, like good dogs, attend. I’d never thought to ask who Daisy might be without me. Maybe she’d survive just as well, or better, on the rotting gulls I denied her. Or maybe, she could actually survive on what she could kill. Maybe there’s some coy dog or pack that awaits her. I suppose these marooned days should be an opportunity. I suppose I should take up the piano, or learn another language, or knit a blanket, or try the tai chi, or do anything other than walk and eat and sleep. But I don’t. I was trained to take care of others and I still did that. Thank God for Daisy or I wouldn’t belong to anything or anyone else. Once I had the Navy, once I had a family, but maybe it wasn’t just the Navy that couldn’t love us back. Maybe no one was capable of returning to me the full measure of the love I’d meted out in meals cooked, wounds bandaged, carpools driven, boxes packed, clothes mended, cakes baked, centipedes disposed of. My daughters told me this, occasionally in patronizing conversations, but mostly in their own choices, in the way they talk about “stay at home moms.” Through the fog, Daisy and I were heartened by a spot of red on the pond’s edge. Daisy raced toward it. A neat square of towel lay in front of the Hummingbird House. I looked for one of the renters swimming, but the fog obscured the water’s surface, even blotting out the lighthouse far down the beach. Their front yard already had a cluttered, used look. The chairs were covered in limp towels and books whose pages curled in the humidity. I lingered among the old boats beached on the pond shore while Daisy ran circles in the softest part of the sand, furthest from the waterline. Julia appeared on the deck covered only in pink and white bath towels, one covering her intimate areas and the other twisted into a tall turban. She picked up a watch from the small weathered table between the sun chairs, and squinted into the impenetrable veil of white that covered the water. She noticed me then, for I was only a few feet away from their deck. I saw her face flush in embarrassment. She waved and started to turn to go inside, but then stood her ground, tightened the towel above her breasts, and yelled, “Sam, twenty minutes,” in a singsong, “honey, I’m home” tone that surprised me. She stood still and waited for an answer. In front of her, Daisy snuffled at sand gnats. “Sam?” Julia called again, this time in the more authoritative tone I had sensed from her carriage. As she stepped off the deck and onto the sand, her towel opened to expose a pale triangle of her thigh and I wondered if they’d spent the morning in bed. She walked halfway to the pond and, cupping her hands tight enough to carry water, she repeated, “Sam. Time’s up.” So as not to intrude, I stayed behind the sailboats whose halyards now hung immobile and magnified the quiet. She waited. I walked as slowly as I could without seeming to linger.

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Without greeting me, she said, “Have you seen him? He was swimming. In the pond. He swims every day. I time him.” She did not look at me as she spoke, but kept her eyes fixed on the point where the lighthouse should have been. Daisy planted herself in front of the towel. “He should be in the water,” the girl said. She did not even notice Daisy. She stared past us with the hollow focus of a shark stalking prey. “It’s impossible to see a thing,” I said. My voice was more dismissive than I’d intended. I tried to make amends, to appear at least curious, “Was he …?” But Julia had vanished. The cottage door slapped shut. Daisy froze and looked to me for reassurance. The door smacked again and she was back, wearing an orange bikini. She called his name again. “Sam?” I held tight to Daisy’s collar. “Sam?” With each repetition, she strode away from us, past the sailboats, around the curve of the pond, towards the seagulls. She stopped on the far side and stared into the fog, no doubt hoping that she would spot his muscular arm arc up in a powerful stroke, nothing but a strong, vigorous swimmer unable to hear her for the splashing. I picked up the towel, which smelled now of wet dog, and brushed the sand from it. Brendan hated a sandy towel. I used to carry his in a plastic bag down to the water, so it would be fresh when he got out. The girl called again, “Sam.” She sounded uncertain and younger than before. I watched the water, held my breath at a movement off-shore, and was angered when a black-capped loon swam toward us. Julia ran towards the spit, tried to hurdle the broad stream of water to reach the beach, stumbled and fell on all fours with a splash. She scrambled, and was up again on the other side. The seagulls, at first blasé, scattered in all directions, and shrieked as she charged through their huddle. She stopped at the high point where the beach dropped away and the channel cut through. Her head swept left and right like the missing lighthouse beacon and then she ran down the far slope of the dune and out of sight. I watched the pond, got as close as I could to the water without wetting my shoes and tried to distinguish shapes in the impenetrable fog. I held my breath so I could listen more closely, but all I could hear was the steady thump of my own heart. Julia came back up over the dune, her wet hair spiking around her head. The gulls that had resettled hopped out of the way, less disturbed by her return. She shrieked “Sam,” this time angry and raw and ran along the pond’s edge. After twenty yards, she turned back towards the beach for a few steps, then stood still. She stared at the blank white and nodded her head in either argument or prayer. “Sam? Sam?” she called. Then she knelt. While her panic had convinced me she was overreacting, her stillness left me to flashes of the last time. For all my mental playbacks of what I could have done, for all the scenes in my uneasy sleep of diving into the waves to save him, here I was frozen again, a spectator. Brendan and I had been standing at the water, watching fierce spring waves batter the coast. It was almost as if he were fine, as if he still knew our children or how to tie his shoes. Soothed by the sense of normalcy, I turned and stroked the hair from his forehead, and put my cheek against his rough wool sweater. He turned to me, without recognition, and stared at my flat chest. He patted my hand and said, “No thanks, darlin’. You’re not my type. I’ve always been a boob man,” and went back to staring at the ocean. The wind clawed at my hair. I had to walk away so he would not see my tears. Sometimes when I cried, he seemed to know it was something he said. I went inside to freshen my drink. When I looked back from the dune path, he was sitting with his arm around Daisy, mesmerized by the waves.

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Julia ran again, faster than before and efficiently. For a long moment I thought she was heading towards me, and I cringed to think I might be expected to do something. But she ran past us to a row of kayaks on the shore. In a flurry of sand, she tore at the boats stacked tight like penny candy. She found a paddle, hurled it into a kayak and dragged both into the water. She paddled a few harried strokes. I lost her to the fog’s belly, which had already taken the lighthouse and the husband. I knew she was still there only because she repeated Sam, Sam, over and over. Lulled by the cadence of her voice, I stared into the white, Daisy tense beside me. He’s gone. They’ll have to dredge the pond to find him. Julia kept calling his name, her voice an unnatural loop like a skipping record. Her chant comforted me with absolution. There was no blame. Strong men die. There is solace in pattern, and I wept, finally, hot tears of inevitability. Then, from behind me on the road, with all the glory of the wind that saves stranded ships at sea, a male voice echoed across the pond, “Julia?” Daisy’s wagging and rolling expressed all the joy I should have felt at the sight of him resurrected. He was slick with sweat. His face fell as he heard the terror in her voice and the blank repetition of his name. She was silent. Then from the fog came a racking wail, the kind we widows do not allow ourselves.

PART THREE

Conceptualizing Memory Studies

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Memory in Liquid Time MARIANNE HIRSCH AND LEO SPITZER

In his landmark book Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (1995), Andreas Huyssen explains the obsession with memory and the past that marked the end of the last century by invoking teleological views of history and the “crisis of the ideology of progress, universalism and modernization” (Huyssen, p. 28). Losing faith in progress, Huyssen argues, we turned to the past. For some time, this turn provided a means to critique and enlarge the present, contesting official histories and making space for suppressed or forgotten voices that might enlarge the historical archive. Indeed, both of us came to the field of memory studies precisely to embrace this critical potential. Drawing on family memories of surviving the Holocaust in Europe, in Marianne’s case, and on memories of refugees from Nazism in Bolivia, in Leo’s, both of us in our work focused on the trauma these occasioned among victims and survivors and on its fraught transmission across generations—a process we have both discussed as “postmemory” (Spitzer, 1998; Hirsch 1997 and 2012; Hirsch and Spitzer, 2010 and 2019). One of the basic tenets of memory studies is that memory is always, fundamentally, in the present. We do not recall the past, but we create the past we need in the present. At the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries, that present is shadowed by the aftermath of traumatic histories that haunt it and demand to be worked through. And by present-day crises that have felt like forms of traumatic return— continuing wars, genocides, refugee crises, state-sanctioned violence, pandemics, and so much more. This conception of time as a form of traumatic return, and of memory as recursive, has in large part displaced the linearity of progress and futurity, to be sure, but it has come with its own problematic implications. Both of us have recently had the occasion to study cultural memory in the context of several transnational interdisciplinary working groups and to participate in memory networks and conferences in numerous locations across the globe (e.g., Altinay et al., 2019). Inspired by feminist, queer, and de-colonial ideas about time and memory and by commitments to social justice, some of these groups have displaced the focus on trauma and its inexorable after-effects. We have joined them in examining alternative, multiple, non-linear temporalities that can make visible acts of resistance, refusal, and unlearning, even while acknowledging past violence and its traumatic legacies.1 And we have also been attentive to current practices and discourses of vulnerability, care, mutual aid, and repair—discourses that without denying the magnitude of traumatic loss resist its unforgiving return. This essay reflects what we have learned from these rich conversations and from the different orientations toward violent histories that distinguish the diverse regions of the

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globe where we have worked. We believe that such a comparative or, as we prefer to think of it, connective approach, can better reclaim the critical edge that memory studies and practices risk losing as they become institutionalized in both national and global contexts.2 The question, we argue, is no longer “what is memory and how is it being used in, and shape, the present?” but “what does—or what can—memory do in different present circumstances and in anticipation of better futures?” Of late, in our work, we have both begun to explore memory’s multi-temporality, including the past’s own present and future, and we have done so particularly through photography and through photo-based memory art. Similarly, in his most recent book on memory arts in the Global South, Andreas Huyssen also focuses on the temporalities he finds in the work of memory artists from the enlarged geo-political landscapes of the twenty-first century. He writes: “By refusing to treat the past as simply past, [memory art] practices its own refusal of time. It is driven by the desire for an alternative future embedded in remembrance. It thereby affirms its solidarity with the complex interweaving of temporalities at stake in memory” (Huyssen, 2022). Our work with photography and photo-based memory art has allowed us to think about how to access some of these multiple potentialities of memory. Specifically, in our recent co-authored book on school photos we have theorized a notion of liquid time that we want to develop further in this essay (Hirsch and Spitzer, 2019). This essay develops the connection of memory and liquid time by way of three photo-based projects that enable us to explore the possibilities and impossibilities of small as well as larger acts of repair: the Native American artist Steven Deo’s mixed media work “When We Become Our Role Models, No. 2,” the video “Marash School” by the German-ArgentinianArmenian artist Silvina der Meguerditchian, and the inkjet print and drawing “Mendel Grossman, The Witness” as well as the artist book Bearing Witness, by Jewish-Argentinian artist Mirta Kupferminc.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TIME In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes famously wrote that “The photograph does not call up the past. … Not only is the photograph never, in essence, a memory …, but it actually blocks memory, quite quickly becomes a counter-memory” (1981, p. 82). It does so through its power to occlude other forms of recollection. And yet, for Barthes, photography performs the inexorable passage of time. “By giving me the absolute past of the pose (aorist),” he writes, “the photograph tells me death in the future.” Indeed, Barthes sees time itself as a photographic punctum that confronts what he terms the “this will be” with the “ça a été,” the “this has been” (ibid., p. 91). Photographic time is thus both sequential—the record of singular moments irrevocably past—and recursive, evolving in haunting returns and after-effects. These powerful “emanations” of the past in the photograph that Barthes discusses through the “punctum” open a way to see time’s affective dimensions, powerfully available in photography as forms of nostalgic, melancholic memory (Barthes, p. 80). And yet for Barthes the photograph itself remains the same: static, unaltered, and unalterable. What changes is its effect on us, our response to it, what it brings forth from the past. But is the photograph itself not also contingent and thus malleable? If it is, then it would also allow us to re-envision the history from which it emerges, and to discover within it different contingencies and potentialities.

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Walter Benjamin’s notion of the “optical unconscious” presents photography precisely in this contingent way. Benjamin is concerned with the invisible that is present within the visible, and with the camera’s ability to bring to visibility minute elements of the photographed scene. “The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses,” he writes (Benjamin, 1969, p. 237). The camera can reveal what we see without realizing it, just as psychoanalysis can uncover what we know without knowing that we do: what is stored in our unconscious. The optical unconscious disturbs and expands conscious acts of looking and the smooth surfaces of photographic images. As images circulate, their unconscious does as well. What happens, for example, if we bring back the different looks and gazes that were present at the photographic event but that are excluded from an image shaped by a singular gaze? In this way, we can look at the image not only from the perspective of the photographer who controls the lens and shutter, or the institution that sponsors the photographic event, but of the photographed persons, at the time of the event, and by them and their descendants or correspondents, later, at different moments of retrospection. Multiplying these perspectives enhances the image’s heterogeneity and allows us to enter it from different vantage points. By unsettling the power and authority of the photographer over the image, a multiplicity of meanings can emerge from the encounter of different subjects, at the time of the image’s making and subsequently. We might thus argue that the photograph anticipates a future viewer who will see in it what we could not detect at the time of its making. As Benjamin writes: No matter how artful the photographer, no matter how carefully posed his subject, the beholder feels an irresistible urge to search such a picture for the tiny spark of contingency, of the here and now, with which reality has (so to speak) seared the subject, to find the innocuous spot where the immediacy of that long-forgotten moment the future nests so eloquently that we, looking back, may rediscover it. (Benjamin, 1999, p. 510) More recent analyses of the different dimensions of photography by theorists and by photo-based artists also point to potentialities contained in the image that can be made visible in the different temporalities in which the photograph lives, and the different kinds of memory it carries and elicits. The photography theorist Ariella Aïsha Azoulay urges us to see photography not through the images themselves, but through events that occasioned them. A photographic event might or might not result in an image, but it organizes our field of vision into what is to be made visible, clear, and recognizable, on the one hand, and what is not considered worth framing and extracting as an image, on the other. The camera’s shutter, in Azoulay’s view, extracts the image from the surrounding time-space, reflecting the mechanisms of power that organize our social and political lives. In a split second, the camera’s shutter draws three dividing lines: in time (between a before and after); in space (between who/what is in front of the camera and who/what is behind it); and in the body politic (between those who possess and operate such devices and appropriate and accumulate their product, and those whose countenance, resources, and labor are extracted). (Azoulay, 2019, p. 5)

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The shutter’s click is controlled by the single-point perspective of the individual photographer who possesses the power to frame the image and to fix the photographed person or scene into the domain of the visible. For Azoulay, therefore, the shutter is a “synechdoche for the operation of the imperial enterprise altogether” (ibid., p. 2). It separates time punctually into a sequence of events—events that are captured to organize a view of history and the makeup of historical archives. In analog photography, this view of the shutter as the instrument that secures the image and helps constitute the archive must be enlarged to take into account the liquid processing essential in photographic developing and printing—a procedure open to contingency and manipulability. In his essay “Photography and Liquid Intelligence,” the photographer Jeff Wall bases his reflections about the “liquid intelligence” of the analog photograph precisely on this darkroom process in which both the photographic film and the photosensitive paper onto which its image is subsequently projected, are immersed in a liquid developing solution (Wall, 2007, p. 109). There, each can change, often in subtle and unexpected ways, before being chemically “fixed”—again through immersion in liquid—into perpetuity. When he wrote his essay in the late 1980s, Jeff Wall wanted to mark the beginnings of the digital turn that introduced a different technological and temporal photo processing regime from its analog antecedent—one effecting, he argued, a “new displacement of water in photography” (Wall, 2007, p. 110). But Wall also wanted to complicate the pervasive view of photography as an inexorable apparatus and tool of ideological power and domination, a medium of representation which, when “fixed into permanence,” embodies a “dry,” and thus unalterable optical and technological “intelligence.” Instead, in highlighting its “liquid intelligence,” he reveals the fluid connection of the photograph to nature and water: the contingencies, possibilities, potentials, and affective registers inherent in the process of image-making. In what we, therefore, want to think of as “liquid time,” photographs continue “developing” when they are viewed and reviewed by different people in different presents. “Unfixed,” they remain open, active, dynamic, acquiring new meanings in new circumstances, or returning to potential meanings they contained before they were immersed in the fixing solution. Digital photography, while not dependent on the exposure and fixing of its images on immersion in liquids, can of course also be regarded as “fluid”—potentially changeable, contingent, dynamic. Unlike analog photography, where an indexical link is produced by reflected light traveling between the represented object, the photographic emulsion that it hits, and the image that is chemically extracted and fixed in a liquid solution, in digital photography, light from the physical referent is converted into data (Marks, 2002, pp. 148, 162–3). It is transformed into coded information—a series of data frames, “1s” and “0s” (or “pixels”), that can be electronically decoded and converted into a viewable photographic image. At various stages after light from the referent reaches the electronic image sensor of a digital photo camera, the data frames making up these images—the pixels that constitute them—can easily be manipulated and modified on a computer with the use of sophisticated digital editing programs like Adobe Photoshop. Such a fluid and multi-temporal reading displaces the retrospective gaze, shadowed by a known and predetermined outcome, that dominated critical approaches to images of past violence, displacement, war, and genocide, as well as the canon of memory studies. It inspires us to think even further back: to the event and to the time before the shutter click that extracted the image. How would this kind of rewinding alter the image and enlarge its temporalities even further? And might it mitigate the inevitable return of trauma as well?

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FIGURE 8.1  Students and teachers at the Wesleyan Newtown West Secondary School, Freetown, Sierra Leone, c. 1890 (Spitzer collection).

School photos add additional dimensions to these reflections on photography: memory and time. The formality of “photo day” in school clearly illustrates the “eventness” of the shutter. School photos are institutional tools of modernity, shaped by an institutional gaze that frames children, making them into subjects of schooling and the state. They measure time dryly and, like regularly scheduled report cards, they depict and mark a linear progression on the road to citizenship and adulthood from one school year to the next. They trace a process of transformative assimilation to hegemonic norms that becomes, for some at least, a ticket to social inclusion. Different forms of memory collide in these images: the school and the state’s institutional memories; the students’ communal, familial, and personal memories; and the counter-memories that inform the present-day work of descendants and artists generations removed.3 Photographs of children seem to illustrate a poignant retrospective and thus memorial temporality. When, as contemporary viewers, we encounter images of young faces looking toward a future, we necessarily wonder what the children in the image envisioned as their future, and we measure that against our knowledge of what that future actually brought them. In our work on school photos, we experienced this poignant irony in images of children photographed on the brink and in the midst of war and genocide— images sponsored by regimes that, on the one hand, sought to incorporate children into nationality, citizenship, and a capitalist ethos through schooling and ideological inculcation, but, on the other, targeted groups among them for persecution, murder, and genocide. How can we imagine the temporality of photographic images of children who

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may not survive to look back at them as adults—children photographed before or in the midst of circumstances of violence and destruction (Bernstein, 1994)? In our book, and in its accompanying exhibit, we wanted to affiliate with the children looking at the camera, and not with the shutter that fixes them into civil subjects.4 We attempted to break both from the institutional and the retrospective gaze and the unforgiving temporality of disaster. We wanted to interrupt the linear histories and teleologies that school photos represent in order to leave space for what Ariella Aïsha Azoulay has called “potential history”—not just what was, but what might have been, and what might potentially be. We argue that images of schoolchildren show us not only the past in which they were taken, but the present and the futures contained in that past, futures that their diverse subjects may have envisioned when they stood facing the lens. Breaking out of entrenched memories and returns of traumatic pasts, we can attempt to recuperate the resistances and the hopes and dreams that also shaped these images— hopes and dreams that were destroyed in the violent histories that coincided with the development of photography as a medium. The three works we want to discuss here place archival images of schoolchildren back into liquid time in order to unfix and, potentially, undo their teleologies. They employ different techniques: collage and mixed media in Steven Deo’s “When We Become Our Role Models, No. 2,” animation in Silvina der Meguerditchian’s video “Marash School,” and digital manipulation in Mirta Kupferminc’s inkjet print and drawing “Mendel Grossman, The Witness” and in her artist book Bearing Witness. Multi-directional and multi-temporal, these works free their subjects from the capture of the shutter and the fixing fluid as well as from the power of single-point perspective and the ironies of backshadowing retrospection. They can thus activate other potential lives that have survived in the photographs, and also in the memory of their subjects.5

THE POTENTIAL LIVES OF IMAGES Steven Deo’s acrylic and canvas mixed-media work “When We Become Our Role Models No. 2” (2004) engages the story of indigenous schooling in the United States, long ignored by a dominant white public, through the artist’s own life history. A Creek Euchee, born in Oklahoma in 1956, and sent to public schools by parents who, according to him, “made the deliberate choice to acculturate their sons into the public school system and mainstream American culture,” Deo explores the “indoctrinated identity” that he and his Indian companions received through the educational process (Deo in Picturing Change 2004–5). He does this by embedding his own experiences within the larger story of indigenous children’s cultural dislocations in government-funded, chartered, boarding schools intended by their Anglo-American founders for the “civilizing betterment” of Native American youth in the aftermath of the American Indian Wars and the launching of the reservation system.6 Deo’s photographed collage is built on an archival photo of an assembled and uniformed school body taken at the turn of the twentieth century at the Carlisle Indian School, the earliest, most photographed, and publicly touted indigenous residential school in the United States (Mauro, 2011). That photo is one of hundreds of so-called “before-and-after” photographs that were taken, many by prominent photographers like Frances Benjamin Johnston, of Native American (and, in some institutions, Black American school children as well), to demonstrate the culturally transformative and assimilationist “success” of the residential schools. Invisible in these photos, of course,

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FIGURE 8.2  Steven Deo, “When We Become Our Role Models, No. 2,” 2004 (Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College).

are the means that were employed to bring about the changes from the “before”—the process that Captain Richard Henry Pratt, Carlisle’s founder and first superintendent, had bluntly described as “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” (Pratt, 1895, pp. 761–2). Upon the arrival of the children at the schools, frequently after lengthy journeys from their homes, this makeover generally included three mandated “initiation” procedures: the removal of the newcomers’ indigenous clothing and bodily decoration in exchange for school uniforms, as a means to create an appearance of conformity and a new external identity; the dropping of Indian names and the assumption of, so-termed, “civilized,” Christian, ones; the often violent, always humiliating, forced cutting of the young Indians’ long hair, which many Euro-American whites associated with what they considered the “primitive,” if not “savage,” state of their indigenous lifeworld. But the effort to obliterate Indian cultural identity also invariably demanded that students restrict, if not abandon, the use of their native languages and learn to substitute English in their stead. Deo, in an exhibit catalog statement, commented on this demand regarding speakers of Euchee, the indigenous language of the Muskogee Creek group into which he was born. “As with most Native languages,” he notes, “[Euchee] was beaten, threatened, and coerced out of the children in federal and religious ‘education’ and ‘civilization’ programs during the past two centuries. … Today … it is spoken fluently by only a handful of elders” (Deo in Picturing Change, 2004–5). It is precisely because photographic images do not readily reveal the violence involved in the imposed transformation from “before” to “after,” that photography came to play such an important publicizing and memorial role in the boarding school system. In “after” photos like the school assembly image used by Deo, for example, photographers staged the portrayed students in timeless tableaux in which their tribal pasts are entirely obliterated from view, or, in some cases, represented as “frozen” ethnographic setups. The promised

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admission into the world of white hegemony is difficult to imagine in these utterly static images: the displayed subjects appear stuck in promises that might never be realized. Time is an important [but often invisible] element in the assimilationist ethos that these “after” images promote and support. The effort to displace indigenous conceptions of time, both in effect and in memory, with what Mark Rifkin has termed “settler time,” can only be seen in the rigid body language the children are made to assume in student body assembly photos like the one Deo displays in his art piece (Rifkin, 2017, chap. 1). Numerous other boarding school photos, however, depict students performing synchronized marching drills, musical training, as well as time-measured athletic events, displaying the temporal discipline that was institutionally imposed on the children. Abandoning indigenous temporal notions and internalizing a schedule of regulated intervals appropriate to the capitalist work world they were being schooled to enter, also no doubt erased the temporal rhythms of the home and their indigenous lifeworlds from their memories. The “we” in the title of When We Become Our Role Models No. 2, while certainly inflected by Deo’s own assimilationist life history, is also open-ended, fluid, and multigenerational. It includes the young boy and girl who pose, arms on each-other’s shoulders, in the color image on the lower right of the artwork (Ortel, pp. 47–50). These are modern American Indian children (actually, Steven Deo’s niece and nephew), wearing jeans and T-shirts and seemingly shaped by a century-long process of acculturation with which, on the surface at least, they seem to be in smiling agreement. For them, it would seem, the Carlisle black-and-white photograph both spatially and temporally background—a ghostfilled past. Besides the modern Native children in the color photo, however, the large Carlisle school assembly photo is also surrounded by images of numerous house and car keys and by kitschy cut-out drawings of fair-skinned Dick and Jane figures that were used in elementary school primers well into the 1960s. In contrast to the quiet pose of the boy and girl and the at-attention line-up of uniformed children in the school photograph, the blond Dick and Jane figures are on the move, running, walking, riding their red wagon, waving. Moving forward in dynamic fashion, they seem to be offering a tempting choice, beckoning, “Come with us, leave behind your ancestral ways, move upward, gain success, grasp the keys that open houses, start cars, and access the material benefits of EuroAmerican modernity!” But are their beckoning and the car keys they offer as a horizon of expectations genuinely tempting? If the Native girl’s and boy’s smile is read not as a gesture of agreement but rather as one of ironic dismissal, it would indicate resistant defiance. It would signal their distancing from both a compromised ghostly past and the lures of a materialistic and deracinated future. Different temporalities collide in this complex present of refusal and resolve. In Deo’s terms, the keys “could possibly mean keys to unlocking the past, keys to the future, or even keys to success. … [I]n this context I think of the keys as the answer to modern Native identity” (Picturing Change, 2004–5). This, indeed, is what Deo’s title of the work suggests: that “we” in the image “become our/their role models.” The temporal structure of “when we become our role models,” however—the time of that “when” and the present or future of becoming—remains ambiguous. And the title of the image also includes a number, number 2, indicating a second iteration. Modern Indian identity is an ongoing process of becoming, this suggests, with different versions, stages, and possibilities. Following the idea of liquid time, could we imagine Deo placing the black-and-white archival image into the developing bath one more time, unfixing it, and having these various contradictory layers emerge, in color, in the process? By overlaying multiple images, Deo definitively alters the nineteenth-century photo of boarding school children.

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He can thus reveal the unexpected futures, the potential lives, that the original image contains—hopes and aspirations perhaps retrievable in the heterogeneous temporalities of photography and memory. * A granddaughter of Armenian genocide survivors who fled to Argentina where she was born and raised, Silvina der Meguerditchian currently lives and works in Berlin. She is the artistic director of Houshamadyan,7 a digital archive whose mission it is to reconstruct

FIGURE 8.3  Silvina der Meguerditchian, “Carpet Series: The Texture of Identity” (courtesy of the artist).

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and preserve the memory of Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire through historical research and collaborative participation.8 Marie-Aude Baronian has usefully described the “archival desire” that could make a phantom past “newly visible” and palpable for diasporic third- and fourth-generation Armenians, especially in view of continued genocide denial (Baronian, 2015). This is precisely the function of Houshamadyan. In its first decade, Houshamadyan has collected and displayed artifacts, images, and stories from numerous of the approximately three thousand Ottoman Armenian villages. Many of Silvina der Meguerditchian’s own multi-media art projects have emerged from this archive. She is particularly known for her “Carpet Series”—crocheted assemblages that embed archival studio photographs, landscape images, postage stamps, and ID cards into tapestries, quilts, carpets, and maps.9 These are the objects that anyone might take along into exile, objects that not only evoke the past but that were literally touched by those who were murdered as well as by those who survived. Her carpets bring these images, and also other archival documents, out of the archives and into the present. The images are blown up, printed on paper, and then laminated and loosely crocheted together with colored yarn. The stitches themselves are simple; they are like the ones a young girl learns from her grandmother, and as such they honor intergenerational transmission of traditional knowledge and practice. Using crochet, der Meguerditchian re-connects an Armenian community and social fabric broken by genocide and exile. The richness of the past lives that the photos and documents contain is made tangible in the carpets as well as in the galleries in which they are installed. The depth of history and memory erased from the sites of eviction and destruction that occurred nearly a century before is reanimated in this work, countering four generations of official denial. By inviting touch and opening a space where we allow ourselves to be touched in return, der Meguerditchan’s carpets underscore memory’s textures and affects, not only loss and nostalgic longing, but also recuperation and repair. Even as her collaborative artistic projects recall catastrophe, they also make space for transformation, renewal, and healing. The carpets are not meant merely to be admired for their aesthetic patterns. Each also provides information about people and the places they left, about where they relocated. Each rebuilds lost communities and lives, haunting gallery visitors, but also inviting us to look and to learn. Schools photos figure prominently in these attempts to reconstruct community life before the 1915 genocide, highlighting the vast network of boys’ and girls’ schools in villages and towns with large Armenian populations (Marsoobian, 2017). Protestant and Catholic missionary societies and missionaries from the United States, France, and Germany fostered and funded education in the region, but the teaching language and staff were Armenian. One of der Meguerditchian’s carpets is devoted to schools from the town of Marash. Group portraits of teachers and school classes are crocheted together and framed by panoramic images of the town and the surrounding region. Accompanying this carpet in its exhibition space is a large flyer that meticulously situates each photo and identifies every face depicted, testifying to the dedication with which descendants scattered throughout the world have researched their histories. One specific photo from Marash—a 1914 class picture of graduates from the Central Turkey Girls’ College, a seminary for teachers—forms the basis for a 2013 video that imagines the arrival of the school photographer and its encompassing photographic event.10 The work animates the still image and the students waiting for the camera click, allowing us to hear the whispered chatter of the young women as they pose. The dialogue der Meguerditchian imagines is trivial: while standing still, the young women

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FIGURE 8.4  Silvina der Meguerditchian, “Marash School,” video still (courtesy of the artist).

discuss upcoming visits by family members, clothing items one mother sent, longing for home, future plans for teaching jobs, and their flirtatious approval of the photographer’s physical look. In the animation their eyes and mouths move, but the bodies remain still as they conform to the behavior mandated by the photographic take. To make the video, der Meguerditchian and her animation-collaborators reconstruct the Armenian spoken during this era; script it into a dialogue that is also translated into English subtitles; add a soundtrack composed of music, chirping birds, and a traditional lullaby; and include a series of drawings that enliven the class photograph and the event that occasioned it. As we listen to the girls’ imagined conversation in the Armenian of the period, we are back in that past time, before the click of the shutter and the developing process that fix these young women into future victims for eternity. We are with them in the moment in which, as they face the camera, they are looking forward to a future of possibility. Their intimate whispers invite us to share in the future they are imagining, and they embolden us to relinquish our backshadowing glance imbued with our knowledge of the soon-tocome genocide. The Houshamadyan web pages devoted to Marash, the stitched-together school carpet, and the Marash video, recreate and reanimate—or perhaps, more accurately in the present create and animate for us—the life of an entire town from the 1880s until the eve of the genocide. These artworks, while imagined and artistically produced by Silvina der Meguerditchian, are of course not the work of a single artist but also of collaborators who, via their contribution to this work of creation, forge a community. In the sounds and images of this video, we sense the echoes of open-ended potential

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histories yet to be written—about the Armenian genocide, exile, the diaspora, and their memory, certainly, but also histories in which cycles of violence might be interrupted and in which teleologies leading to disaster might be redirected. That work is left up to us as active and engaged visitors responding to the compelling invitation of this simple and yet urgent work of re-animation. * Mirta Kupferminc is the daughter of Holocaust survivors from Hungary and Czechoslovakia. She was born and raised in the country of their refuge, Argentina, during

FIGURE 8.5  Mirta Kupferminc, “Mendel Grossman, The Witness” (2019). Inkjet print and drawing on cotton paper (courtesy of the artist).

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periods of its authoritarian repression and economic crises. Her work as a printmaker, photographer, video and installation artist is devoted to, though not entirely weighted down by, these histories and their vicissitudes. In her photo-based projects, Kupferminc shares the challenges of other contemporary artists engaging with archival photographs from the period of the Holocaust. The sources and attributions of the thousands of photos that have survived the destruction are often ambiguous and many are mis-categorized in various public and private archives around the globe. Paradoxically, however, and no doubt owing to the relative ubiquity of these images, contemporary Jewish artists working on projects memorializing the victims have often had to resort to photographs taken by perpetrators. But Kupferminc, in both her 2019 inkjet print and drawing “Mendel Grossman, The Witness,” and in her 2020 artist’s book Bearing Witness, contests this practice by highlighting the courageous clandestine acts of witness of the Jewish ghetto photographer Mendel Grossman and, by implication, of other clandestine ghetto photographers.11 Kupferminc’s print and artist’s book are tributes to photography as a technology of political resistance. She uses digital techniques to zoom in, reset, and transform ghetto photographs, reversing the gazes and frames of a history that has in large part survived in the viewfinders and the archives of the perpetrators. The seed for Kupferminc’s inkjet print “Mendel Grossman, The Witness” is a photograph taken by Walter Genewein, a high-ranking Nazi official, who, through what we term a “Nazi gaze,” took over six hundred 35mm color slides of the activities of Jews in the Lódz ghetto between 1940 and 1944.12 A skilled amateur photographer, Genewein had access to high-grade cameras and to scarce I.G. Farben/Agfa color stock film and processing. His ethnographic images of ghetto inhabitants and their vulnerable lives do

FIGURE 8.6  Walter Genewein, “Schulauspeisung,” Lódz ghetto, Poland, 1941 (Jewish Museum, Frankfurt).

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what perpetrator images frequently do: they stage Jews as an abject, inferior, species on the eve of its extinction. And yet, no doubt undetected by him, Genewein’s ghetto images do contain small gestures of resistance on the part of their subjects. The Genewein slide prompting Kupferminc’s project shows a group of young Jewish schoolchildren, each wearing a Nazi-mandated “Jew star,” waiting for food in front of an unidentified building—in all likelihood, their school. Originally captioned Schulauspeisung (“school feeding”) by him, the photograph was taken in 1941 during the brief months when Nazi authorities still permitted some non-vocational schooling in the ghetto. Soon after this photo was taken, the Nazis began to deport Lódz ghetto Jews whom they deemed as unfit workers in their war effort to nearby Chelmno, where nearly all—no doubt including many of the children in the “Schulauspeisung” photo—were murdered in gas vans. “Schulauspeisung,” like many of Genewein’s slide photographs, is staged to present the ghetto to outsiders as a benign community that feeds and educates its children. To Nazi indoctrinated German viewers, however, these hungry children no doubt appeared as supplicants on a brief reprieve from their intended destruction. And to contemporary viewers, this image, in Barthes’ terms, “tells [me] death in the future.” The photo is taken from an angle and the children are looking expectantly off to the left, squinting into the sun. Still, the large group is somewhat disorderly with a few children looking elsewhere than at the camera, and only a few smile. But three boys, in the right front of the photo, actually stare back directly and without smiling at the photographer and, in their apparent non-compliance with the role assigned to them, they silently subvert the photographer’s monolithic gaze and take at least some command of the photographic event. The children’s heterogenous looks and expressions in this photo lead us to wonder what they actually saw when they looked into Genewein’s camera lens. And this question is precisely the one that Mirta Kupferminc engages in “Mendel Grossman, The Witness” where she creatively aligns herself with the children as they face the camera lens and animates their presence to reconceive their experience of the photographic event. Digitally creating an alternate scenario, she undoes the power and the teleology of Genewein’s slide. Refraining from directly displaying the photo taken by the Nazi photographer, Kupferminc reverses his gaze and grants the children a point of view. She acknowledges and represents Genewein only as a cold static photo lens, situated above the children, that is focused on them and awaiting the shutter’s click. In that lens’ reflection, however, the Nazi photographer’s look is returned by multiple eyes. Using Photoshop editing on her digitally re-photographed version of Genewein’s original slide photo, Kupferminc highlights and builds on the stare-back of the non-compliant children that is reflected within it. More than that, in a fleeting, barely discernible reflection that she imaginatively added to the image of Genewein’s lens, we can now also see the outline of an additional person—an adult. This is Mendel Grossman, the Jewish photographer and, in Kupferminc’s construction, clandestine witness to this photographic event. Employed as an official photographer to publicize activities of the Lódz ghetto Jewish Council, Mendel Grossman had secretly secured a small camera for his own use. He pilfered and hid film stock from his official ghetto duties and then daringly took and then buried hundreds of surreptitious images—many taken through a buttonhole of his coat or a crack in a door—in order to ensure that a fuller visual record of a population slated for destruction would have the possibility to survive into the future (Grossman, 1997; Smith, 2000). In Kupferminc’s imagined scenario, Grossman stands behind the children and secretly photographs the photographer Genewein. Capturing Genewein’s

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FIGURE 8.7  Mirta Kupferminc, page from The Witness, 2019.

lens and its reflection in the image that Kupferminc has artistically constructed for our viewing, Grossman thus offers the children a frame through which they can look back at Genewein, making him the object of their gaze. All the while, Grossman, as clandestine witness, remains outside the frame, on a different plane—unseen and thus also free. Through this act of creative repair, Kupferminc has given Grossman and the children control of the visual field. On the surface of this layered digitally created work, Kupferminc graphically inscribes the story of Grossman’s courageous acts in the ghetto in her own handwriting. She notes that “the texture of the graphic handwriting produces a veil that paradoxically, unveils Mendel’s hidden way of taking the photos. While writing, I felt like a scribe who copies by hand a milenary text on the scrolls of a Torah.”13 Placing her text on the projection of a shadow, Kupferminc touches Grossman from a great distance and, by way of her direct touch, brings him closer to us. This combination of digital creation with manual inscription also characterizes the artist’s book Bearing Witness, which Kupferminc created as a tribute to Grossman. To view this work, she invites us to open the box in which it is contained by unhooking a clasp in the shape of a camera lens. And, providing us with white fabric gloves to wear, she bids us to touch and turn its pages. Both of these actions engage us—our own hands and senses—in a haptic encounter. Grossman’s lens is the book’s central image: we look at it and, through veils of translucent pages, look through it. It looks back at us. We see it from the front and from the side. Vision is as multiply mediated as it is contingent. Turning pages carefully to

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FIGURE 8.8  Mirta Kupferminc, page from The Witness, 2019 [Grossman’s lens sideways].

reveal the images underneath, we are in every way implicated in the book’s many visual fields. At the end of the book, we see ourselves in a mirror inserted into the last page. We view photographs of Grossman photographing, taken by other ghetto photographers, and the photos he took of ghetto life, mostly clandestinely. He is there in image and shadow, a persistent determined witness to degradation and deportation. And, as we turn the pages, Paul Celan’s words—inscribed as the artist book’s epigram—affect us profoundly. We “bear witness for the witness,” and, through our visual and haptic engagement with her intriguing multidimensional artistic creation, we also bear witness to Kupferminc’s own act of witness. Hers is documented in handwritten notes that testify to the extensive research she did about Lódz and Grossman. At the center of the book is a fold-out version of Kupferminc’s remake of the Genewein “Schulauspeisung” image, “Mendel Grossman, The Witness.” Larger than the other pages, it requires unfolding and smoothing out on our part, inviting our bodily and haptic participation in this remake. Folding it into our own time, we bring the children along as well, re-imagining their future not through Genewein’s shutter, but through Grossman’s lens instead. The large inkjet print is smaller here, embedded into a context, included in a book that can be in our home and on our table. Bearing Witness highlights the subversive work of Grossman’s witnessing lens. Whether open or shut, hidden or exposed, that lens, seen here from multiple angles and revealing multiple scenes, becomes a persistent and irrevocable witness to this ghetto and to the history of destruction and survival that we have come to think of as the Holocaust. In our own encounter with it, we participate in his act of witness, in our own present,

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*** Mirta Kupferminc’s image and artist’s book devoted to Mendel Grossman, Silvina der Meguerditchian’s “Marash” video, Steven Deo’s “When We Become Our Role Models, No. 2,” these are acts of transgenerational witnessing. Using the potentials of photography, they are gifts from the future for those who were captured in images of impending disaster. Rewinding, unmaking, unfixing photographs from the archives of catastrophe, they infuse them with renewed possibility. They show us ways in which, in liquid time, painful legacies can be transformed into works of beauty and acts of repair.

NOTES 1. These non- or anti-linear conceptions of temporality are inspired by theoretical discussions about queer time (Halberstam, Stockton, Muñoz, among others) and by Black feminist thought that figures the potentialities of Black lives, and Black futurity, through the conditional and the subjunctive, rather than the indicative (see esp. Campt, Hartman). 2. In both The Generation of Postmemory and School Photos in Liquid Time, we engage with different histories of violence and catastrophe, arguing that although these are not comparable, they are connected in multiple ways. We believe that speaking of a “connective” rather than a “comparative” approach clarifies this distinction. We extend that argument in this essay. 3. For a more extensive historical and theoretical discussion of school photographs, see Hirsch and Spitzer, 2019. This essay elaborates and extends some of the book’s arguments by focusing specifically on memory and time. 4. “School Photos and Their Afterlives,” Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, January–March, 2020. https://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/explore/exhibitions/schoolphotos-and-their-afterlives 5. For a discussion of “other lives of the image,” see Hayes, 2020. 6. In addition to Carlisle, major off-reservation boarding schools were founded ‘in the United States’ in New Mexico, Arizona, Michigan, Oregon, South Dakota, Kansas. By the early twentieth century, there were three types of schools for Indian children: off-reservation boarding, missionary, and on-reservation. 7. https://www.houshamadyan.org/home.html 8. For one of many English language histories of the Armenian genocide, see Suny (2015). 9. https://www.silvina-der-meguerditchian.de/works/the-texture-of-identity-ongoing/ 10. https://vimeo.com/62853647 11. https://www.mirtakupferminc.net/en/obra/bearing-witness/ 12. On the Nazi gaze, see Hirsch (2012), chpts 4 and 5; Hirsch and Spitzer (2019) pp. 142–4. 13. Hirsch and Spitzer, email and Skype conversations with Mirta Kupferminc, 2018–19.

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CHAPTER NINE

A Case for Melancholy ANGELIKA BAMMER

AN UNFINISHED MEMORIAL In the north German city of Hamburg, close to the central Dammtor station, where a steady stream of local and long-distance trains come and go, and a mere stone’s throw from the old visitors’ entrance to the renowned Hamburg Botanical Gardens, there is a memorial that most residents of the city hardly know. Unless you are looking for it, you might walk right past it. Yet, commissioned in 1983 by the Hamburg Senate in the context of a city-wide initiative on “Art in Public Space” (Kunst im öffentlichen Raum), it is one of the most significant works of the Austrian sculptor, Alfred Hrdlicka.1 In 1985, he himself oversaw the first public installation of the sculpture, with a full court press and city officials in attendance. However, five years later, work on the project was broken off. Two of the four commissioned parts were left unfinished, and the sculptor was himself almost broken by a work he could not complete. The first time I saw this memorial, it stopped me dead in my tracks. Like a sudden scream that breaks the surface of an otherwise placid day, it jolted me into attention. On a grassy plot off the pedestrian walkway, where I was coming from the Dammtor station, I saw the jagged contours of a human body crushed by a beam. I saw the skeletal outline of a girl whose burned body had fused with the wall behind her back. The body crushed by the beam was of marble, the girl who had been burned was of bronze, but to me these figures of agony were as real and as haunting as a nightmare. They have been seared into my memory ever since. At first, it was the violence that shocked me: the visceral impact of human suffering rendered in graphic, three-dimensional form. But over time, it was the questions this work confronted me with that have had the most lasting impact. For it caused me to revisit assumptions about the histories we claim as ours, how we remember them, and the ways that mourning can sometimes be—or feel—impossible. More profoundly and in a more deeply unsettling way, my encounter with Hrdlicka’s tormented work led me to ask whether the resolution promised by mourning is always the best way to deal with loss, particularly when the grief that loss produces is unresolvable. Perhaps leaving a loss open—like enduring a wound that never quite heals—can be its own form of resolution. Perhaps we need—or want—to sustain some pasts in a state of melancholy, rather than try to resolve them through a process of mourning. These questions frame the following reflections. The official name of Hrdlicka’s sculpture—Countermemorial [Gegendenkmal]— identified its charge: it was to counter the implicit glorification of war represented by traditional war memorials; it was to shock viewers with visceral reminders of wars’

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FIGURES 9.1 AND 9.2  Alfred Hrdlicka, Hamburg Countermemorial. Station I: Hamburg Firestorm, 1985 (detail). Photos by author.

traumatic effects. In particular, it was to counter another public memorial in Hamburg that had been a lightning rod for controversy over decades. Known officially as the War Memorial on the Dammtor Embankment [Kriegerdenkmal am Dammtordamm], but colloquially often derided as the Hulk [Klotz] or sometimes, War Hulk [Kriegsklotz], it was a memorial dedicated to Hamburg’s own Second Hanseatic Infantry Regiment, No. 76 and its companion Reserve Infantry Regiment. The memorial had earned its moniker, Hulk, from its massive size: a limestone block of around nine meters long, seven meters high, and four meters wide, it is encircled on three sides by a sculpted frieze of eightyeight larger than life soldiers. Twenty-two rows of four men abreast, they march forward in tight formation: helmets fastened, rifles shouldered, eyes straight ahead. Engraved in the limestone, in words that define the fate of the marching soldiers, is the martial motto, “Germany must live even if we must die” [“Deutschland muß leben und wenn wir sterben müssen”]. The memorial commemorates the men—soldiers in Hamburg’s Second Hanseatic Infantry Regiment—who fought and died in two defining German wars: the victorious war of 1870–1 that helped secure the foundation of German statehood, and the catastrophic war of 1914–18 that helped pave the way toward German fascism.2 However, even though the memorial was supposed to commemorate two previous wars, wars dating back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was not completed until a time when Nazi rule had come to power and Germany was gearing up for another war.

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When the War Memorial on the Dammtor Embankment was finally inaugurated in 1936, in the presence of Nazi officials and soldiers in military formation, the recently elected German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, sent his congratulations. The following year the 76th Hanseatic Infantry Regiment was again mobilized. And on September 1, 1939, it was sent to battle in what was to become the Second World War.

FIGURE 9.3  In this image, Richard Kuöhl’s 1936 War Memorial on the Dammtor Embankment [Kriegerdenkmal am Dammtordamm] is seen from the perspective of Hrdlicka’s 1985 Hamburg Countermemorial. The view of the war memorial is framed by the jagged contours of Hrdlicka’s countermemorial, in particular the Hamburg Firestorm section that juxtaposes the destruction of life and property wrought by war with the glorified memory of marching soldiers. Photo by author.

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FIGURE 9.4  Richard Kuöhl, War Memorial on the Dammtor Embankment [Kriegerdenkmal am Dammtordamm], Hamburg, 1936. Photo by author.

The glaring discrepancy between what the memorial purported to remember (the wars of 1870–1 and 1914–18) and what it represented visually (the war that began in 1939) marked the memorial as a problem from the outset. For the marching soldiers on the memorial’s frieze weren’t wearing the uniforms and spiked helmets of the German army during the First World War. They were wearing the uniforms and helmets of soldiers deployed in Hitler’s army. This discrepancy made the memorial particularly controversial after the Second World War, in the wake of Germany’s defeat in yet another catastrophic war that it had caused and the crimes against humanity it stood accused of. In light of these crimes, Allied directives had initially decreed the demolition of what they had designated not just a war, but a Nazi, memorial, a position that local antimilitarist and antifascist groups supported. In the end, however, the memorial remained, saved from demolition by historic preservation mandates. Still, the bitter struggle over the memorial’s fate continued. It was attacked and defended, vandalized and repaired, in a back and forth that seemed to be endless. All the while it remained standing, seemingly impervious to change. Only the graffiti that regularly defaced it made it an active part of the ongoing public dialogue in Germany about war and peace. As an alternative to tearing it down, opponents of the Dammtor War Memorial—or, as they insisted on calling it, the War Hulk—proposed that the area around the memorial be redesigned so that the anti-war position could be publicly recognized and made visible. They called for a “countermemorial.” Eventually, this proposal was taken up, and in 1982 a national design competition for a “countermemorial” to the War Memorial on the Dammtor Embankment was launched. It specified that the original war memorial would remain what and where it was, but that a second memorial would be set up opposed

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FIGURE 9.5  Richard Kuöhl, War Memorial on the Dammtor Embankment [Kriegerdenkmal am Dammtordamm], Hamburg, 1936 (detail). The spray-painted graffiti says “Never Again Germany” [“Nie wieder Deutschland”]. Photo by author.

to it. In a kind of point/counterpoint, the “war-glorifying message” of the original war memorial would be disrupted and passersby would be challenged to “consider the causes and consequences of war” (Walden 35). The Austrian sculptor, Alfred Hrdlicka, received the commission. A memorial in four parts—or, as the sculptor referred to them, “stations” (as in “stations of the cross”)—was contracted for. It was to be completed in 1986. The first station was installed in 1985, on the fortieth anniversary of the official end of the Second World War. Made of white Carrara marble and cast bronze (fashioned by Hrdlicka’s regular collaborator, the metal caster, Alfred Zöttl), the massive sculptural installation, roughly seven meters long and five meters high, remembered the civilian victims of war, especially those women, men, and children who perished in the bombing of urban centers that became a dominant mode of warfare during the Second World War. In particular, as the title of this station, Hamburg Firestorm [Hamburger Feuersturm] makes evident, it remembered the people of Hamburg who died in the Allied bombing of their city, most notably the firebombing of July 25 to August 3, 1943, named “Operation Gomorrha.” In the wake of this assault, in which the British Air Force dropped around 9,400 tons of bombs, including 3 million firebombs, over the sleeping metropolis, between 37,000 and 50,000 people died and the city was reduced to rubble. This event, which preceded the more well-known firebombing of Dresden and the atomic bomb assault on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, added a new word to the modern lexicon of military destruction: “firestorm.” The second station of Hrdlicka’s memorial—Cape Arcona [Cap Arcona]—was added in September 1986, a year after Hamburg Firestorm was completed. Standing

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separately from the first station, although in such proximity that they almost touch, Cape Arcona remembers the death of some 7,000 inmates from the Nazi concentration camp Neuengamme,3 who drowned when the German ocean liner, S.S. Cap Arcona, and its accompanying cargo ships, which had been requisitioned by the German navy as prison ships, were mistakenly bombed by the British Air Force three days before the end of the war. Contemporary witnesses report that as the ships were sinking and German navy personnel were trying to save themselves, they took the time to shoot prisoners struggling to keep from drowning. Two additional sections of the memorial—Soldier’s Death [Soldatentod] and Image of Woman [Frauenbild]—were planned but stayed on the drawing board. Stories differ as to what happened. There are vague references to “disagreements” or “disputes” between the artist and the Senate, mention of funds that ran out, of budgets overrun, of the Senate “changing its mind,” of personal (health and emotional) problems on the part of the artist. One version has it that Hrdlicka finished what he could in a state of growing despair: reputedly drinking himself into oblivion, falling ill, finally trying to force the stone with both hands broken. In 1990, after about 900,000 DM (between 400,000 and 500,000 in today’s Euro currency) had been spent already and completion was four years overdue, work on the memorial was officially termed ended.4 Something had clearly gone wrong. But what? Perhaps the charge, to counter the implicit glorification of war that traditional war memorials represented, had been unrealistic. This was the explanation proffered by the cultural historian, Volker Plagemann: the proposed countermemorial couldn’t prevail against the mythic force of the combined appeal to heroism, manliness, and love of fatherland represented by the original war memorial. In the contest, the memorial that glorified war won out (Plagemann 239). Moreover, public response to Hrdlicka’s memorial was ambivalent. Like the war memorial it had been charged to counter, it became an object of debate and controversy itself. Among other things, Hrdlicka’s selection of historical events to remember—notably the focus on what was perceived as Allied atrocities and the suffering they caused—was sharply criticized. As Hans Walden, one of the memorial’s most vocal critics, put it, the focus on the suffering caused by the Allies failed to address the very issue that German memorials consistently left unaddressed: German militarism and the suffering that it caused. Hrdlicka had the wrong perspective, he exclaimed with a palpable sense of righteous indignation, “Shouldn’t at least the suffering of the people in those countries invaded by German soldiers have been addressed?” (Walden 38). In the end, as the memory studies scholar, James Young, concluded, it was “a monument the city no longer wanted” (Texture of Memory 39). Whatever the reasons, the countermemorial remained unfinished: a fragment that over time became a ruin. Every time I saw it, on regular visits to Hamburg through the 1990s and on occasional visits after that, it looked neglected and ignored. Defaced by random graffiti, the ground around it unkempt and littered with urban trash, it was a sorry sight. Rather than provoke reflection on the destruction caused by war or inspire antiwar sentiments, it seemed to be met with mere distracted indifference. By all counts, then, Hrdlicka’s attempt at a countermemorial was a failure: a failure of art, of public memory, of civic will. I will argue, though, that it is not failed, but rather melancholic. Within the framework of this argument, I will suggest that a case can be made for melancholy more generally. Contrary to Freud’s view on the matter, as laid out most famously and explicitly in his “Mourning and Melancholia” essay, I will propose that, under certain conditions, melancholia can, in fact, be generative. Seeing it

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as such could have productive implications for both public and private memory. For if we accept the proposition that melancholia can be valid and meaningful in its own right— not a failed or incomplete form of mourning, but something different from, alternative to, mourning—we can see it as a powerful, indeed necessary, counter to the promise of closure that mourning holds out. We can see it, in fact, as a refusal, a resistance to closure. The cultural theorist, Nicole Loraux, has described such a state as “nonoblivion.” Such a state has its own temporality, she insists. Delimited neither by the relief of oblivion nor by the burden of memory, it resides in the ambiguity of remembering to not forget. Loraux highlights the radical power of this ambiguity. It can manifest the transformative potential that Donna Haraway has described as “staying with the trouble”: the refusal to either give up or move on. In this refusal, as Haraway and Loraux suggest, lies the utopian hope of salvaging future possibilities from the unredeemed wreckage of the past (Haraway Staying with the Trouble).

MELANCHOLY ACCORDING TO FREUD It has become commonplace, at least within psychoanalytically inflected contexts, to think of melancholy as a kind of failure. The standard reading of Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia” sees mourning as a successful coming to terms with a painful past and melancholia as a failure to do so.5 This distinction deepens a dilemma that is seldom explicitly addressed. Psychologically speaking, as individuals, we are said to have dealt successfully with the past when, as the expression goes, we are “over it.” Yet, socially speaking, on a collective level, we are enjoined to keep the past present in our minds, so as not to forget the harm our people suffered or that people inflicted in our name. Freud’s distinction—indeed perceived opposition—between mourning and melancholia has had the effect of discrediting the melancholic side as unproductive, or even outright harmful. We all have heard the instructions: you shouldn’t hold on to grief in the wake of loss. You should let it go. Move on. Get over it. Deal with your loss through a proper mourning process. Of the two responses proposed to loss—mourning and melancholia— only one is held to have value. Yet what if we thought of loss more expansively, beyond this binary? What if melancholia had a purpose of its own? What if the effect it produced, the non-resolution of a grief, was not a failed, but intended, outcome? Freud acknowledges from the outset that, in many ways, mourning and melancholia are not that different. Both are responses to a loss that we experience as significant, whether on an experiential or ideational level. The exciting cause can be either “the loss of a beloved person or an abstraction taking the place of the person, such as fatherland, freedom, an ideal and so on” (“Mourning and Melancholia” On Murder 203). But he immediately posits a difference in the way these responses are perceived. The one (mourning) is perceived as healthy: it is what we would hope to see, as it signals the beginning of a healing process. The other (melancholy) is perceived as unhealthy, the sign of a “pathological (krankhaft) disposition” (203). More to the point, it is counterproductive. While mourning moves us forward toward an eventual resolution of the pain of loss (“We rely on it being overcome after a certain period of time” [204; emphasis added]), melancholy moves us backwards. Marked by a “loss of interest in the outside world, the loss of the ability to love, the inhibition of any kind of performance and a reduction in the sense of self” (204), melancholia gradually shuts down our entire life energy.

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The defining difference between the two responses lies in the nature of our experience of the loss. In mourning, we know what we have lost and what it meant to us. In melancholy, our relationship to the thing we lost is not as simple. In melancholy, we can identify the thing we lost (the person, the relationship, the belief we held), but we don’t fully know what it meant to us and what, therefore, the loss we are experiencing signifies. As a result, the work of mourning, of undoing our attachments to the thing we lost, is impeded, if not blocked, as the nature of those attachments is not quite clear to us. As Freud emphasizes repeatedly throughout his essay, mourning and melancholia are not just feelings that overcome us, but forms of psychic action we undertake. Both, in their own way, he notes, are important “internal work” (205). Indeed, he notes by way of summary that “it is not difficult to discover a significant analogy between the work of melancholia and that of mourning” (217). The problem with the “work of melancholy” is that it is ineffective. Instead of moving us forward, it moves us backward into the entropy of depression. We exhaust ourselves trying to figure out what the thing we lost meant to us in the first place. We know that a loss has occurred and even that it has affected us, but we find it “difficult to see what has been lost” (205; emphasis added). As Freud puts it, the person suffering from melancholy “knows who it is, but not what it is about that person that he has lost” (205). In this state of confusion, as we grope for answers (what is it about this thing I have lost that I now grieve?), many different, at times competing, memories are activated, and as they surface, they trigger conflicting feelings—love and hate, shame and resentment, anger and guilt—in relation to the thing that is lost. As these conflicting feelings “struggle with one another,” Freud explains, a series of “battles for the [lost] object” ensues (216). And in the maelstrom of this emotional turmoil, resolution—an end to the grief of loss—is deferred. As long as our relationship to the thing we have lost is not clear to us, Freud notes, resolution “is complicated by the conflict of ambivalence” (216).

MELANCHOLY AND PUBLIC MEMORY What would mark a memorial as melancholic? Freud’s contention that melancholia is defined by ambivalence is a good place to start. We can begin with the ambivalence of the memories invoked. Hrdlicka’s Countermemorial depicts the (German) victims of aerial bombing in ways more commonly seen in depictions of (Jewish) Holocaust victims. In the Hamburg Firestorm section, the charred and skeletal figure of the girl whose body has melted into the blackened wall evokes a memory of death by fire that recalls the Holocaust as much, if not more, than the aerial bombing that this station references.6 Yet in the space of the memorial, these different deaths by fire are not equated or compared, or even, explicitly, connected. The artist doesn’t clarify what we are seeing (or supposed to see) or which memories the scene he presents should evoke in us. The stations have no visible names or labels. And because the relationship between the figures and their viewers is left unspecified, the encounter remains profoundly ambiguous. Who am I in relation to these figures? Who are they in relation to me? For anyone, but particularly for a German encountering this memorial, these can be unsettling questions. For by presenting victims of the Holocaust alongside victims of the bombing war—Jews killed at the hands of German and Germans killed by Allied bombs—the memorial mixes categories that have conventionally been separated into “victim”/“perpetrator” rubrics. Hrdlicka refuses this separation and leaves the relationship between “us” and “them”

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open. He brings human figures together in a shared space of violence and suffering and leaves us, passersby, to decide how to respond to what we are witnessing. As the art historian, Franziska Kirchner, notes, Hrdlicka deliberately eschews the resolution of meaning (50).

FIGURE 9.6  Alfred Hrdlicka, Hamburg Countermemorial. Station I: Hamburg Firestorm, 1985 (detail). Photo by author.

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Most fundamentally, Hrdlicka’s memorial invokes ambivalence about the past itself. In relation to painful, much less shameful, pasts, we are often ambivalent about our own position as rememberers: which past, or which part of the past, do—or should— we remember and in what way? What if facing that past is too painful? What if our private memories diverge from the public narrative? Hrdlicka’s memorial confronts this ambivalence about the past head on. Moreover, it does so on a site that is itself haunted by competing and conflicting memories. The Dammtor train station is just a short walk away. Trains from there took German soldiers to combat and returned those who survived back from war. They took Jews to camps where they were killed or worked to death, and they brought prisoners from German-occupied territories to work and die here. Between 1941 and 1943, in a series of seventeen transports, 5,296 Jewish residents of Hamburg were deported, many from here. A generation earlier, German soldiers—Christian and Jewish alike—had been sent to the carnage of the First World War from this same station. Hrdlicka’s memorial remembers those who died as victims of war alongside those who died as victims of genocide. It remembers civilians crushed or burned to death when their city was firebombed; prisoners shot by their guards as they watched them drown; soldiers killed in a war that made them cannon fodder.7 All these dead are remembered in this memorial. They are remembered together. But not as members of groups defined by categories: soldiers, Jews, Germans, civilians. They are remembered as embodied persons, present in human form to our touch and gaze. The shock of this encounter is visceral, as we who face them—safe in our own intactness,

FIGURE 9.7  Sol LeWitt, Black Form—dedicated to the missing Jews, Hamburg-Altona, 1987–89. Photo by author.

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however relative—see a shattered body, a charred corpse, a dismembered limb. At the time of its installment in the mid-1980s, the shock of this encounter was heightened by the fact that the prevailing form of memorial art in Germany, in particular memorial art that addressed the Holocaust, favored abstract forms, with human bodies, even human forms, all but absent. Another memorial, installed around the same time, also in Hamburg—Sol LeWitt’s Black Form—Dedicated to the Missing Jews, a large black cube that evoked an abandoned coffin—made the provocation of Hrdlicka’s embodied form all the more evident. It also brought into sharp relief the degree to which embodiment was precisely the point of Hrdlicka’s memorial. Abstraction just repeated the crime, he maintained. It once again eliminated the human person (cited in Kirchner 49).8 In his discussion of Hrdlicka’s countermemorial, James Young submits that its very incompleteness, the fact that the dilemmas it represents remain unresolved, renders it a particularly productive form of public memory: an active engagement with the past that remains a perpetual dialogue, “an argument … that could be won by neither side.” To the extent that this lack of resolution “sustains memory and occludes complacency,” Young argued, it was vital to an ongoing, critical engagement with the past (Texture of Memory 40).

A CASE FOR MELANCHOLY So, can a case for melancholy be made? Is it invariably, as conventional readings of Freud suggest, a failure, a lack or incompletion, a mourning that was left undone? Or, to reprise my earlier questions, could it be a good thing, valid in its own way? Could there be purpose—or even value—in staying with the trouble, as Donna Haraway puts it, to refuse to accept a loss as given, mourn, and move on? Could remaining in the state of nonoblivion that Loraux describes, suspended between remembering and forgetting, be productive or generative? What could melancholy do? Freud’s own recognition of the validity—even, at times, necessity—of a melancholic response to loss, seems a good place to start. As he emphasized throughout his discussion of mourning and melancholia, melancholy is not the absence of something, the negative to mourning’s positive. The refusal of resolution is also an act. Melancholia, he explains, is a different, but no less active, engagement with loss as mourning. Both, Freud reminds us, take work. In the case of melancholy, this work can buy time to face the ambivalence we feel in relation to a particular loss. If we aren’t yet able to say what the thing we have lost actually meant to us, we probably aren’t yet ready to act in response to the experience of that loss. Like Penelope, the wife of Homer’s Odysseus, who wove by day and at night unraveled what she had woven earlier to stave off the steps that would follow if she accepted and mourned her husband’s death, melancholia can extend the time we need to sort things out until we are ready. But apart from these reasons, essentially grounded in a lack of clarity about the meaning of the loss, there are other, more forceful, reasons to choose the suspension of time that melancholy provides. A not inconsiderable reason for holding on to the pain of loss can be the grievances that it gives rise to, grievances that can serve as grounds for action, such as vengeance, retribution, or reparation demands. “Memory,” as the ethicist, Avishai Margalit, reminds us, “breathes revenge as often as it breathes reconciliation” (5). Alternately, from the

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perspective of those who have caused, as opposed to suffered, harm, the envisioned outcome could be restorative rather than retributive along the lines of the ethical promise that Friedrich Nietzsche posited as foundational to the free exercise of personal morality. As he notes in The Genealogy of Morality, we temper forgetfulness with “a counterdevice, memory, with the help of which forgetfulness can be suspended in certain cases, —namely in those cases where a promise is to be made.” This “active desire not to let go,” he explains, “… is the will’s memory” (39). And this “will’s memory,” this refusal to forget a promise we made, is what we call conscience: it holds us responsible. It enjoins us to remember not to forget. Approached from this perspective, melancholy can be seen as a source of both moral power and creative energy. Taking the German artist, Anselm Kiefer, as her case in point, the art historian, Lisa Saltzman, proposes just such a re-vision. Arguing that the conventional Freudian view of melancholia ignores one of its most generative dimensions, namely its potential as a creative source, she presents Kiefer’s work as an illustration. Kiefer’s creative energy, she maintains, has consistently been fueled by an abiding engagement with his German past, with wounds that refuse to heal and traumas that resist closure. His work, Saltzman concludes, “bespeaks an aesthetics that is deeply melancholic” (86). This resistance to resolution can, paradoxically, even be experienced as a form of healing. Under certain conditions, pain and suffering can be seen as meaningful: a means of reckoning, a form of expiation, an acknowledgment of difficult truths. The medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman stresses this very point in his reflection on why people sometimes choose to live with psychic pain. In The Things That Matter, Kleinman argues that healing is not always an option or not the best one. Sometimes moving on, getting over something painful, can actually feel wrong, perhaps because it seems like a step toward forgetting. Under such circumstances, melancholy can be deeply meaningful. It acknowledges that some losses cannot be mastered and some wounds will never heal. It knows that some griefs refuse resolution. They can only be endured. Perhaps it’s in this sense that Hrdlicka’s Countermemorial is melancholic. It doesn’t try to complete a process of coming to terms with the German past, of healing or redeeming its traumas. On the contrary, its very state of incompletion resists this process. It eschews answers and leaves the fundamental questions open. It manifests woundedness in its very form. From the perspective of the Holocaust scholar, Lawrence Langer, this is a fitting response to the history the memorial invokes. Memories of atrocity on the order of the Holocaust cannot be resolved, according to Langer. Such memories have no purpose, they aren’t productive, they simply abide and “refuse to die by their own forlorn gravity” (Langer Using and Abusing the Holocaust 96). Living with them is not the triumph of successful memory work. It is not redemptive. It is simply the result of the ability and will to endure. “Forlorn gravity” is an apt description of the impression that Hrdlicka’s unfinished sculpture left me with that day when I first stumbled across it on a stroll through Hamburg. It troubled me then and it troubles me still. But I accept that trouble as productive. The weight of an unresolved past that the memorial could not resolve holds a challenge for us now: to remain vigilant, refuse the comfort of closure, and build a future on the foundation of a past that continues to be present.

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FIGURE 9.8  Anselm Kiefer, Lilith at the Red Sea [Lilith am roten Meer], 1990 (detail). Photo by author.

NOTES 1. Alfred Hrdlicka (1928–2009) worked in a variety of forms, including drawings, paintings, and prints, but his international reputation was based on his sculptures; “sculptor” he chose as his profession in his passport. After experimenting in the 1950s with individual figures (his first public exhibition was in 1960), he soon turned focused on the depiction of figures in groups. From the outset, he was drawn to the concept—and practice—of what became known as “Art in Public Space,” in which the “art” involved both the work fashioned by the artist and the physical space where the work was placed. The resulting dynamic between place and work created a third—and invariably charged—dimension, as it opened a space for public debate.

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2. The casualties they suffered in the First World War alone were staggering: around 6,000 men of this regiment were lost. 3. Located north of the city, in the Hamburg suburb from which it got its name, Neuengamme was one of the largest concentration camps on German soil. It began operation in 1938. Between 1940 and 1942, during the very period that deportations of Hamburg Jews were underway, many from the Dammtor train station (starting in October 1941, in a series of seventeen transports, 5,296 Hamburg Jews were deported), the prisoner population of Neuengamme increased exponentially. All in all, between December 1938 and May 1945, around 104,000–106,000 people, most of them from German-occupied territories, with Soviet citizens comprising the largest group, were imprisoned there. Unlike in other, often more well-known camps, the number of Jewish prisoners was, comparatively speaking, small: the estimated number is around 13,000. 4. While this outcome was not without precedent—Hrdlicka was known for either not completing or destroying, partially or wholly, works that fell short of what he had set out to do—his failure to complete the Hamburg memorial and honor the contract he had signed was perceived as particularly egregious. 5. The standard English translation of Freud’s text uses the Latinate “melancholia” for Freud’s German term, “Melancholie,” even though the common English word, “melancholy” is a perfect equivalent of Freud’s word choice in German. For this reason, and so as not to further obfuscate the import of Freud’s term for English-language readers, I am using the two terms—“melancholia” and “melancholy”—more or less interchangeably in this essay. 6. We are, of course, also reminded in this context that the word, Holocaust, derived from the Greek holokauston, means, in the most literal sense, “a burnt sacrifice.” 7. This was not the only time that Hrdlicka attempted to bring memories of a shared time— wartime and Holocaust memories—together in a single memorial. Indeed, the work for which he would ultimately become most known—the Vienna Memorial against War and Fascism [Wiener Mahnmal gegen Krieg und Faschismus]—was marked by this very refusal to contain public memory within such separate, and separable, categories. There are many ways to destroy a human being, his works proposed, and the same period of German history, the Nazi years, offered ample evidence. Hrdlicka made his first model of the “Street-scrubbing Jew” [Straße waschender Jude], the life-size figure of a Jewish man on his hands and knees forced to scrub the pavement with a scrub brush, this abject figure that formed a key element of the Vienna Memorial, in 1977. Yet the same year that he fashioned this figure of the degraded, humiliated Jew, a figure that would be a flashpoint for controversy from the outset, he fashioned another composite figure, “Dead Woman with Child,” that remembered the civilian war dead. Half a decade later, in his work on the Hamburg Countermemorial, Hrdlicka revisited this earlier attempt to grasp the impact of historical events and the human suffering they caused, not in terms of identity categories (e.g. German perpetrators and Jewish victims), but in terms of power and powerlessness. Both the “Street-scrubbing Jew” and the “Dead Woman with Child,” he proposed, were victims of violence visited upon them. Neither had the power to protect themselves against the forces aligned to destroy them. As Hrdlicka began work on the Hamburg memorial, he returned to the Vienna project and ended up working on both projects simultaneously. In 1984, a year after he completed the first station of the Hamburg memorial, he completed the figure of the

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“Street-scrubbing Jew” that he had first modeled in the 1970s. And in 1987, a year after the second station of the Hamburg Countermemorial was installed and as his work on the additional two stations he had planned was faltering, Hrdlicka turned his attention to the Vienna Memorial against War and Fascism and completed it. It was installed on the Albertina Square in central Vienna in November 1988. And like the Hamburg memorial he was unable to complete, it reminds us of compounded horrors: a catastrophic war accompanied by a racialized genocide. 8. Hrdlicka refused abstraction from the outset; he was interested in embodied form. A particular (one could even say, obsessive) focus of his work was physical violence and the human body: how does the human body register violence? How does it respond, how is it transformed, how much can it endure, when and how is it broken? The vulnerability, strength, and resilience of human bodies; the human capacity to suffer violence and to inflict it, these were the issues that Hrdlicka spent his career exploring.

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CHAPTER TEN

Memory Images, between Discourse and Representation PHILIPPE MESNARD

Memory-based representation of twentieth-century violence has been a topic of much debate. A quick look at the “state of the art” reveals that the major debates have mostly focused on the Nazi terror with participants taking up positions against aestheticizing this violence on the basis of a few memorable pronouncements. Among the best-known, and therefore the most repeated, is Adorno’s statement that after Auschwitz, all poetry is barbarous (1949), or Jacques Rivette’s virulent criticism which branded the panning shot used to prettify a deportee’s suicide as “abject” in Gillo Pontecorvo’s Kapo (1961). Susan Sontag, for her part, recalls in On Photography the subjective event of the discovery of the photographs of the Nazi camp of Dachau and deduces from it some considerations about the ethical questions that polarize the images of extreme violence (Sontag 19–21). In the wake of Blanchot and echoing Rivette and Serge Daney, Claude Lanzmann, before Shoah (1985) came out, had already made a stand against Marvin Chomski’s Holocaust (1978), and fifteen years later, against Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993). Thus, he became the defender of the thesis that the Shoah is unrepresentable. This debate continued with JeanLuc Godard, then Didi-Huberman, to whom we shall return later. But it is regrettable that jockeying for position in the intellectual field has taken precedence over real conceptual issues. From these authors, two directions emerge. One invites us to consider that the desire to show everything—in conformity with what the conventional and mimetic “realism” requests—compromises the referential relationship to reality, with the risk not only of falsifying the events but also of violating the memory of the victims. This ethical concern is focused on a question of dignity. It is for this reason that critics summon a lexicon such as “abjection,” “pornography,” or “obscenity” to criticize what it is too quickly called the “aesthetic bias,” which is frequently associated with the judgment of beautiful (jugement du beau) although it more generally concerns the issue of sensitive. The ethical concern of the second direction emphasizes the imagination’s ability to produce a thought about that which escapes it. As such, seeking to establish a link between the past and the present by means of the imagination does not mean neglecting the question of dignity. On the contrary, it means extending it by a kind of transmission imperative which stops short of shutting down the magnitude of the event.

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In trying to go beyond this alternative, which refers, mutatis mutandis, the old iconoclast and iconophile dichotomy, the following reflections question the dialectical relationship that the image maintains with contemporary memory discourses which inform and frame our relationship with the past, and which even attempt to structure it. For this reason, rather than returning to Halbwachs’ term “collective memory,” or Aleida and Jan Assmann’s “cultural and communicational memories,” I would prefer to emphasize the discursive mainstream which currently dominates memory issues, whatever political, institutional, or cultural contexts are in play. Considering that one of the major characteristics of memory-based devices is that they produce a normative vision—indeed, ever more normative—of the world, resting on values such as reconciliation, dignity, transmission of stories and traces of the past that all communities and people are invited to share so that their identity can be recognized. To avoid any misunderstanding, I insist on saying that I am not criticizing an aesthetic approach. I do not refute the aesthetic question which, obviously, is not reduced to the issues of “beauty.” Moreover, I do not take one side or the other of the positions quickly mentioned above. On the one hand, I argue that the treatment of the aesthetic question cannot neglect a constructivist approach which includes a cognitive construction of the glance and its cultural determinations (I extend in this way Foucault’s and Rancière’s analysis). Furthermore, I consider that the aesthetic of the images of the extreme violence of the past is a major stake of the contemporary memory discourse or, more exactly, of the memory such as it became a normative discourse of the past at the scale of the political as well as the cultural power. During the long and controversial history of the image, we can find several episodes where the image, notably with painting, has been an issue of mastery by the religious, political, or academical discourse. I will just expose the following historical example we can put in parallel with the current situation. The evolution of the relationship between discourse and painting in the Renaissance, with the ideological stakes belonging to this period, helps to understand what has been happening between the memory and the visible for the last forty years. The fifteenth century is thus crossed by the will to settle the richness of the painting and the enigmas that they conceal. The challenge is to not “disturb the harmony of a thought ordered according to the principles of reason,” explains Jacqueline Lichtenstein (9). Among the master precursors of this turning point at the dawn of the classical age, Alberti (1404–72) laid the foundations of a new art “assigning to the painter a purpose similar to that which had been set for the orator by Cicero: to move” (Lichtenstein 216). The objective is to make prevail a rhetorical conception of the painting to drive more effectively the emotions that the painting can then concentrate. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, the rationality of framing constantly asserts itself. The Ut rhetorica pictura, as it is called, concerns above all what the representation produces in those who watch it, and this kind of codification would thus prevail over the poetic dimension of painting, the Ut pictura poesis. The will to power of this rhetoric rests on the force with which the paintings can command, or not, what the spectator feels. Like the listener of a speech, the viewer of a painting must experience the emotions that are represented to him, so, “we weep with those who weep, laugh with those who laugh, and share the suffering of those who suffer” (my trans.; Alberti 56). Alberti appears here almost as a contemporary theorist of immersive emotion generated by the memory devices. Daniel Arasse makes an analogous observation, analyzing it as a “prise de pouvoir” (a taking of power) by rhetoric over ars memoriae, the art of memory (make no mistake,

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the memory in question is art as a technique of memorization). “One passes, writes Arasse, to a rhetorical conception of painting where painting serves not to remember something anymore, but to convince the spectator by the emotion of what it tells” (Arasse 171–2). This “coup de force,” at the same time aesthetic and epistemological, leads to what the visible itself becomes, to take again this time the terms of Lichtenstein, “an effect of speech, perceptible only thanks to the evocative power of the word. [The image] can be registered in the order of the theoretical legitimacies without apparently putting the stakes of the discourse in danger” (10). Let us return to our time to consider that the memorial, too, bases its power of conviction on academic legitimacies and on the moral framing of the great violence of history. We will then ask how memory-based mechanisms enter into dialogue with individual or collective subjectivities when they are in relationship with the images of the past. What role do aesthetic codes of representation play there, when mass culture combines so well with commodification and erupts onto our screens and into our daily lives? Yet, rather than discrediting the aesthetic, it is instead integrated into my analysis as one of the elements in the process by which memory becomes visible. And more particularly when we refer to the memory of extreme violence. To this end, it is important to keep in mind two aesthetics which count as the archaeological bases of the memory aesthetic—on the one hand, that of war and its development, and on the other hand, that conveyed by marketing, both being situated in the vicinity of contemporary memory issues.

BETWEEN ETHIC AND AESTHETIC, WHAT ENDS? WHAT MEANS? In the past, the war aesthetic ushered in by Guillaume Apollinaire’s irony, Ernst Jünger’s enthusiasm, or Emilio Lussu’s fatalism, led us to see war as “beautiful.” Nowadays, while championing the fragile question of ethics, let us not kid ourselves that representations of memory are empty of aesthetic sense and are not animated by a certain idea of beauty, as if this notion had been cancelled out by the multiple visions of corpses and jerking bodies. Today, representations of memory are not the prolonging by other means of Ernst Friedrich’s Krieg dem Krieg (War against war) project, whose first edition appeared in 1924. This eminently pacifist work sought to purge the population of its drive for war by showing in the most direct way the catalogue of mutilations caused during the Great War by weapons, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated. If memory work has indeed contributed to the further pursuit of this work of horror—the term “horror education” is also used—it has done so over the last few decades by integrating it into an aesthetic which, without necessarily giving meaning to the images, frames them, delineates them, and makes them speak to our imagination rather than leaving it stunned. Furthermore, contemporary societies continually put themselves on show and create their own representations of themselves, supported by the insidious alliance between culture and marketing which caters to operating principles already approved by the ministries of propaganda, even if their purposes are different. While marketing was still in its infancy, the propaganda machines were already working at full power to mobilize the masses against the “enemy” and invent an ideological unity. However, neither propaganda nor marketing allows images to simply exist; by instrumentalizing them, these twin discourses attempt to make them say whatever they want—and most often succeed in this. In this context, the heavy responsibility for these simulacra and shams has usually been placed on the images themselves. It was thought that images indulge in

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playing such tricks or that “there are many ways in which images can lie” (Gervereau 326). But we cannot settle for such an answer which is part of the long tradition of their disqualification. As Susan Sontag underlines, to move beyond these hasty observations, “the ethical content of photographs is fragile” (21) and “the ‘realistic’ view of the world compatible with bureaucracy redefines knowledge—as techniques and information” (22). That is what we learn from a brief documentary history of the discovery of the Nazi camps. The first visions of the terror that reigned in the Nazi camps were recorded with roughly a degree of autonomy by George Stevens at Nordhausen and Dachau in May 1945, and Samuel Fuller in Falkenau, for instance. These visions circulate in an erratic and disconcerting manner (Steinle 129–45; Bou 255–99; Weiss). They shock. So films or photos published by the press present an unprecedented phenomenon, not having the horrors of war as a reference, whether these horrors had struck soldiers or civilians. But these first gestures without any predetermined frame, linked to the visceral stupefaction and indignation at the suffering in the camps, were very rapidly absorbed by specific and rational programs. Among these was the filmed documentation used in the Nuremberg trials with the projection on November 20, 1945, of the American film, Nazi Concentration Camps, and on February 13, 1946, of its Soviet equivalent, Atrocities Committed by the Germano-Fascist Invaders in the USSR, which are both compilations of sequences of news reports. Matthias Steinle also mentions the “Atrocity Pictures [which] were supposed to retrospectively convince the American population of the necessity of war” (134). A similar policy controlled the editing of the Actualités françaises since May 1945, analyzed by Sylvie Lindeperg (155–71). To different degrees and for very diverse audiences, these visuals are integrated into discourses which, even if they glorify the noble cause of the liberators who conquered Nazism and convey the values of justice and freedom, are sharing numerous characteristics of a propaganda rhetoric which subordinates the image to its own will. Thus, the arrival of American troops in Mauthausen on May 7, 1945, as documented by Don Onitz, is no less reconstituted than the “liberation” of Auschwitz by the Red Army in the well-known sequences where dozens of children file empty-eyed between lines of barbed wire. The photographic tableau depicting General Eisenhower’s visit to Ohrdruf camp on April 28, 1945, is equally eloquent: wincing before a dozen prisoners’ corpses, he stands at the center of a perfect perspective with some thirty soldiers in the background. By staging this misery, the political leaders of America, the Soviet Union, and Britain, each in their own way, reappropriated it—staging as a means of reappropriation (Chéroux 103). They reap the benefits of portraying themselves as liberators while at the same time masking the following historic reality: not a single camp was ever of any strategic interest to the Allies before they were exposed, any more than the railways conveying the deportees were ever selected as bombing targets. So, the media machinery ran riot, forming a focal point where all the advantages that the victors hoped to gain after the war converged. One of the damaging consequences of this work of representation was to make people “imagine” the genocide of the Jews from visual material from which they were largely absent. To reflect on the Jewish genocide meant using an imagination filled with corpses or survivors who looked like corpses, while the SS had erased all trace of both the victims’ bodies—including from the massacres in the East—and the death camps. This is why the photographs of SS troops, later published in the book The Album of Auschwitz, which documented in 1944 a selection of Hungarian Jews just arrived in Auschwitz, made so

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little sense for fifty years. These people were represented as being in apparent good health and clothed just as you or I, even though most of them were going to be gassed and burned a few hours after their arrival. This representation did not match the image of the skinny concentration camp prisoner appropriated by the discourse of the “liberators” and, in its wake, that of the construction of the memory of the camps. Two highly intellectual avatars of this desire to make us imagine the Shoah are found in Giorgio Agamben’s Remnants of Auschwitz and Georges Didi-Huberman’s Images malgré tout. Reappropriating Primo Levi’s reflections, Agamben turns the deportees selected for Auschwitz into the so-called “Musulmänner”1 the exemplary figure of the “complete” witness; this figure is largely inspired by a Christ-like model of expressing suffering, marginalizing from the outset the specificity of the Shoah while claiming to subsume it (Mesnard and Kahan; Mesnard). As for Georges Didi-Huberman, he confers on the imagination the capacity to seize any image, thereby rejecting its resistance to being imagined, whereas Lanzmann opposes him with the argument that images can exist and circulate without imagination. But on the other hand, establishing a process of rationalizing the visual, which is contiguous with the methodical management of war imagery (Zelizer 36), has resulted in the exclusion of a certain number of them whose power, it was thought at the time, could have had harmful consequences for the population. Although not made in this context, Roland Barthes’ remark is especially relevant here: “Society strives to soften photography, to temper the madness which threatens to explode in the face of whoever looks at it” (180). In 1945, a film made by Sidney Bernstein, the British officer who headed the Allied command’s film section based in London, became a blatant example of this type of censorship. The film, entitled Memory of the Camps, was stopped by the Foreign Office because its more violent sequences risked long-term demoralization of West Germans who were in the process of reconstructing their country. Consequently, the sequence showing the Bergen Belsen bulldozer pushing piles of bodies into a ditch would only re-emerge much later, inserted into works of fiction, or into a documentary like Nuit et brouillard (1955) or French “Actualités télévisées,” before becoming the subject of a 1985 film about the history of the shoot and its challenges. During the same period, George Stevens Jr.’s films George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey (1984) and then George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin (1994), paid homage to his father by showing the rushes he filmed in Dachau.

VISIBILITY’S DISCURSIVE CONDITIONS The belated renaissance of such images relates to a moment in time when frameworks for memory-based work were being put in place, and what had previously been given no visibility now acquired some. That is how, according to Harun Farocki, “two employees of the CIA undertook a search of the archives to analyze the aerial views of Auschwitz” in 1977 (Farocki 37). Exploring these photographs which had lain dormant in the archives, they discerned, fragment by fragment, the elements of Birkenau’s extermination gas chambers. Many visuals which languished in public or private warehouses could now be identified and used, miraculously acquiring meaning in the eyes of those who had in the past stood before them without seeing them, as in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.” There are significant similarities with Eyal Sivan’s discovery in the 1990s of Eichmann’s 350-hour court case, following an odyssey worthy of seasoned detectives. It led to Sivan and Rony Brauman making the film, Un Spécialiste (1999).

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These precious reels, the fruit of filming by Leo Hurwitz, became visible at the turn of the twenty-first century and gradually, so did a quantity of other films which fell into new memory frameworks. This not only helped their meaning to be grasped, but also created conditions favorable to their reception. If the double relationship to image and to violence—which poses the question of what the image signifies about the violence that it depicts—opens up chasms where we lose the sense of what we, in a humanist fashion, consider as “civilization,” it is easy to understand the centrality of the issues which this polarizes. A fortiori, when referring to a world like our own, where extreme violence as spectacle has acquired ultra-visibility. As such, the discursive rationality of memory work no longer leaves the images of the past to their own torment, it subordinates them to codes which tend to relegate them to the rank of mere illustrations, it builds them into stereotypes of a compassionate culture with collective memory as one of its purveyors, or it imbues them with a connotation which makes them “unique items” from which emanates a completely fabricated aesthetic of authenticity. This explains why old, scratched, yellowing, unsynchronized home movies are so appreciated in new memory-based productions. This quest for authenticity is expressed through a lexicon of sacredness which Susan Sontag’s interpretation of concentration camp images identifies—despite their astonishingly Catholic connotations—by terms such as “revelation” and “negative epiphany” (Sontag 33–5), terms also adopted by Christophe Cognet (19–22). In this respect, there is an injustice which springs not from the image, but from the fact that the image’s meaning is determined by a discourse which gradually takes possession of the visible. Marie-José Mondzain observes that a slip takes place when the visible replaces the image, imposing its own rules of cultural verisimilitude, up to and including the way in which it identifies the most brutal violence (265). In order to impose the said rules, the visible finds itself under the tutelage of discursive reasons which distributed the values to which the images were then assigned, setting up norms to govern them all. Because if, “in photography, I can never deny that the thing has been there,” to reprise Barthes’ famous phrase (120), his work just as often emphasizes the relevance of framing and connotation without which that which is shown would make no sense and would not even appear. Thus, it is clearly right to think that propaganda reduces the most striking images to a utilitarian function to serve political ends. But we should also consider that there is nothing surprising in the fact that a discourse, whatever it is, does not allow the images themselves to speak, given that they risk making us lose our grip on reality. After the Second World War, the question, as emphasized above, must be posed in the strongest possible terms in a world in ruins and whose reconstruction rests on what this world will henceforth be able to represent, and on the way those who inhabit it represent themselves. This is why the systematic stigmatization of a population, even if the majority were compliant with the criminal regime which governed it, would have been counterproductive—it would have contravened the imperative for the country to bounce back from its devastation. The question is relevant for all these unbearable images which, rather than being forgotten, are invested in and by the discourse of the victors who use them to present and proclaim their values. Why would contemporary collective memory, whose photo library is filled with suffering, derogate this rule if memory itself is indexed on values of justice, equity, and dignity? But on our journey to the present, we had to negotiate the bend of the 1960s and ’70s. While information continued to accelerate, the discourse of the victors of the Second World War lost its credibility against the backdrop of the unjustifiable violence

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of the colonial and imperialist wars, on the one hand, and on the other, the Soviet repression, then the occupation of Afghanistan by the USSR. Even though we were still in an era where contested political thought, notably Third-Worldism, maintained its own value frameworks and produces its own militant discourse, humanitarianism and journalism were, each in their own way and often together, powerful levers for change in the representation of violence, instituting with memory work these new frames of interpretation. Today, because we have internalized them, they appear as obvious as they are transparent. They deconstruct, piece by piece, the culture of war that reigned, and they give new meaning to the question of peace. The shock photograph of Phan Thi Kim Phuc (“The little Napalm girl”), her face distorted by pain of napalm burns, taken by Nick Ut on June 8, 1972, on Route No. 1 Trang Bang owed its impact to the stereotype of vulnerability exemplified by the child with its memorializing and humanitarian precedents of the little boy in the Warsaw ghetto with his arms held high or the little Biafrans with bellies swollen by famine during the Igbo secession from Nigeria. We attribute such power to these images erroneously, for in reality they only have this effect once they are transformed—whether instantly by the media broadcasting system—into clichés whose function is to illustrate the speeches which tell us what to think. Images appear to us in this way because they have undergone a transformation that has made them typical examples which are assumed to be inevitable. And if certain images distort what happened, that does not flow directly from them, but from what makes them speak. Contrary to popular belief, images do not lie, at least not as long as they are not subjected to the demands of a discourse where they are supposed to tell the truth about what is. Images as they presented to us do not merely fulfill a certifying function, and it would be naïve to believe that, like photography, the stamp of reality in situ defines them sufficiently. Many of the signals they send us have to do with what is inferred by the discourse that channels it, and on which those who watch it rely. The “viewer can only see if he submits to the mechanism’s operating rules, but as compensation for this submission, ‘the scene which is represented is stupefying in its reality: it is itself reality.’ Reality in its representation, that is the reward for obedience,” explains Louis Marin (82). Let us consider that it is not just about convincing, but also about domesticating the abysmal power of the image which, without framing or discourse, could very well carry off the person who looks at it as did Medusa with her spiky mane. If this helps us build, for better or worse, a memory in the contemporary sense of the word, the politically perilous paradox involves excluding that which fails to conform to memory-based norms and their aesthetic, while aspiring to universal transparency. The permanence of discourse alongside, above, and inside what we see springs from different sources and fans out in directions no less varied. It is very noticeable that domains such as the visual arts—actively involved in memory-based issues to which many artists have directly committed their works since 1980—very rarely dispense with a discourse to accompany their production, a discourse which has even become its driving force. The work of Christian Boltanski, although it generally comes across as silent and recollected, in reality works by what rhetoric calls preterition, inciting unrestrained discourse about itself. It would appear otherwise without the comments, explanations, and speculations which accompany it, without the dialogues and interpretations which anticipate and follow it, and with which it is perfectly in step and which it has completely integrated. Moreover, the artist functions as one of these cogs, playing adeptly with discourses on his own creations. Thus, an essential part of his work is extended outside creation per

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se, onto screens and in front of microphones that the debonair C. Boltanski controlled behind his clairvoyant naïveté. Without this, it would still be a work of art, but a work radically different than when on the stage of culture full of reverence for memory-based art and in whose mirror it loves to gaze.

THE WILL OF THE MEMORY By becoming discourse, by turning itself into discourse, what we understand in both academic and familiar terms by “collective memory” could not ignore the question of the image and simply leave it to wander aimlessly. As such, if this memory with its norms and its capacity to control and recycle the past finds an equivalent, on an individual scale, in the so-called voluntary memory, then it is the symmetrical opposite, indeed the antithesis of the involuntary memory so dear to Proust. Indeed, Walter Benjamin wrote that it is subject to “free formations” arising from “visual images … whose presence remains enigmatic” (“L’image proustienne” 154). In acquiring these discourse attributes, memory work has lost not only the part of memory that carries the enigma of the emergence of the images, but also the irrational element of time that nobody is in a position to really make come back. Being driven by this desire to reappropriate for itself that which has been and configure it to reflect more the present than the past, many of the great projects of our era strive to reconstitute the authenticity of objects or events invested with a memorial value or disposed to such an investment. It is as if what we understand by “collective memory” had launched into a frantic race to retrieve what Benjamin called in another text the aura (“L’Œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproductibilité technique” 269–317). Just as the ordering of medical discourse has considerably changed the visibility of the body, our relationship to its intimacy and its enigmas, so the contemporary collective memory device seeks to adjust our subjective relationship as much to the past as to extreme violence. As such, by reading the images of the past through its mechanism, it transfers to the level of the visible limits that its discourse draws in terms of what is sayable. It is in this sense that Michel Foucault should be understood when he writes that “we must question the original distribution of the visible and the invisible in so far as it is linked to the division into what is enunciated and what is silenced” (VII). The discourse of memory draws a horizon beyond which everything that does not share its values is rejected, while inside its circle, it orders the visible in proportion to its reception. Thus, the image is the space and the heart of a tension between that which resists and that which is exposed to memorial rationality and to its power strategies.

NOTE 1. Used only in Auschwitz, this denomination had nothing to see with the Muslims. It qualifies this sort of deportees having reached the limits of their physical and psychical capacities. The origin of such a qualification has not been clearly elucidated till now, but we know that many survivors mentioned that the way these agonizing deportees remained curved on themselves was frequently associated with Muslims during the prayer.

PART FOUR

Monuments, Memorials, Museums, Memoirs

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Negative Spaces and the Play of Memory: The Memorial Art of Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz JAMES E. YOUNG

Among the hundreds of submissions in the 1995 competition for a German national “memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe,” one seemed an especially uncanny embodiment of the impossible questions at the heart of Germany’s memorial process. Artist Horst Hoheisel, already well-known for his negative-form monument in Kassel, proposed a simple, if provocative anti-solution to the memorial competition: blow up the Brandenburger Tor, grind its stone into dust, sprinkle the remains over its former site, and then cover the entire memorial area with granite plates. How better to remember a destroyed people than by a destroyed monument? Rather than commemorating the destruction of a people with the construction of yet another edifice, Hoheisel would mark one destruction with another destruction. Rather than filling in the void left by a murdered people with a positive form, the artist would carve out an empty space in Berlin by which to recall now-absent people. Rather than concretizing and thereby displacing the memory of Europe’s murdered Jews, the artist would open a place in the landscape to be filled with the memory of those who come to remember Europe’s murdered Jews. A landmark celebrating Prussian might and crowned by a chariot-borne Quadriga, the Roman goddess of peace, would be demolished to make room for the memory of Jewish victims of German might and peacelessness. In fact, perhaps no single emblem better represents the conflicted, self-abnegating motives for memory in Germany today than the vanishing monument.1 Of course, such a memorial undoing would never be sanctioned by the German government, and this, too, was part of the artist’s point. Hoheisel’s proposed destruction of the Brandenburger Tor participated in the competition for a national Holocaust memorial, even as its radicalism precluded the possibility of its execution. At least part of its polemic, therefore, was directed against actually building any winning design, against ever finishing the monument at all. Here he seemed to suggest that the surest engagement with Holocaust memory in Germany may actually lie in its perpetual irresolution, that only an unfinished memorial process can guarantee the life of memory. For it may be the

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FIGURE 11.1  Horst Hoheisel’s proposal to “blow up the Brandenburger Tor,” submitted to the 1995 design competition for Germany’s national “Memorial for Europe’s Murdered Jews.” Photos courtesy of Horst Hoheisel.

finished monument that completes memory itself, puts a cap on memory-work, and draws a bottom line underneath an era that will forever haunt Germany. Better a thousand years of Holocaust memorial competitions in Germany than any single “final solution” to Germany’s memorial problem.2 Like other cultural and aesthetic forms in Europe and America, the monument— in both idea and practice—has undergone a radical transformation over the course of the twentieth century. As intersection between public art and political memory, the monument has necessarily reflected the aesthetic and political revolutions, as well as the wider crises of representation, following all of this century’s major upheavals—including both the First and Second World Wars, the Vietnam War, the rise and fall of communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites. In every case, the monument reflects both its socio-historical and aesthetic contexts: artists working in eras of cubism, expressionism, socialist realism, earthworks, minimalism, or conceptual art remain answerable to both the needs of art and official history. The result has been a metamorphosis of the monument from the heroic, self-aggrandizing figurative icons of the late nineteenth century celebrating national ideals and triumphs to the anti-heroic, often ironic and self-effacing conceptual installations marking the national ambivalence and uncertainty of late twentieth-century post-modernism. Unlike the utopian, revolutionary forms with which modernists hoped to redeem art and literature after the First World War, much post-Holocaust literature and art is pointedly anti-redemptory. The post-Holocaust memory artist, in particular, would say, “not only is art not the answer, but that after the Holocaust, there can be no more Final

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Solutions.” Some of this skepticism has been a direct response to the enormity of the Holocaust—which seemed to exhaust not only the forms of modernist experimentation and innovation, but also the traditional meanings still reified in such innovations. Mostly, however, this skepticism stems from these artists’ contempt for the religious, political, or aesthetic linking of destruction and redemption that seemed to justify such terror in the first place. In Germany, once the land of what Saul Friedlander has called “redemptory antiSemitism” (3), the possibility that art might redeem mass murder with beauty (or with ugliness), or that memorials might somehow redeem this past with the instrumentalization of its memory, continues to haunt a postwar generation of memory-artists. Moreover, these artists in Germany are both plagued and inspired by a series of impossible memorial questions: How does a state incorporate shame into its national memorial landscape? How does a state recite, much less commemorate, the litany of its misdeeds, making them part of its reason for being? Under what memorial aegis, whose rules, does a nation remember its own barbarity? Where is the tradition for memorial mea culpa, when combined remembrance and self-indictment seem so hopelessly at odds? Unlike statesponsored memorials built by victimized nations and peoples to themselves in Poland, Holland, or Israel, those in Germany are necessarily those of the persecutor remembering its victims. In the face of this necessary breach in the conventional “memorial code,” it is little wonder that German national memory of the Holocaust remains so torn and convoluted. Germany’s “Jewish question” is now a two-pronged memorial question: how does a nation mourn the victims of a mass-murder perpetrated in its name? How does a nation re-unite itself on the bedrock memory of its horrendous crimes? These questions constitute the conflicted heart of Germany’s struggle with its national memory of the Holocaust. Seventy years after the defeat of the Nazi regime, contemporary artists in Germany still have difficulty separating the monument there from its fascist past. German memoryartists are heirs to a double-edged postwar legacy: a deep distrust of monumental forms in light of their systematic exploitation by the Nazis and a profound desire to distinguish their generation from that of the killers through memory. In their eyes, the didactic logic of monuments—their demagogical rigidity and certainty of history—continues to recall too closely traits associated with fascism itself. How else would totalitarian regimes commemorate themselves except through totalitarian art like the monument? Conversely, how better to celebrate the fall of totalitarian regimes than by celebrating the fall of their monuments? A monument against fascism, therefore, would have to be monument against itself: against the traditionally didactic function of monuments, against their tendency to displace the past they would have us contemplate—and finally, against the authoritarian propensity in monumental spaces that reduces viewers to passive spectators. One of the most compelling results of Germany’s memorial conundrum has been the advent of its “counter-monuments”: brazen, painfully self-conscious memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premises of their being. At home in an era of earthworks, conceptual and self-destructive art, a postwar generation of artists now explore both the necessity of memory and their incapacity to recall events they never experienced directly. To their minds, neither literal nor figurative references suggesting anything more than their own abstract link to the Holocaust will suffice. Instead of seeking to capture the memory of events, therefore, they recall primarily their own relationship to events, the great gulf of time between themselves and the Holocaust. For this generation of German artists, the possibility that memory of events so grave might be reduced to exhibitions of

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public craftsmanship or cheap pathos remains intolerable. They contemptuously reject the traditional forms and reasons for public memorial art, those spaces that either console viewers or redeem such tragic events, or indulge in a facile kind of Wiedergutmachung or purport to mend the memory of a murdered people. Instead of searing memory into public consciousness, they fear, conventional memorials seal memory off from awareness altogether; instead of embodying memory, they find that memorials may only displace memory. These artists fear rightly that to the extent that we encourage monuments to do our memory-work for us, we become that much more forgetful. They believe, in effect, that the initial impulse to memorialize events like the Holocaust may actually spring from an opposite and equal desire to forget them. In the pages that follow, I would like to reflect on both a handful of memorial projects co-created by Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz that I have discussed elsewhere and to add several of their more recent installations to the discussion. To my mind, the collected corpus of memorial and counter-memorial works by Hoheisel and Knitz have come to embody the most profound and critical of Germany’s national self-interrogations of its Nazi past. In the process, I hope also to refine and adumbrate the concept of countermonuments in Germany, the ways they have begun to constitute something akin to a “national form” that works through, but never actually resolves, Germany’s Holocaust memorial problem. Rather than continuing to insist that the monument do what modern societies, by dint of their vastly heterogeneous populations and competing memorial agendas, will not permit them to do, I’ve long believed that the best way to save the monument, if it’s worth saving at all, is to enlarge its life and texture to include its genesis in historical time, the activity that brings a monument into being, the debates surrounding its origins, its production, its reception, its life in the mind. That is to say, rather than seeing polemics as a by-product of the monument, I would make the polemics surrounding a monument’s existence one of its central, animating features. For I believe that the monument succeeds only insofar as it allows itself full expression of the debates, arguments, and tensions generated in the noisy give and take among competing constituencies driving its very creation. In this view, memory as represented in the monument might also be regarded as a never-to-be-completed process, animated (not disabled) by the forces of history bringing it into being. Some ten years before Horst Hoheisel’s proposal to blow up the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the city of Kassel had invited artists to consider ways to rescue one of its own destroyed monuments—the “Aschrott-Brunnen.” Originally this had been a twelve-meter high, neo-gothic pyramid fountain, surrounded by a reflecting pool set in the main town square, in front of City Hall, in 1908. It was designed by the City Hall architect, Karl Roth, and funded by a Jewish entrepreneur from Kassel, Sigmund Aschrott. But as a gift from a Jew to the city, it was condemned by the Nazis as the “Jews’ Fountain” and so demolished during the night of April 8–9, 1939, by local Nazis, its pieces carted away by city work crews over the next few days. Within weeks, all but the sandstone base had been cleared away, leaving only a great, empty basin in the center of the square. Two years later, the first transport of 463 Kassel Jews departed from the Hauptbahnhof to Riga, followed in the next year by another 3,000, all murdered. In 1943, the city filled in the fountain’s basin with soil and planted it over in flowers; local burghers then dubbed it “Aschrott’s Grave.” During the growing prosperity of the 1960s, the town turned Aschrott’s Grave back into a fountain, sans pyramid. But by then, only a few of the city’s oldtimers could recall

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FIGURE 11.2  Original “Aschrott Fountain” in front of Kassel’s City Hall before it was destroyed in 1939 (left image). Negative-form memorial to the destroyed “Aschrott Fountain,” while under construction in 1986 (right image).

FIGURE 11.3  Visitor peers into the negative-form abyss of the Aschrott Fountain Memorial.

that its name had ever been Aschrott’s anything. When asked what had happened to the original fountain, they replied that to their best recollection, it had been destroyed by English bombers during the war. In response to this kind of fading memory, the “Society for the Rescue of Historical Monuments” proposed in 1984 that some form of

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the fountain and its history be restored—and that it recalls all the founders of the city, especially Sigmund Aschrott. In his proposal for “restoration,” Horst Hoheisel decided that neither a preservation of its remnants nor its mere reconstruction would do. For Hoheisel, even the fragment was a decorative lie, suggesting itself as the remnant of a destruction no one knew very much about. Its pure reconstruction would have been no less offensive: not only would self-congratulatory overtones of Wiedergutmachung betray an irreparable violence, but the artist feared that a reconstructed fountain would only encourage the public to forget what had happened to the original. In the best tradition of the counter-monument, therefore, Hoheisel proposed a “negative-form” monument to mark what had once been the Aschrott Fountain in Kassel’s City Hall Square. On being awarded the project, Hoheisel described both the concept and form underlying his negative-form monument: I have designed the new fountain as a mirror image of the old one, sunk beneath the old place in order to rescue the history of this place as a wound and as an open question, to penetrate the consciousness of the Kassel citizens so that such things never happen again. That’s why I rebuilt the fountain sculpture as a hollow concrete form after the old plans and for a few weeks displayed it as a resurrected shape at City Hall Square before sinking it, mirror-like, 12 meters deep into the ground water. The pyramid will be turned into a funnel into whose darkness water runs down. From the “architektonischen Spielerei,” as City Hall architect Karl Roth called his fountain, a hole emerges which deep down in the water creates an image reflecting back the entire shape of the fountain. (“Rathaus-Platz-Wunde”)3 How does one remember an absence? In this case, by reproducing it. Quite literally, the negative space of the absent monument would now constitute its phantom shape in the ground. The very absence of the monument will now be preserved in its precisely duplicated negative space. In this way, the monument’s reconstruction remains as illusory as memory itself, a reflection on dark waters, a phantasmagoric play of light and image. Taken a step further, Hoheisel’s inverted pyramid might also combine with the remembered shape of its predecessor to form the two interlocking triangles of the Jewish star—present only in the memory of its absence. In his conceptual formulations, Hoheisel invokes the play of other, darker associations, as well, linking the monument to both the town’s Jewish past and a traditional anti-Semitic libel. “The tip of the sculpture points like a thorn down into the water,” the artist writes. “Through coming into touch with the ground water, the history of the Aschrott Fountain continues not over but under the city.” As an emblem of the Holocaust, the history of the Aschrott Fountain becomes the subterranean history of the city. In Hoheisel’s figure, the groundwater of German history may well be poisoned—not by the Jews, but by the Germans themselves in their murder of the Jews. By sinking his inverted pyramid into the depths in this way, Hoheisel means to tap this very history. “From the depth of the place,” he says, “I have attempted to bring the history of the Aschrott Fountain back up to the surface.” Of course, on a visit to City Hall Square in Kassel, none of this is immediately evident. During construction, before being lowered upside down into the ground, the starkly white negative-form sat upright in the square, a ghostly reminder of the original, now-absent

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monument. Where there had been an almost forgotten fountain, there is now a bronze tablet with the fountain’s image and an inscription detailing what had been there and why it was lost. As we enter the square, we watch as water fills narrow canals at our feet before rushing into a great underground hollow, which grows louder and louder until we finally stand over the “Aschrott-Brunnen.” Only the sound of gushing water suggests the depth of an otherwise invisible memorial, an inverted palimpsest that demands the visitor’s reflection. Through an iron grate and thick glass windows we peer into the depths. “With the running water,” Hoheisel suggests, “our thoughts can be drawn into the depths of history, and there perhaps we will encounter feelings of loss, of a disturbed place, of lost form.” In fact, as the only standing figures on this flat square, our thoughts rooted in the rushing fountain beneath our feet, we realize that we have become the memorial. “The sunken fountain is not the memorial at all,” Hoheisel says. “It is only history turned into a pedestal, an invitation to passersby who stand upon it to search for the memorial in their own heads. For only there is the memorial to be found.” Hoheisel has left nothing but the visitors themselves standing in remembrance, left to look inward for memory. Neo-Nazi demonstrators protesting the Wehrmacht exhibition when it came to Kassel in June 1998 were granted permission by the Mayor to hold their protest in the Aschrott-Brunnen plaza, in front of Kassel’s city hall. Here they stood atop the original fountain’s foundation stones that had been salvaged by Hoheisel to mark the perimeter of the original fountain. Skin-headed and tattooed, wearing black shirts and fatigues, the Neo-Nazis waved black flags and taunted a crowd of counter-protestors who had assembled outside police barricades surrounding the Neo-Nazis. In a press release, the artist Hoheisel recounted a chronological history of the site, beginning with the donation of the fountain to the city of Kassel by Sigmund Aschrott, through its demolition at the hands of the Nazis in April 1939, the memorial’s dedication in 1987, and concluding with the Neo-Nazis’ demonstration there in May 1998. For Hoheisel, the Neo-Nazis’ “reclamation” of the site, their triumphal striding atop the ruins of the fountain that their forebears had destroyed in 1939, seemed to bear out his dark hope that this would become a negative center of gravity around which all memory—wanted and unwanted— would now congeal. By this time, Hoheisel had initiated several other memorial projects, including another in Kassel. In 1991, Horst Hoheisel turned to the next generation with a more pedagogically inclined project. With permission from the local public schools, the artist visited the classrooms of Kassel with a book, a stone, and a piece of paper. The book was a copy of Namen und Schicksale der Juden Kassels (The Names and Fates of Kassel’s Jews). In his classroom visits, Hoheisel would tell students the story of Kassel’s vanished Jewish community, how they had once thrived there, lived in the very houses where these school-children now lived, how they had sat at these same classroom desks. He then asked all the children who knew any Jews to raise their hands. When no hand appeared, Hoheisel would read the story of one of Kassel’s deported Jews from his memory book. At the end of his reading, Hoheisel invited each of the students to research the life of one of Kassel’s deported Jews: where they had lived and how, who were their families, how old they were, what they had looked like. He asked them to visit formerly Jewish neighborhoods and get to know the German neighbors of Kassel’s deported Jews. After this, students were asked to write short narratives describing the lives and deaths of their subjects, wrap these narratives around cobblestones, and deposit them in one of the archival bins the artist had provided every school. After several dozen such classroom

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visits, the bins had begun to overflow and new ones were furnished. In time, all of these bins were transported to Kassel’s Hauptbahnhof, where they were stacked on the rail platform whence Kassel’s Jews were deported. It is now a permanent installation, what the artist calls his Denk-Stein Sammlung (memorial stone archive). This memorial cairn—a witness-pile of stones—marks both the site of deportation and the community’s education about its murdered Jews, their absence now marked by the still evolving memorial. Combining narrative and stone in this way, the artist and students have thus adopted the most Jewish of memorial forms as their own—thereby enlarging their memorial lexicon to include that of the absent people they would now recall. After all, only they are now left to write the epitaph of the missing Jews, known and emblematized primarily by their absence, the void they have left behind. Similarly, when invited by the director of the Buchenwald Museum, Volkhard Knigge, shortly after its post-reunification revisions to memorialize the first monument to liberation erected by the camp’s former inmates in April 1945, Hoheisel proposed not a resurrection of the original monument but a “living” alternative. In collaboration with architect Andreas Knitz, the artist designed a concrete slab with the names of fifty-one national groups victimized here and engraved with the initials K.L.B. (Konzentrationslager Buchenwald) that had marked the prisoners’ original wooden memorial obelisk. And as that obelisk had been constructed out of the pieces of barracks torn down by their former inmates—i.e., enlivened by the prisoners’ own hands—Hoheisel’s built into his memorial slab of concrete a radiant heating system to bring it to a constant 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (36.5 degrees Celsius) that might suggest the body heat of those whose memory it would now enshrine. Visitors almost always kneel to touch the slab, something they would not do if it were cold stone, and are touched in turn by the human warmth embodied here. Dedicated in April 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of the prisoners’ own memorial (which lasted only two months), this warm memorial reminds visitors of the memory of actual victims that has preceded their own, subsequent memory of this time. In winter, with snow covering the rest of the ground, this slab is always clear, an all-season marker for the site of the prisoners’ original attempt to commemorate the crimes against them. In the artists’ words, this “memorial of a memorial” is meant to be a “poignant manifestation of life, which does not distinguish between races and nationalities, between the young and the old, between men and women, as well as between the persecuted and the persecutors. The body temperatures of the victims and the persecutors are identical.” Rather than fixing memory in cold, hard stone, this “warm memorial” humanizes the memorial act, unifying those who remember in their common humanity. Many years later, Hoheisel recalled that during a visit to Buchenwald during NATO’s bombing of Serbian forces between March and June 1999 (code-named “Operation Allied Force”), he and museum director Volkhard Knigge watched as German warplanes returning from their mission flew directly overhead in tight formation, dipping their wings in unison as they passed over Gedenkstatte Buchenwald. It was the first time since the Second World War that Germany had allowed its warplanes to cross its borders, sanctioned now by memory of past genocide in its attempt to prevent a new genocide of Kosovar Albanians at the hands of the Serbian state. The German Air Force understood that memory of the Holocaust in Germany could not be a substitute for action against contemporary genocide, but would have to be its direct inspiration for intervention. In the years to follow, Hoheisel and Knitz collaborated on numerous other memorial projects, both in Germany and abroad, as far-flung as South America and South East

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FIGURE 11.4  Visitors touch the “warm memorial” at Buchenwald concentration camp, commemorating a wooden memorial obelisk built by liberated prisoners of the camp in April 1945.

FIGURE 11.5  The “warm memorial” at Buchenwald concentration camp, in the winter.

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FIGURE 11.6  U.S. President Barack Obama lays a flower on the “warm memorial” at Buchenwald in June 2009, accompanied by survivors Elie Wiesel and Bertrand Herz, and by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Asia. Some of these projects have been realized, and some of them have not. One of the realized memorials, “The Monument of Grey Buses—to the Victims of the So-called Euthanasia-Aktion T-4” (2007), was installed in front of (and blocking) the gate of the psychiatric institute Die Weissenau clinic in Ravensburg. Two 35-ton concrete “grey buses” would recall the shapes and color of the original buses used to transport disabled people to Die Weissenau clinic, where they were murdered. Over the course of this T-4 killing program, some 300,000 disabled were thus murdered in such “euthanasia” sites throughout Germany between 1939 and 1941. One “grey bus” has remained in front of the clinic in Ravensburg, blocking its entrance, while the other one has traveled by means of semi-trailer truck nearly 5,000 kilometers to some seventeen other T-4 killing sites throughout Germany. This is, in effect, a mobile memorial to commemorate both the mobility of the victims transported to such killing sites and the mobility of vans and buses that gassed their victims by piping their exhaust fumes back into their passenger holds. At one point in her description of how her design for the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial would work, Maya Lin suggested that the difference between a “monument” and a “memorial” was that the monument was fixed, whereas a memorial allowed for movement into and out of its space. As Maya Lin described it in her original proposal, “The memorial is composed not as an unchanging monument, but as a moving composition, to be understood as we move into and out of it” (4:05). That is, as a “monument” is fixed and static, her memorial would be defined by our movement through its space, memory by means of perambulation and walking through. This came to mind as I regarded two further projects by Hoheisel and Knitz, one realized and one not. In their unrealized

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FIGURE 11.7  Permanent “Grey Bus Memorial” to the 300,000 victims of the Nazis’ mass murder of the disabled, in the so-called T-4 “euthanasia program,” located in Ravensburg.

FIGURE 11.8  Mobile “Grey Bus Memorial” travels to other T-4 killing sites.

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proposal for a permanent T-4 Memorial at the site of the original Tiergartenstrasse 4 address in Berlin, where the “euthanasia program” was conceived, the artists proposed moving one of the grey-clad stelae from the nearby stelae field of the “Denkmal fur die ermordeten Juden europas” to the Tiergartenstrasse 4 address. Thus would the artists extend the Denkmal and its remembrance of Jewish victims to the first victims of a Nazi mass-killing program, a method of killing that became a template for the mass murder of Jews. The moveable stelae would also leave a void behind in the field of stelae, to be filled with an explanation for the missing pillar, which would in turn, move visitors to seek out the mobile stelae’s location at Tiergartenstrasse 4, creating a matrix of memorial nodes in the vicinity of the Denkmal and Tiergarten. Visitors would now be invited to walk a memorial trail without ending or beginning, but which would include the Denkmal, the “Homomonument” (also seemingly a Denkmal stelae transported into the Tiergarten), the “Memorial to Sinti and Roma” in the Tiergarten, and the T-4 Memorial just across the park—collected memory by means of perambulation. This brings me to Hoheisel and Knitz’s “Memorial to Eberswalde’s Destroyed Synagogue.” Like dozens of other synagogues throughout Germany on November 9, 1938, the nineteenth-century-designed, Romanesque synagogue in Eberswalde was torched and destroyed by local, Nazi-inspired citizens. But unlike most of the other synagogues destroyed on what came to be known as Kristallnacht, the synagogue in Eberswalde had actually been reconstructed only seven years earlier by local sympathetic non-Jewish citizens of the town after it was struck by lightning and badly damaged in an August 1931 thunderstorm. Some of the same citizens who had helped rebuild the synagogue in 1931 took part in its destruction in 1938. The morning after the synagogue was burned down on Kristallnacht, Eberswalde’s town officials delivered a demolition order to the Jewish community, demanding that the community raze what was left of the synagogue and pay for the carting off of its rubble.

FIGURE 11.9  The Eberswalde Synagogue set on fire during a lightning strike in August 1931. Reconstructed with the help of local non-Jewish townspeople, it was then torched and destroyed on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938.

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Shortly after this now-vacant lot was cleared of all signs of the synagogue, the town built an auxiliary fire station on the site of the former synagogue, staffed by fire-fighters who had not attempted to save the synagogue which had stood on this very site only months before. Not long after the war and the division of Germany into East and West sectors, this fire station was itself converted into a police station in the 1950s by the local communist government officials. In 1987, just two years before the Berlin wall was breached, East German officials marked the perimeter of the police station’s land, with a poignant bas relief of the synagogue and a description of how the synagogue had been destroyed on “the night of broken glass.” That was how Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz found the site in 2012 the first time they were introduced to it by the director of Eberswalde’s Kulturbehörde, Stefan Neubacher, who had invited them to conceive of a memorial to the destroyed synagogue of Eberswalde, to be funded by the town itself as an atonement for the obliteration of both the synagogue and the Jewish community it once housed. The artists accepted the commission, and envisioned an articulation of the synagogue’s foundation, a kind of palimpsest. Assured by local townspeople that absolutely nothing remained of the original building, the artists brought in a back-hoe, both to knock down the police station and to dig beneath the top layer of earth, where they did indeed discover the entire, intact foundation, and even a number of synagogue artifacts and relics from its basement. The artists then razed the old police station entirely, ceremonially crushing its steel, brick and mortar remains as they had done to the Gestapo headquarters in their “Crushed History” project in Weimar in 1997. But instead of leaving the crushed rubble on the ground, “thus creating a walkable sculpture” out of the building’s remains, as they did in Weimar, the artist and architect envisioned another kind of palimpsest outline. They proposed building up from the foundations a three-meter high wall, completely enclosed, and planted inside with one fledgling Linden tree, which would in time grow taller than the walls to reveal new, if inaccessible life to the local community. In the artists’ words, “[t]here are no windows, no doors, no gate, no entrance or exit. No one can enter the inside, which has been left for nature to take over. As time passes, the trees inside will slowly redefine the shape of the building and redefine the former interior of the old synagogue” (Hoheisel and Knitz “The Art of Memory”). Although clearly reminiscent of a Jewish form of remembrance known as “Etz Chaim,” or “tree of life,” this walled-in garden of a single Linden tree and several further “volunteer” trees and bushes planted by birds and even the wind, also found inspiration in Hoheisel’s own “family-tree.” One of the reasons Hoheisel had been drawn to memorializing Eberswalde’s destroyed synagogue in the first place was his father’s student-years at what was then Germany’s National Forestry Academy in Eberswalde, located some 100 meters from the synagogue, where the elder Hoheisel had completed his degree in forestry. As one of a handful of “head foresters” in the Nazi hierarchy, Hoheisel’s father had been assigned to administer and manage the forests of the Baltic regions occupied by the Nazi Reich during the Second World War, including those just outside Riga (his father’s birthplace), and where in 1942 Kassel’s deported Jews were taken and shot en masse. Kassel, of course, had become Hoheisel’s own home-town, after the family left Riga toward the end of the war. The father was captured by the Soviets at the end of the war and sentenced to twenty years hard labor as a “Nazi forester” in charge of the Baltic forests and killing fields. At the age of nine in 1955, the young Horst met his father for the first time, when he was released early from prison-camp. Horst Hoheisel went on to study forestry, receiving his Ph.D. in it in 1983, before turning to his life’s work as memorial artist. Hoheisel knew from the moment he returned to his father’s

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FIGURE 11.10  The “Memorial to the Destroyed Eberswalde Synagogue,” pictured with the artists Andreas Knitz and Horst Hoheisel, and the author.

forestry academy in Eberswalde that his would be a forester’s vision for this memorial to Eberswalde’s destroyed Jewish community. In the artists’ eyes, this would be a place and a process whereby they would make visible the layers of buried history, even as they gestured to the invisibility of what was lost. The memory-work included both the excavation of this site and the building on top of what they found here. The artists want the old foundation to carry and hold the impenetrable memorial wall, enclosing a permanent void within the city, memory of the void of the town’s lost and murdered Jews. With no Jewish community left to inhabit it, the synagogue would not be rebuilt. Instead, a new, inaccessible space has been opened in the cityscape, to be inhabited by flora taking root from windblown seeds, or by the spore deposited by visiting birds. As nature abhors a vacuum, this void would now be filled with natural life which will not be managed by human hands. As such, what the artists now call “Growing Memory—A Monument to the Destroyed Synagogue in Eberswalde” would remember life with life, and loss with loss. Memory grows and is sustained in our visits to the memorial, as the “trees of life” within the memorial’s walls are sustained by the heavens above. Except for the leafy tips of trees and bushes peeking above the edges of the wall, we can never know exactly what is inside this closed space, just as we can never know all that these Jewish families went through, can never enter into their lives, but must always remain outside, unable to enter this history. Many families—both Jewish and German—have built walls around these stories, Hoheisel has said. Walls divide us from what is behind them, but they also gesture and give form to what we can’t see. Horst cannot recall his father ever speaking to him about the synagogue in Eberswalde, even though in retracing his father’s steps down the stairs of the academy’s arched entrance, he realizes that the synagogue would have been

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right in the middle of his sight-lines, less than 100 meters away, although its view is now blocked by a four-story parking garage. The artists are also comforted by the thought that their memorial accords with the “new philosophy of forestry” embraced by the Forestry Academy since the fall of the wall, which is to let nature take its course, not to impose non-native trees on the land, but to let the natural-born trees grow themselves. Standing outside this memorial, I couldn’t help but recall encountering a singular apparition in several Polish villages I have visited over the years. Like wild, unkempt village commons, large thickets of vines and brush now occupy the centers of several of these villages, with neat houses and storefronts built around them. When I asked what this was, villagers answered that this square had been where the Jews lived and where their homes and markets had once stood. But during the Nazi time, some of the homes were burned along with the wooden synagogue, the other homes plundered, and then after the war the local Polish villagers regarded the center as a kind of memorial, profaned and now untouchable. Vines grew up around the ruins and nature took over, and the result is a big patch of wilderness marking what had once been the Jewish quarter of the village—what W.G. Sebald has called “the natural history of destruction.” Here I also recalled another kind of “green memorial,” realized by architect Tadao Ando in Kobe, Japan. Two years after the “Great Hanshin Earthquake” of January 17, 1995, in Kobe, Tadao Ando proposed to commemorate the 6,000 victims of this catastrophe (plus another 300,000 left homeless) with a mass-planting of trees across the entire swath of destroyed buildings. In an article that appeared in the Royal Institute of British Architects Journal in 1997, Ando proposed a “green network”: that is, planting 250,000 trees, including some 50,000 white blossom-yielding trees such as magnolias. “The white flowers,” he wrote, will serve as both a prayer for those who perished in the disaster and a reminder of what has happened to those who survived it. Trees and plants are living things, and caring for them is not easy. By cooperating to protect and nurture the living things as they grow, I believe that little by little the community will rejuvenate itself …. We must leave the children of the next generation irreplaceable assets. Like twirling a baton, we must foster life itself …. This is what I hope for. (86) In fact, the architect’s dream has been realized, as the Emperor himself has recently gone to Kobe to plant the 300,000th tree, and planting continues to this day. One of these is a commemoration of a mass murder, the other of a natural catastrophe. But in both cases, the dead are remembered by living forms, with the regeneration of life itself, so that the victims’ lives—and not just the terrible moment of their deaths—are at the center of our memory now. At the same time, we make ourselves responsible for nurturing and sustaining such memory. We remind ourselves that without the deliberate attempt to remember, memory itself is lost, that like life itself, memory needs to be cultivated and attended to. On the one hand, this “closed memorial forest” embodies a kind of “pastoral elegiac” tradition that has long comforted mourners and loved ones by locating life’s passing in nature’s cycle of life and death. But here it is accomplished with an anti-redemptory twist: instead of a simple and consoling “remembrance of life with life,” this memorial hints at both “life-ongoing” and “life walled off,” memory to which we have no access. It is both a “living memorial” and an open wound. In twenty years, wild trees will fill the volume

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of this walled-in void; with the passing of time, the longer it is, the greater the volume of trees and life within the sealed off space will be. It is a closed space AND an open space— closed to us but open to the sky and the heavens, to nature and to life. And with the history of its origins inscribed in an ongoing script around the perimeter of the wall, the memorial’s narrative requires visitors to circle the site endlessly, without clear beginning or end, in constant movement—memory by means of perambulation.

NOTES 1. This essay is adapted from James E. Young “Negativ-Orte und das Spiel mit dem Denkmal”; the first English-language version of this essay appeared as “Memorial Arts by Horst Hoheisel and Andreas Knitz.” Parts of this essay are also adapted from Young At Memory’s Edge; The Stages of Memory. Both books elaborate on themes I first explored in “The Counter-Monument.” Also see Young, The Texture of Memory, 27–48. 2. For a record of this competition, see Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas. For a collection of essays arguing against building this monument, see Der Wettbewerb für das “Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas.” On his proposal to blow up the Brandenburger Tor, see Hoheisel, “Aschrottbrunnen Denk-Stein-Sammlung - Brandenburger Tor - Buchenwald. Vier Erinnerungsversuche.” 3. Subsequent quotations from Hoheisel on this memorial are drawn from Aschrott-Brunnen: offene Wunde der Stadtgeschichte, and from www.hoheisel-knitz.net.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Spiral Memory: Mike Nelson’s The Coral Reef (2000), The Cosmic Legend of the Uroboros Serpent (2001), and The Amnesiacs (1996–) HELEN HUGHES

In the European summer of 1999 to 2000, the renowned English artist Mike Nelson— who was twice nominated for a Turner Prize, represented Britain at the 2011 Venice Biennale, and holds work in major collections, including the Tate Britain—undertook a transition toward constructing immersive, multi-room installations. The origins of this transition can be glimpsed in his exhibitions Studio Apparatus for Camden Arts Centre and Tourist Hotel at the Douglas Hyde, both in 1998, but emerged in full force in The Coral Reef in 2000. Connected by corridors, the rooms of this installation were devoid of inhabitants and contained carefully selected objects arranged within them. Each room connoted a specific religious, ethnic, or subcultural group; these included American patriots, Christian evangelicals, occultists, motorcycle gangs, Zapatistas, Muslims, and, of course, the subculture that is London’s contemporary art scene itself. Many of the rooms’ walls were painted in bold colors—sky blue or deep magenta—which helped to create vivid impressions on the viewer as they snaked through the installation’s tight, winding corridors, pushed open creaky doors, and navigated their way around the furniture and detritus belonging to the rooms’ absent occupants. The significance of Nelson’s work is often framed in terms fiction, or the construction of other worlds (Grayson; O’Sullivan). But the paradigm of memory is another means of understanding its enduring impact. Indeed, wandering through Nelson’s constructed rooms recalls an ancient Greek and Roman loci technique, sometimes known as Memory Palace or Roman Room. This memory-retrieval process involves the memorizer, historically a rhetorician, purposefully associating information (like names and numbers) with stable objects, rooms, or locations, which the memorizer later visualizes and mentally walks through in order to recall the relevant information. Perhaps because of

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their similarity to Memory Palaces, Nelson’s immersive multi-room installations inscribe themselves firmly in the minds of viewers, as numerous visitors have attested to over the years (O’Hagan; J. Jones). Interestingly, as we shall see in this chapter, Nelson’s work deploys inscriptive mnemonic techniques whilst simultaneously embracing—and thematizing—processes of decay and infidelity that are inherent to the act of remembrance. I describe these processes of decay and infidelity as a kind of spiral memory, one that continually returns to the original event but never quite arrives, moving further away from the origin with each orbit. The shape and symbolism of the spiral are important to Nelson’s work more broadly, being central to the structure of works such as his 1996 Barker Ranch (which referenced Vladimir Tatlin’s unfinished spiralling tower of 1920, Monument to the Third International), and After Kerouac of 2006 (a long, white corridor that begins with a doorway then curls in on itself in a spiral—a reference to Kerouac’s 1957 novel On the Road, which was supposedly typed on a continuous scroll of paper). Where Tatlin’s spiral is famously associated with the “modernity, energy, and expansion” of the early twentieth century, Nelson’s use of the spiral form in fact has more in common with what Nico Israel, in his book Spirals: The Whirled Image in Twentieth-Century Literature and Art (2017), has termed “later-century work,” in which the spiral connotes “recoiling entropy” (Israel 7–8). This, “latter-century” form of spiral is central to work of Robert Smithson, one of Nelson’s key antecedents, namely his land artwork and film Spiral Jetty of 1970. In spiritual discourse, spirals are often associated with radical introspection, self-reflection, and enlightenment (consider, for instance, the map of the spiralling path to the Celestial City in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress). As we shall see, Nelson’s work sometimes marries self-reflexivity with the spiral form, and his multiroom installations often include a moment of spatial revelation toward the end. Israel makes the important observation that there is a “curious ambivalence” in the definition of the English word “spiral,” which includes both a centripetal and centrifugal motion (13). In other words, spirals are bidirectional: they can either move toward a center or radiate outwards. Where Nelson’s physical installations often involve a centripetal, interior-oriented movement, the model of memory that his work posits spirals outwards and away from the original event being recalled. In deploying mnemonic techniques whilst embracing processes of memory decay, Nelson’s installations offer a unique framework for the endurance of ephemeral works of art, wherein: the artwork survives as memory; the memory is subject to confusion or deterioration; and that confusion or deterioration is absorbed into the meaning of the work itself. In this chapter, I consider the ways in which memory is referenced, embodied, and deployed as an apparatus in Nelson’s work focussing on several multi-room installations from the early 2000s and the fictional motorcycle gang the Amnesiacs, which Nelson invented in 1996 as a mechanism for making new work. I conclude with some reflections on why the vagaries of memory may be such a resonant theme for Nelson working in London at the turn of the millennium.

THE CORAL REEF, 2000 In the last few months of 1999, Nelson began work on his first major multi-room installation, titled The Coral Reef, for exhibition at his London gallery, Matt’s Gallery. Built inside the existing architecture of the gallery, The Coral Reef comprised fifteen interconnecting rooms, joined by a warren-like series of corridors that spoked out from a

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central point, causing each new wing of the installation to fold back in on itself, drawing viewers back into its center like a vortex. As visitors wandered between The Coral Reef’s rooms, they encountered various objects and spaces that connoted different ideologies and subcultures: ranging from organized religion, to outlaw motorcycle gangs, to socialism, to drop-out drug culture. Nelson has explained that the combination of rooms alluded to a “complex and fragile” ecosystem made up of “different sorts of belief systems” that coexist beneath the “ocean surface” of global capital, the prevalent ideology or belief system today (Bishop 45). The first of all these rooms was the small reception area of Matt’s Gallery itself, which is also a simulated space within the real, larger, space of the gallery reception. Here at the beginning, viewers found an open visitors’ book alongside two copies of a publication about Nelson’s past work (titled Extinction Beckons). Nelson frequently draws on ideas from literature in the construction of new works. He derived the spatial structure of The Coral Reef from the circular logic of A Perfect Vacuum, the Polish science-fiction author Stanislaw Lem’s anthology of reviews of madeup books, with its first chapter being a review of itself. There were a correlative fifteen rooms in Nelson’s installation to the fifteen reviews in A Perfect Vacuum, plus Lem’s introductory review of A Perfect Vacuum itself, which correlated to Nelson’s inclusion of Extinction Beckons in the reception area. Additionally, Nelson aimed to create in The Coral Reef the sense of walking from waiting room to waiting room. He had “the idea of a sequential series of rooms which were all receptions that never led to anything” (Nelson and Wallis). In the sense that all the fifteen rooms were modelled on reception areas, waiting rooms, or antechambers, they were like Lem’s introductions—“liberated” from the books that they are supposed to introduce. The Coral Reef was dismantled at the end of its run at Matt’s Gallery in March 2000, and in 2008 was—in a landmark acquisition of a work so large-scale, complex, and ephemeral—purchased by the Tate Britain, where it was reconstructed for public display in 2010–11. However, the work is not installed anywhere currently, and so I will attempt to reconstruct it here in the present tense. Through the first door of the gallery reception area, the visitor enters a minicab office. Upon the office’s walls are posters announcing the prophet Muhammad at Mecca and Medina. Walking behind the dividing screen, more paths and rooms begin to appear. One room is decorated with the detritus of American kitsch: a tapestry of John F. Kennedy at Capitol Hill, and a glossy painting of an American eagle. A miniature fan whirls from the tip of a plastic gridiron football. (Small portable desk fans are everywhere in Nelson’s work, and indeed in many of the rooms in Coral Reef. Beyond serving a functional purpose, the fan stands in as metonym—an object that goes around and around in circles, without advancing.) Another room is styled as the reception area for a church, with a red velour couch beneath a signboard which reads: THIS MONTHS [sic] EVANGELISM IS AT ________ ________ [S]AME FOR EACH AREA IS AT 12.30 TO 3.30.

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FIGURE 12.1  Mike Nelson, The Coral Reef, 2000. Installation view, Matt’s Gallery, 2000. Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin.

In another room nearby, a drab olive-green couch sits beneath a double portrait of two Zapatistas. A plastic cactus is planted in a disused army grenade box, and the viewer encounters an assortment of textbooks on Lenin. Through yet another door we enter a larger room painted bright sky-blue; a ceiling fan whirrs faintly overhead, while a faded print of wild horses running in open plains hangs next to the door. A smashed chair—its back splintered, the remains scattered over the floor—is perched next to an upturned milk crate, which functions as a make-do table bearing some crumpled aluminium foil, a pipe, a pink cigarette lighter, and a packet of ten Benson and Hedges cigarettes onto which a mobile phone number is scratched—the dealer’s number, perhaps. These accoutrements suggest heroin use, which is iterated by the image of horse (slang for heroin) on the wall.

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Weaving one’s way further into the installation through the corridor, one discovers a room whose floor has been lined with newspapers; another small fan is mounted on the wall, and an ornate Tibetan mandala adorns the ceiling. A large plank of wood resting diagonally across the open doorway obstructs entrance into the space. On the floor are some bottles in a crate and some rags. Around a corner is a room with a bar sporting a small TV monitor, another whirring portable fan, a rubber clown mask, and a hand-made “Tommy” gun. Convex security mirrors are angled in several corners of the warren-like system of hallways, always entreating the viewer to look back from whence they came. Through a hallway, past an area with maroon walls and swinging saloon-style doors, is a 1980s arcade game called “Mr Wardner” encased in a cabinet inscribed with “Black Magic,” bleating intermittent electronic sounds. Here, the viewer finds a pair of black animal horns mounted on the wall, and a photocopy of some text pertaining to occultist Aleister Crowley and his Abbey of Thelema. Through another squeaky door, two beaten leather chairs are perched in front of a long, thin desk behind another wire barricade. This room is dimly lit—one light muffled by a T-shirt that has been wrapped around it—and the walls are a deep purple. Clocks showing different times hang haphazardly on the wall. On the desk, two small TV monitors buzz with static. Dirty coffee cups abound, along with numerous phones, CB radios, and copies of Playboy magazine from the 1970s. The cover of one magazine had been partly ripped away in a manner suggesting that whoever usually occupies that seat used it to make roaches for joints. Beneath the desk is a large, plastic bag full of old landline phones. Elsewhere, a space is strewn with car tyres, motorcycle helmets, electrical leads, and silver duct piping. The plastered joints in the newly constructed walls here are left exposed, and the walls unpainted, distinguishing it from the other, freshly painted rooms. A tub of industrial cleaning agent, another tyre, and some plastic tubing are scattered over the workbench; a small window looks out onto a hallway, where a metal waste bin overflows with beer cans, sheet mirror, and other building debris. On the floor lies a 1991 copy of the British tabloid The Daily Mirror. Its headline, “600 Jets Swoop Saddam: WAR,” refers to the First Gulf War. There are some cabinets installed on one wall, and from the door of one open cabinet hangs a leather biker jacket with denim cut off. Finally, through a pair of white doors, the viewer returns to what appears to be the initial point of entry to the work—the minicab office. The mission brown phone, portable fan, Islamic posters, bench, and wire barricade—all exactly the same. Expecting to walk through its doors and back into the reception area of Matt’s Gallery, the viewer is, surprisingly, ejected elsewhere—into the gallery’s storeroom. This cold, concrete room has high ceilings, in contrast to the previous fourteen claustrophobic spaces, and is illuminated by a distinctly different source—harsh fluorescent overheads, as opposed to the rest of the work’s atmospheric lamps. This room is full of building materials like sawn-off wooden beams, sheets of hardboard, MDF offcuts, tubs of paint, a porcelain Belfast sink, empty beer bottles, and a skip filled with more leftover building materials. These are, in fact, the leftover materials Nelson has used to build the rest of the installation. The colors in the paint tins match the walls in the preceding rooms. The viewer has found themselves in the gallery’s actual storeroom, and not in a simulated space. (This is the work’s reveal.) The minicab office, the viewer finally realizes, is a double—a perfect simulacra of the first. It exists in two different places within the installation. At this point, visitors can turn back and retrace their steps, or in the reconstruction at the Tate Britain, depart the work through the exit doors that lead from the storeroom onto the street.

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Nelson didn’t want viewers to be able to clearly discern the difference between the recently constructed artwork and the pre-existing gallery space. Furthermore, he didn’t want viewers to be able to clearly discern the difference between a memory of this work and other memories of other interior spaces. This is why his rooms must be real to the touch (not like stage sets, to which they are often erroneously compared, which are flimsy and open). This is why they must unfold in real time, why they must engender real and psychological triggers in viewers, and why the memories that they produce must be filed in the brain alongside other memories of other spaces. Nelson makes this point in a 2012 interview with Canadian art historian Robert Enright, commenting that art doesn’t exist to be read at the time you actually see it; it can be read posthumously throughout your life. You might be buying a newspaper or reading a book and something you’ve experienced—a smell, a touch, or anything—will come back to you. I hope the works function in that way: that people revisit them at different points in their own history and make sense of them looking back. I also think they act like a snowball, gathering things. I’ve had people describe spaces that they’ve attributed to one of my works, which their brain has somehow annexed. (Nelson and Enright 30) For Nelson, The Coral Reef endures not as an installation, but as a memory—fragile and replete with annexations and anachronisms.

THE ART OF MEMORY The first-century Roman rhetorician Quintilian explains why architectural interiors, such as those that Nelson constructed in The Coral Reef, “help memory”—for instance, to assist orators to remember long tracts of speech in the correct order. In the Institutio oratoria c. 95 ACE, he writes of the Roman Room or Memory Palace technique: It is an assistance to the memory if places are stamped upon the mind …. For when we return to a place after a considerable absence, we not merely recognise the place itself, but remember things that we did there, and recall the persons whom we met and even the unuttered thoughts which passed through our minds when we were there before. (Yates 22–3) Quintilian suggests that an idea, word or image is first “placed” by the memorizer in each of the imagined architectural spaces. Then, “when it is required to revive the memory, one begins from the first place to run through all, demanding what has been entrusted to them, of which one will be reminded by the image” (Yates 22). Through this process, rooms and hallways of imagined architectures become storehouses for memory. In addition to rooms, objects are strong memory triggers. Richard Terdiman explains in Present Past that “normally objects have an intimate relation to remembrance. Through their associations, they play a familiar triggering or anchoring role in the mnemonic process” (13). Like rooms that recall “things that were done there,” objects recall the site at which and person from whom they were acquired, and the reason one came to acquire them (13). Because rooms and objects are already predisposed to trigger strong memory associations, they are the logical mental storage devices for memorizers.

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The art of memory is said to have originated from a dinner party attended by the ancient Greek poet Simonedes (Yates 1–2). At a certain point during the dinner, Simonedes was informed that there were two men waiting outside to see him. Upon exiting, the two men (thought to be the twin gods Castor and Pollux) were nowhere to be seen. Whilst Simonedes was outside, however, the entire building collapsed—not only killing everyone inside, but disfiguring their faces and bodies beyond recognition. Simonedes used his memory of the architectural space to identify the crushed bodies based on where the guests had been seated. As such, the practice of mnemonics has, since the beginning, been closely entwined with the destruction or total collapse of architecture. Though much less bloodthirsty, Nelson’s multi-room installations are nevertheless destined to be dismantled at the end of their exhibition period. Like performance artworks, they are ontologically ephemeral and difficult to reconstruct through documentation. First-hand accounts of the work are thus crucial to their reconstruction and endurance throughout art history. Attunement to their ephemerality may also contribute to the works’ powerful inscriptive capacity—their unique ability to implant themselves firmly in the minds of viewers.

MEMORY IMPLANTS Nelson has mentioned that a major influence on The Coral Reef was the Class B android subplot in Philip K. Dick’s 1968 science fiction novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Nelson and Wallis). The Class B androids are human-looking robots that have been implanted with “fake” human memories. What is most disturbing is that some androids do not themselves know whether they are androids or humans because of their implanted memories. The implantation of memories also describes the impact of The Coral Reef, the experience of which firmly lodged itself in the memories of its visitors. English art critic Jonathan Jones articulates this idea clearly in a review of the work for frieze: The moment you entered … you agreed to the fictional game—signing the visitors’ book as if signing a contract—you were agreeing to have an implant in your head. The apparently playful decision to go along with Nelson’s Gothic fantasy and walk from room to room was, in fact, an acceptance of an imaginative virus that you would not be able to purge from your memory. Somewhere in your mind, always, would be this place. Nelson himself explained his work to Enright saying that “once it is demolished, that history and that meaning is taken away and is disseminated in the brains and memories of the people who visited it” (Nelson and Enright 38). So, while the physical structure of The Coral Reef is borrowed from Lem, its afterlife as a memory implant is borrowed from Dick—in keeping with Nelson’s regular nods to science fiction that he has made throughout his career. Like all memories, however, viewers’ recollections of The Coral Reef ’s rooms and objects are unstable. Nelson cannot simply and perfectly implant memories of The Coral Reef in the minds of viewers to be recalled on demand; these memories are subject to confusion and misremembrance. Speaking of the lost house of his childhood, Rainer Maria Rilke famously wrote that “it is not a building, but is quite dissolved and distributed inside me: here one room, there another, and here a bit of corridor which, however, does not

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connect the two rooms, but is conserved in me in fragmentary form. Thus the whole thing is scattered about inside me” (Bachelard 57). Jones echoes this sentiment, describing The Coral Reef as “a place that has no edges,” further adding that “[i]n the depths of The Coral Reef it was impossible … to identify the shape of the space … that sense of shapelessness lingers unsettlingly in the mind.” Attempts by visitors to map the architectural footprint of The Coral Reef that exist online are testament to this difficulty. As such, it would not be strictly accurate to say that in The Coral Reef Nelson attempted to inscribe information that could be objectively retrieved in visitors’ memories later (as per the memory implants of Class B Androids). Certainly, Nelson intended to inscribe a strong memory, but one that would, inevitably, be, on account of compositional devices such as the doubled-up minicab office and the spiral-like architectural footprint that caused visitors to constantly turn in on themselves, disorienting and subject to confusion. In the gestation period of The Coral Reef, the notion of memory implants gained traction beyond the realm of science fiction in step with increased forensic scrutiny on the objectivity of memory. In particular, the notion of false memory was popularized in the wake of the proliferation of cases of “repressed memory syndrome” in the United States in the 1980s, particularly in relation to the moral panic surrounding child sexual abuse and satanic ritual abuse (Gibbons 4). Repressed memory syndrome describes the process in which memories of traumatic experiences are forcibly wiped from the conscious mind. One of the most important factors in the popularization of repressed memory discoveries during this period was Ellen Bass and Laura Davis’s 1988 self-help book The Courage to Heal, which suggested that some people, mainly women, who suffer from symptoms such as depression, anxiety, or alcoholism may have been victims of childhood abuse, but have repressed the memories of that abuse and are thus unaware of the cause of their suffering. Bass and Davis offer a variety of treatments for overcoming the abuse— including recovering the lost memories. An opposing group of psychologists, including Elizabeth Loftus, D. Stephen Lindsay, and J. Don Read, proved that therapeutic sessions geared toward retrieving repressed memories could, in fact, implant fictitious memories of child sexual abuse or satanic ritual abuse. One of the most famous examples from this period occurred in 1983 with the accusation of mass ritual child abuse at McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, beneath which (as parents and their children claimed) existed a structure of tunnels that facilitated the abuse. Subsequent excavation of the site disproved this claim. Howard Singerman reflected that the imaginary architecture under McMartin Preschool is, perhaps, “a model of the unconscious itself” (47). The debates over repressed and false memory syndromes became known by clinicians as “the memory wars” in the 1990s—the decade leading up to Nelson’s creation of The Coral Reef in 1999. Theories of memory and its politicization thus infused much art made during this period, and may have informed Nelson’s Coral Reef. For instance, Nelson is a keen follower of the late American artist Mike Kelley, and in the mid-1990s Kelley produced a body of work called Missing Time, 1974–1976, Reconsidered that directly engaged the “memory wars” and the McMartin Preschool conspiracy specifically. Missing Time is a series of seventy-four works on paper that Kelley made when he was an undergraduate art student at the University of Michigan in the mid-1970s, twenty-seven of which he modified in 1993 and 1994. Kelley explains that the debates over “recently discovered” memories prompted him to self-experiment by reexamining his old paintings from art school to see what repressed or implanted memories might be couched within them.

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In 1995, Kelley undertook a related project called Educational Complex, where he built a small-scale model of every school that he had ever attended, as well as the house in which he grew up, the combination of which represented what he called the “geography” of his education (39). Kelley had originally hoped to build the models based on his memory alone, but he soon discovered that he did not recall enough details of the buildings to do so. He therefore decided to render the exteriors of the buildings as accurately as possible based on photographs, site-visits, and floor plans. However, he wanted the ‘models’ interiors to appear “radically incomplete” in order to reflect his “inability to remember what was there.” He writes of Educational Complex: “These unremembered sections of architecture are left blank, represented as filled-in inaccessible blocks” (37). These solid gaps could be interpreted as having been repressed, or a mere memory omission error—such as is frequent in children aged under five. While The Coral Reef can be said to be in dialogue with some of Kelley’s work from this period, it is less satirical of memory qua its politicization in the United States in the 1990s. Instead, The Coral Reef embraces the fallibility of memory as a medium that extends the life of the installation in unplanned and productive ways. Before moving onto Nelson’s next major installation work in 2001, it is worth noting that The Coral Reef explores errors of memory in another way: it stages the sensation of déjà vu when the viewer encounters the doubled minicab office at the end of the work. Déjà-vu (French “already seen”) describes the ineffable sensation of the past replaying in the present. Déjà vu differs from false memory because for déjà vu to occur, “there needs to be the sensation of retrieving something from memory combined with the knowledge that you have, in fact, not encountered it before” (Moulin and Chauvel 229). The staging of déjà vu in The Coral Reef is thus an example of Nelson’s interest in not only implanting memories, but in producing anomalies of memory experience, to which we shall now turn.

THE COSMIC LEGEND OF THE UROBOROUS SERPENT, 2001 Following the positive reception of The Coral Reef in 2000, in 2001 Nelson was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and made a work titled The Cosmic Legend of the Uroborous Serpent for the occasion. The Cosmic Legend developed The Coral Reef’s experimentations with mnemonic objects and architectures, but it did so in a much more introspective, self-cannibalizing way—one befitting of the Uroborous title. The Cosmic Legend was intended to be a memory of The Coral Reef. It was, quite literally, a large store room with the contents of The Coral Reef stacked on its shelves. These included the old couch and sign from the Evangelical waiting room; the cactus planted in the disused grenade box from the Zapatistas’ room; the copy of The Daily Mirror declaring war from the bikers’ hangout; the Black Magic arcade game; the convex security mirrors plucked from the hallways; chunks of wall painted bright blue and deep purple; and old doors. Around this central storeroom snaked a long corridor that had a doubled entrance, emulating the identical minicab offices of The Coral Reef and its doubled entrance. The connection between the two works was made even more explicit at one point in the warehouse office by the placement of a piece of dried white coral, which connoted the earlier work’s title despite not actually being part of the original work. Not unlike Robert Morris’s 1961 Box with the Sound of Its Own Making, The Cosmic Legend was a storage unit that housed

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FIGURE 12.2  Mike Nelson, The Cosmic Legend of the Uroboros Serpent, 2001. Installation view, Turner Prize, Tate Britain, 2001. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin.

its own memory—for Nelson reasoned that The Cosmic Legend owed its existence (i.e., its prize nomination) to the original success of The Coral Reef, which had drawn the attention of the Turner Prize committee. While The Cosmic Legend was a memory of The Coral Reef, it was not a straightforward recapitulation of the earlier work, which, as we have seen, was here deconstructed and jumbled. The Cosmic Legend also remembered aspects of other, older works—namely, Nelson’s earlier exhibition at Matt’s Gallery, Trading Station Alpha CMa of 1996. For Trading Station Alpha CMa, Nelson fitted out the gallery with rows of floor-to-ceiling wooden storage shelves. Some of the shelves were crammed full with detritus scavenged from the surrounding “East End that proliferated in the streets and waste ground before the property boom” (Nelson and Robecchi). Some of the shelves were scattered with plastic tubing, metal drums, PVC pipes, car tyres, filing cabinets, stools, plastic milk crates, rope, and other miscellaneous construction materials. Other shelves were left partially or completely empty. An old jacket hung from a palette. Thus, The Cosmic

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Legend conflated the two past exhibitions at Matt’s Gallery (Trading Station Alpha CMa and The Coral Reef). Or perhaps it confabulated them—meaning that it fabricated an imaginary experience (the new work) as compensation for the loss of memory (of the deinstalled earlier works). By playing with themes like confabulation in this way, The Cosmic Legend explicitly framed memory as a process of reconstruction rather than an objective retrieval of the past. In this way, the work is in step with contemporary memory studies, which conceive of acts of remembering the past as undertaken in and inflected by the present. In so doing, Nelson eschews the model of memory associated with Plato and then Freud’s wax block, which is capable of recording impressions through indices. Nelson’s memory rooms deliberately invite misremembrances, confabulations, and anomalies of memory—like déjà vu, annexation, and the intermingling of timelines. Nelson’s real interest in memory is not in its precision but its chaos, which is the productive (as opposed to reproductive) agent. As Mary J. Carruthers has argued, multi-chambered mnemonic techniques like Roman Room have actually always functioned not merely to preserve memory, but “as a support for making new thought and composition … memory craft was practiced as a tool of invention” (2). In this same vein, the combination of mnemonic processes with the thematization of the vagaries of memory allows Nelson to innovate his practice.

MEMORY AS TECHNICAL SUPPORT Strangely, Nelson’s deployment of memory as a tool for artistic production finds a useful interpretive framework in American art historian Rosalind Krauss’s 2011 book Under Blue Cup. Krauss may seem an unlikely ally for Nelson’s work, given the ferocity and persistence with which she has denigrated the category of installation art over the last two decades. Indeed, in the very first line of her acknowledgments, she explains that Under Blue Cup was inspired by “over a decade of disgust at the spectacle of meretricious art called installation.” In this book, Krauss argues that contemporary art is plagued by an amnesia in which the central importance of medium has been almost completely forgotten. Installation art, whose godfather is Marcel Duchamp (the inventor of the readymade), is the main antagonist in this conspiracy, and is largely what Krauss holds responsible for the amnesia. Here, she harks back to her 1998 Walter Neurath Memorial Lecture on the “postmedium condition,” in which she argues, following Fredric Jameson, that postmodernist cultural space has been entirely dominated by the image, and all experiences—“from shopping to all forms of leisure”—can be classified as aesthetic. Installation art, Krauss argues, “essentially finds itself complicit with a globalization of the image in the service of capital” because it “mimics just this leeching of the aesthetic out into the social field in general” (“A Voyage on the North Sea” 56). In other words, without the memory of medium, art loses its specificity and critical purchase on, or remove from, the world. Krauss suggests that installation art, which she would say is history-less, unlike painting or sculpture which belongs to ancient guild traditions, cannot independently designate its difference from the world at large (in the same way that a readymade artwork, which is indistinguishable from a readymade consumer product, cannot). According to Krauss, only a select number of contemporary artists “remember” the centrality of medium when making new work, whom she designates as defenders or “knights” of the medium. In her repudiation of her predecessor Clement Greenberg’s theory of medium specificity, Krauss develops an alternative formulation of medium in non-material terms. She theorizes medium as a set of rules rather than a positivist set of relations between things—such as pigment to canvas, or painting to flatness per Greenberg. Rather than

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relying on material supports, which represent an inherently limited set of possibilities, Krauss formulates the alternative notion of a “technical support,” which is open-ended and adaptable, and can take the form of anything ranging from Ed Ruscha’s use of the automobile to Sophie Calle’s parody of investigative journalism. The importance of the technical support lies in its ability to allow the “artist to discover its ‘rules,’” Krauss writes, “which will in turn become the basis for that recursive self-evidence of a medium’s specificity” (Under Blue Cup 19). In other words, a technical support can invent a new medium. Here, Krauss’s argument is buttressed by philosopher Stanley Cavell who argues, in The World Viewed of 1979, that the task of the artist is not to produce “another instance of art,” but rather a new medium (104). Cavell calls this production of a new medium an “automatism.” Krauss’s notion of medium is modelled on Cavell’s automatism, which she advances through the binary of remembering and forgetting: remembering the rules of the medium (a logic or recursive structure), and forgetting (adapting and developing those rules in order to innovate the medium). Krauss develops a distinctive vocabulary to describe the interplay of rule and improvisation, remembering and forgetting; this includes a variety of metaphors such as the L-shaped knight’s move on a chessboard, musical improvisation within the prescribed notes of a fugue, a swimmer pushing off the walls of a pool, or an artist working within the walls of the white cube gallery. Under Blue Cup is a recapitulation of Krauss’s work on the post-medium condition, extending her important 1998 lecture and 1999 book “A Voyage on the North Sea.” However, it is also a remarkably personal memoir of the years following the aneurysm that she suffered at the end of 1999 and her subsequent loss of memory through the destruction of synaptic pathways in her brain. Under Blue Cup takes its title from one of the mnemonic games that Krauss played in order to help overcome her amnesia. She adapts the personal anecdote of lying in a hospital bed trying to remember “who she is” as a metaphor for the struggle that contemporary art faces in the post-medium condition, that is, the amnesia of contemporary art, in its “forgetting of how the medium undergirds the very possibilities of art” (2). Despite being one of the most renowned installation artists of the twenty-first century, Nelson’s work can be understood within Krauss’s explicitly anti-installation art interpretive framework because he has, through works such as The Coral Reef and The Cosmic Legend, deployed memory as his technical support. By utilizing memory as a technical support in the production of new works, Nelson creates recursive structures that designate their own identity even as they, in moments such as the segue between the minicab office and the gallery reception area at Matt’s, precisely blur the boundary between artwork and the world at large. Yet Krauss’s formulation of medium as a rule-governed, rational system—like the L-shaped movement of the knight on a chessboard—also presents some limitations for interpreting Nelson’s work. For Krauss’s rule-governed system is always already highly predetermined, whereas for Nelson, memory is productive precisely for its uncertainty, instability, and unpredictability—its inherently open spiral form, as opposed to a hermetic, self-referential, closed circular form. In Present Past, Terdiman describes the unpredictability of memory in contrast to the “crystalline abstraction of logic,” the latter of which strongly resonates with Krauss’s approach. He writes: [H]owever much a logic may transform its material, in a deep sense such a system can produce nothing new. Everything that can be generated out of it, everything it implies, is already present. A logic refers to nothing beyond itself and contains its world inside

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the system it comprises. Such a logic thus slips back into self-identity, into tautology. It cuts nowhere into the external world we can recall—which is the only one we can change. (60) In deploying memory and its vagaries as a technical support in the production of installation art, Nelson’s work demonstrates, contra Krauss, that installation art is capable of reflexivity and recursive self-identification, even when it “leeches out” into the world at large. For, as Nelson’s work shows, this “leeching out” is a constituent factor of memory and its decay over time itself. O’Sullivan has identified the feedback loop as a key form in Nelson’s work. He writes that Nelson’s work “might be thought of as involving feedback loops from the present to the past and then back to the present” (296). To more clearly conceive of Nelson’s use of memory as a technical support, we can further develop O’Sullivan’s observation in reference to the American art historian Pamela Lee’s theorization of the “recursive temporality of feedback” in her book Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s of 2006. Feedback is a type of circular memory, most often used to describe electronic audio amplification, when the output signal flows back into the input signal creating an escalating loop. In Chronophobia, Lee develops her concept of feedback in relation to American land artist Robert Smithson’s notion of entropy. She isolates a phrase that Smithson uttered in an interview with artist Patsy Norvell in 1969: “If you make a system, you can be sure the system is bound to evade itself.” Lee goes on to describe certain feedback loops as capable of positive reinforcement through behavioral modification, where others become “directed towards negative ends.” As such, Lee reasons, feedback is at once “prophylactic and predictive. It presumes to control a system whose very breakdown is projected as inevitable” (244). As we have seen, for Nelson, who is also keenly aware of Smithson’s practice, memory is figured as a type of entropic feedback loop that oscillates between precision and chaos. In this sense, it can be described not as circular memory but rather spiral—it continually returns but never quite arrives, moving further away from the origin with each orbit. As Israel writes: “spirals, as markers of repetition and potential difference, begin to express a new entwinement of space and time” (Israel 35). This feedback system is at once productive and geared toward negative decline. It is a rule-governed system, but one premised on fragmentation and entropy via the successive inclusion of new information, such as the memory of Trading Station Alpha CMa in The Cosmic Legend.

THE AMNESIACS The element of entropy intrinsic to Nelson’s use of memory as a technical support can be most clearly glimpsed in the body of work that he has made with the help of the Amnesiacs. Nelson invented the Amnesiacs in 1996. They are a purely fictional motorcycle gang that, in Nelson’s imagination, suffers from a distinctive form of memory loss: their minds throw up random images with no context. With Nelson’s “help,” they try to make sense of this chaotic information by making sculptures and installations. To be clear: the Amnesiacs are a figment of Nelson’s imagination, but in this capacity they are also important collaborators on his work. He has described this imaginary gang as Gulf War veterans, or, more specifically, as “the first Gulf War version of the Second World War–spurned Hells Angels and Vietnam-era Bandidos” (23). Therefore, they are temporally attached to the First Gulf War in 1990–1, and conceptually attached to the kinds of memory disorders associated with war veterans suffering from posttraumatic

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stress disorder, such as memory loss and involuntary flashbacks. It would also be safe to bet that the Amnesiacs were one of the fictional inhabitants of The Coral Reef—viz., the room with the newspaper announcing the beginning of the Gulf War and leather biker jacket hanging from a door. While their timeline is clear, Nelson has described the function of the Amnesiacs in different ways. In 2007, he explained that the Amnesiacs “started off as a way of coping with all the heavy theoretical stuff that I had absorbed in the Eighties …. I basically created this narrative structure for myself: the fictional bikers who made the work. I had to apply the mentality of the Amnesiacs to the making of the work” (O’Hagan 48). But shortly after inventing them, in late 1996, Nelson’s close friend and collaborator Erlend Williamson died suddenly in a mountain climbing accident. In his grief, Nelson turned to the Amnesiacs as an aid. Henceforth, they became a “gang of amnesiac bikers who build shrines through flashbacks” (O’Hagan 48). Nelson said of his friend’s death that “it is like part of your memory going … it’s a physical personification of your memory … somebody who’s close to you and who’s lived through things with you and then when they’re gone … half of it is gone … and then you sort of doubt that it actually happened” (Irvine and Nelson). The process of the imaginary bikers losing and retrieving memories mirrored Nelson’s own grieving process. The Amnesiacs have “ridden” alongside Nelson’s practice for many years now, but they made their first appearance in Nelson’s 1997 exhibition Master of Reality at Berwick Gymnasium in Berwick-upon-Tweed in the north of England. During Nelson’s severalmonth-long residency at the Gymnasium, the Amnesiacs spent their time picking up bits and pieces of junk from the streets and shoreline in the vicinity of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

FIGURE 12.3  Mike Nelson, Master of Reality, 1997. Installation view, Berwick Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1997. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin.

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They did this because they believed this detritus to be, quoting Nelson, “encoded into a language, and they’re trying to make sense of it” (Nelson and Enright 34). The exhibition thus featured found objects that had been fashioned into crude figurations. In one instance, two car tyres, a sheepskin, a pair of animal’s horns, and wooden box were fastened together to appear like a motorcycle. In another, a plastic cone, a split golf ball, and a twisted tree branch conjoin to make a snake. By helping Nelson make these sculptures, the Amnesiacs personify Nelson’s technical support for the production of new work. In the mid-2000s, by which time Nelson had established a practice of building multiroom installations, including a high-profile, multi-room commission for the 2001 Venice Biennale, he began constructing more complex works with the help of the fictional motorcycle gang. For his third solo exhibition at Matt’s Gallery in 2006, Nelson produced AMNESIAC SHRINE or Double coop displacement. The press release for this exhibition explained the role of the Amnesiacs in the work’s production, which is worth quoting at length because it clearly charts the ways in which memory and amnesia combine to help Nelson navigate his personal art-historical canon: As a mythical biker gang shadowing their tangible cousins, the Amnesiacs built up a new world, a sort of fractured ricochet from their (and [Nelson’s]) past. Flashbacks provided imagery without explanation from which to start to build. Some were of the everyday, like fire and water, whilst others pointed to previous lives and their dense libraries of received images, many never seen outside of print or projection. Having laid dormant for the best part of a decade the Amnesiacs have returned to help build a shrine. This time their recollection is telescopic, not only are they confused in terms of personal history and received imagery but more specifically in terms of religious iconography and art history. (Matt’s Gallery) This AMNESIAC SHRINE was partly based on the layout of The Coral Reef, Nelson’s previous exhibition at Matt’s Gallery in 2000. While it was sparse, comprising a series of wraith-like walls made of chicken wire, it was not completely bereft of objects. Five plaster pods were suspended between the walls (one of which emitted the red glow of a photographic darkroom). In two places there were piles of charred driftwood, perhaps campfires that had been abandoned. These aimed to mirror the déjà-vu sensation that Nelson staged in The Coral Reef with the doubled minicab office. Like The Coral Reef, which wanted to entrap viewers, AMNESIAC SHRINE was spatially disorienting: it was unclear where and whether doors between the sections of the installation existed. Visitors  could only discover them by pushing against the walls and seeing if they would budge. As the press release explains, the Amnesiacs confuse personal memories with images from the everyday, religious iconography, and art history. The “coop” in the work’s title referenced Chicken Coop of 1969–71 and later Artist’s Co-op of 1973 by installation artist Paul Thek, a key art-historical precursor for Nelson’s immersive environments. The “displacement” referenced Robert Smithson’s Mirror Displacements of 1969, and the “double” referenced Bruce Nauman’s 1974 sculpture Double Steel Cage Piece—a sevenfoot-high steel cage with another steel cage inside it. In the same way that AMNESIAC SHRINE remembered aspects of The Coral Reef, it also remembered works by these important art-historical precedents that make up Nelson’s personal canon, thereby

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FIGURE 12.4  Mike Nelson, AMNESIAC SHRINE or Double coop displacement, 2006. Installation view, Matt’s Gallery, 2006. Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Franco Noero, Turin; Matt’s Gallery, London; and neugerriemschneider, Berlin.

suggesting that the precondition for making new work is the simultaneous remembering and forgetting of what has come before. This confused combination or confabulation of artworks by Nelson and precedents echoes the ways in which viewers of Nelson’s work have been said to “annex” other spaces onto his multi-room installations.

HAUNTING Visitors to Nelson’s immersive installations often describe feeling “haunted” by them. Haunting—or “hauntology” as it came to be described by a group of music critics in the early 2000s—had a broader cultural resonance at the time of making The Coral Reef, which may help account for Nelson’s adoption of memory, and its vagaries, as a technical support. In the 2000s, the term “hauntology”—first coined by Derrida in Specters of Marx to describe the ontology of something that “cannot be fully present,” something that “has no being in itself but marks a relation to what is no longer or not yet” (82)—was summoned to describe a set of music practices that sounded “ghostly” (as in distant, from the past, often including the distinctive, crackling sound of dust on a vinyl record). As Mark Fisher supposed, electronic and other forms of avant-garde music of the early twenty-first century could no longer conjure an image of the future that was strange or different, whereas up until this point electronic music—as used in science-fictional radio

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plays and TV shows, for instance—always had. Instead, contemporary music has become dominated by pastiche, sampling, and academic referencing of past music. In line with broader postmodernist malaise, Fisher argued that contemporary music had “succumbed to its own inertia and retrospection” (“What Is Hauntology?” 16). Hauntological musicians critically reflected on this condition by thematizing it; that is, by producing haunting, ghost-like music that self-consciously reflected on the conditions of inertia and retrospection—of the sense of there being no future. Put another way, hauntological music registered a “broken sense of time” (18). English music critic David Keenan coined the related term “hypnagogic pop” to describe a similar trend specific to American pop music in the first decade of the twentyfirst century. Hypnagogic pop is music that feels as if it sleepwalks through the pop music of the past, emanating from somewhere “between waking and sleeping, liminal zones where mis-hearings and hallucinations feed into the formation of dreams.” Where hauntological music may amplify dust on vinyl, hypnagogic pop (whose historical references are to the 1980s, when most of its practitioners were kids) amplified the warp of magnetic tape loops from cassettes that have been worn down from repeated playing over time. As Keenan put it in his original Wire article, hypnagogic pop is “pop music refracted through a memory of a memory.” Of course, failure to imagine a future was, and is, symptomatic of a broader cultural malaise that spans far beyond music or any other artform. (This was Derrida’s point in Specters of Marx, which attended to the specific historical context of the collapse of the Soviet empire and thus the disappearance of a socialist alternative, thereby seemingly allowing global capitalism to prevail.) As Fisher put it, “the disappearance of the future meant the deterioration of a whole mode of social imagination …. It meant the acceptance of a situation in which culture would continue without really changing, and where politics was reduced to the administration of an already established (capitalist) system” (“What Is Hauntology?” 16). Indeed, as Fisher would aphorize in Capitalist Realism, paraphrasing Jameson and Zizek, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than an end to capitalism” (Capitalist Realism 2). Nelson’s work emerges from this milieu and, as we have seen, trucks in several of its sentiments and methods. Against the apparent loss of a future that would represent a substantial alternative to the capitalist present, the “ocean surface” from underneath which The Coral Reef’s subcultures mete out their quiet resistance, Nelson’s works figure forth as a haunting—memories of memories, each one slightly more warped and crackled than the last. The rooms he constructs, filled with second-hand objects gleaned from thrift-stores that are “stained with time,” could be described as sites “where time can only be experienced as broken, as a fatal repetition” (Fisher “What Is Hauntology?” 19, 21). Yet, following the course of the spiral, Nelson’s recursions and repetitions never fully complete their cycle but rather culminate in what Svetlana Boym, writing of Tatlin’s tower, once described as a “radical opening … suggesting unfinalisability not synthesis” (9–10). In this way, Nelson’s work never feels cynical or exhausted, instead always promising a future unpredictable iteration.

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Hanka MIRYAM SAS

It was already morning after a dizzying flight when I settled into the back of a black Ford limo next to Iryna, with the tanned blond Oleg, her husband, in the front passenger seat alongside Jarosław, our driver. After a half hour of driving on the gently curved, well-paved two-lane road leading out of Lviv, we were rolling by gas stations and I stared at the cars booming toward us in our lane from the opposite direction to pass an occasional truck. By the side of the road I saw an old man walking with his cow on a rope. It wasn’t the kind of walking where you lead the animal by a rope because you are trying to get it to go somewhere. It was the kind of companionate walking you do, maybe on a relaxed vacation day with a dog; sometimes you pull a little, and sometimes you let the animal sniff around in the grass, munch its way through a tuft of weeds, go to the bathroom. The cow was eating from an overgrown corner by a fence, and the man stood by the side, waiting. “My grandfather had a cow like that,” said Oleg. He explained that he had recently finished forty days of intensive work on UEFA’s accreditation team, sleeping three hours a night, in preparation for Eurocup. “My grandfather took his cow for a walk for three hours every day until she died. Once in the morning, and once in the evening, so she could have something to eat.” Somewhere near these stretches of road, all repaved to prepare for Eurocup, would be the “village outside of Lemberg” where my mother was born on that scratchy straw bed. Abundant green trees lined the smooth pavement, and it looked to me, though it was odd to think it, like the Hartford Turnpike in Connecticut, except with only one lane in each direction and a good number of large trucks. A boxy maroon car zoomed toward us in our lane before, at the final second, veering back to its rightful side. “Lada!” said Oleg. “‘Perfect from the very beginning!’” he quoted an ad from Soviet days. As we drove on, Oleg helped me with the handwritten Cyrillic alphabet, writing my name (мирям), his (ОЛЕГ), Iryna’s (ІРИНА), and then their last name alongside the name of the town we were headed for: Лопатин (Lopatin), formerly Łopatyn. Iryna smiled quietly, seeming amused at Oleg’s joyous energy for our ride through the countryside. Kolhop—agricultural collectives in Soviet times. Nikita Khrushchev created these corn collectives, but now they were defunct. Brynza—delicious sheep cheese. Mamaleha—a corn dish Oleg highly recommended. Būts—a cheese like Mozzarella. Podhirci—the name of a nearby famous castle and church. To get to Łopatyn we followed the GPS attached to the dash of Jarosław’s limo.

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I tried to ask Oleg and Iryna about the translation of the term “Liegenschaft” in Ukrainian. Could we find it? The Liegenschaft in Łopatyn: where Tadzik had worked, the husband of the young couple who had housed my mother and Sabti, my grandmother, in 1943–4, and where Sabti was a cook despite another woman named Hanka’s objection— Hanka had wanted to be the cook herself, and didn’t appreciate the favoritism of my three-year-old mother’s being allowed to be on the Ligenschaft. The story was that Hanka herself had once had a child too, and the Oberleiter had not let her child stay in the Liegenschaft kitchen, nor on the estate, nor in the large elegant building like a palace on the Liegenschaft. He had forbidden the child to come in. So Hanka had to take the child to the rural areas to stay with her extended family, and the child got measles and died. Between the rows of cornfields and, as we approached the town, houses, Oleg suggested that Liegenshaft might be translated into Ukrainian as panski mayetok, a kind of feudal manor or landowner’s farm. Still, in this Łopatyn—I thought as we bumped along the road—the Germans once had a kind of estate called a Liegenschaft. Some things you could say for sure: that a Polish young couple, Ziutka and her blacksmith husband lived in one of what Sabti called those “after-Jews-apartments.” This is where Sabti and my mother had come when things seemed too dangerous in the nearby town of Kozaki. I knew of Ziutka and Tadzik, but not their last names—for there were almost no last names in Sabti’s story. Here was the Łopatyn, with the apples in the Oberleiter’s kitchen that Ziutka craved when she was pregnant, but Sabti would not take any; and where Tadzik had fashioned a ring out of scrap of metal for my mother, and where so many other events happened, memories I would hear about from Sabti in our conversations and later from her taped stories. Crossing the gravel hill speed bump that led to the town, our car’s bumper scraped against the dirt of the road flattening back out. “A vodka factory!” announced Oleg. In Łopatyn, I’d been told, there had been a vodka factory. In my backpack at my feet, I had sheaves of manila folders that held transcripts of Sabti’s story, near at hand in case I needed to refer to them on the way. Sabti had talked about this vodka factory in her telling about her time in Łopatyn. The left side of the street we descended was lined with suburban-style houses, with flowers and black metal fences. On the right was a river, and across the river was a quaint, broken-down shed. “That?” I asked, pointing to the shed, the falling damp wood, the disintegrating paint. This was my image for what I would find—something old, decrepit, that would feel like a ruin, if possible untouched since 1945. The shed across the algae-covered green river matched that picture. Perched above the river, its dark interior and moldy walls had a feeling of time. I took a photo. “No, no!” said Oleg, half jumping up and down, “Not that. This!” He pointed to a shiny, luminously white stucco building with bright blue trim like an Israeli flag, which stood glaring all the way down at the end of the bright, empty road. As we walked toward the building after our several hours’ ride, the very elegant Iryna, checking to make sure there was no one around, squatted to pee behind a tree. The whole street had the unmistakable yeasty smell of vodka being made, a smell that would come to stand in my mind for Łopatyn, but that afterward I would smell in town after Ukrainian town. We stepped into the bright hallway of the empty factory—it was Sunday—and found the lone guard. He told us that the old factory had been on this spot. Iryna read and translated the plaque describing the renovation, but there was nothing to keep us long.

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We stepped out again into the sun. Ripe raspberries grew on the fences around the houses from the well-tended gardens. Oleg plucked a berry. “Is it allowed?” I asked. “Only the ones that are hanging outside the fence,” he smiled. Iryna and I took a raspberry each as well. We were allowed to take raspberries; but only those offered to us by poking through the fence. At what point would I cross into a terrain that would trespass on someone’s unspoken edge: of the Ukrainians, Poles, my mother, or even Sabti? I nibbled the raspberry, fresh and warm from the sun. We proceeded deeper into the apparently empty town on its dirt roads. Our black limo looked completely out of place. Jarosław pulled up at the first clearly inhabited building, a corner grocery full of sausages with a few red-faced men talking animatedly. Oleg approached the men with his strong, friendly energy, and after a brief exchange the men invited us all back through the store to the rear living room, where a TV showed soccer. This very storefront, today with its bread and handmade cakes, its gum and candies, its abundant alcohol, could have been one of those “after-Jews” apartments that Sabti described, its living space behind, the store in front. In the room behind the storefront, Oleg asked the men about Łopatyn during the war, and if, for example, they ever heard of a “Liegenschaft” there. The men shook their heads. One burly man suggested we try to ask his ninety-two-year-old grandmother, Hanka. Hanka, another man argued, couldn’t remember anything anymore. The red-faced men in the sausage store explained to us that Łopatyn was known for its orphanage that housed orphans from all over western Ukraine. I looked up and down the roads, listening for children. I felt an urge to find the orphans, the lost children of Łopatyn. All the buildings and the streets were completely silent. I saw just one father pushing a stroller. Two older men quietly passed through the streets on bicycles. The child in the stroller started to stand for—to stand to the side of, mark the place of—those missing orphans. But can one missing piece of the present stand in place of another missing piece of the past? What’s the relation between what is before our eyes and what we cannot see? Is it fair to press on the walls of the present-day Łopatyn to try to open that past? We drove just two blocks in search of this other Hanka, the grandmother of the man in the sausage store. This Hanka would know the story of the war, he had said, or would have forgotten it, insisted his friend. Turning the corner of a dirt road, finding her was almost too easy, hardly needing to look—a metaphorical door pops open, yielding to our lightest touch, to reveal a way forward. A hundred yards ahead stood a woman who looked to be about ninety-two. Jarosław parked the car at the corner and Oleg, Iryna and I walked toward her: she paused, bent over, her back to us, carrying heavy bags in one hand and holding a walking stick in the other. The stick trembled slightly. Then she began to move so slowly, receding away from us, this tiny bent woman in all black at the center of the wide dirt road. On her right as we approached, a row of houses stood squat with laundry lines in front, and a small grove of trees lined the road on the left. As we approached I could see that she was about four feet tall—but she kept walking ahead, not turning around to us until we found ourselves almost alongside her. “What do you want to ask?” Oleg looked at me. Oleg bent a bit as he introduced us and she kept up her slow walk as she listened. She stopped to take a breath, still carrying her baggage and her stick. “Yes, I am Hanka.”

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We had found a Hanka, another Hanka, Ukrainian, cheeks tan from the sun, deep lines traversing her face with a kind of sculpted radiance. Her dark eyes twinkled back at us from the depth of her creased face; her voice crackled softly, as if the sound were coming from a far-away radio. But her answers were strong, concise. “I was not here during the war.” Oleg translated her answer. He was not shy to approach strangers. “Does she remember anything about a Liegenschaft?” Hanka’s face darkened at the word “Liegenschaft.” He tried his experimental translation we had discussed in the car, “Panski mayetok.” She shook her head. I listened to the crack of her voice as she spoke more words, more phrases. She walked a few more steps down the road. She shook her head. Little by little her eyes got wet. “She came here just after the war, when the Ukrainians were brought in from the other side. Times were very hard under the Soviets,” Oleg translated. “She was a single mother with a daughter, left all alone.” A goat stood silently munching and watching us in the grassy expanse nearby. We were bothering an old woman in 90-degree heat to remember the hard times, I thought, stepping back, though Hanka’s tanned face was so luminous against her black cloak in the midst of this wide farming town. Sabti never lived to be Hanka’s age. She never had so deeply lined a face. No one had ever said, like the grown men in the store, that Sabti could not remember things. When Sabti lay on the hospital bed in our dining room in Connecticut, it was the first time her face had become thin, but she never had very deep lines like this. Though her skin was always toned olive, it never had the least hint of a tan. And yet. Of course I wanted to see where the Liegenschaft had been, to find out even the tiniest detail about Tadzik or Ziutka. I would be satisfied even to peek inside one small workshop of any blacksmith whatsoever in Łopatyn who might still live here. I wanted to watch him work, to see even one tiny scrap of his discarded metal, like the scraps at the Liegenschaft that Tadzik used to make my little mother a ring. Perhaps I was only too willing to put chance things together, to compile and follow any trail unfolding. Let one metonymy layer upon another—Hanka’s face shifting and placing itself over my Łopatyn of Sabti’s memory, a translucency with just a bit of uncomfortable skew. Hanka shook her head. No Liegenschaft, no memory of here before the war, not even in a rumor. Many memories of the hard Soviet times, of all that followed for her, and the weight of those bags she carried even today. The silence of the missing orphans seeming to resonate in the streets. The red-faced men standing by the sausages in the store, their TV with the soccer game, the silence of the dirt road, empty of all cars beside ours; this other Hanka—I should not photograph Hanka’s face. She is not an object from Łopatyn to be stolen or taken home. But I longed to hold to something of her: as we returned to the waiting car, past the houses with their laundry lines, past the goat and the lines of trees, I turned to take one snapshot from very far off. In it, her back is a tiny slip receding in the distance. The photograph came out blurry, dominated by the giant potholes in the dirt road. You can just see the one heavy bag Hanka held in her left hand, the other bag’s long handles over the opposite shoulder so she could grasp the tall walking stick on her right. I watched as she turned the corner near a broken wooden fence, picking up her story where it left off. I would study in the photo how Hanka’s black coat reaches to her knees, how she wears a small black cap against the sun, and the flash of white at the back of her neck—her bright white hair.

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In the real world of today, where Jarosław waited by the car smoking a cigarette, we hopped back in and he drove us another two blocks up the paved section, until we reached a light blue-painted dacha of a church, with a green, grassy courtyard. We stepped out into the blazing heat, and Oleg showed me how to pull up water from a well in the corner of the church yard. “Country wells have the best water in the world. It is always precisely 4 degrees Celsius no matter how hot it is outside.” I splashed my face with the coolness, though I didn’t sip from the cup. Oleg gave Iryna a drink from the metal cup attached to the top of the well, and then he drank deeply. We stepped inside the church, gazing across the expanse of the backs of the white heads of Łopatyn’s people today—many in their seventies, many also with their hair covered with colored kerchiefs. The voice of the mass resonated out into the cool air of the vestibule where we stood. Just outside, a pickup truck held a huge bank of flowers decorated with ribbons. “This is the funeral of Kateryna, born in 1930,” Iryna read. Here were the people of Łopatyn—and this was their moment to mourn. A kind of discretion—step in, step out. This was as far as I could go today. Turn a corner.

FIGURE 13.1  Lopaytn Well. Photo taken by author.

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We wandered away from the church toward an empty building that had been, the guardian said, repurposed as a hospital. I stopped to use the bathroom he showed us down at the end of its cool corridors. I felt dizzy shuttling between past and present: now I was back in this day, its scratchy pink toilet paper. A single closed café across the way had a sign that read: Інтернет. Internet. Just beyond that café, we found another large church surrounded by bright red poppies. We wandered into that church yard until we were followed by the deep voices singing in Old Church Slavonic. A pickup full of flowers ascended the road beside a funeral hearse. A small parade of people walked beside it slowly. After it passed, across from the bigger church six cheerful women in their fifties or sixties sat at what I could now see was a bus stop. They were ready to go home. Jarosław’s shiny black limo pulled up beside us. We chatted with the ladies. Oleg told them I came from California and was born in New York. One woman with vibrantly dyed red hair laughed and called out, “Take me with you! I want to go to California! And to New York!” Her eyes sparkled and she gave a big smile and a laugh. She shook her reddish hair out of its kerchief. She gazed with a wink into the leather seats of Jaroslav’s limo. And with that Ziutka’s parents and Ziutka and Tadzik faded back into their world ever so slightly and I popped out now, here, with this lady and her ironic chuckle. The bus stop of Łopatyn. The big open laugh. “New York! I’m going with you!” I met her eyes with a smile. Łopatyn. In Ternopil Oblast, the region of Ternopil, here we were. Our black limo rolled out of Łopatyn, its air conditioner blasting, and headed down the paved road once more. *** On tapes of her stories made by my aunt and by me in college, Sabti had described her mother’s family, a family that had lived in the city of Tarnopol, not far from Lopatyn. She talked about her childhood—how at first her newly married parents lived with her father’s family, who were very religious, and her mother made every possible mistake. Her mother ate the challahs that were baked for Shabbos; she used the wrong knife in the kitchen so it had to be buried; and she wore powder on Passover, thus “making chametzdik” (unkosher for Passover) the family’s whole house. “My mother said to me,” Sabti explained on the tapes, “that when she went in their kitchen, it felt as if a whole army of knives were chasing after her. If you made a mistake, like using the wrong knife, they would stick the knife in the ground to purify it. She felt if all those knives were going to come for her …” Sabti had continued: “My grandparents had a very big house. My mother would say about her time living with them: ‘I had everything I needed but myself. Where was I?’ So my mother came home one day and gave an ultimatum to my father: ‘I am leaving.’ She rented the biggest, nicest apartment with a balcony and took a mattress, put it in the apartment, and said to my father, ‘The mattress is there.’ “He had no choice but to tell his parents he was moving out to the new apartment. My father never forgave her for that. After they left, his sister who had been estranged from the family, moved back into my grandparents’ house with her husband; they took over all our rooms in their house. Now, instead of his inheriting all the property, it would be divided half and half—the family had accepted his sister back and she would get half of everything. That bothered him for years.

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“As for me,” continued Sabti, “I stayed with my grandparents often and went to eat meals there until I was at least sixteen years old. Whenever I came, they gave me a candy, two candies, or even five candies. Always I had a mouth stuffed with candies, and everything I did was the right thing to do. I could do no wrong. “My mother’s family, on the other hand, were the kind of people who went to shul twice a year, but always to the oldest shul in town, as part of the aristocracy. Whereas my father went every Shabbos with his father to the more observant shul, that is, every week. In the chumash, [the book you use to follow along with the reading of the Torah] he hid newspapers—my father would finish up his newspapers during the service.” Sabti talked about this rich family, her father’s side, the observant side who went every week to shul—that push and pull of different peoples’ needs; the stress between her mother and her father’s family was palpable. The grandfather gave her any amount of money she wanted, but then afterward worried she had no sense of money. “Once I spent sixty dollars in a store. All the stores gave me credit. Afterward my grandfather asked me about it—that store sold only buttons. How could I spend sixty dollars just on buttons? “Usually the maid on Saturday afternoons took us out to a visit. Where did they visit? The maids took me with them to visit their relatives who were maids at different houses. That is how, every Saturday, from when I was five, six, seven years old, the cook or the maid took me to visit a home that belonged to my future husband. Henio had a grandmother who was paralyzed. At that time, they believed paralyzed people would get cured if they kept guinea pigs in their beds. The guinea pigs were brown and they were always running around the whole place. After we were married, I described his grandmother’s kitchen better than he ever knew it—where there was a hole in the floor burned from the wood coal, and where the entrance to the attic was, where the cupboard was—and I told him stories about his home which he, as a boy, never knew. He didn’t pay attention.” “When I was maybe six or seven,” Sabti said, “there was a big epidemic, and I lost my brother, who was older than me. Dysentery, dysenteria they call it, which we used to say in his case came from eating an unripe apple. At that time I also lost a lot of friends, little girls and little boys. I knew that my brother was not alive, and when another child died that time in the epidemic my mother would say to me, this way your brother will have a friend to play with. I was sorry that he was not alive, but I always held onto the idea that he is in heaven, and he has a friend, so he is not badly off. However, I also knew that his body was in the ground. On rainy days I covered myself up with my mother’s or my father’s coat, because I felt very sorry that my brother was in a grave and that the rain was falling right onto him. I did know that he was in a grave, but also in heaven, with angels. “For a long time I never talked with anybody about the fact that I knew he died—little children didn’t go to funerals. I knew because somebody had told me that he died, and because he was not around anymore. Still, very often I went to playgrounds and I would see a boy with freckles and think—I don’t know for how many years but I kept looking for my brother, the freckles—I lived with all kinds of fantasies. I didn’t want to attach myself to anyone, because I lost my brother and we had been very very close. He used to take me all over. They said he had eaten a green apple. But we ate the same kind of apple, he and I. We were both sick, but I recovered and he didn’t.” Her story gives me a picture of what Ternopil was like, what her hometown Zbaraż was like: her religious grandmother bringing rolls and jam to give away at the hospitals on Shabbat; the maid who gave out coffee and challah and a coin to the beggars on Friday mornings, but if one beggar came back again she would recognize and scold him and not

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give him two. She gives a picture of people with needs and pain—Sabti concealing from the religious grandparents what her mother did on Shabbat, out of loyalty; and how her mother had felt overwhelmed living with such a big, religious family. Sabti’s was a living, pulsing life—looking for her brother or anyone with freckles—covering up with the cape, since his body would be cold in the grave. Stepping through Łopatyn, these images rose to take a place around me, in flashes—filling in the picture of that prewar life. The grandmother, the mother’s mother, who lived in Tarnopol, had said to her when the boy died: “You cannot be upset.” She had only one grandson. Yet, Sabti said, “My mother sat shiva for a whole year. Now, when I look back, I realize she was probably counting every year: now he would be twelve, now he would be thirteen, now he would marry. Maybe he would not turn out to be a good boy—but he was very big child and very bright. At the age of nine he passed all the tests, all the examinations—he was a very alive, happy child.” She went on, “Even with all the sadness, I had a very happy childhood. With all the storms, the wars—they had a cellar where they kept all the treasures, wine, food, coffee, beets, and you could walk through the cellar no end. They said don’t go down, there is no air: the sign that there was not enough air was when the candle blew out. But to me it was a mystery in the cellar, with its slippery stone steps. We children liked to go down, to taste the wine, to put our hand into the special whiskey, the alcohol, to take out a plum, a cherry, to take out the fruit they kept—the fruit from the wine.” The losses layered. There was not only this war, but the other war, the one with Chielmnicki, when the cellar was built, when the beets and wine were hidden so that Sabti could find them again— crumbling-apart beets left down there from that last war. So many mysteries. Not only the loss of her husband, my grandfather Henio, in 1941—but also before that of the freckled boy, even when she was a child, imagining him cold under the dirt, her so big so smart brother and his friends, her friends, from the dysentery; happy childhood layered with loss. And here had been Hanka, the one from Łopatyn today, the single mother whose walk down the dirt road brought forth the Soviet times, survival in this place well after Sabti and my mother and Tadzik and Ziutka were gone. There was the loss of Kateryna, her funeral pyre; and the orphans. Layers upon layers of mothers and children, crossing this quiet place. And the water, the 4°C water, and the heat: to drink and refresh in this place, the future of Oleg and Iryna traversing these first months of their marriage. Through the clear water splashed on my face came clear bits of Sabti’s voice with its flashes of that Sabti childhood: knives that needed to be buried in the ground, powder on Passover, the mattress in her mother’s new apartment. “The mattress is there,” she said, simply. Sabti’s mother’s voice, her strength in just those four words: and then the guinea pigs, the guinea pigs running all over Henio’s grandmother’s apartment. That’s all I have today of my great-great grandmother. Sound of a guinea pig shuffle and a black hole in the kitchen floor left by a piece of burning coal. Łopatyn and all around me, the region of Ternopil as the layering of times. The red-haired woman and her friends watched wide-eyed as the black shiny car swallowed us up and pulled away through the dry dust of Łopatyn’s roads. Now he would be thirteen, now he would be bar mitzvah. The unspoken thought, the unfound places, people, blacksmith’s ring: the held back and the missing also settle into their places just here.

HANKA

FIGURE 13.2  Hanka from behind. Photo taken by author.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Breathe Me Home: A Remembrance via Thomas Andrew Dorsey’s “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” AMY HASSINGER

In memory, my grandmother lies propped on pillows, eyes half-closed, mouth hanging open, chin jutting toward the ceiling. Beside her on the night table, a glass of water holds a foam cube attached to a stick—a tool we have been using to wet her parched lips and tongue. Her gaunt frame is clothed in white—white nightgown, white bedspread tucked neatly around her ribs, white freckled arms lying inert atop the covers. Aunts, uncles, cousins, my grandfather, my parents, all circle the bed. The hospice nurse has just told us it’s time. We take hands, watch my grandmother’s stillness. Suddenly, a gasp seizes her, yanking her chin and chest skyward. A long moment later, it shudders out again. I hold my breath with hers, feel myself suspend in the protracted in-between. Doctors call the final tortured breaths of the dying gasping respiration. It’s a kind of deathbed auto-resuscitation, as if the body can’t quite relinquish the spirit. It’s also called agonal breathing, and it’s clear why. It looks like an agony. Like the spirit is fighting to free itself from the body’s unyielding confinement. The hospice nurse, a slight, somber, grey-haired woman skilled in piloting this passage, suggests we sing. My grandfather names “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” Thomas Andrew Dorsey’s beloved hymn, one of my grandmother’s favorites. Hesitantly, we begin, searching together for a common key: Precious Lord, take my hand. Lead me on, let me stand. On the bed, another breath wracks my grandmother’s body. Her agony stops my throat, and I drop out mid-phrase. I am twenty-four, newly married, absorbed by my own blossoming adult life, unprepared for this loss. My grandmother is the sun my family orbits; I fear her death will set us all adrift. I listen as the phrase unfolds, let my breath equilibrate, until I am ready to re-enter the stream of sound.

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I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, Lead me on to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord, Lead me home. When the hymn ends, my grandmother’s last breath makes itself clear: it rattles through her in a long convulsion, then ceases. The silence that follows is different, final. It’s clear she’s gone. The body on the bed is a corpse—not her, no longer her. Her spirit, helped along by the song, has become air. * Americans who lived through the 1960s remember “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” as a musical motif of the civil rights movement, frequently performed by gospel greats like Mahalia Jackson and, later, Aretha Franklin. It was a favorite of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., who requested the hymn on many occasions, including on the evening of his death. “I want you to play that ‘Precious Lord’ tonight like you never played it before,” he told saxophonist Ben Branch, who was scheduled to play at a dinner King planned to attend. Leaning over the balcony of Memphis’ Lorraine Motel toward Branch, who stood in the parking lot below, King continued, “Tonight, especially for me, play it prettier than ever.” He never got the chance to hear it that night; moments after he spoke those words, King was shot. Instead, Mahalia Jackson sang it for the hundred-and-fifty thousand gathered to remember Dr. King at Atlanta’s Morehouse College, five days after his death. A hundred and twenty million more watched the service on television. In the footage, as Jackson prepares herself to sing, the camera frames a section of the crowd—a sea of faces, most of them brown, all angled toward her, waiting quietly for her voice. She steps to the podium, bows her head, and closes her eyes, then leans toward the mic and whispers the first phrase—Precious Lord … A single voice cheers, then subsides into the general hush. Jackson continues, moaning out the first few phrases over the piano’s accompaniment in a quiet rubato invocation. She undulates the melody, lingers on the first high note, her eyes closed in pained concentration, as if listening for an arrival. At times she barely murmurs, as if pleading with herself; at other times, she shouts an outraged command—I want you to hear my cry, hear my call—before returning to her plea—just hold my hand, Lord, and don’t let me fall. The melody seems to range through her like a river over wide interior expanses. The song becomes a channel linking the stream of her own tender, hurting spirit to the ocean of her God. Her voice flows both ways: pouring out prayer, drawing in consolation. * I was born in 1972, four years after Dr. King’s assassination. I did not hear Mahalia Jackson sing “Precious Lord” until much later in my life. In fact, I don’t remember the first time I heard the hymn, nor do I remember learning it myself. It seems as if I’ve always known it, as if I was born with its melody pre-installed on my mental hard drive, and with it the harmonics of my grandmother’s life: her deep religious faith, her commitment to working for social justice despite—or maybe because of—her own privilege, her reverence

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for Dr. King and what he stood for. As a child I learned that my grandmother had traveled to Selma, Alabama, in 1965 to march with Dr. King for voting rights, and that this was something to take great pride in. For years, that story rang in my mind like a righteous major triad, before I began to hear its blue notes and nuanced chordal extensions. My grandmother’s name was Geneve Williams, but everyone called her Teddy because she shared a birthday with Teddy Roosevelt. She was a lifelong athlete; she majored in physical education at Skidmore College, and remained a lover of sports all her life, especially tennis. Her tennis serve was a thing of beauty: a high, straight toss, followed by a relaxed but ebullient little hop (her pleated tennis skirt bouncing), then a strong, graceful arc of the arm until racket precisely met ball. She taught me to play—how, when serving, to wait for just the right toss before sending the ball across the net, how to step into my swing and always keep my eyes on the ball. She taught me to waterski, too—how to hold my skis parallel, the tips floating just above water as I waited for the boat’s tug, and how to keep my arms straight and lean back as it pulled me upright. And she drove the boat that towed her grandkids across the water, one arm on the wheel, the other resting on the gunnel, steering wide gentle arcs while the boat rode the crest of the wake. She took us sailing and canoeing, organized family softball games and Olympics events—complete with hurdles made from sawhorses—out on the big lawn behind their summer lake house. If not sports, then games: summer evenings were spent playing cards (her favorite: bridge), charades, Scrabble, and one hilarious circle game designed to make your brain explode called “This is a Cat, This is a Dog.” She loved novelty and often got swept up in new ideas. One year, she had her colors done and offered to do mine, brandishing a big binder of plastic-encased color chips and questionnaires; another, she stopped washing her hair to restore the natural oils; another, she led my cousins and me in a morning aerobics class, enthusiastically calling out the steps—Lunge and kick! Charleston!—along with the voice on the record; another, she laid her fingers at various pulse points on my body, trying out her new “Christian healing” techniques. “I don’t really know if this works,” she admitted. “But it certainly can’t hurt.” One summer, she lanced the poison ivy blisters that had stiffened my fingers with a sewing needle she’d sterilized in a candle flame. “Poor Amy,” she murmured over and over, drawing out the diphthong in poor so the word blurred into gentle nursery-rhyme nonsense. She took me blackberry picking and canoeing, clothes shopping and roller-coaster-riding, and across the Atlantic to the UK when I was fourteen, allowing me a legal glass of wine with dinners out, an indulgence that had the added bonus of infuriating my mother. And early summer mornings, she took me skinny-dipping. Clad in terry-cloth robes, we’d walk through the dawn, stepping gingerly on prickly pine needles as we descended the hill to the glassy lake. She’d always scan the water for any fishermen who might spy us, but I knew she didn’t really care if they did. Then she’d drop her robe on the cold blue dock and dive naked into the lake. “Chilly beans!” she’d shout, “chilly beans!” before cutting her way through the water with those graceful arms. These memories of her echo in my mind like a melody bright with summer sunlight and our uncomplicated mutual affection. Beneath that melody hum the stately chords of family history, the stories I’ve learned over the years. Teddy was one of five siblings who grew up in comfort in Syracuse, New York. Her father, a successful businessman, supported not only his own sizable family, but also his in-laws, including sister-inlaw Gert, an artist and evangelizing free spirit who, during the Depression, welcomed wandering hobos into their living room, where she’d tell them gospel stories using a

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flannel board while her sister Geneve—Teddy’s mother, my Great-Grandma Gen—ladled out soup. Great-Grandma Gen (GG for short)—was a former women’s tennis champion and a no-nonsense homemaker, who made her children tithe to the church from their weekly allowances. I knew GG as a billowy nonagenarian who would shout out critiques from her perch at the edge of the tennis court whenever her children missed a shot. Teddy would reply with a frustrated “Oh, Mother!,” an oath she’d use on the court even after GG died. Like her mother before her, Teddy was a devout Protestant who observed the Sabbath with Bible readings and family hymn sings, and who considered it an article of faith to look after the Poor and the Needy—terms so vaunted in my family, I heard them as titles. GG had grown up Poor herself, with a single mother who ran a boarding house to make ends meet; this background, combined with her turn-of-the-century Puritan-descended ethics and her brash personality, made GG’s advocacy for justice difficult to ignore. (In her later years, after she spoke out on behalf of a Black family who wanted to buy a house in their very white Chicago suburb, GG was hit by a police car as she was crossing the street, an “accident” that left her with a broken hip and a lifelong limp.) Teddy followed her mother’s example, running her own household, raising five children of her own, serving on the social justice committee at her Presbyterian church, attending lectures on the thorny political issues of the day, staying abreast of the news, and joining in various efforts to contribute to the betterment of the community—all toward the goal of ushering in what she would have called God’s kingdom on earth. When my grandfather took a job in Washington, D.C., in the early sixties, and they moved from their well-to-do, white Chicago suburb to the well-to-do, white D.C. suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, Teddy insisted the family attend a church in downtown Washington, closer to the centers of both power and need. Also well-to-do and white, the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church was frequented by the Washington elite, but it sat in the middle of the ghetto and had a strong culture of volunteerism, particularly when it came to social and racial justice. While there, my grandmother worked to create a system of free, integrated preschools hosted by a handful of area churches. She recruited families from the surrounding neighborhood, taught the young children, and led a mothers’ group, while her own older children—including my teenage mother—were busy at school. * I don’t know exactly when Teddy would have first heard “Precious Lord.” She might have listened to Jackson’s rendition at Dr. King’s funeral; it’s likely she would have watched the televised broadcast. But “Precious Lord” was a well-recorded tune by then, having been launched into the realm of popular music from the gospel subculture by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, whose bluesy, hard-driving rendition reached broad audiences, religious and secular, Black and white—including a young Elvis Presley, who himself recorded the tune in 1957, a year after Jackson. Teddy might have listened to any of those, though her tastes in pop music tended toward Glen Miller and Perry Como—not so much Elvis’ risqué gyrating. But there’s another possibility, too, one I prefer to imagine: that she first heard it in the company of Dr. King himself when she gathered with hundreds of other protestors at the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Selma, Alabama, on the night of March 8, 1965. That was a day after Bloody Sunday, when six hundred peaceful protestors had attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on their way from Selma to Montgomery

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in an effort to draw attention to Alabama’s unjust voter suppression laws. The protestors had been met with a phalanx of state troopers wearing helmets and gas masks and flanked by local police on horseback, who prodded and beat them with clubs, blinded and gagged and choked them with tear gas, and then trampled the bodies of the fallen to chase the crowd back to the Brown Chapel, where the wounded finally found sanctuary. The images of police beating American citizens bloody—including a young John Lewis—while they lay, broken, on the hot pavement, had pulsed on TV screens and front pages across the nation that evening, shockingly vivid even in black and white (“Bridge to Freedom”). The next morning—according to an account my grandmother gave in a recorded interview many years later—she drove from her Bethesda home to the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, intending to visit some of the mothers of preschoolers in the neighborhood. But as she parked her car and began walking, she felt uneasy in a way she never had before, walking those streets. Whether her uneasiness stemmed from any real threat or only a perceived one, it was enough to make her cancel her plans. Rattled, she drove to the house of a good friend, the wife of one of the church’s ministers. There, Teddy learned about the telegram Dr. King had sent to hundreds of clergy all over the country to join him and the determined protestors in another attempt at the march the following day. “No American is without responsibility,” he wrote. “The people of Selma will struggle on for the soul of the nation, but it is fitting that all Americans help to bear the burden” (qtd. in Morrison-Reed). Teddy also learned there were two empty seats available on a private plane that had been chartered by a wealthy Washington woman for area clergy who wanted to join the march. It was headed for Birmingham in just a few hours. She drove home, made the necessary arrangements, packed a small bag—including a wet washcloth wrapped in plastic to cover her face if she was caught in a cloud of tear gas—and left a note for my grandfather. Then she went to board the plane. When they arrived in Birmingham, a volunteer from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) met them with a van and a warning: if they ran into a roadblock, they should remain silent and let him do the talking. “That put a little of the fear of God into me,” Teddy remembered. Sure enough, halfway there, they met a line of Alabama state troopers, helmeted and straddling motorcycles. One of them approached the van. “Where are you headed?” he asked at the window. “To Selma,” replied the SNCC driver. “Who are all these people?” “My friends.” The state trooper played the light of his torch across the dozen or so white faces inside, one or two necks sporting stiff white clerical collars. He waved them on. Once they got to Selma, they went directly to the Brown Chapel, which was “full to bursting with people, all shouting and singing. [It was] a great, great noise” (Vincent). They were the first group of out-of-town supporters to arrive—the first white clergy to enter that mostly Black crowd—and when they did, the whole church roared. “We were ushered to the front,” my grandmother recalled. “I was in about the third row of people, standing behind Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King. I could have reached out and touched him.” As people continued to arrive from all parts of the country, an array of speakers rallied the crowd, their oratory punctuated by songs. They would have sung civil

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rights classics like “This Little Light of Mine” and “We Shall Overcome” and “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” among many others. It’s possible they might have also sung “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.” It’s possible, but I have no proof. Still, I like to imagine it that way—as if the channel of the song could carry me to my grandmother’s side that night, so I might live that moment with her, standing beside her in that chapel, amid that crowd, singing ourselves strong. * The next morning, after staying the night in the home of a Black woman my grandmother remembered as Mrs. Lightning, she woke to the news that the federal district judge had prohibited the march until a hearing could be held. After some debate, Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the leaders of SNCC had decided to go forward anyway, without federal protection. Thrown, Teddy sat on the sunny chapel steps, deliberating. Joining the march would be illegal, a breach of both state and federal law. The court order had empowered the police, increasing the already significant threat of violence. Should she go through with it? As she sat thinking, a few women from the local housing project approached her and began to talk with her—about their lives, their working conditions, their struggles. They spoke gratefully about the voter registration drive and the national support for their cause. “After they left, they brought tears to my eyes,” my grandmother recalled. “How could I ever disappoint these ladies? Of course I’ll march, whether it’s against the law or not.” She found a place in the line, one in over two thousand who walked arm in arm, singing and shouting, following Dr. King and the SCLC and SNCC leaders across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. There, faced once again by the forbidding phalanx of police, and knowing they had no federal protection, the marchers knelt for a while in prayer, then turned around and returned to the Brown Chapel. It wasn’t until two weeks later, when a federal judge finally deemed the march legal, that they made the full five-day, fifty-fourmile walk to Montgomery, gaining in numbers as they marched until the crowd swelled to a triumphant 25,000 when they reached the state capitol. And it was three months later, in August of 1965, that President Lyndon Johnson, moved by the Selma-centered voting rights campaign, signed the Voting Rights Act into law. As for my grandmother, she flew home the evening of March 9, safe and sound, and changed in ways that I will never fully know. * This telling of the story concludes with a triumphant cadence in a major key, but there are details that I have left out so far that ring more discordantly against that proud finish. Teddy employed a maid at the time, a Black woman named Rebecca. In Teddy’s telling, as she was packing to leave for Selma, Rebecca offered any help she could give, since Teddy was doing so much for “them.” Teddy replied, “I’m not doing it for you, I’m doing it for all of us.” But then borrowed Rebecca’s weekly pay, just in case she might need to bail herself out of jail. Rebecca may have been glad to loan it to her, and maybe my grandfather repaid Rebecca immediately upon his return that evening, I don’t know. Still, I wonder how much hardship that loan might have caused Rebecca and her family. Did they have to

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skip a meal so my grandmother could fly on a chartered plane and sing righteous songs in the presence of her hero, so she could dip her toe in a struggle that was all too easy for her to step back from whenever it became too taxing? Did she wonder at all if Rebecca herself might have preferred to be the one on that plane, taking her spot near Dr. King in that chapel, in that determined crowd? Did Teddy think of offering her the seat instead? Also: in the middle of the night before the march, when Teddy and another white woman from their group were sleeping in Mrs. Lightning’s home, Teddy heard a car speed by on the dirt road outside, its engine roaring, its occupants jeering and hurling curses. Afraid, she stayed in bed, imagining they’d planted a burning cross on the front lawn. What, I’ve wondered, might Mrs. Lightning have been feeling at that moment? It was her home: she didn’t have the luxury of staying in bed, at least not permanently. Nor could she up and leave the next day, as my grandmother would. She’d put herself in danger, housing these two rich white northerners who had traveled to Selma to shine an unflattering light on what so many southern whites wanted to keep in the dark. Did she know those voices, those men? Would she have to meet them on the street the next weekend, stare into their hate-filled faces? Would she fear for her life? And: on the morning of the march, Teddy stayed to the back of the line, cowed, I imagine, by the threat of violence. Near her marched two elderly Black men “who had walked almost seventy miles” to be there that day. “They were literally in rags,” she recalled. “I don’t think I had ever seen people literally dressed in rags as they were. Their shoes were all worn out and their pants just ripped and hanging on them.” She marveled at their determination, despite the fact that they looked “just as pitiful as could be,” while she stood out against them, dressed in her “cute little jumper and white turtleneck.” At one point, she overheard one spectator ask another, “What’s a woman like her doing in this march?” In her telling, she’s clearly struck by the stark visibility of her own privilege, even discomfited by it. Maybe the experience brought it home for her in a way she hadn’t yet felt. Maybe it was part of what prodded her to continue using her many advantages to help others in the years that followed: to serve on the Board of the League of Women Voters, for example; to, with my grandfather, create a charitable foundation; to house Vietnamese and Afghani refugees in their attached apartment. Still, they owned two homes and eventually built an indulgent third. Still, they padded their nests, enjoyed the plush layers of protection that surrounded them. Still, they were rich when so many were poor. And what about me, perched here at my comfortable distance, gazing at her life from my own plush nest? It’s easy for me to squint at her offering, point out its imperfections, make a show of my critical awareness. Harder to turn that same squint on myself. How, exactly, have I upheld her example? Over the last thirteen years, the Voting Rights Act she fought for and celebrated has been gutted by several destructive Supreme Court decisions which have paved the way for a raft of new voting restrictions that disenfranchise voters of color. My activism on this issue pales in comparison with hers. I fear that for too long, I’ve worn her presence in Selma as a badge of righteousness, proof of my family’s innocence in the face of America’s original sin. As if that one act of hers could absolve me of my guilt. As if my absolution were what mattered. * Memory, melody—maybe there’s a reason the words are assonant and metrically identical. “When we ‘remember’ a melody,” writes neurologist Oliver Sacks in Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, “it plays in our mind; it becomes newly

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alive …. We recall one tone at a time and each tone entirely fills our consciousness, yet simultaneously it relates to the whole” (212). When I hear “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” it restores to me my grandmother: her last breaths, the arc of her tennis serve, the feel of lake water on my skin when swimming with her, her tenderness, her thirst for life, her passion for justice, as well as the uncomfortable fact of her—and my— privileged positions in a deeply racist and inequitable society. But I wonder: have I claimed the song too possessively? Heard too much of my own family’s story in it? Its associations in my mind are personal, meaningful, tinged by love and loss. But they also miss so much—an inestimable number of other private memories and associations that float to the surface of an uncountable number of minds when they hear the first notes of that melody. What a vast container of human experience this song is! What if I could hear it that way—in all its fullness, swollen as it is with stories, with generations of love and loss and memory? What if I could hear it fresh, as if for the first time? * Imagine it: 1932, a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. A middle-aged man—a blues pianist and songwriter by trade—sits before an upright piano in the basement room of a beauty school, slouched over the keys. Beside the piano stands his friend, a singer, who’s brought him here to cheer him up. The man at the piano is grieving. Last week, he and his wife were happily expecting their first child. This week, both wife and baby are dead. The wife died in childbirth while the man was away on business; the baby died the morning after he returned. Their loss has blown a sudden void in his chest, a vacuum drawing all things toward it: light, hope, breath. The man knows this feeling. He’s experienced variations of it before in years past; sometimes so profoundly it’s landed him in the hospital. His wife cared for him during those times. Who will care for him now? He fingers the keys listlessly until the tune of an old hymn surfaces, and he begins to play. His friend, Theodore, catches the melody and sings along: Must Jesus bear the cross alone, and all the world go free? No, there’s a cross for everyone, and there’s a cross for me. (qtd. in Hawn) Theodore’s voice rings out—rich, full, inspiring. The man energizes his playing a bit, bluing a note here and there, ornamenting the chords, shaking up the stiff rhythms. He begins to moan out the tune along with Theodore, wordlessly at first, then adding fresh lyrics as they come to mind. Blessed Lord, he begins. But Theodore stops him. “Call him Precious Lord,” he suggests. And something about that word precious hits the man at the piano. Precious is a parent’s name for a child, a lover’s for the beloved, a mourner’s for the source of his release. “That does sound better,” he says. “That’s it.” And from that point on the new song flows “just like drops of water … from the crevice of a rock” (qtd. in Harris 238). A fresh spring—the trickling headwaters of what will become a mighty river.

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* Writing “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” saved Thomas Andrew Dorsey, lifted him from the pit, helped him bear his new cross. The Sunday after he wrote the hymn, he and singer Theodore Frye debuted it at Chicago’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where it met with wild applause (Harris 243). Dorsey eventually became known as the father of gospel, writing hundreds of blues-inflected hymns and shaping the evolution of American popular music. His name became so fused with gospel music that people began to call any gospel song a “dorsey,” whether he’d written it or not. Throughout his life, music seems to have flowed from him as naturally as a fresh spring from rock, helping to quench not only his own spiritual thirst, but the thirst of millions of others. Spring, flow, river, or channel—this water imagery depicts the life-giving, healing power of this song. But it misses a key element of its physical reality: that song is made from breath. The ancient Greek for breath was pneuma, a word that also meant spirit. Stoic cosmology held that pneuma was both the source and substance of all life, a kind of generative fiery breath that structured, animated, and sustained all forms of matter. Like breath, pneuma flowed both outward and inward in constant dynamism, expanding and contracting, creating and sustaining. This tensile flow permeated all matter. Just as each person was animated by pneuma that took the shape of psyche or soul, so was the cosmos animated by a universal pneuma, which Stoics took to be divine intelligence—Nature or God (Sellars 86–105). The Romans called it anima mundi: the soul of the world. During the year after my grandmother died, I felt her spirit as an active component of that cosmic pneuma, especially when I spent time at the house in Wisconsin where I’d visited her every summer of my life, and where her ashes are now buried. I saw her in the eagle when it soared majestically above the lake, hunting for food for its young, and when, on one occasion, it sprayed its chalky poop on the heads of my grandmother’s siblings as they gathered beneath the tall pines (an event very like a prank she might have played). I saw her dazzle in the sundogs that ringed the cold March sun over the frozen lake. I welcomed her airy embrace as I walked across the lawn, or sat on the porch feeling the breeze coming up from the water. Breathing could feel, in that time of fresh grief, like both a figurative and literal inspiration. My grandmother died of pneumonia. Years before her death, doctors had discovered a tumor the size of an orange lodged at the base of her skull. Brain surgery was only partially successful; some of the tumor was so deeply enmeshed with neural tissue it couldn’t be removed. She grew more and more dependent on others: she could no longer walk, not even to the bathroom, without someone to lean on; words on paper swam before her eyes. Even eating became hazardous. A neurological mix-up would cause her to aspirate particles of food, which then contaminated her airways, causing the pneumonia. A feeding tube was the only foolproof solution, but she refused it. She was tired of invasive medical interventions. She would allow the infection, allow her alveoli to fill with fluid, allow her breath to grow labored, allow herself, eventually, to asphyxiate. The lifelong flow of her pneuma would finally cease. You might logically think that pneumonia—a disease that constricts the breath— derives from pneuma. But the term actually comes from the ancient Greek for lung, pneumon, which in turn derives from the Indo-European pleumon, meaning to swim or float (Ramoutsaki et al. 1385). A lung was the only human organ that floated in water. The pneumon was the organ that transformed cosmic pneuma into individual psyche: air into spirit.

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Just as we do when we sing. We inhale: air becomes breath, spirit. We sing out: spirit becomes sound—a sound that instantly transforms into air. Each inhalation a sip from the cosmic pneuma, each sung phrase an offering up of the same. Maybe then, in addition to a river that flows through the wilds of memory or a channel through the canals of history, in addition to a spring that quenches thirst and washes clean and gives life, we might imagine “Take my Hand, Precious Lord” as a kind of lung, a pneumon, filtering the flow of pneuma from the individual to the communal to the universal, and back again. From my grandmother to each of those beloved family members who circled her deathbed, to those tens of thousands of mourners at Dr. King’s memorial service, to all the millions of Black Americans over the centuries who have suffered and died, violently, at the hands of white ones. From all the Mrs. Lightnings and the old men in rags and the Rebeccas in the world to their tireless leaders like Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy and the SNCC organizers, all the way across the decades to contemporary counterparts like Stacey Abrams, who organized a transformative voter registration drive in Georgia and founded Fair Fight Action to continue to organize against voter suppression, or like Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as all the many local leaders who, despite setbacks and betrayals and violence and despair, work and speak out every day against the lethal virulence of anti-Black racism and police brutality. From Thomas Andrew Dorsey, who courageously forged his grief into a powerful vehicle for healing, to all those down the generations who have gratefully received that healing. As I did over two decades ago, when we sang my grandmother’s earthbound spirit loose. And as I still do now, when I confront the constant onslaught of injustices brought before my eyes by the daily news. Like my grandmother, I am lucky. I am only a witness to those injustices, not a victim. But there is power in that witness, and responsibility. “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” reminds me of that power. It breathes me back to my grandmother, to the memory of how she handled her own power and responsibility—how sincerely, how imperfectly, how faithfully. And it breathes her back to me, teaching me the ways I can still stand beside her and take her hand.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Belonged AUDREY PETTY

I stay for the lake on a day like this. How it is grey when you get close enough. How it’s blue from a distance. How it waits cold, but not always freezing, outside my door. I count myself lucky. The lake was nearby when I was a child. Back then, my father was the Saturday guide to the outdoors. At least, this is what the snapshots report, but then again, it was my mother behind the lens. In her few final years, fond of disposable cameras, she would capture her grandchildren with such excitement that her fingertips entered the candids as blur. Today I can see myself and my sisters, running ahead on a summer green grass expanse. Lake Michigan at the horizon, as flat as a mirror. And my father with hair, sporting a respectable fro, trim and contained compared to my mother’s. When she let hers grow, it amazed and embarrassed me. We still laugh at the block party Polaroid of our parents side by side, young and grinning, my father hugging my mom’s afro. Eventually I’d want a style like hers, and my mother would do her best to help me, manning the Afro Sheen, cupping and patting and shaping my strands, making the cloud of my hair stand still for my second grade class picture. Decked out in a white sailor dress. The pride on my face is trembling and true. On a day like this, the clouds meet the lake and the high sky is blue-green. I’m on my bike, trying to break a sweat and save my life. I started motherhood late, and I have to stick around for the girl. Today, I want to stay for myself. The lake is so beautiful and everyone I pass on the park’s path meets my gaze. We all say hello. Black people in motion. I stay for this. Ahead is a figure who could be my father. Same gait. Same mix of loose, gray sweat clothes. My father once ran along the lake when I was a child. Daily, daily. He’d come home out of breath and alive. This was back in the seventies, when I couldn’t imagine his death, but I’d begun to fathom my own. I pedal past the man on the path, as tall as my father once was. The man wears earphones and stagger steps, breathing heavy and occupied with watching the lake. I’m here for the sight of him. When my father is gone, and if I survive, I can find someone on this stretch who, for an instant, reminds me of him. If I keep my distance, I can make the misunderstanding last for a while, to pretend or recall. I stay for the terrible Jewel on 75th and Stony. Our closest grocery store, two miles from our building. Spit-polished dingy, downright rundown and shambly inside. C’mon Jewel’s. Can’t y’all renovate a store? Ella is giddy. I let her climb into the cab of the grocery cart, something I never allow in Whole Foods. “Wee!” she cries, and I pick up some speed. The store is ample. The produce section is full of deals. Usually I travel the four miles to shop in Hyde Park, but I’m trying to live more creatively and to be exactly where I

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am. What if? Where am I? What if? Everybody’s shopping at Jewel today, so I’ve come at the wrong time. We pass the long line at the deli counter and when laughing breaks out among the crowd, one lady squawks above all others. An old man bends at the knees and rocks, giggling and coughing. Oh, now! another woman is yelling, like a joke has gone blue. “What’s going on there?” Ella wants to know. “They’re talking,” I tell her. “They’re having fun.” “Do they know each other?” “Maybe. Maybe not.” Ella watches everything. We’ve got bananas and oranges now. I grab bottles of the chia drinks that they’re practically giving away. Now for the waffles. And then onto milk and eggs and butter. We can’t beat these prices, but the line at the checkout will remind me of the oil crisis of 1979. I don’t have enough time to teach this girl the history she’ll need. We drive for gas afterwards, to the cheapest filling station in the neighborhood. Outside, autumn is exquisite. Sharp sunlight glances off the passing cars, the passing faces. Scorched red and yellow leaves slip into the air as the wind picks up. “I like the store,” Ella declares from the back seat. “Everyone there talks like they’re from Alabama.” I remind her that Poppy is from Alabama. That her grandmother Lala came to Chicago from the Deep South, too. “Do you remember Lala?” “Let’s talk like we’re from Alabama!” Ella says, straightening in her booster, catching my eyes in the rearview. “OK,” I say. “OK,” I repeat. I don’t want to refuse her, and I don’t want to play or do damage. She has no idea what she’s asking, but I still have it in me, though I’ve spent most of my adult life in small-town Illinois. I learned to code-switch as a child. Moving from Chatham to Hyde Park taught me. And family reunions. Bus rides and beauty shops taught me. Playgrounds taught me. K through 12 taught me. Walking from here to there taught me. I stay for this. I stay for the basement bathroom at the Hyde Park Co-op, which is now called Treasure Island. The tight bathroom where I spent hours of my life with my mother. Always the Wednesday weekly grocery shopping at the Co-op, with the promise of a stop across the courtyard for a treat from the Woolworth’s counter if we three girls stayed on our best behavior. The Co-op basement was once home to a post office, a liquor store, a test kitchen, a bulletin board full of neighborhood news. The bathroom has never changed. A box of a room with a single toilet. A feeble fixture shedding light over the sink. I’m most often alone here now. Only occasionally with Ella. The small space takes me back and I take my time. And there’s the afternoon when I’m parked downtown, in front of Columbia College, waiting for my husband and Ella to come down to the car. Maurice is upstairs, finishing sewing lessons and Ella, now six, is with him, inspecting his projects-in-progress: two bright and lovely shirts for her. Five more minutes to go. And then it happens on the near sidewalk, at Wabash and Harrison. I see her. Short and wearing a tight salt-and-pepper afro, and talking with her hands and laughing with a friend who’s smiling big and taking a smoke. From this distance, the woman’s profile is my mother’s. I believe and I disbelieve as I drink in the scene, captivated and beginning to bawl, bracing for her to turn and to face and dispel me. Or to claim me dead on the spot.

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I count myself lucky. I saw El Dorado in my mother’s lifetime. We called it a Christmas gift: paying for that long weekend of homecoming in Arkansas. For most of our lives, she spoke to us of El Dorado as if the place were rose-colored Mayberry—as if Aunt Bea herself had something wholesome and tasty waiting warm on the stove, a dish that she would share with us. By the time I was grown, The Andy Griffith Show was my mom’s wee-hour companion. Bunked in my old bedroom for a weekend or holiday visit, I’d sometimes roam into the haze of her late-late-night reruns before heading off to pee. My mother suffered insomnia for nearly two decades. Andy and Opie, and that Barney Fife, especially—bless them all—they made her laugh out loud. “Mayberry reminds me of home,” she’d explain. How Jim Crow fit into all of this, she’d never quite say. There was so much she’d never quite say about El Dorado. The memories she recited were about the beauty of her family, the precision and dignity of her mother’s church choir, Saturday fishing trips with her father, how her big sister Esther was classmate and friend of Goose Tatum. How Goose went on to play in the Negro Leagues and, later, to become a Harlem Globetrotter. I heard more than one leaving-El-Dorado story from my mother. Aunt Es rocketed off to college at the age of fifteen, soared on to graduate school, a Fulbright in Berlin, work in New York City, an ivory tower in Madison, Wisconsin. My Uncle Brother, once a teacher and assistant principal in Fort Smith, would be sent to soldier in Korea. “Flatfooted with asthma and too old to fight,” he’d be drafted anyway, and eventually return stateside, maimed inside and out. I count myself lucky. I’d come to know Uncle Brother’s whole heart. I’d know his loud, breaking voice anywhere. A big tree of a man, he was. How he trembled, just trembled. Occasionally my mother would acknowledge the ugly of back home. Yes, it was bad. The racism there was awful. Family friends had their land stolen from right under them. El Dorado was boomtown, you see. She’d seen and felt her father jeered, called “uncle,” as they crossed the town square. She’d been rejected by a white playmate when the two of them were practically babies, before they’d even lost their milk teeth. The girl’s family decided they wouldn’t grow up to be friends. As I came of age, I understood my mother’s silences about the ugly and the bad as acts of protection, though now and then she’d blurt out angry, anxious warnings as I ventured out, trusting, into the widening world. Be careful. My mother stayed away from El Dorado for forty years, returning in the summer of 2003. First stop: Booker T. Washington, her alma mater. As we roam the entry hallway, an older man approaches us, wearing dungarees and a crisp plaid shirt, ID clipped onto the collar. “Good afternoon,” my mother says, reaching out to shake the man’s hand. “I’m from here. My mother was a teacher at Booker T. Washington. My daddy was the principal, Napoleon Jackson …” The man’s searching face breaks into a grin. “I know you. You’re Gee.” As they begin to hug for dear life, he murmurs his own nickname, too. The custodian is our tour guide now, showing my mother how much the old place has done changed, ushering us to the front office for hellos and welcomes from the skeleton crew. Naomi Jackson has arrived. My father is photographer as we explore El Dorado. He gets the man at Booker T.  Washington posed with my mom. His arm around her shoulder, the two of them at ease, smiling into this future. He gets me on the porch of the old family house on Columbia Avenue, embraced by the homeowner who becomes our instant host. We’re invited into the living room, graced with purple pastel drapes and plants left and right,

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still centered by the old brass candelabra chandelier. And there’s an upright piano near a corner window, in the same spot where my grandmother’s once was. My mother, music teacher to her very marrow, gives into temptation, lays her fingers on the black and white keys, and arpeggios into a bright ditty. I know she wants to sing. Here we are at the home of Marzell and Niles Smith. About a dozen years older than my mother, classmates of Aunt Es, they’ve made their lives in El Dorado as community workers, as educators. They’re erecting the South Arkansas African American Historical Society. Soft-spoken and fierce, Marzell shows us some of the treasures she’s collected. My father records me and Jill kneeling on the carpeted floor of the Smith family room. Before us, I hold an ornately framed portrait of our grandfather. Stocking up at Rexall Drugstore, our accents must give us away. “You all here from out of town?” an owlish white woman at the register asks the three of us. Her gaze is welcoming as we clutter the counter with postcards and snacks. Chicago, my sisters and I reply. I add that we’re in El Dorado with our mother, who’s been away for many years. “Welcome home!” the woman trills to my mom, still browsing in a far aisle for toiletries. Within an instant, the two are side-by-side, chatting up a storm, my mother professing how good it is to be back. How beautiful the town still is. “I see that the Rialto’s still showing movies. The oil company’s still going strong. I remember they sold milkshakes here,” Momma says, pointing us to the fountain countertops. “Looks like they still do!” Every detail of remembering seems to delight her. Before we head out, the clerk urges us to stick around downtown till sunset; there will be a historic re-enactment on the square at 6 p.m. People come from all around to see it. Apparently, it’s fantastic. “The Parnell-Tucker gunfight? I don’t think I rightly know about that,” my mom says. The Parnell Brothers and the city Marshall Guy Tucker. 1902. A bitter feud. It’s quite a show, the store clerk tells us, as we say our goodbyes and thank yous. Outside, we catch up to my father, window-shopping. We tell him we’ve been asked to stay for a re-enactment. Showdown on the square. Free of charge. In unison, we lose ourselves to knee-slapping laughter, in stitches about orchestrated gunfire and ourselves as the special guest stars. No question about it. We’re getting the hell out of Dodge. Ella has heard the back and forth, set off by a question I’d usually pose as we were leaving for Urbana. What if we stayed? What if we actually stayed? I’d feel the tug as we’d wheel out of Tuskegee. Columbus. Little Rock. Louisville. Birmingham. Our people left traces in these towns and cities. And, in each place, I feel at home. The foods and folkways are deeply familiar. I recognize the cadences in voices I hear. And the astonishing beauty of the land itself slows my pulse. Hills and ridges and red dirt. Crepe myrtle, dogwood, magnolia, hickory, pine. I can get lost in all the colors of green. I felt the magnetic pull before there was an Ella. I felt the pull well before I found Maurice. I stay because Maurice has not yet agreed to live in the South. The most social butterfly I know, the man has friends in every direction. Home for him must be a place to set out from easily; home must be a place where others can easily travel to. We’ve discussed the idea of New Orleans for as long as we’ve known each other. Now I harbor the fantasy of the two of us thriving as old people in Tremé. Despite our longstanding connections in Atlanta, it could never become home. We make visits on our way to and from family in Tuskegee, but Maurice will never forgive that city enough to root himself there. Maurice’s best friend was killed in Atlanta thirteen years ago, shortly before we got together. Okon’s murder remains an unsolved case. Investigators came to one conclusion: This vital and brilliant and magnificent person was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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When I return to Urbana from appointments with my mother in Chicago, I find Ella and Maurice in the attic of our bungalow at the corner of Oregon and Vine. We get back to our parallel play, listening to music and sketching on the dry-erase boards we’ve plastered across our walls. Maurice works on computer science homework, and Ella and I doodle. Insisting on purple as usual, she’s back to her shapes within shapes. Circles, squares, hexagons, filigreed into jewels. The girl takes her sweet time. And I am back to my cityscape, connecting lines to form a phalanx of linked buildings. Always the thin high-rise with chiclet windows, the oversized A-frame with chimney and smoke, the skyscraper inspired by the Chrysler, and another like the John Hancock, complete with two antenna as crown. About a month ago, Ella, not yet three years old, told me she wished she were white, and, right away, I was afraid that I knew what she meant. Ella spoke of her wishes with plaintiveness, lonesomeness, and I tried to listen without showing any alarm, telling her she is beautiful and brown and just right. I’d go online that night, buying her more books full of brown and black beauty. I would leave it to her to bring up whiteness again. On a family visit to Lala and Poppy’s, the girl wakes and looks out the car window to notice that we’re in Chicago. Watching the Black folks traversing Garfield Boulevard, she spontaneously designates our colors. “Mommy is brown. Daddy, you’re silver. I am tan.” This season, Ella has begun to see herself in the tan Norah Jones. Come Away With Me was one of the girl’s first albums; “Turn Me On” was a serenade by heart. In a pitchperfect rendering, she eerily (and hilariously) captured the earthy, languorous notes of that torch song. Now Ella asks to see Norah’s videos again and again. She commits Feels Like Home to memory. We keep that CD on repeat during our afternoon sketching session. It moves me to rock my shoulders, and the essential tinge of sadness in Norah’s every note is what soothes me most. Her voice lets me be still with my grief and my gratitude. My mother is dying. My mother is still alive. We can make it back to her before she passes. As always, Ella stops her work to investigate what I’m making. A city, I tell her as I begin to draw trees. Is that where Norah Jones lives? Yeah, some place like this, I best-guess. She’s from Texas, but I think she lives in New York. “Can we go there?” she asks me. “Can we go there, please?” I stay for the look on Ella’s face as we trespass the public golf course, making our way to the tiny patch of beach. The girl runs ahead, knowing east is always lake. We’re no longer landlocked. Huge slabs of red-brown slag line the shore’s edge at this hidden spot. With time, we can find all manner of beach glass. We study downtown north of us, smokestacks of Gary, Indiana to the east. One of my most familiar childhood spots is just to the south. Rainbow Beach was the answer to summer days with my best friend, Johari. Her parents brought us there, suited, with bag lunches and towels, and we’d stay for hours. On the hottest of afternoons, crossing to water barefoot was my life’s greatest challenge. Studded by the silver skeletons of alewives, bones pricked each and everywhere, the sand itself scorched our soles. How the cold finish line made us squeal and cheer. “Yes,” I tell Ella. “I was about your age back then.” South Shore is as south as we get, for now. A family building with us on the third floor, my big sister’s family on the second, my father on the first. Emmett Till Road is two blocks up from our place. Cartographers fix our neighborhood’s western boundary at Stony Island. Where Stony Island and Till intersect are eight lanes of traffic and a rail stop. A shuttered catfish joint sits on the west side of the tracks; a Starbucks buzzes on the other. Vendors hawk goods up and down the lanes of Stony, selling tube socks,

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water, peanuts, penny candies, the Sun-Times. Just up the road from the Regal Theater, a middle-aged man in a bowtie and a finely pressed suit sells today’s The Final Call with one hand and freshly baked bean pies with the other. Where traffic thins and there’s room for parking, a very young man in dungarees, T-shirt and Sox cap sets up his own shop from a sturdy red pickup. Lined and stacked in the flat bed are gleaming, long, oval, striped watermelons. Above the harvest: a simple advertisement, broadcast from a white background in red-stenciled cursive. Sweet Mississippi.

PART FIVE

Memory, Memoriam

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Memory SAYED KASHUA (TRANSLATED BY JESSICA COHEN)

What is a Palestinian allowed to write about memory? What may be said about memory by someone who lives under occupation, or belongs to a persecuted minority, or is displaced—whether as a stateless refugee, or one who has obtained citizenship? Can one speak of a cohesive Palestinian memory when Palestinians are displaced, dispersed, and living under varying circumstances across the globe? Does a “privileged” Palestinian with citizenship in a Western country carry the same memory as a refugee living in the Ain alHilweh refugee camp in Lebanon? Does a Palestinian who encounters Israelis every day— whether as soldiers, settlers, or bosses—have a similar memory to that of a Palestinian who only sees Israelis on the evening news? Does the grandchild’s memory resemble the grandparent’s, and are the memories of the wealthy akin to those of the poor? Kay la nansa (“lest we forget”) is a slogan that adorns many Palestinian books, drawings, protest signs, graffiti, and headlines, and “do not forget” is one of the central Palestinian national edicts: Do not forget Palestine, the Nakba, where we came from, what happened to us, where we belong—and do not forget that we are Palestinians. In Israel, where the national mingles with the religious, the liturgical term Yizkor (“He shall remember”) is the basis of the imperative: remember. In other words, while Israel enacts an affirmative command, the Palestinian counterpart is a negative one: do not forget. Israel’s religious-national ethos includes numerous memorial days commemorating destruction, persecution, redemption, the Holocaust, the fallen soldiers, and the state’s independence. The Palestinian directive, however, is phrased as a negative because it is a response to Israel’s dictate and to its religious and national memorial days, which skip from ancient to modern, from the Bible to the nation state, casting into oblivion the Palestinians it removed along the way. Part of this Israeli remember entails a forced forgetting of the Palestinians. And so, whereas Israelis are instructed to remember, we Palestinians are commanded not to forget. I first saw the motto kay la nansa in a book with a brown cover, which my father brought home one day and tossed on a bookshelf without saying a word. It took me a while to understand that this was my parents’ way of teaching us about issues they felt uncomfortable discussing. It was not unlike the way The Encyclopedia of the Body had appeared on a shelf one day, leading my older brother and me to gape at it— especially the section on reproductive organs. The title of this new book with the brown cover was Qabl al-shatat. I understood the first word, qabl (“before”), but the second word, shatat, confused me. We usually used it to describe a person who was scatter-brained, or who’d lost his mind. I did not yet know that shatat was the Arabic

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term for the Palestinian diaspora. As a citizen of the State of Israel, I’m not sure that I even understood what it meant to be Palestinian. The book’s subtitle was “A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876–1948.” My interest in the photographs collected by the author, Walid Khalidi, quickly and decisively surpassed my curiosity about reproductive organs. I doubt there was any other book I flipped through so frequently and for so many years. I studied those black-andwhite photos as if I were witnessing a magic trick, examining every detail. And I tried to assemble them into a single mental image of the history of this nation to which, as I began to deduce, I belonged. The pictures showed villages that no longer existed, Arab cities that looked clean and well-maintained. There was Yafa, with its beautiful port, the clock tower, the cafés, even a magnificent cinema, all looking nowhere near as impoverished and dirty as the Yafa I knew in the 1980s. Grandma’s descriptions of the old Yafa were true, then, and so was her story about dressing up as a man so that she could go to the movies with Grandpa, where she saw city women dressed proudly in modern urban clothing. The book also had pictures of Beisan (today Beit She’an in Hebrew), Safed (now Tzfat), Lake Tabriya (the Sea of Galilee, or in Hebrew: Tveria) and the nearby city, and fishermen with nets in their boats. So it was all true, it was all real. But where was Tira, the village where I was born? Why were there no pictures of Tira before 1948, and why were my grandparents not documented in this book? At home we had no pictures from before ’48. There was one portrait of Grandfather, who was killed in the war. It showed his neck and head, like a passport photo, and there was a blank expression on his face. Grandma swore it was him, but my father, who was not even a year old when his father was killed, used to tease her, “How can I be sure it’s really Father? You could show me any picture and claim it was him!” When I was little, all I knew about Palestine was that it was the answer to a frequent clue in the weekly crossword puzzle in Al-Itihad, the newsletter of the Communist Party in Israel. The word was sometimes across and sometimes down, and the clue was “dawla atida,” which my father explained referred to “Palestine.” I did not understand the Arabic word atida, but knowing some Hebrew, I assumed it must be the same as the Hebrew word atid (“future”) and that the phrase therefore meant “future state”—a sort of fantasy country, science-fiction, like the alien planets in Star Trek. At school I never heard the word “Palestine.” After 1948, the education of the Palestinians who had remained on their land was administered by Israel’s Ministry of Education. The primary criterion in hiring principals, teachers, supervisors, and janitors was their “loyalty” to the State of Israel. This was supposed to guarantee that teachers would not diverge from the textbooks written for us, in Arabic, by Israelis. Errant educators suspected of belonging to political organizations that opposed Israeli policies were dismissed. Teachers suspected of deviating from the Ministry of Education’s dictates were replaced with more loyal ones, even if they had never gone to college, obtained a teaching certificate, or even graduated from high school. At my Arab-Israeli school, we sang about our love of the homeland, yet we did not know where it was. We were forced to sing songs praising the State of Israel, although we did not understand that this was the state we were honoring. “Homeland” was a vague notion that held no meaning for me as a child. It was simply another task I had to perform in order to get an A in both social studies and music. On Independence Day, Israeli flags were draped from the school rooftop, and we had to sing nationalist songs and be happy. And we were happy, because if celebrating the homeland meant we got a day off school, then long live the homeland, whatever it may be.

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What’s certain is that we were not taught any of the stories about war that my grandmother used to tell me. She did not know what Zionism was, and never used the word. She did not know what nationalism was, although she did know how to mangle the Arabic word ihtilaal—occupation. She spoke about Jews, about our village, about Arabs, and about land. There is nothing more terrible than war: that was the standard opening line for her stories, and their closing line, too. May God keep you away from war and the horrors of war, my boy. And war, as Grandmother understood it, was mostly the Jewish militia forces’ attacks against her village of Tira. She was a young woman in her twenties at the time, with four daughters and one son—my father, who was born in May of 1947. In that terrible war, the bullets whistling past became an integral part of the family’s routine, occasionally invading their house. When the fighting became intolerable, she traveled eastward with the other women and children, seeking refuge in the hilly outskirts of Tulkarm. The men stayed behind to protect the village and fight back, and they did so heroically. Many were killed, but many of them also killed others. In Grandmother’s stories, Tira’s fighters were brave heroes with barely any weapons, and ammunition was hard to come by; there were days when each fighter was only supplied with two bullets. And there were days when the Jews’ bombardments fell from the sky like rain, and Grandmother—trying to reach the hills with her children—would lie down on top of her baby when the whistling sounds got too close, “and I knew that if a mortar shell landed, there’d be nothing left of me or the baby.” Her husband, the same Grandfather from the picture on the wall, was killed in one of the battles over Tira, leaving her widowed with five small children. “And we were the lucky ones,” Grandmother explained, because in Tira, unlike so many other villages, the houses were not destroyed and the villagers were not doomed to become homeless, defenseless refugees. She attributed this to the Tira men’s armed resistance, but my father said that with all due respect to the fighters and their heroism, Tira’s residents weren’t deported because they signed a ceasefire agreement before the Jews could enter the village. If they had entered, as they were about to do, they would have slaughtered everyone, precisely because the villagers fought back. The cemetery in the neighboring town of Tel Mond is full of Jewish soldiers whose gravestones read: “Fell in the battle to conquer Tira.” After the ceasefire, Tira became part of the newly established Jewish state, and my grandmother and her children were granted citizenship and became Israelis. Tulkarm, a city that was walking distance from Tira and whose hills had offered refuge from the battles, became part of the West Bank, in Jordan: an enemy state that for twenty years we were not permitted to enter. Al-Awda (Return) has always been and still is the Palestinian dream, the most revered national aspiration. More than half the Palestinians who lived in Mandatory Palestine lost their homes and lands and became refugees as a result of the establishment of the state of Israel. Those few, like my grandmother and her children, who remained in their villages, which became part of Israel in 1948, were stunned to find themselves cut off from their people, their culture, and their language, their lands subjected to Israeli seizure laws, living as a second-class-citizen minority in a Jewish state. In 1967, Israel achieved full control of the remaining areas of historical Palestine when it occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There, today, some 5 million Palestinians live under an Israeli occupation that denies their civil rights, restricts their freedom of movement, and continues its policy of land grabs, deportations, and destroying villages in order to build settlements and roads for the exclusive use of the country’s Jewish citizens. The 700,000 Palestinians who were uprooted from their homes in 1948 have grown into a population of almost 6 million refugees (roughly half of the estimated worldwide

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FIGURE 16.1  Grandpa Ahmed, photo by author of image of grandfather.

Palestinian population today), scattered among refugee camps in the Middle East and elsewhere. Most of the Palestinians living in the occupied territories and in Arab states (with the exception of Jordan, which granted them citizenship) lack passports or a clear legal status in their countries of residence, where they are perceived as unwanted foreign transplants. Many of those who’d fled in 1948 became refugees for the second or third time in later conflicts: the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the armed conflict known as Black September between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Jordanian forces in the early 1970s (which resulted in the deportation of PLO activists and other Palestinians from Jordan), the civil war in Lebanon that began in 1975, or the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 that led to further expulsions, this time to Tunisia. The exiles continued during the first Gulf War, when most Palestinians in Kuwait and the Gulf States were forced to leave because of Yasser Arafat’s support of Saddam Hussein. In the past decade, Palestinians have once again had to seek refuge following the civil wars in Iraq, Libya, and, worst of all, Syria. It can be said that the figure of “the wandering Jew” has been replaced by that of “the wandering Palestinian.” The stateless Jewish refugees, whose tragic plight Hannah Arendt depicted so movingly, have been supplanted by the stateless Palestinians, who similarly demonstrate that a person without citizenship is a person without protection or recourse to justice. Except that Palestinian-Israeli history has proved that experiencing the anguish of being a refugee does not guarantee sensitivity to the suffering of other refugees—not

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even among those who are the primary cause of the suffering. It seems that even those who have themselves been victims cannot be expected to develop any special compassion, nor can those who have suffered persecution be expected to then pursue justice for all. While every son or daughter of a Jewish mother may immigrate to Israel and become a naturalized Israeli citizen overnight, Palestinian refugees and their descendants are not entitled to return to their homeland—thanks to Israeli laws and regulations that violate international law and repeated UN resolutions. Most Palestinian refugees cannot even visit Palestine as tourists, including those who hold European or American passports, except in exceptional cases. Essentially, the only Palestinians who can exit and enter Israel are citizens of Israel, which I am. And perhaps it is this rare privilege that has enabled my exile—the voluntary exile, one I can choose to end whenever I wish and return to the inner exile in my homeland. Like the Palestinian refugees and exiles, I, too, would like to return to the pre-Nakba Palestine that is represented in collective Palestinian memory as a lost paradise. I would love to go back to the Palestine my grandmother used to tell me about: the fields, the cattle, the harvests, the grapes and figs, the olive trees, and the lemon tree that—in Palestinian lore—stood outside every house. In this idyllic picture of Palestine, there is no poverty, no drought, no landowners exploiting farmers, no masters lording over the commoners. I, too, like all Palestinians, would like to return to Palestine as it was depicted in that book with the brown cover, with its pictures of farmers working their fields—or perhaps the fields belonged to Arab or Ottoman landlords, who were later replaced by Jewish ones. It doesn’t really matter, because you can see in the photographs that they were happy, picking oranges that shimmered even in black-and-white, and packing them into wooden crates stamped with the word Jaffa in English. In the photographs of citydwellers in places like al-Quds (Jerusalem), Bethlehem, and Haifa, you can see school children in uniforms, including girls with no head-coverings. Those must be the brazen urban women whom Grandmother had seen only because she disguised herself as a man. Significantly, the book shows Palestinian women from before the Israeli occupation, going to school and caring for patients in clinics. The Palestine in that book was modernizing, with women only just getting their first taste of freedom. That development, much like Palestinian land—as the book would have it—was yet another path of progress that was robbed. But this image of a Palestine dripping with figs and pomegranates grows blurry in the consciousness of Palestinian refugees, and not only because most Palestinian villages were eradicated. What was left was then populated by millions of Jews who took over Arab lands, Judaized the sites, and Hebraized the names of streets, orchards, rivers, flora, and fauna. That picture has blurred because of the loss of a political vision and the death of a popular struggle for emancipation, a struggle that peaked in 1987, when the First Intifada erupted as an all-out national uprising. The Oslo Accords of the 1990s, which purported to offer an end to the occupation and Palestinian suffering, ironically did more than any other factor to harm the Palestinian dream of al-Awda. It was the PLO leadership, which had for decades represented the Palestinian nation and molded its national consciousness, that ultimately let down the refugees when it agreed to establish limited authority in a small area of the West Bank and Gaza, with jurisdiction primarily over policing and supervising domestic Palestinian affairs. The PLO leadership claimed to represent all Palestinians around the world, with the refugees first and foremost, but it left them to their own devices in the refugee camps

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and offered little more than lip service to their rights. The refugees were not partners to the hastily signed agreement designed mainly to bolster the PLO itself as it tried to recover from the mass deportations of its members from Lebanon to Tunisia. Far away from Palestine, the PLO became essentially a bureaucratic organization. Its political and financial nadir came in the early 1990s, a phenomenon related to the Arab world’s more general political decline because of creeping neoliberal values and kowtowing to US policy from the one hand, and the Islamist movements becoming virtually the sole opposition to the Arab dictatorships that enjoys Western patronage, on the other. For all that—and even if Palestine is not a paradise frozen in time in 1948, waiting for the refugees to reclaim their homes, villages, and fields—what alternative do they have to the dream of returning? This is especially true when it comes to the refugees living in impoverished, dilapidated, overcrowded camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza. “The elderly will die, and the young will forget,” said David Ben-Gurion, who orchestrated the establishment of the Israeli state and the banishment of Palestinians from their land. True, the elderly will die—but the young cannot afford to forget. How can a young refugee forget his homeland if he lives with constant reminders that he is a foreign element, unwanted, even despised? How can a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank, in the Galilee or the Negev, ever forget the Naqba, which, though it might have slowed down, has never stopped? How can the deportations be forgotten when Palestinians are still removed from their homes so that Jewish settlers can move in? How can the expropriation of lands be forgotten when Israel, using its own legislation as justification, continues to destroy houses, trample villages and Bedouin tribal lands, and evict their Palestinian residents? How can the oppression be forgotten when settlers prevent farmers from reaching their lands, and soldiers forbid them from leaving their towns and villages? The Palestinian equivalent to the Israeli Yizkor is not a directive to remember the oppression and the destruction, because these are still alive and well. Rather, it is a command to remember that it could have been better. The Palestinian equivalent to the Yizkor is the precept to hope for a better life, for liberation. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to adhere to. Israel’s enforced forgetting—which includes passing laws that forbid any mention of the Naqba, concealing evidence, failing to publish archival materials, obliterating the memory of villages—is mostly framed to the Israeli and international public as an attempt to justify the Zionist project. When it comes to Palestinians, the meaning of this endeavor is: forget about things ever getting better for you. What Israel is trying to make people forget is not so much the past as the future. More than relegating the continuous historical nightmare into obscurity, the obliteration is aimed at the dream of a future. Ben-Gurion, then, might have more aptly claimed: “The elderly will die, and the young will lose hope.” On one of the last times I took part in a march with my late father—I can no longer remember whether it was the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre or the Kfar Qasem massacre, or International Workers Day, or Naqba Day—he drew my attention to the fact that one of the regular slogans had been slightly altered. “It used to be,” said my father, who had been placed under administrative detention as a student in the late ’60s because of his political activism, “that the slogan was ‘Thawra thawra hatta al-nasr’—‘Revolution, revolution, unto victory!’ But today they shout, ‘Thawra thawra hatta al-mawt’—‘Revolution, revolution, unto death!’” I sometimes think about Palestinian acts of resistance (which include terrorism) and wonder if they are committed out of hope, or merely out of despair and this notion of

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revolution unto death, now that the Palestinian uprising has been emptied of meaning and ceased to provide a source of hope or a path to victory. My father told me that when he was young, he believed in socialism, in perpetual revolution, in universalism and class solidarity. He knew that the struggle would be difficult but that, ultimately, justice would prevail and we would live in a fair, egalitarian society. “And today?” I asked, “what do you believe in?” He never did answer me. When politics—whether local, Arab, or international—provide no inspiration and no hope for a better future for Palestinians, it leans on memory. On nostalgia. Some people go as far back as the days of the Prophet Muhammad. Others, like me, make do with remembering Grandmother’s stories and the photographs in the book with the brown cover, where Palestine before the diaspora looked so green. Especially in black-and-white.

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Chasing Glowworms STEVE STERN

In Talmud there are several variations on the legend of the Angel of Forgetfulness. According to one version, this is the angel (Laila by name) who holds a light over the head of an infant in the womb. By this holy light the child is able to see all of history— past, present, and future; personal and universal. It is also endowed with a knowledge of the entirety of Torah and retains its memory of Paradise before the soul’s incarnation into a physical body. Then, upon its birth, the angel gives the child a fillip under the nose, which erases all the wisdom the child knew in its mama’s belly, and incidentally leaves the indentation called a philtrum. Which begs the question: why give the child the gift of such revelation only to take it away upon their entering the world? One reason might be that the angel, who can’t help radiating enlightenment, realizes at the critical moment that knowing the end of the story—both the individual’s and humanity’s—might spoil the experience of living in chronological time. Or maybe a consciousness of all that lost splendor would make ordinary life seem, by contrast, a kind of desolate proposition. So perhaps it’s better that we’re born amnesiac. Of course, if Freud’s theory of suppressed memory is correct, the loss of our pre-natal knowledge has made neurotics of us all. I offer myself as a case in point. Like everyone, I suffered the PTSD resulting from having been yanked from my mother’s womb against my will. Again, like everyone, I was left with the feeling of having been awakened from a turbulent dream that dissolved at the first glimmer of consciousness. Afterward there’s a lingering sense of unease—which lasted in my case for decades—as you attempt and fail to recall the dream. But forgotten dreams have a way of resurfacing at unsolicited moments. The Talmud says of Moses that his learning was just a process of recollecting. What I presume to call my own recollecting began somewhere around my thirty-third year, when I was working at a folklore center in my hometown of Memphis. I’d been raised in the Reform Jewish “tradition,” although the word here is somewhat of an exaggeration. The temple I attended represented a strain of Judaism designed to be virtually invisible, to blend indistinguishably with the Christ-haunted landscape of the South. We had no yarmelkes or prayer shawls, no bar or bat mitzvot; the rabbi wore ecclesiastical robes and preached before a choir loft appointed in brass organ pipes. Our hymnals retained only a smattering of Hebrew. There was nothing demonstratively Jewish in the liturgy, no fetishizing of the Torah scrolls or swaying at prayer; the congregation rose and sat obediently on cue. As a consequence, I was nearly untouched by tradition and had no real awareness of its absence. Flash forward fifteen or so wayward years after my “Confirmation” when I’d fetched up again in my native Memphis: having tried and failed

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to initiate a career as a writer of fiction, I’d taken, as a kind of penance, a job at a local folklore center, folklore being to my mind at least a poor relation to literature. As I was nominally Jewish and worked cheap, I was assigned the task of researching the roots of the Memphis Jewish community. I was informed that the original site of that community was a dilapidated quarter on and around North Main Street, an area I’d never heard of called the Pinch. A brief digression: Franz Kafka has always been, for better or worse, a role model of mine. We share, if little else, a similarly assimilated upbringing and secular detachment from religious observance. Yet he could say on a stroll through Prague with his friend Gustav Janouch regarding the old Jewish ghetto razed in 1893: In us all it still lives—the dark corners, secret alleys, shuttered windows, squalid courtyards, rowdy pubs and sinister inns. We walk through the broad streets of the newly built town, but our steps and our glances are uncertain. Our heart knows nothing of the slum clearance which has been achieved. The unhealthy old Jewish town within us is far more real than the hygienic town around us. With our eyes open we walk through a dream: ourselves only the ghost of a vanished age. (80) More than as a slum, however, the old Prague ghetto endured in the imagination as a place of concentrated mystery. It was there the sixteenth-century sorcerer-rabbi Judah Loew was said to have created the Golem. This was the creature molded from clay and animated by magic to do battle with the enemies of Israel. Its remains, it is rumored, still lie discarded in the attic of the Altneuschul, the medieval Old New Synagogue. Beyond its macabre associations, though, the ghetto was a locus of the type of traditional Judaism that had been so thoroughly scrubbed from the community of German-speaking Jews in which Kafka lived. I can’t claim the same exotic aura for the (also leveled) Memphis ghetto. By the time I arrived, all that remained of that once vital mercantile quarter were a warehouse with opaque glass windows that was once a shvitz bod, a Russian bath; a scrap metal yard belonging to three consecutive generations of the Blockman family; and an abandoned synagogue whose final incarnation was as a nightclub featuring transvestite entertainment. The rest was a no-man’s-land of condemned properties and weed-choked vacant lots. But as I began to track down and interview survivors of that community, seniors living at a suburban remove from the old neighborhood, the Pinch began to reconstitute itself before my eyes. North Main Street was repopulated with kosher butchers, piecework tailors, fishmongers, cigar-makers, haberdashers, and market wives. They lived above their businesses in cramped apartments, oven-like in the Memphis summers. To escape them the entire neighborhood would retire in a body to the Market Square Park, where they bedded down in an outdoor dormitory beneath the spreading branches of a patriarch oak. In harvesting the memories of my informants, children of the original immigrants themselves already advanced in years, I began to become acquainted with the tradition their families had carried with them from the Old Country. This was the tradition that had been air-brushed to near transparency in the Reform synagogue of my childhood. My late encounter with it was an experience I came to call, in the words of the psychologist C. G. Jung, “memories in the blood” (140). That is, a recollection of things you’d never

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previously known. It had also for me—please forgive the hubris—the taint. Still an aspiring writer of fiction, I decided that the Pinch would become the fixed address to which my formerly stateless stories could come home to roost. An article of faith in Judaism is the admonition to remember: Zakhor! Specifically what we’re enjoined to remember are the foundational events of the Hebrew people. The Jewish calendar is studded with these events, so that the temporal year is held in place by an armature of the eternal; the holidays serve as mnemonic devices that allow us to live in a cozy contemporaneity with the mythic past. But there is in the tradition an even more urgent incentive for remembering. And here I’ll venture another reason for the angel’s tweak under the nose: it’s by way of giving us something meaningful to pursue while we’re alive. Something literally “uplifting.” Having nothing better to do, we might try— for the sake of all that’s holy—to recover what we lost by being born. I’m reminded of a notion from another faith, Thomas Aquinas’s concept of felix culpa, the happy fall. The idea being that only by existing in a fallen state does an individual have the opportunity to redeem himself or herself—or, in the case of the Jews, the world. According to Kabbalah, “the hidden, pulsing lifeblood of Judaism” as Erich Neumann maintains (119), the circumstance of the world at its creation has much in common with that of the individual at birth. The sixteenth-century mystic Isaac Luria theorized that the real exile of the Jews predated the destruction of the Temple and the ensuing expulsion from Jerusalem. Exile, as Luria has it, was itself a cosmic tragedy dating back to the beginning of time, when God sent forth from the void vessels filled with primordial light. But the effulgence of that light was more powerful than the vessels could contain, and they burst, scattering their divine sparks throughout the universe. Had the vessels arrived intact, the world would have remained in its sublime prelapsarian state. We would never have fallen from grace and been banished from the Garden. As it is, the separation of the light from its source echoes not only the historical Jewish Diaspora but a kind of personal diaspora of the soul. These days we call it alienation. To gather those scattered sparks and return them to their original source, thereby heralding a messianic age, was the mission that Luria, known as the Ari, the Lion, assigned by order of his visionary authority to every Jew. By this act, called tikkun, the Jews themselves would assume the responsibility for perfecting the world. The recipe the Ari provided for recovering the sparks was simple; it was accomplished through mitzvot, that is, through study, prayer, and good works. There are worse ways to spend a life. But practically speaking, only a handful of saints had enough virtue to go the prayer and good works route. For the rest of the Jews there was study. By study I mean the traditional study of the Torah and its commentaries, an endeavor that had been underway long before the Ari consecrated its significance. Remember (and I use the word advisedly) that included in the knowledge the angel deletes from the mind of the newborn is a knowledge of the entirety of scripture—the very knowledge the angel had herself instilled in the child during its gestation. “Turn it and turn it again,” say the sages regarding the Torah, “for everything is in it.” If so, then the intimacy of the fetus with holy writ is consistent with the omniscience it enjoys in the womb. In the pursuit of that “everything” the Jews applied themselves assiduously to the study of the Torah and its commentaries throughout the centuries following the expulsion from the Holy Land. Thus their identification as People of the Book, the Book having become in essence the homeland of an otherwise peripatetic tribe. Their exclusive discipline of scriptural learning allowed the scholars to strike a balance: they could reside, so to speak,

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in two dimensions at once. There was the terrestrial sphere, the one that lay beyond the cracked windows of their tumbledown study houses in somebody else’s mother- or fatherland; the quotidian realm with its succession of exiles and persecutions and all the humiliations the flesh is heir to. Then there was the Book, whose archetypal narratives— though fraught with their own profound sorrows—allowed the Jews to view the earth from a celestial vantage. Its narratives gave shape and meaning to the contours of history. In fact, they provided all the history you needed to know, a mythic past complete unto itself and impervious to the depredations of time. Over the centuries, however, study became, rather than a means to attaining sanctity, an end in itself. It bred a culture defined and, in a sense, held hostage by the Book. One’s status in the community was determined by his (girls were excluded from study) prowess in the interpretation of texts. The cult of the Talmud prodigy, the illuy, was spawned— memory artists who could recite entire chapters and tractates of Mishnah and Gemara; stick a pin in a word on any page and they could tell you the precise word pierced on the page following that. Such geniuses were a prized commodity in the East European shtetls; every father wanted to snag one for his daughter’s spouse. Memory itself had become the paramount virtue, leaving study a more or less empty exercise. To borrow a trope from another folk motif: it was as if the generations of scholars had collectively abandoned a troubled earth to climb into the Bird’s Nest where Messiah awaits his own coming; they pulled up the ladder behind them and began waiting alongside him for his advent. But waiting is not an active enterprise, and having retreated into the Book, the generations forgot the higher purpose of study. They no longer sought, as the Ari had prescribed, to rescue the scattered sparks of divinity from their captivity in the husks of evil and repair the rift between heaven and earth. What rift? That task was largely forgotten, and its neglect constituted another iteration of the amnesia that, recalling the angel’s tweak, has afflicted us all from birth. To be sure, there were reactions to this academic species of Judaism. There was the Hasidic movement of the eighteenth century, which favored an ecstatic celebration of the Divine Presence over study, and Hasidism’s polar opposite, the nineteenth-century Haskalah movement. Haskalah was, in effect, the Jewish Enlightenment, the European Enlightenment having been a late arrival to the shtetl. The maskilim, the educators, had taken it upon themselves to introduce the Jews to secular learning. Pied-Piper-like, they sought to entice the shtetl folk out of their sovereign Book and into the company of books whose disciplines made no claim to holiness. For the first time since the religion’s inception, historians began to appear among the Jews: history, it seemed, involved more than just recounting the fabled origins of the Covenant and the Tablets of the Law. Writers of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, the Science of Judaism, such as Leopold Zunz and Heinrich Graetz, presented in their works a rational, sensible, even progressive version of Judaism. This was a religion divested of folk beliefs, its prodigious mystical component reduced to a small, almost apologetic chapter in the long historical narrative. About such figures as the Ari and his crackpot theory of Creation, or legends about wisdom learned in the womb, the less said the better. Here was a Judaism sanitized of superstition and made suitable for close inspection by the goyim. With growing disillusionment the yeshivah scholars exchanged their studies for an embrace of Zionism and Revolution. An impatient generation that now had no intention of waiting for Messiah, they would preempt his coming by perfecting the world through politics and a return to the Land. For the oldschool Jew still clinging to tradition, all of this meant a widening of the storied rift between heaven and earth—it was now a yawning chasm.

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Gershom Scholem, who devoted his life to recovering a lost heritage, cites this parable at the end of his masterwork Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism: When the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, was confounded or distressed, he would go to a place in the forest, light a fire, say a prayer, and receive enlightenment. His nephew followed his example—he entered the forest, lit the fire, but found he’d forgotten the prayer. But he decided it was enough just to be there. The nephew’s son would go into the forest too, only to realize that he’d forgotten the prayer and hadn’t a clue how to light a fire. But again, just to be in that sacred place in the forest was enough. The next generation, however, can’t even find the forest, never mind light a fire and recall a long-lost prayer. But they remember the story of the forest, the fire, and the prayer, and that must be sufficient. (349–50) My worry: that subsequent generations will no longer even remember the story. The first of my own stories that I set on a resurrected North Main Street in the Pinch was about an irascible old man who, despite a laundry list of geriatric complaints, is too obstinate to die. In the end he’s dragged off to Paradise by a frustrated Malech Hamovess, the Angel of Death, while still alive. Clever, I thought. But in those days I was practically tabula rasa; I knew nothing of the mystical element in Judaism and the hermetic texts that had given rise to it. I had, however, learned something of the superstitions the immigrants had imported to the Pinch along with their featherbeds and menorahs, and intrigued, I did some homework. I discovered that the antiseptic religion I’d grown up in had been keeping a secret from me all those years—namely, its magical dimension. In a literature I hadn’t even known existed I found Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz, another stubborn, death-defying old party who cons the angel into admitting him into Paradise alive. There was Serah bat Asher, a cousin of Moses and prototype of the Wandering Jew, who manages to survive from the time of the Exodus into the Middle Ages before being taken into the Upper Eden still kicking. There was the prophet Elijah who ascends to heaven deathless in a fiery chariot and returns to earth in a variety of disguises to meddle in human affairs. And Enoch, who receives only a passing mention in Genesis (“He walked with God and was not …”) but launched whole volumes of mystical lore. He was a cobbler who for his righteousness was translated into Paradise alive, where he became the archangel Metatron who sits at God’s right hand. And these were the generations of my story…. So maybe I wasn’t so clever after all. Nothing in the lackluster character of the religion I knew had prepared me for this late enthusiasm for a hidden tradition, or anyway a tradition that had been hidden from me. “We can’t renew our former strength,” said the nineteenth-century fabulist Nachman of Bratslav (Schwartz 27), speaking I assume of the power antiquity had drawn from living so close to its original myths. “We can’t renew our strength, but we do retain an imprint of those former times, and that in itself is very great.” I felt that in writing my story I had instinctively retraced the contours of Nachman’s “imprint.” The act reverberated in my skull like a tolling bell. If myth takes place in a timeless realm outside of history, I reasoned, then folklore (and by then I considered myself an amateur folklorist) blurs the distinction between the historical and the universal; it occupies a familiar place—a ghetto, say, in Prague or Memphis—whose boundaries may extend beyond the common conventions of reality. In this way a mundane story can aspire to myth. So I began to use the old folk narratives as templates for my tales of ordinary people. I borrowed stock

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characters from the Yiddish repertoire: shopkeepers, artisans, wise men and women, the village idiot (shtot meshugener), rabbis, students. They mingled freely with demons and imps (sheydim and mazikim), wandering souls (dybbuks), hidden saints (lamed vov tzadikkim), and golems. It was a program by which I meant to fashion containers in time to hold a timeless content. Wasn’t that what good stories were supposed to do? It would be pretty to think that what I’d done constituted a successful salvaging operation: I redeemed an extinct community and transplanted the culture of Yiddishkeit to modernday Tennessee. But the marriage of the old folk magic to our current environment is fated to be an imperfect union. Well-intentioned as is the alliance, in practice it may not extend the bounds of the possible so much as subvert them; it may not so much restore the tradition as distort it. And to be honest, I sometimes wonder if that was my intention. “There is a crack in everything,” sang Leonard Cohen, “that’s how the light gets in.” In my case, I fear the opposite is true. Try to confine the old archetypes to artificial new containers and the containers can burst from the overload. Then whatever light the story holds will bleed out like the primordial light from God’s cracked vessels. Whatever glimmer of essential meaning a narrative might have spills into the material world where magic, having no currency, evaporates in the face of the matter-of-fact. After decades of living in and around the reimagined Pinch, I often feel I’ve joined the ranks of Kafka’s ghosts of a vanished age. Which brings me to the legend of the omniscient fetus. Remember (that word again) that the wisdom the child receives in the womb, and is ultimately made to forget, is two-fold. There’s the memory of the celestial Garden, back when the soul rambled free of its captivity in the body, and the memory of the entire arc of history—all of which is included in Torah. But another way of looking at the perfect balance of that prenatal state is that it was not so perfect in the first place: the two strains of memory are perhaps not so compatible after all. The tension between them recapitulates the tension between earth and heaven—or the material and the spiritual, history and myth, time and eternity, and—as living myth has retreated into metaphor and metaphor into psychology—Sigmund Freud’s pairing of eros and death. I think of the tension between the biblical twins Jacob and Esau quarreling in Rebecca’s womb. It’s a tension that metastasized in our own blood and bones, and even though we may have lost an awareness of its origin, continues to resonate within us after we’re born. My guess is that in the early years of our species that tension increased to a full-blown conflict; that over time the conflict drove a wedge between the poles of our consciousness. This is another way of describing the estrangement from ourselves we call alienation. These days the poles are so far apart that neither seems to be on speaking terms with the other. In the Bible Jacob and Esau are finally reconciled, but efforts to reconcile the dual extremes of our psyche are now viewed as frankly absurd. (Absurdity was the watchword of the post-modern predicament, but here in the post-post-modern, we’re beyond absurdity, wherever that is.) And still holy writ has the temerity to say, “God and man are twins.” Albeit unidentical. Kafka again—his parable called “Paradise”: He is a free and secure citizen of the world, for he is fettered to a chain which is long enough to give him the freedom of all earthly space, and yet only so long that nothing can drag him past the frontiers of the world. But simultaneously he is a free and secure citizen of Heaven as well, for he is also fettered by a similarly designed heavenly chain. So if he heads, say, for the earth, his heavenly collar throttles him, and if he heads for Heaven, his earthly one does the same. And yet all the possibilities are his, and he feels it; more, he actually refuses to account for the deadlock by an error in the original fettering. (463)

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Some might say we’ve been wearing those chains so long that we’re no longer even aware of their existence. Or maybe they’ve rusted away, leaving us in a free-floating limbo, effectively citizens of nowhere. In a novel aptly entitled The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera reasserts the comfortless view from Kafka’s perspective: Time in Kafka’s novel [The Trial] is the time of a humanity that has lost all continuity with humanity, of a humanity that no longer knows anything nor remembers anything, that lives in nameless cities or streets different from the ones they had yesterday, because a name means continuity with the past, and people without a past are people without a name. (157) That’s quite a disheartening description of the alienation for which Kafka struck the primary chord. It speaks to my own anxiety about our having forgotten the story of the forest, fire, and prayer that was “sufficient.” A story about having forgotten the story is hardly sufficient, although it might evoke a poignant longing which must now be enough. I left out an important piece in tracing the experience of the Jews from their indwelling in the Book to their exile from it. There was a counter-reaction to the reaction that produced the generation of revolutionaries and the maskilim. It came in the form of a desire on the part of an emerging cohort of literary artists to preserve a quickly disintegrating culture. Their motive was not your common or garden nostalgia, but was more akin to the pain of longing at the root of the word’s original definition. Because even in the eyes of the disaffected, the culture still reverberated in the blood. Understand that, other than the Torah-inspired flights of fancy envisioned by the rabbis in their commentaries, there had been no imaginative literature among the Jews. There was an oral tradition, a folklore relating the deeds of wonder rabbis or the miraculous visitations of the prophet Elijah, but no novels or short stories, no men of letters beyond the scribes. Then suddenly toward the end of the nineteenth century a host of impassioned virtuosos appeared on the scene. There was the triumvirate of Sholem Aleichem, I. L. Peretz, and Mendele Mocher Seforim, educated and worldly men nevertheless bent on recapturing the life of the shtetl in order to restore its distinctly Yiddish vitality to an increasingly deracinated population. Then came a second generation of writers like Moshe Kulbak and Itzik Manger, whose Book of Paradise chronicles the adventures of Shmuel-Aba, who eluded the angel and managed to be born without receiving the amnesia-inducing tweak under the nose. But tragically, that extraordinary confluence of talents was in large part snuffed out at the height of its fluorescence, its flame extinguished almost as abruptly as it was kindled. If modernity had sounded the death knell, the Holocaust delivered the coup de grace to the culture of Yiddishkeit, widening the chasm between heaven and earth and all that metaphor entails to perhaps an unbridgeable abyss. It would be foolish at this point to ask what had become of the search for the Ari’s scattered sparks of the divine. In the beginning, or so I imagine, they were hidden in plain sight, like a father might hide the afikomen at Passover. Then after the Shoah those sparks were buried so deep under the rubble of a lost culture that an archeologist (let alone a scholar) would have no idea where to begin their excavation. That is, if they were even moved to dig. Kafka didn’t live to witness the enormities of the Second World War (his sisters were not so lucky), but it’s become almost a cliché to read their anticipation in his work. His themes still characterize our historical moment. In his well-known “Before the Law”

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parable Kafka tells the story of the man from the country, who spends his whole life waiting to enter the Palace of the Law (3). (For Law, you might read something like the truth of one’s essential self, although no analogue does complete justice to the notion.) The man is too timid to ask admittance to the Palace from the formidable doorkeeper, who tells him at the end of his days: “This entrance was assigned only for you. And now, I am going to close it” (3). With that pronouncement Kafka also seemed to slam the door for subsequent generations on our faith in an access to that primal knowledge; he effectively sentenced much of the literature that followed to repeating variations ad nauseam on the theme of alienation. The doorkeeper has the last word. Since Kafka, our most iconic literary landscapes have been largely godforsaken: think of T. S. Eliot’s “Wasteland” or the leafless tree beside which Vladimir and Estragon await, instead of Messiah, a Godot who never comes. It has had to be enough in these latter years to dwell in such landscapes longing for a time when “the Law” was accessible. Longing has become our heritage. Which is not to say that we don’t still feel the phantom tug of Kafka’s fetters, the ones that attach us equally to heaven and earth. In his diary Kafka declared somewhat audaciously, “I am a memory come alive” (Diaries 50). Recall that this is the same Kafka who also claimed that the demolished Prague ghetto still lives in us all. The city fathers had liquidated that unsavory quarter in the same way the German-Jewish bourgeoisie tried to dissolve their connection to the more conspicuous brand of Judaism the ghetto represented. “Be a man in the street, a Jew at home” was their motto, never mind the schizophrenia that attitude invited. They deplored the shabby Yiddish-speaking Ostjuden, whose society Kafka would come to champion. He went so far as to befriend a ragged troupe of Yiddish actors (“Lie down with dogs and you get up with fleas,” sneered his father [Pawel 97]) and to introduce their performance at a local venue. “People of Prague,” he declared in an uncharacteristic public homily, “you know more Yiddish than you think” (Pawel 102). Which suggests that Franz Kafka was himself not immune to memories in the blood. He was, however, ignorant of Kabbalah; it would be some time before Gershom Scholem single-handedly unearthed that tradition. Yet Scholem would say of him: “I found in Kafka the most perfect and unsurpassed expression of the fine line between religion and nihilism, an expression which, as a secular statement of the kabbalistic world-feeling in the modern spirit, seemed to me to wrap his writings in a halo of the canonical” (Biale 32). The concept of a secular mysticism identifies the paradox at the heart of Kafka’s work, and elsewhere in his diary Kafka himself speaks of an order of writing that would develop into “a new secret doctrine, a Kabbalah. Though of course it would require genius of an unimaginable kind to strike root again in the old centuries, or create the old centuries anew …” (Janouch 48). Some might say that Kafka himself was that genius. At the very least he gave voice through his vision to a soul-deep longing for what is lost and wants desperately to be retrieved. “A widely accepted belief of the later Kabbalah,” writes Scholem, “states that Torah reveals to each individual a particular aspect meant for him and understood by him alone. Thus, each Jew actually realizes his [or her] own destiny only by perceiving the aspect meant specifically for him and integrating it into tradition” (Messianic Idea 297). (Said the doorkeeper: “This entrance was assigned only for you.”) “In the Messianic Age,” adds Scholem, “every single man [and woman] in Israel will read the Torah in keeping with the meaning peculiar to his root. This is also the way Torah is understood in Paradise” (On Kabbalah 65). And also, I would add, under the tutelage of the angel in the womb. Kafka would not have been familiar with this notion. Yet even as he evoked the impossibility of

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an intimate connection to the Law, he could not avoid the irony of conjuring at the same time the defining myths of the tribe. If not referencing the Covenant itself, he sounded everywhere in his work adumbrations of the Covenant, and I would submit that this paradox—his inescapable habit of expressing alienation in the language of midrash, of faith—is the engine that drives all of Kafka’s fiction. “We can’t renew our strength,” said Nachman of Bratslav, sometimes considered Kafka’s precursor if only for the inscrutability of his tales, “but we do retain an imprint of those former times” (Schwartz 35). Nachman’s “imprint” was most certainly stamped into Kafka’s imagination. There’s a fragment of an aborted story in his diaries clearly set in the old Jewish quarter of Prague, where a rabbi is making a golem to protect his people from the usual threats. He performs this work in full view of the diverse activities of the community, kneading his clay creature in a washtub with “his sleeves rolled up like a washerwoman” (Diaries 88). One can only guess why Kafka never completed the story. Maybe he identified with the futility of the rabbi’s enterprise: what golem, regardless of his strength, could stand a chance against what the future held in store for the Jews, or mankind for that matter? But in my mind the unfinished tale has more to do with the sanctity of the rabbi’s task. It was after all a public task, inspired by and in service to the community. Yet the holy magic able to quicken inanimate matter figures nowhere in Kafka’s inhospitable universe, nor even perhaps in the rabbi’s ramshackle slum. Echoes of a mythic past resound in Kafka’s work sometimes as loudly as the myth’s original utterance. It may be just coincidence that both Kafka (“I am a memory come alive”) and Nachman (“I have hidden the secret of summoning the Messiah in my stories” [Schwartz 106]) asked that their fictions be destroyed upon their deaths. But I still can’t help wondering why. Was it an impulse like that of the Angel of Forgetfulness to protect future generations from the pain of remembering? Did they intend to turn their prophetic truths back into amnesiac dreams? Whatever the case, we deem it fortunate that they were both betrayed, Kafka by his close friend Max Brod and Nachman by his scribe Nathan, who preserved his tales. Nathan is incidentally the scribe at whom Nachman scoffed as he dictated his stories, “If only you knew what you write!” “Surely I don’t know,” said the humble Nathan, to which the not so humble Nachman replied, “You don’t even know how much you don’t know” (Schwartz 57). I can’t begin to fathom the magnitude of that unknown knowledge. Of course there’s some consolation in not knowing, in being spared the pain of remembering. It’s not surprising that the ancient biblical injunction Zakhor! has its homelier Yiddish corollary in the curse: Zolstu krenken un gedenken, you should sicken and remember—as if memory were itself a symptom of a disease. Certainly it is a burden, though one we have largely shirked. We’ve got enough on our plate already, what with alternating our worries between the death of democracy and the death of the planet. Who wants to add to all that weltschmerz the combined weight of both the costumed and naked truths of the ages? Never mind the responsibility all those memories imply. Isaac Luria again: “Man is not the only end of creation, nor is his dominion limited to this world alone, but on him depends the perfection of the higher worlds, and of God himself” (Neumann 119). An onerous task. No wonder a passage in Talmud repines that it’s maybe better never to have been born. (The caustic Jewish rejoinder: “But who is so fortunate? Not one in a thousand.”) The kabbalists used to insist that their initiates, before commencing an indepth study, should first have a wife, a minimum of forty years, and a respectable paunch. These attributes were meant to serve as a kind of counter-weight against the student’s being literally carried away in his spiritual transports. (See the cautionary tale of “The

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Four Who Entered Paradise”: One lost his life, another his mind, another his faith, and only the blessed Akiva returned unharmed.) In most cases, however, the weight of family, years, and spare tire is anchor enough to make the ascent to the realm of the absolute impracticable. Circumstances have so moored us to the material world that the spiritual sometimes no longer seems an option, or even a temptation. In former times it was the tzaddik, the saint or shaman, that attempted such ascents. The goal for them was what it has always been, to find that which has been lost since birth—the wisdom taught by the angel, the memory of Paradise—and restore it to man. But tzaddiks and saints are in short supply these days, and I wonder if we’re equipped or even inclined to receive the tidings they might bring back from their intrepid travels. It’s been the mission of religion over time to translate history back into myth, but the abuses and hypocrisies of religious practice have often diluted the process. Many of us, if we’ve looked at all, have looked to the secular sphere for that reconnection. The social philosopher William Irwin Thompson maintains that: The power of myth is so strong in challenging our racial amnesia that priests [and rabbis] respond with exaggerated fury, and the myth is pushed out of religion into fairy tales, children’s songs, and the work of heretical artists. (12) Kafka is certainly one of those heretics, as is, after his fashion, Sigmund Freud. Like a latter day incarnation of the dream-interpreter Joseph, Freud declares of collective memory: There probably exists in the life of the individual not only what he has experienced himself, but also what he brought with him at birth, fragments of phylogenetic origin, an archaic heritage …. In fact, it seems to me convincing enough to venture further and assert that the archaic heritage of man includes not only dispositions, but also ideational contents, memory traces of the experiences of former generations …. We must conclude that mental residue of those primeval times has become a heritage which, with each generation, needs to be reawakened. (170) Freud’s colleague Carl Jung discovers a less joyless version of Freud’s principle in the sixteenth-century sage Paracelsus: In every human being there is a special heaven, whole and unbroken. For a child which is being conceived already has his heaven. As the great heaven stands, so is it imprinted at birth. (22) Rebbe Nachman had this take on the age-old conundrum: “The Book of Genesis says that God created light on the first day, the sun on the fourth. What light existed before the sun? The tradition says this was the spiritual light, and God hid it for future use. Where was it hidden? In the stories of Torah” (Schwartz 250). This would be the light that renders those stories timeless, perennial, and authentic. But it’s a long way from Rebbe Nachman, who lived in intimacy with Torah, to Franz Kafka, who lived in exile from it—a condition Kafka expressed so starkly through his longing for proximity to

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“the Law.” There’s a variant of the legend of the Angel of Forgetfulness that recounts the creation of Adam. In it the patriarch is provided with a light from an angel that allows him to see everything at once: he sees the whole of his own life as well as the history of the world from beginning to end. Then the angel who presented the gift, intending either to relieve Adam of that staggering vision or simply to preserve it for God himself, revokes the light, and Adam forgets all he’s seen. However, as nothing in Jewish lore is unrecyclable, the light, according to Nachman, was never extinguished. Blithely confusing it with the light that preceded the sun, he claims that it too was hidden in the stories of Torah. Nachman also said that, by extracting a tincture of that sublime light for his fables, he could show his disciples how the people once were happy. Since when were the people happy? Maybe before they were born. Again, it’s a long way from Nachman to Kafka, and happiness was not a sentiment the latter was known to trade in. His message was more urgent than Nachman’s. “A book,” Kafka famously insisted, “should be an axe to break the frozen sea within” (Diaries 63). Or a flame to melt it. A flame like the torch the angel used to tease Adam and all of the succeeding unborn with visions of eternity. To encounter such a light here at this darker end of creation could be blinding. You would have to slam shut that impossible book, extinguishing the flame and scattering sparks in the process. Those dying embers, however, might continue to illumine the night with a firefly flickering that warms the soul—and that leftover warmth should be sufficient; it’s all we need here on earth. So what could possibly compel us to stir from our sweet inertia and chase after those sparks like children chasing glowworms? And why, when they’re captured, continue to fan them like crazy in the hope of reviving a flame that allows us to view the earth, in all its manifest beauty and terror, from the vantage of Paradise?

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Disappearer DINA GUIDUBALDI

For two weeks now I’ve been sleeping between billboards that stretch like wings over the colorful backbone of South Congress Avenue. Between them is a wide, strong plank, bigger than my side of the bed back home. Mornings I wake to see the sun patting the crown of the capitol building a mile away, smooching the granite towers pink. When I first arrived in town I’d been amazed by the colors; I was used to gray and silver cities on the banks of one long brown river that curled through the northeast like a rat’s tail. I was used to puffy coats and dirty gloves, to drinking and smoking my way from November to May. Down here the sun is yellow, not white, the river green, the buildings golden. The people wear shorts and tank tops and are baked to the color of biscuits. I jog and order smoothies instead of smoking Camels and chugging beer. But despite all that, here I am between these billboards. One is for a telecommunications company and depicts a cell phone floating angelically past a field of bluebonnets and into the waiting hands of a slender brunette. It reads: Now the world is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. The ad is supposed to be comforting but it rattles my bones. I like to think I can vanish whenever I want to in this world. I’d prefer to barely fit in the palm of its hand. In fact, I take the ad personally because I have the same phone, and my mother tries to call me on it at least once a day. She thinks I’m still living with my husband up the road; she thinks things are fine. The other ad I like much better, and it’s toward this one that I turn each night in my sleep. It’s for an old barbecue joint downtown and just has some orange habanero smears against a red and white checkered chuckwagon tablecloth and says: Messy’s Good. That about sums it up. Once when I was in high school I left home and went to live in an abandoned house. It was in my parents’ neighborhood, but they had no idea; they thought I was staying with my best friend Kate across town. The house was actually a mansion, with a corpsecolored marble staircase, three Jacuzzi baths, four bedrooms with real fireplaces, a pool clogged with dead leaves, long hallways lined with dusty red carpet. The Jacuzzis didn’t bubble, of course, no electricity, but the toilets managed to flush and at nights I read by the light of a kerosene lamp I’d found in the garage. In addition to the faded opulence, the house had a story behind it: the owners, the Mallants, had lived there uneventfully for twenty years before they sat down one Wednesday to their usual liver and onions. Mr. Mallant took a big bite, rolled his eyes toward heaven, and Mrs. Mallant, aged 55, shot him right where he smiled. Then, in the literal dead of night, she packed her stuff into one flowered plastic suitcase, locked the house, dumped the body in the sand quarry on her way out of town, and flew out to Vegas to dance at an off-Strip burlesque house, which had apparently always been her dream.

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I understood Mrs. Mallant, and even, a little bit, Mr. Mallant. I felt them often while I was living in their house and tracing my finger along what I presumed was the swirled bloodstain on their kitchen wall, a dim spray that looked like an infinitesimal winecolored version of the Milky Way. I did laps with their spirits in the murky pool, chased them down the marble staircase, toasted marshmallows and hot dogs with them in the fireplace. And nights when I fell asleep reading, they must have turned out the Coleman lamp for me, since every morning when I woke the flame had died but there was still plenty of fuel left. Eventually, though, it was their sad and restless presence that urged me to go back home. Now, at four a.m. when Congress is quiet as a monk, I see them walking past the shops, arms intertwined. They stop at the Toy Emporium and Mr. Mallant points to the vintage tin wind-up cars, his mouth full of old blood that shines beneath the streetlights. His wife, her charcoaled eyes alert with purpose, tugs him away. They teeter past T-shirt shops, all-day bistros with chalkboard menus, stores selling expensive disappearing soaps. She stops every few paces to yank up her fishnets. They are dead, they are happy. I am sleepy and confused. My own husband and I have a more typical tale. No one tells a story about us. We met at a party back in grad school a couple towns south of here. He’d been watching me eat. Apparently, I’d had too many shots of Jägermeister and was diving into the guacamole, green slop all over my face. He said I was eating like a starving Fury, in fast forward, and that I was beautiful because I didn’t care. I was glowing, he claims, with tortilla chips crushed in both hands and my hair crusted with sour cream. I don’t remember any of this but maybe that’s why I like the barbecue billboard. Maybe that’s why I believe things can be messy but good, why the Mallants seem fine to me, why I am in no hurry to run home, take a shower, iron my oxford shirts and skirts, apologize to the injured parties and get ready for work tomorrow. Maybe that’s why I’m here. Another reason, though, is I’ve forgotten my husband’s name. This is something wives aren’t supposed to do. I’m almost positive it’s Stephen, but sometimes I think it could be Michael or David. Or Louis, even. Maybe it’s a fugue of some sort, though I wasn’t hit on the head and haven’t had a bad trip since undergrad. My husband, when I try to recall him, seems to be a mixture of different men I’ve known, he seems to be no one. I can’t remember his face as a whole entity, but (I think?) I remember the way one eye winks more than the other when he smiles, like he’s had a tiny stroke. It’s that eye I dream about sometimes up here. I see it in the sky, and ninety percent of the time it’s benign but the other ten percent it’s sinister, sly, malicious, an eye you’d see too close up in a Kubrick movie. I do however remember the name of the woman I’m pretty sure my husband is having an affair with: Susan. We work together at the paper. I often see her driving by; she keeps her windows down and plays the light rock station, her hair trailing in the breeze. I sometimes call out to her, but she never hears me. People aren’t used to listening to voices coming from above them. Now it’s 6:30 in the morning and there what’s-his-name goes, off to work at his software company, in my car, an old Volvo wagon. Though I crane my neck, I can’t see his face; if I could things might return to normal, I might be possessed to go home again. I wonder if Susan is asleep in my bed, if she’s up for getting some coffee with me. I doubt it. She oozes guilt, and who knows what else, whenever she’s with me, though she doesn’t know I know, or I don’t know if she knows I know. So I climb down, head back through the alley and to the Morning Glory Diner.

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Ryan, whose name I also remember, gets me three little espressos, my morning soldiers, right away. “How goes it?” he asks. He’s cute, and young. His hair is green with black roots and he has tattoos of exotic fruit all over his arms. “Good, thanks.” “Getting more sleep?” “No,” I say. “But then I kinda enjoy being awake at four in the morning, you know? Like it’s the start of something?” “Not good.” He pretends to withhold my cup. “Maybe I should get you off the sauce.” “Tomorrow, maybe.” Ten minutes later he brings me my banana-nut pancakes. “So,” he says, sitting down across from me even though the impatient breakfast crowd is staggering in, newspapers raised and rolled as if to swat away the future, beat back the past. “What are you doing tonight?” What am I doing tonight? Since I’ve been sleeping in the air, my schedule has been pretty fixed. I spend the days at the library, take showers in the sprinklers in the park or at the local swimming pool in the evenings, then I take a nap or read. At midnight I get up and watch the city sleeping like I’m on guard, I don’t know for what. “Reading a book about Jung.” It’s true; it’s taking me a while to get through. “Maybe I’ll stop by?” Ryan, this lychee-imprinted waiter who I’ve hung out with maybe three times in my life, is the only person who knows where I am. My mother thinks I’m at home, my husband thinks I’m at Kate’s place in New Orleans, my boss thinks I’m writing a piece on the vanishing wildlife of Galveston Bay. I know any minute now these different stories will clash and make for one confusing situation, but I’ll be safely between my billboards when they do. It’s getting hard to answer the phone though. I never know who it will be, which plot I’ll have to add to. “Sure,” I say, “just remember the knock.” I mean on the pole that supports the signs; if I hear Ryan coming and don’t know it’s him, I’ll slip away down the opposite ladder. I figure I’ve got the best billboard set up in town. The plank I sleep on is big enough for a milk crate that I use as a nightstand, my sleeping bag, and my duffel bag of clothes. I hang my bathing suit from some struts and it dries in minutes. I have a lantern that gives enough light to read by but not enough to see from the street. The billboards keep the wind out, and the alley I climb down into is behind an antique store whose owner is always hungover and so the place is always closed. It’s dark and tucked away, and—the best part—there’s a port-o-potty very conveniently at a construction site less than a block away. I’m set; it’s even better than when I stayed at the Mallants, since that was too lonely, and here I can people-watch. I had the place staked out before the whole thing with my husband and Susan; it caught my eye because it reminded me of the tree house I never had growing up. I leave the diner and go for a walk in the park nearby. The air is thick as a lake and I don’t walk so much as breaststroke through it. The leaves in this city, at this time of year, seem artificial and the grass is crunchy, stabbing me through my flip flops. I stop on a bench to read the alternative weekly, the one I work for. It’s the usual snotty film reviews, the same interviews with local musicians, a typical story on a small bout of political corruption. Since I’m on a semi-vacation in Galveston Bay I don’t have any articles in this issue, though my name is there, high up on the editorial list. I turn to the Shot in the Dark section, where people try to get the attention of someone they saw last week who very likely didn’t notice them at all. I saw you at the Diamond Shamrock on 6th street, was

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dazzled by your eyes, you said hello as I was pumping. Want to pump something else? Call #3345. But usually they aren’t that crass: I was buying granola, you were getting basmati rice. I offered to buy you coffee, you said another time. Did you mean it? Call #4401. Sometimes they’re downright melancholy. Kay, I’m sorry I left you that night. I’ve spent ten years wishing I hadn’t. If you still work at the bookstore, call me #7822. I don’t know why I like these sad little ads, squashed hopelessly in the back page between the women seeking women and the musicians seeking drummers; I guess I secretly wish that someone from my past will write in about my blue eyes he never forgot and there it will be, a bright neon EXIT sign hanging over this life of mine, illuminating the way to the next one. But instead the phone rings and I make the mistake of picking it up. “Where are you?” It’s Tommy, my boss. “Mustang Island,” I say. “Watching the last of the wild horses. They’re not frightened of people, that’s for sure.” “I need you back here to do a story on that church they’re opening on the east side, the one with all the little bronze shrines.” “The Milagro Chapel?” “Yeah, that’s it. Susan can’t do it, she’s been busy.” “I bet. Well, I can’t either Tommy, I just ate a huge ass po-boy and all I wanna do is lie here on this beach and get tan.” I squint up at the sun, and picture Tommy in his tidy gray office, looking out the window at the same sun and imagining me elsewhere. “When are you coming back?” “Soon?” I put it like a question I’m asking myself. Across the street, two children are on their way home for lunch, carrying twin backpacks made of bright yellow vinyl. One stops to look at some kind of nut on the ground and the other bends to watch. The first one throws the brown whatever it is, dog shit for all I know, high up toward the telephone line. It lands far away from them both. “How’s the po-boy?” “Fucking great. The dorado’s fresh, and they put this great herby mayo all over it. And the margaritas: way better than at Papa’s.” Tommy is quiet. He takes me to Papa’s for lunch at least once a week, and likes to think nothing can compare. My husband thinks Tommy is in love with me, and maybe he is, in his fussy hair-gelled, CrossFit way. “Come back,” he says now. I scratch my nails over the phone. “Tommy, the reception’s going—there’s this big storm coming up. The water’s all glassy and weird.” I skim my breath against the mouthpiece like I’ve got a conch shell. “Can you hear me? I’ll try to call soon.” I decide to go for an early swim, all the talk of the ocean’s making me yearn for something like it. The pool is deserted now; kids in school and their parents at work. A few college students are scattered across the patch of grass, tattoos climbing out of and into their bathing suits. No one I know comes here, which is the point. I can move in big enough circles in this town to never see anyone twice unless I want to. Although, I have to admit, I like seeing Ryan every morning; he’s as reassuring as the solid lines painted beneath me in the lap lanes. I swim back and forth, and wish I really were in some ocean, somewhere with water less chlorinated. My eyes sting even though I’m wearing goggles. I climb out and lay face up, figuring if I ever go back to work I’ll need to look tanned, like I’ve been on a real beach. My phone rings again and this time it’s Kate. “Where the hell are you?”

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Kate is the only one I don’t have an excuse for, but I figure the person she’s most likely to be in contact with is my mother, who thinks I’m at my own house, so I tell her the truth. “At the pool by my place.” “Liar.” “I am, listen.” I hold up the phone so she can hear the lifeguard’s whistle. “See, it’s break.” “Well, your oblivious husband called last night wanting to talk to you and I had to say you’d gone to get some milk.” “Who called?” I fish. “Your gentleman savior.” “That’s funny, because I did go get some milk. Cashew.” “Oh, stop it,” Kate says. “What now?” she wants to know. “Nothing now,” I say, and it’s the truth. I go to my billboards to take a nap and I dream once again of the Mallants. They stand with their hands held out to me, begging for something. “But I don’t have it,” I tell them, and they believe me and turn away. Ryan comes over when he gets off work. He climbs up to bring me a chicken sandwich with blue cheese and a side of pepper fries. We go for a walk through the alleys and weave our way between the million-dollar shacks. Styrofoam cups glow like sea creatures in the gloaming. I am nearly ten years older than Ryan, but tonight I feel younger, I feel like the air is throbbing with possibilities, the kind that are available only to the very young and foolish. Or maybe they’re available to everyone, but only the very young and foolish know how to spot them, have the right kind of eyes for that. Ryan puts an arm around my shoulders as if he’s afraid I’ll fall or break into a run. I let him but don’t know what to do next. “You smell like a hamburger,” I say. “You smell like a pool.” We walk past a wall full of black and white flyers advertising shows around town. “Listen,” he says. “Why don’t you come stay with me for a while, until you figure out what you’re doing? We have an extra room in back that I use for a studio, I can clean it up for you easy.” “I have a home,” I say, unsure of which one I mean. “But you can’t stay there forever. What will you do when it rains?” That’s a good point, actually. The rains haven’t started yet but when they do they’ll be hot and heavy, like Mickey Rourke or whoever’s the new version of him. They won’t let up. Ryan steers me in the direction of his house, which I’ve been to once before, last week when I was walking past and he invited me to a barbeque. His roommates nod when I come in and resume playing their video games. A girl with dusty black dreadlocks smokes a clove cigarette and has her face tattooed like a clown. She looks exaggeratedly sad all the time. She presses a button and there goes the world. When she cackles, her red mouth droops. Ryan and I sit in lawn chairs in the back yard. He lights a tiki torch and hands me a coconut rum and coke. “I saw your husband today,” he says. “If he’s that guy you used to come in with for dinner sometimes. He came in to buy a paper.” “Did he ask about me?”

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“No, why would he? Doesn’t he think you’re in New Orleans?” “But if he knew me,” I said, “he would have asked. We’ve been married for eleven years. He should know I’m not in New Orleans. It’s just he’s too busy fucking around.” “Stupid man,” Ryan says, and I have to agree. I scratch a bite on my leg. “Did you get his name, by any chance?” I wake up on Ryan’s lawn under a blanket, citronella candles burning in a strategic ring around my body. Ryan is nearby, wrapped in his coat and snoring heedlessly through a blocked nostril. His head presses deep into the crab grass. I could go to him, lie down and let him hold me all night, but I don’t want to, not really. Instead I sneak away through the stars. I miss the comfort of my billboard, and a few blocks later there it is, shining red, smeared and ugly. The Mallants are waiting in front of it, they wave to me and slip down the ladder. “Thanks,” I say to them for keeping my spot safe, and they nod and float off toward downtown, not wanting to violate the rules of the dead in regard to speaking with the living. “Shh,” I say, and they turn back briefly to give me two tolerant smiles. The next day my mother calls just as dawn is tearing itself open on the twisted live oaks, when I’m already awake and debating whether to get coffee or change up my pattern. “Why are you up so early,” she wants to know. “Why’d you call if you thought I might be asleep?” “I’m coming to visit.” “When?” I say, alarmed. My mother lives in Sedona and could be here relatively soon. “In a week. We’ll go drive over to visit Kate. It’ll be a hoot.” “Alright.” At least I have a little time. “Tell that husband of yours we’re going to have a blow-out poker night.” “Tell who?” But she hangs up. I go to the diner and demand that Ryan give me my coffee, proper sleep be damned. He agrees only because he needs some himself; he stops at my table and sips from one of my cups in a way that’s getting a little too familiar. “Needs cream,” he says. “You’ll get an ulcer.” I scan the Shot in the Dark column: You were in the red Mustang, stopped next to my Jaguar at the Lamar light. We made eye contact, it felt right. Call me at #2213 if you agree. And: Kay, I’m waiting, waiting forever. #7822 “Some guy’s waiting forever,” I tell Ryan as he breezes past, balancing five egg-laden plates on his arms in a Seussian feat. “I know the feeling,” he says. I still wish someone would put something in about me: I looked up and saw you high above the city, thought you were an angel. Call if you want to know who I am. But who would I want to write that? No one I dated in high school. In college I had a slew of boyfriends, but we were all stoned so much I’d be surprised if any of us could recognize each other if we collided naked on the street. Ryan, of course, might write such a thing, but he is too young and would grow out of it. And then there’s my husband who, if I could remember him, would probably be the one I want. Maybe I should go home, talk about the cheating, how I’m mildly attracted to Ryan, clear the air of all the psychological dust motes that have been swarming my thoughts, blurring my perspective. I’ll say, Hey, what’s-your-name, sorry about all this but you know how I am, and then—

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“Oh thank goodness.” It’s Susan. I cast my eyes around for somewhere to hide but it’s too late, there’s nowhere. I slump down in the booth but realize how silly that is since she’s already making herself comfortable across from me, and then I sit up too straight. “Susan. How’s it going. Have some coffee.” Ryan walks by and I point to her. His eyes bug out behind her blond head. He knows the whole story, or the part of it I know. How I came home one night to find Susan and my husband on the couch, talking heatedly with their hands. How Susan wasn’t at work when she was supposed to be and neither was he. How I see her driving down my road in the mornings, looking tousled, thinking I’m away. “Tommy said you were in Galveston.” “Just got in.” “But your husband says you’re in New Orleans with a high school friend?” “I took a strange route,” I say, the subtext of which is: And why are you talking to my husband? “Can you do the whole Milagro Chapel piece?” Susan is rummaging through her purse, distracted. She comes up with a cell phone and makes a face at it. “I’m so utterly busy.” “Well,” I say, “I don’t know, I’m kind of having—” “An affair with Tommy?” “What? I’m certainly not.” This is a new twist, to hear such things from Susan. I want to explain irony to her, but she doesn’t seem to have the headspace. “That’s what I told your husband, it’s absurd, right? I stopped by one night to drop off that thing for you to look over, the piece on the mayor? I was on my way to my new house, which is almost finished, by the way, you’ve got to come see it—”here she skims through her phone and shows me; her house is apparently the construction site where my port-o-potty is—“and he started in about Tommy. Sat me down on the couch and started asking all manner of questions. I said hell, Tommy was probably in love with you but you were oblivious, right? I don’t know how you manage to be so insightful with your work when you spend your life in a cloud.” Susan laughs and her teeth gleam like knives. I don’t trust her for a second. Fortunately, Ryan walks by and pours coffee down her neck. She yelps, looks at her watch and bolts to the bathroom. “Thanks,” I tell him. “You just made yourself a big fat tip.” Back between my billboards I read Jung some more. He tells me that the modern man “stands upon a peak, or at the very edge of the world, the abyss of the future before him, above him the heavens, and below him the whole of mankind with a history that disappears in primeval mists” (196). Sure, Jung, I think. The mid-morning fog hugs me in its warm arms and turns me toward the city. I see the Mallants, waving from the long narrow bridge where the bats live, their outdated clothes in disarray, shoulder pads rumpled and collars up, their smiles full of encouragement. I call my mother back. “Do you recall the story of those sad Mallants?” I ask. “That old alcoholic and his Tupperware wife? Sure.” “It was so strange about them, wasn’t it?” “Strange? What’s strange, that the guy had a heart attack and the bird moved to Florida then keeled over less than a year later? I suppose, strange like everything else is strange.” “Heart attack?”

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“It was back when all those affairs were going on, maybe you were too young to remember, who knows what you picked up on. Your asshole father went up the road and chatted up the sexy EMT while they loaded him in the ambulance.” “I thought she shot him?” “Kathy Mallant? Shot Jimmy Mallant? Ha! Neither of them had the nerve. They found him in the garden, leaning on his rake. Not his hoe, Get it?” “I get it. Time to go. What’s-his-face just got home.” I throw my Jung all the way to the ground. “I know all about your little signs already,” I say, and the pages splay onto the pavement like a broken bird. I spend the rest of the morning staring at the blank wooden backside of the barbeque billboard, thinking maybe things aren’t as messy as I picture them, as I want them to be. I try to remember the long-ago chaos—vases flying, doors slamming, crazy things filled with awful words being passed around between my parents like poisoned jelly donuts. And after I’d gone to live at the Mallants and returned, those awful next six months where I got to watch them stomp and plod their way through to their own sloppy end. The rumors that chased me around town—my father’s secretary, their best friend, my junior high gym teacher—that seem to follow me always, even down here: the other people, the prettier people, the better people and the happier people. But the fighting and the screaming is muted now, and maybe instead—I look to the other sign—the world could fit in my hand, if I’d let it. Maybe I should scurry down and pick the Jung back up. My phone rings and rings—Kate, my mother, my husband (who is unfortunately listed on my phone only as “Husband,” which I already know), Tommy, Ryan: too many times. All day long I don’t answer. Clouds roll in and the sky fills up, swells with gray. Around rush hour, two men park around the corner from my billboards. They have buckets and coveralls and brushes. I scurry down the ladder and hide in the alley while they climb up and express surprise at my belongings. They run their blistered hands along my milk crate, move yesterday’s clothes nicely to the side, and begin their work of covering things up. I want to tell them to stop, to hold on a second, but I’m curious to see what takes the place of my BBQ sign. I crouch lower and wait. They smoke cigarettes with their legs dangling over the edge as the sun goes down over the storm-dark city, a red ball splashing into Town Lake. They talk—I can’t hear what, but I imagine about their lives, their families, how they want better jobs. Or maybe not. Maybe they are content, they like being up so high, changing the words the city sees, driving by later and saying—to their wives, their little children—“See, I put that up there, I did that yesterday.” Usually the Mallants come at this time of night, but tonight they stay away, perhaps because of the men, perhaps because I’m on to them now, the undrama of them, the lie that they weren’t. Finally the workers climb down and vanish in their truck and I risk walking around to the other side to see what it is they’ve put up. It’s just another cell phone sign, for a different company, and this one has the phone soaring through outer space, floating past the stars. It reads, in ominous capital letters, YOU CAN’T DISAPPEAR. As I read I think I’m crying awfully cold tears, the kind that would exist in a robot future where a sign like this goes up, but then I squint up and see it’s just rain. I thought it would be hard but it’s easy. I climb up, pack my things and walk home. My husband is sitting on the couch, alone with a loosened tie and what looks like a stiff drink—it’s brown and has a fancy square

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ice cube in it, just one. He stands and buries his head in my neck. He doesn’t seem to care that I’m soaking wet. “It’s you,” he says, smiling so hard both of his eyes tear. “I thought you ran away for good this time.” “It’s me,” I say, rubbing his back in circles, pressing my cheek into his hair, remembering, feeling so stupid and sorry. “It’s you.” Yesterday I finally went to the Milagro Chapel. The place—an old wooden shanty on the east side, paint peeling, lantanas going bananas—was filled to the ceilings with little marvels, tiny miraculous things I had to bend down and peek into. A woman in a black fringed scarf guarded the door and brought me water crammed with green limones. I investigated the shrines, festooned with brass eyes and ears and noses, lined with scraps of wallpaper and dotted with paint drops. Inside the miniature houses, papier mâché skeletons danced and ate thumbnail-sized tacos, read little newspapers with Spanish headlines. They grinned at me, out of this world and glad. I decided that next time I go into hiding it will be in one of those teeny things, in a nutshell or matchbox. The woman at the door watched me as I took notes and read the plaques on the walls. She asked if I was alright. Now I’m at my own kitchen table, everything familiar but changed. The freshly cleaned window I just spritzed lets in more sunshine than before, the coffee from our French press is less acidic than the Morning Glory’s chalky espresso (though when I texted Ryan that he sent back a sad emoji), and my husband’s name is more interesting than I remember. I reach across the table for his hand. When I open the paper to the Shot in the Dark column, I see the ad I put there for myself: All signs eventually point toward home. I cut it out and tape it to the fridge, and my husband tilts his mug to it in a morning salute, but doesn’t ask.

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

In Memoriam CHASE DIMOCK

This poem begins and ends with a necessary failure. To remember the men I never met grieve the losses I never possessed To remember a lost generation, not wandering, but gone, after so many found themselves, gazing into the disco ball, a thousand reflections of stars shot across the dance floor. And like stars from distant galaxies, their light arrives to me years after they burned out. When I was younger, I wore a novelty t-shirt to an old gay bar in my new neighborhood. A frowning brontosaurus stood beside the caption “All My Friends Are Dead.” I hoped to get attention, make new friends with morbid, kitchy senses of humor. Instead, and old man alone at the bar pulled me over, said how he identified with the dinosaur, the last of his era still alive. He listed his friends, not by name, but as Cancer, Heart Failure, Stroke, Cancer, Diabetes, Drugs, Heart Attack, Car Accident, Cancer. And as he reached into the recesses of his memory the names from 90s back to the 80s became Car Accident, Drugs, AIDS, AIDS, left without a trace, AIDS, Pneumonia (AIDS), We think AIDS, AIDS, suicide after an AIDS diagnosis, AIDS. With each name, he pointed across the bar to show me where I’d find them in the 80s.

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Whose ghost is grinding on gogo boys on the dance floor. Whose ghost is silently moderating a political debate between cigarette drags on the porch, still cursing Reagan with his last, death bed wheezings. Whose ghost is checking me out from afar. I was his type, but he’d be intimidated by my glasses. In the afterlife he has the courage to possess the living. Whose ghost hovers over the pool table muscular arm gently working the cue, a look of singular determination. He remembers that arm atrophying, doddering, shaking, but still determined to rack and break. This bar is the afterlife for every soul locked out of heaven, the Jerry Falwell Moral Majority self appointed guardians of the gate kicking the sodomites into the inferno, knowing this plague was God’s divine cleansing. I remember Canto 15, where Dante visits his teacher Ser Brunetto Latini, as he runs endlessly on a hot molten beach beneath a rain of fire: the punishment in the 7th circle for sodomites. Even as he burns alive in the torture Dante invented for him, Ser Brunetto sits with his pupil, advises him on his journey, and watches as his greatest student and greatest torturer, walks on as the hero. Dante had Virgil guide him through each circle Alan Ginsberg had Walt Whitman guide him through each supermarket aisle, and I realize, the guide I should have had the guides all my generation should have had are wandering this bar, spectral in their limbo deceased while I was in the cradle. Every guy my age in a bar like this is looking for a Daddy, but I have seen where the fathers should have been. In grad school I told professors I chose to believe in reincarnation because Michel Foucault died the month I was conceived. Hervé Guibert wrote that Foucault doubled over laughing at the news of a Gay Cancer infecting homosexuals unaware of how it was percolating inside him.

IN MEMORIAM

And there, there’s that morbid humor, the same gallows humor as you walk blindly into a freshly dug empty grave. But this wasn’t cruelty on his part; Foucault understood after decades of studying the discursive construct of bodies in power relations the evolution of the sodomite to homosexual from sinner to congenital case, and the centuries-long search of science to find the mark of difference on the body the sashay encoded in the DNA of the homosexual that a marker has been found, and its name is death. In the plague year of Covid, I found love for the first time, but my love doesn’t want me speaking of death. His love is life, but it’s death that makes it rare. I was 35. And I realize now, these ghosts populating the bar perished younger than me. These mentors who never came to be, they’re 60, but living in 25 year old bodies. They witnessed the passing of the decades and have knowledge of the great beyond, but some never got to bring their love home hold hands across a sticky Denny’s Table dream of what they’d name their French Bulldog become the sweater vested, khaki accountants of suburbia, everyone cheering their anniversary at the HOA monthly meeting. Salvador, my love for you is the dream of so many who died. Those who made our love possible. I love you with the passion of everyone who deserved what we have, but never had it. My final failure is my unworthiness the cosmic unfairness, of coming of age after the AZT cocktail, after treatments after education, after Act-Up, after Ryan White, after the NAMES Project, after everyone who gave everything. They call us millennials entitled, and maybe it’s true, coming out in the post-Ellen, post-Elton world with a digital encyclopedia in my pocket full of knowledge, full of support, a GPS app that can tell me the exact distance of the nearest gay man looking to score. How can I demand

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to mourn the ghost of a mentor I never had? What right do I have to conjure the melancholia of the past, when I live in the promised land they wandered through deserts to reach?

So I end without a proper ending a merciful silence for the silenced.

PART SIX

Enacting Memory Studies

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CHAPTER TWENTY

Memory, Allegory, and the Plague: Albert Camus on Covid-19 DEBARATI SANYAL

In the time of Covid-19,  Albert Camus’s The Plague (1947) shot to the top of literary charts. Set in formerly French Algeria, the novel depicts a mass epidemic of bubonic and pulmonary plague that decimates a city’s population over the course of a year. From its inception an allegory of the Nazi Occupation and of Fascism (or the brown plague, as it was commonly called), the plague in Camus’s work was subsequently excised from its initial frame of reference, grafted onto other contexts, and injected with varying contents. Initially received as a commentary on the German Occupation of France, its figures have since been recycled in cultural representations of other regimes of historical violence. Across global memoryscapes The Plague has circulated as an allegory of the Holocaust, imperialism, immiseration, migration, encampment, and terrorism. Camus’s novel was about contagion at the level of plot, but just as important, its allegorical register became a vector of memorial contamination across myriad sites of reception. The Plague produced figurality in the mode of contagion, a viral figurality that was also a figural virality. Like memory, allegory is contagious. As Fredric Jameson observes, it is “an interpretive virus that, by way of its own propagations, proliferates and perpetuates itself” (Allegory and Ideology, 21). Yet allegory is neither fixed nor eschatological; it neither replicates itself identically across time and space nor does its meaning rest at a final destination. If allegory propagates itself, it does so like an organic virus that mutates and reemerges in unpredictable variants. Its contagion differs from our understanding of viruses and virality in the digital world today. In cybermodernity, viruses gesture toward infectious malware, virality describes networked connectivity, and a meme “goes viral” by replicating itself identically on social media platforms. Unlike these figures of digital virality, however, Camus’s allegory functioned like a biological agent in postwar cultural memory; it mutated and recombined into hybrid variants. Its recurrence as a “concentrationary plague” (la peste concentrationnaire) in Alain Resnais’ documentary on Nazi deportation, Night and Fog (1956), differed from its flareup in Driss Chraïbi’s Les Boucs, a Moroccan novel on migrant shantytowns outside of Paris, or its eruption in Le FIS de la Haine (1994), an essay by Algerian author Rachid Boudjedra denouncing “the plague of fundamentalism” (la peste intégriste). Like Covid itself, the allegorical virus mutated in its proliferation and perpetuation. Recurrence meant repetition, but with a difference.

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Camus’ figure of a bacillus “that never dies or disappears” remains a viral vector of memory and mobilization to this day (The Plague, 332). But for the first time in the history of its reception, under the Covid-19 pandemic, The Plague has begun to be read not for allegory but for epidemiology. If the figural register of the disease ensured its relevance for various histories in earlier years, in viral times, it was the portrayal of the literal disease that restored its pertinence. The novel has been hailed by the contemporary press as “a guide to surviving the pandemic,” a pedagogical and moral lesson, a source of medical ethics.1 Never has fiction seemed more real, never has allegory come closer to mimesis, never has the literary site of memory more literally been made present. This essay examines the allegorical, epidemiological, and corporeal significance of Camus’s plague during the Covid-19 pandemic. It elucidates the memorial, political, and bodily force of Camus’s figure of the bacillus. At the same time, it probes the relationship between allegory and embodiment. Contrary to classical accounts of allegory as a dualist figure in which tenor and vehicle occupy relations of fixed equivalences, allegory, from allos, or other, is a figure that “speaks otherwise” and dislocates its meaning toward an elsewhere and another time. A powerful vector of memory, allegory is actualized differently by readers who renew its critical, political, and ethical force within their contemporary moment. Allegories have their own generative life, a viral quality that is also a constant virtuality. As a figure that crosses histories and geographies, allegory is often understood to untether itself from the body and its historicity. Whether it takes the form of fixed biblical prescription such as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or is deconstructed as a temporal figure of perpetual indeterminacy, key theorists understand allegory to detach matter from meaning, substance from abstraction, thus transmuting content into form.2 I argue instead that the allegorical procedure confounds matter and meaning and entwines flesh with figure. Allegory’s enfleshment renews the pertinence of The Plague as we face the juncture of a global Covid pandemic in its most physiological sense, and figural epidemics—such as poverty, racial violence, statelessness, authoritarianism—that are differentially inscribed on embodied, sentient beings. What follows considers allegory as a potent figure for memory and mobilization that remains embedded in the bodily and material conditions of its reception. Inspired by allegory’s catch and release structure, I track the movement between Camus’s allegorical epidemic and our all-too-real pandemic to consider how Camus’s plague has been remembered and resignified as prophecy. I argue that the ethical and political force of Camus’s figures resides in their embodied and historical dimensions. The Plague illuminates the connections between flesh and figure, body and ideology, its memory lays bare the contamination of literal and figurative illness, or Covid-19 and the structural inequities of our social arrangements.

ALLEGORY’S ETERNAL RETURN: THE BACILLUS THAT NEVER DIES The Plague opens with a citation from Daniel Defoe, whose Journal of the Plague Year chronicled the last epidemic of the bubonic plague in 1665 London: “It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not!” (viii). The epigraph signals that we are at the threshold of allegory. Yet when we turn the page, the narrator announces that what follows is a faithful chronicle of the events that took place in Oran sometime in 194–, witnessed and composed by a historian of sorts. From the outset, chronicle and allegory,

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data and imagination, symptom and significance, trouble the distinction between “what really exists” and “that which exists not.” Allegory, as the constitutive trope of modernity, disrupts any stable correspondence between first and second order reference (or the plague and what it represents). Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously proposed that, unlike the symbol’s organic unity and translucence, allegory is an insubstantial figure that merely draws an equivalence between abstract picture, or vehicle, and another abstract notion, or tenor. In Paul de Man’s reformulation, this abstraction is temporalized: allegory “designates primarily a distance in relation to its own origin,” the allegorical sign and its origin or true meaning are caught in a relationship of perpetual anteriority that will not settle into equivalence or presence (207). As for Walter Benjamin, allegory acquires an improvisational quality when it unfolds and is re-actualized in mutant forms by future readers: “the allegorical must constantly unfold in new and surprising ways” (Origin 183). Where Coleridge notes allegory’s voiding of substance, de Man considers allegory’s origin or true meaning as perpetual anteriority, and Benjamin evokes allegory’s renewable futurity. Allegory is empty, its vehicle and tenor are abstract, which has the effect of simultaneously vaporizing history’s substance while fixing its frame into recurrence. To wit, in its substitutive movement through time, Camus’s plague was hollowed out of its content and invested with contingent meanings at various historical junctures. Benjamin likened the allegorist to a ragpicker rummaging through fragments and holding them next to each other in haphazard or inscrutable relations of proximity instead of identity: “At no point is it written in the stars that the allegorist’s profundity will lead it to one meaning rather than another” (Arcades Project J80, 2; J80a, 1). The relationship between allegorical sign and meaning is not fixed but contingent and mutable. Successive meanings flicker spectrally through Camus’s plague, for instance: the epidemic as Fascism, colonialism, the Holocaust, empire, terrorism, apartheid …. Allegory’s arbitrary and differential relations make it a ghostly figure, “an abstraction whose original meaning is even more devoid of substance than its ‘phantom proxy,’ the allegorical representative; it is an immaterial shape that represents a sheer phantom devoid of shape or substance” (de Man 206). The ghost in allegory’s machine appears over and over, as we see at the conclusion of The Plague on the virus’s latency and phantom return: For he knew … that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears; that it can lie dormant for decades … and that perhaps the day would come when, for the sorrow and education of men, the plague would revive its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city. (332) If Camus’s plague was such a powerful vector of cultural memory, it was at the cost of its relevance for punctual historical junctures. The force of allegory—its extraction from one history and injection into another, its ghostliness—was also its price.

MEMORY AS PROPHECY Once a literary site of memory, under Covid-19, Camus’s figural testimony of past violence has turned into the chronicle of a pandemic foretold. Oran’s spineless administration, its  resistance to prophylactic measures and to naming the disease has been echoed in

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cover-ups by states unwilling to face the ramifications of the current pandemic. The novel has mirrored the uneven distribution of health care, subsidies, and medical equipment; the emergence of black markets and profiteering; the requisitioning of hotels and stadiums for quarantine and encampment. Minutiae such as the town’s paper crisis leading to shorter newspaper found farcical echo as toilet paper flew off store shelves. Even the peddling of products guaranteed to cure the plague has been echoed in presidential musings on bleach injections and blasts of light as treatment for Covid. Also seemingly foretold has been the compassion fatigue before the rising death-toll. “You get tired of pity when pity is useless,” the narrator and health care provider Dr. Rieux observes (95). His vertigo when confronting the sheer scale of a city’s epidemic has been amplified in our incapacity to fathom the death toll of a global pandemic. As the dead bodies pile up in fictional Oran, the narrator worries if the city will be forced to take desperate measures such as “dumping corpses into the sea, and he could easily imagine their monstrous scum on the blue waters” (191). He shrugs off such hallucinatory visions because “the plague had nothing to do with … grand, exultant images” (192). Yet during the pandemic, fact has been stranger than fiction, for this fictional hallucination became reality when the rising waters of the Ganges disgorged hundreds of bodies that were buried in shallow graves by families unable to afford wood for cremation (Gaur). In Camus’s Oran, a fictional administration manipulated the death toll and transferred bodies to the crematoria in the dark of night. In our Covidreality, the corpses washed ashore in broad daylight, “a monstrous scum” that gave lie to government statistics. The human victims of Camus’s fictional plague died in solitude, robbed of mourning rites and hastily disappeared into mass graves. For postwar European readers coming to grips with the scale of the Nazi genocide, Camus’s passages on bodies piled high on carts and serially aligned in fire pits with “a thick, nauseating vapor” (190) hanging over the Algerian city would have evoked the plumes emanating from the Nazi crematoria. During Covid, however, these pages have conveyed the reality of bodies dumped in mass graves and—in India, for example—the blaze of round the clock creation. In pandemic times, then, figure and memory became a reality at once palpable and phenomenal. The tally of Covid victims remains unknown in nations that still declare victory in their “war against the disease” and celebrate “Liberation Day” while citizens, denizens, the stateless, displaced, and undocumented continue to perish. It is a grim irony that a literal public health emergency triggered authoritarian responses across the globe more virulent than Camus’s allegory of Fascist totalitarianism. The novel’s allusions to Nazism are well-known—Oran under quarantine evokes the isolation of France from the Free French Forces and those separated by the demarcation line. In its murderous efficiency, the plague figures the Third Reich’s bureaucracy. “But there always comes a time in history where he who dares to say that two and two equals four is condemned to death” (141), the narrator observes as Oran’s fictional citizens enroll into sanitary squads, risking their lives to recognize the full measure of the epidemic and combat it. Camus’s allusion to totalitarian censorship was later reprised by Orwell in 1984 as 2+2=5. This figural math has become realism as twenty-first-century illiberal democracies fudge numbers, tell lies, or incarcerate journalists who contest the pandemic’s official narrative. The Plague foretold the tyranny of anti-science, of alternative facts, government disavowal and disinformation. During the global pandemic, then, Camus’s literary site of memory for the brown plague and its victims has been reanimated and lived out in the present. Fiction has become fact, memory has become prophecy, allegory resignified as reality. As journalist Stephen

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Metcalf has declared, during Covid, contrary to its postwar reception as an allegory, The Plague has become “an anti-allegory … vivid, tactile and frankly repulsive—the story of particular people actually dying from an actual disease” (Metcalf). Yet, in another turn of the figural screw, The Plague—literalized as a pandemic—has simultaneously been allegorized as prophylaxis and treatment, portrayed as literary immunization and moral serum for pandemic times. Kamel Daoud, for instance, author of The Meursault Investigation (2013) (a novel that revisits The Stranger (1942) from an Arab-Algerian point of view), compares The Plague to a survival manual and has been depicted wearing the book as a mask over his mouth (Figure 20.1). Like the Plato’s pharmakon, The Plague has been invoked as personal protective equipment and as textual vector of contagion, as remedy and disease. When Daoud stood before Camus’s home in Oran during the Covid

FIGURE 20.1  Kamel Daoud: “[I]t now spreads outside of the novel, invisible and sly, it leaps from page towards skin, its metaphor seeps towards the lungs.”

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pandemic, he observed that the allegorical epidemic in Algeria had leaked from page to place: “it now spreads outside of the novel, invisible and sly, it leaps from page towards skin, its metaphor seeps towards the lungs” (“elle s’épanche désormais hors du roman, invisible et sournoise, elle bondit du papier vers la peau, suinte de sa métaphore vers les poumons”; my trans.). The allegory was no longer an abstraction or a hollow emblem consigned to ghostly returns, but a punctual matter of the flesh. Even though the image above simultaneously casts the book as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Daoud suggests elsewhere that under Covid, The Plague has become the word made flesh, that its literary figures have contaminated readers’ literal bodies. This contagion of flesh by figure has not been limited to reading this fictional work in the midst of a real pandemic, but occurs in the pages of the novel itself. The allegory was always embedded in the life of the body, its pages suffused with Camus’s tuberculosis. The author’s symptoms—shortness of breath, fevers, cough—leaked into Oran’s suffocating atmosphere; his lung incisions during artificial pneumothorax therapy appear in residual form as the incision of ganglions during the plague’s early bubonic stages. The allegory’s literal registers were never far from view, for Camus had conducted extensive research on plagues throughout history, including documents on a nineteenth-century typhoid epidemic in Oran, and over a hundred cases of the plague which were recorded in Algeria during the 1940s (Malek et al.). Grisly imagery such as ganglia suppurating and splitting open “like a rotten fruit” (38) and meticulous observations on the distinction between the bubonic and pulmonary strains of the disease verge on the genre of a medical treatise. The alternation of allegory, epidemiology, and physiology sought to convey the scale and texture of the plague—whether literal or metaphorical, a disease or an ideology—as conditions that are lived out in the flesh.

ALLEGORY’S ENFLESHMENT How to anticipate the devastation of a plague, apprehend its scale, its unequal consequences across time, space, and populations with what Camus eloquently called “the eyes of the body and a physical notion of justice?”3 Hailed in its postwar reception as a “monument to witnessing” that conveys the magnitude of a public health/historical crisis through exhaustive testimonies and voices, in pandemic times The Plague reminded us to seek different sources of information and to “read” the virus as a phenomenon at once epidemiological, ideological, allegorical, and corporeal.4 Dr. Rieux, the narrator, is a frontline witness and essential worker par excellence who tracks the disease’s symptomatology while charting its social and moral itinerary. His account is supplemented by Jean Tarrou, a historian of the unhistoried who documents absurd episodes and quotidian life under the plague’s shadow. Diaries, newspapers, statistics, historical documents, clinical diagnoses, anecdotes, meditations, but also flashes of flesh, blood, and pus all jostle together in the novel to convey the scale and texture of living in catastrophe. When the narrator attempts to grasp the cumulative toll of the bacillus throughout history, from Constantinople to Canton, he concludes that “a hundred million corpses strewn across history are nothing but smoke in the imagination” (37). How to enflesh statistics, narrate truncated lives, or restore faces to the dead?5 The Plague is written in a sober, if not monotonous and even bureaucratic style that conveys the tedium of a deadly condition turned quotidian. Yet eruptions of graphic detail and extravagant figuration interrupt the flat prose to convey the confusion of matter and

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meaning intrinsic to allegory. This confusion is explicitly staged when the citizens of Oran watch a performance of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice during the epidemic. As the doomed couple sings their aria, in an artificial recreation of the kingdom of death, played in the opera house of a plague-stricken city, Orpheus’s voice begins to shake. The audience perceives these tremolos as stylizations of natural emotion until the singer falls dead on stage and the audience flees. The narrator proffers this image as a personification of “the plague on the stage in the form of a collapsed thespian” (213), conveying the dizzying convergence of body and actor, nature and artifice, flesh and form, in allegory itself. For what does it meant to personify the plague as a dead thespian on stage? Where is the threshold between a body and its stylization, between matter and its figuration? This scene challenges us to imagine the plague as a force that brings body and figure into crisis. In other passages, the text conveys the plague’s impact on living, suffering bodies through shocking contrasts: a bloodless administrative discussion at the prefecture on the epidemic’s proper nomenclature is followed by the image of “a woman screaming in agony, bleeding from her groin” (55). Circuitous debates on how to “figure” the plague confront its physiological effects, speech becomes scream, nomenclature yields to the body in pain. Allegory was always enfleshed in The Plague, its pages conveyed the vulnerability of bodies to contagion while commemorating past figural epidemics and their resurgence in mutant form. The rats that appear at the start of Camus’s plague, for instance, are simultaneously figural and material. They emerge from lairs underground to spread throughout the city and die en masse in its streets, like allegory’s contagious perpetuation. Injected with varying contradictory meanings, as Colin Davis observes, “the rats are not just rats, they are bearers of meaning, though no one can quite settle what that meaning might be” (1014). The first victims of the plague, and possibly vehicles of contamination, the rats are prophetic, symbolic, and even anthropomorphic: one rat pirouettes like a ballerina before falling dead, others die alone in deserted public spaces, others still lurch, stagger, and sway like drunkards (16–17). At their most figural, however, these rodents remain fleshy, palpable, embedded in the bodily and material world, reduced to putrid, bloated matter, their whiskers stiffened in death. They are simultaneously matter and meaning: “(M)ore than one person out for a nighttime stroll felt, underfoot, the squishy mass of a still-fresh corpse. It was as if the earth beneath our houses was purging its cargo of humors, as if allowing its boils and pus to come to the surface after what had been, until then, an internal struggle” (17). A symptom of the dark, unnamed forces beneath Oran’s modern, capitalist, and commercial neutrality, this literal and metaphorical purulence erupts into catharsis. The rats are thus at once palpable and plastic, a mass underfoot, and a polyvalent allegory that has been contradictorily deciphered as Nazis or French collaborators who “ratted out” their neighbors, but also as Jews in the antiSemitic imaginary and Holocaust memory. In other contexts of reception, the rodents evoked the absent Arabo-Berber inhabitants of this colonial town, odiously designated as ratons or little rats in the imperial imaginary and subject to racist assaults or ratonnades by armed forces in the colony and later, the metropole.6 Disparate readerships may have understood these rats’ fleshy figuration differently. But despite its allegorical register, The Plague remains throughout a remembrance of time past—as well as those pasts’ mutant reanimations—through the “eyes of the body.” Against what he described as a failure of imagination and the murderous abstractions of epidemiological and allegorical terror, Camus embedded his figures of rats and bacillus in the body while pointing toward their vitality, virtuality, and virality.

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THE VIRUS AS WAR, THE WAR ON THE VIRUS Imagination is as much the province of epidemiology and politics as it is of literature. Camus notes in The Plague that “There have been as many plagues as wars in history.” An administration’s imagination or lack thereof is “never scaled up to epidemics (112; translation modified)” as the Covid pandemic revealed with its shortages of masks, respirators, tests, hospital beds, oxygen, and vaccines. In Camus’s fictionalized Oran, the administration is composed of “men who had precise and well-organized ideas about everything that concerned the bank, or exports, or citrus fruit, or even the wine business” (113). In short, men in the business of colonial and commercial extraction who lack the imagination to fathom a plague for which they may bear responsibility. When the city’s health care system and quarantine management break down under the virus’s toll, a small group of “citizens” headed by Tarrou and a “foreign” journalist use their imagination to form voluntary sanitary squads, risking their lives to combat the virus. Camus did not cast this resistance as heroic or spectacular, but as natural. “There is a plague, we must defend ourselves,” exclaims an elderly volunteer ironically named Joseph Grand who is perpetually at a loss for words, “Ah if only everything were so simple” (143). Grand stands for the ordinariness of heroism: exploited by day at his menial post office job, he volunteers with the sanitary squad in the evenings and toils late into the night writing and rewriting a clumsy sentence. When he opens up about a lost love and his writerly labors, the narrator marvels at the little fellow’s commitment to the memory of a loss and the hope of literary perfection: “Grand was a thousand miles from the plague” (94). Yet later he proffers this toothless clerk as the embodiment of Oran’s spirit of resistance, concluding that he is “incapable of describing what Grand stood for in the midst of the plague” (147, trans. modified). In the original French, Grand is at once “à mille lieues de la peste” (far from it), and “au milieu de la peste” (in the midst of it). In French the two clauses are homonymic and underscore Camus’s vision of resistance as persistence, as a daily commitment to the task at hand, and as an existential refusal to be fully coopted by terror. In his paradoxical immersion in and distance from crisis, Grand stands for the operations of allegory itself, which catches one phenomenon while gesturing toward another. But what exactly does it mean to “defend ourselves” from a literal plague, as Grand exclaims? For Camus, resistance entailed performing the task at hand to the best of one’s ability: developing a vaccine, checking on patients, quarantining, and managing the sick, writing a good sentence, counting the dead, disposing of their bodies, taking a moment for friendship. But as his experience of Nazi occupation taught him, resistance can always swerve into complicity, for “to fight against [the plague’s] abstraction, you had to resemble it a little” (96). The Plague illustrates this implication of violence and care when the doctor is accompanied by the military to force unwilling families to surrender their sick, when the medical establishment tries out a new serum that prolongs the agony of a dying child, or when a football stadium is turned into a concentration camp for the quarantined (McDemid). Similarly, in pandemic times, violence and care converge when patients are quarantined in carceral Covid camps, when ventilators, personnel, and critical care beds, or access to the vaccine are rationed according to a hierarchy of patients. The word “triage” carries a faint echo of the collusion of medicine, race, and eugenics under the Third Reich, even if the patients admitted to ICU beds or given access to vaccines and oxygen tanks are saved, not killed.7 But their “selection” has meant that others—the poor, the elderly, the racialized, the minoritized, rural populations—have been left to die.

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Unlike waging a war, combatting an epidemic that is bound to return means facing “an endless defeat” (136), as Dr. Rieux declares. For Camus’s contemporary Roland Barthes, the mutation of war into virus yielded “a world deprived of history” (“La Peste, annales d’une épidémie ou roman de la solitude?” 6). The conversion of Nazism into a plague stripped the war of historicity, volition, and endpoint. The poetics of pathology erased human agency and replaced politics with epidemiology. In stark contrast to the allegory of war as disease in The Plague, however, under Covid-19 disease is allegorized as war. Bellicose tropes for Covid have turned a public health crisis into conflict. State leaders cast themselves as wartime leaders sending essential workers to “the front lines” despite insufficient “ammunition” and “manpower” in the form of PPE and personnel.8 A militarized public health emergency requires all out sacrifice and turns hospitals into zones of conflict. Dead and dying patients are figured as casualties or collateral damage, if not soldiers who should be combating the virus. The body is turned into a battlefield instead of a vulnerable site of care. As Susan Sontag warned in Illness as Metaphor (1978), converting disease into war is injurious to patients, for “it overmobilizes, it overdescribes, and it powerfully contributes to the excommunicating and stigmatizing of the ill” (94). The bellicose rhetoric of disease has ideologized the pandemic, polarized public health, racialized health care, and reinscribed orientalist xenophobia. Literal and figural registers of infection converge at national borders that are securitized in the name of public health and ethno-national identity. Immunitary fences and borders rise up to protect territories from both cultural and physical infection. Reminiscent of the “war on drugs” targeting African Americans in the United States, the “war on Covid” has also echoed the racially charged “war on terror” and its indefinite aftermath today. Terror is a slippery metonym, speciously cast as a foreign epidemic breaching Western borders. A similar logic has externalized the origins of the virus into enemy territory through allusions to a “Chinese virus”, “Wuhan flu,” or “Kung flu.”9 Under Covid, the longstanding tactic of deploying epidemic rhetoric in service of colonial itineraries of war, extraction, and extermination has resurfaced in defense of neo-imperial strategic interests.10 Epidemics, whether literal in the case of typhus or figural like terrorism, are externalized and rendered foreign, their origins sited in the Middle East or the Global South. The Plague flags this orientalization, but to ambiguous ends. When Oran’s medical establishment speculates that what infects Oran may be the plague, a doctor reportedly exclaims that “It’s impossible. Everyone knows it has disappeared from the West” (39). This effectively grafts Oran onto France and Algeria onto Europe. The assimilation of this North African city into Western Europe is hardly surprising, for it runs deep in the French colonial imaginary. Camus’s own embodied attachment to Algeria turned the colonial space into an internal organ: “I have pain in Algeria like others have pain in their lungs,” he declared at the beginning of the war of independence. Yet despite the pervasive rhetoric of Algeria’s incorporation into France, and by extension, into Western Europe at the time, the phrase draws attention to the excision of the city’s location on the African continent. This exclusion is rehearsed in another odd passage, when the Parisian journalist Rambert seeks information about the sanitary conditions of Oran’s Arab population for an article to be published in mainland France. Dr. Rieux refuses to collaborate because colonial censorship would presumably prevent the publication of “a total condemnation” of these conditions in the hexagon (13). The novel itself quarantines any further allusion to the Arab and Berber populations under the plague of colonialism, save in displaced topographical or figural references. In a third truncated gesture toward the colonial plague, the doctor overhears a navy

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officer in a bar recounting a typhus epidemic in British Cairo. The native populations were quarantined in tents while colonial sentinels were shooting at their families: “It was harsh, but fair,” the officer drunkenly declares (165). These self-erasing gestures toward colonialism and race erupt throughout Camus’s literary works only to be cordoned off, leading Connor Cruise O’Brien to accuse the author of perpetrating an “aesthetic final solution to the problem of Arabs in Algeria” (56). In Memory and Complicity: Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance, I argued that such accusations are symptomatic of the “Camus effect,” which produces mutually exclusive readings of his allegory within a singular historical frame of reference (the plague as Holocaust, on the one hand, or as settler colonialism, on the other).11 Here I underline these allusions to race and imperialism not to indict or defend Camus’s stance toward colonialism, but to consider why the novel draws attention to the absence of racialized, colonial subjects and what it can teach us about the connection between literal and figurative references to Covid-19 today. Oran’s transplant into hexagonal France, the sanitary cordon drawn around colonial subjects in Algeria, the encampment of natives in the British Empire are all allusions that recall the historical and embodied reality of race, imperialism, and apartheid in a city allegorized as occupied France. Together these gestures stage the failure to represent a comprehensive collectivity that suffers equally under allegorical and embodied violence. When Barthes criticized Camus for turning war into disease—“What would the combatants of The Plague do if they had confronted its human face?” (“La Peste, annales d’une épidémie ou roman de la solitude?” 6)—Camus responded that “Terror has many faces, which justifies that I named none of them in order to strike at them all” (“Lettre”  7). But what about terror’s victims, including the faces of colonial subjects, absent in a novel that otherwise lingers on a doctor’s rugged features, a judge’s owlish face, a child’s tortured expression, a mother’s warm brown eyes? If there is a “systematic nullification of Arab characters,” the novel puts this omission on display (Apter 502). It is worth noting that the formulation “nos concitoyens” (our fellow citizens) appears no less than seventy-three times in the text. The repetition underscores the equalizing force of the plague, the commonality fostered by a shared vulnerability to the virus. And yet, in Oran, 194–, these “fellow citizens” would have excluded Muslim Algerians and Berbers as well as Algerian Jews. Arab and Berber Algerians were already reduced to Indigenous Muslims under the Code of Indigenous Status (or Code de l’indigénat). As for Algerian Jews, citizens by virtue of the Crémieux decree of 1870, their citizenship was revoked by the collaborationist Vichy régime in 1940, around when the novel is set. Camus’s repeated reference to citizenship at a historical juncture that stripped both Arabs and Jews of the category remains open to interpretation. The displaced allusions to the Holocaust, colonial immiseration, and native encampment in the text draw attention to the exclusion of racialized subjects at the time. Their explicit erasure from a shared condition of citizenship in the allegory reflects historical fact. Against the illusion of a natural virus’s equalizing force, the allegorical virus was a reminder that illness—as fact and metaphor—is unevenly distributed across populations.

AT THE CROSSROADS OF BODY AND FIGURE The ostentatious disappearing of these populations from The Plague is instructive for pandemic times. Just as the fictionalized plague in Oran “concerned us all” and caught everyone “in the same net” (69), Covid has been touted across the world as a great

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equalizer by government officials, the mainstream media, and even celebrities sitting in marble bathtubs strewn with rose petals.12 Yet instead of disclosing our universal vulnerability, the pandemic revealed and intensified brutal inequities across racial, economic, gender, and geopolitical lines. In an astute commentary on Camus and Covid, Sam Earle observed that the exclusion of Algerian populations from representation in The Plague “foreshadowed our own conceited response to the crisis. Amid a haughty universalism that said: ‘We’re all in this together’ and ‘the virus does not discriminate,’ the suffering of some became, like the Arabs in Oran, invisible.” The “haughty universalism” of Covid as equalizer echoes the disappearance of racialized colonial subjects from “our fellow citizens” in Oran and any documentation of their dire sanitary conditions under the colonial, bubonic, or pulmonary plague. Structural inequities lie dormant and disavowed, concealed by an apparent healthy normalcy, until they bubble up to the surface during a plague and a pandemic “as if the earth on which our houses stood were being purged of its secreted humors” (16). As the plague surfaced in an ordinary city, “nothing more than a French prefecture on the Algerian coast” (5), but surely nothing less, the coronavirus has unveiled the interlocking plagues of poverty, racism, and physical disease and their differential impact across the globe. Yet revelation is also revolution. When latent infections roil to the surface in The Plague, Oran is figured as a human body: “If only you could picture the shock in our little city, usually so peaceful, shaken to the core in a matter of days, like a healthy man whose thick blood suddenly goes into revolution!” (17; trans. modified, my emphasis). This arresting exclamation in the otherwise spare narrative style signals the virus’s capacity to provoke rebellion and revolution. Jacqueline Rose unspools the contemporary significance of Camus’s diagnosis for our public health catastrophe: The plague sparks a revolution in the blood. It erupts like a protest or insurrection, in its relevance for pandemic times: a fleeting moment of lucidity. Seen in this light, the novel could be issuing a warning, or asking a question that is driving many responses to a world laid bare by Covid. (Rose) The differential visibility of victims subjected to plague and pandemic brought underlying socio-political injustice and inequity into view. The eruption of these conditions made visible, even palpable, the intersections of literal and figural disease. Allegory is always both an abstraction and an enfleshment. It is a rhetorical figure in which matter and meaning flicker in and out of visibility. Despite The Plague’s aim to strike at all of terror’s faces and bear witness to Oran’s totality, its allegorical testimony failed to give both perpetrators and victims of racial-colonial violence a recognizable human physiognomy. It did not parse the intersection of literal and figural terror in a colonial town and its unequal imprint across different bodies and faces. In sharp contrast, however, during Covid-19, citizens and non-citizens across the world have grasped the dangerous intersection of a literal and figural pandemic that laid bare the violence of our social arrangements. In Spring 2020, African Americans were dying of the virus at three times the rate of white people in America.13 While official channels urged citizens to follow the protocols of social distancing in the interest of collective care, a white officer in uniform pressed the full weight of his body into the neck of a Black citizen who once said he wanted to touch the world. When George Floyd’s killer stared back at the camera with full confidence in his impunity, the plague fleetingly took on a human face.

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Camus’s allegory may have failed to strike at all the faces of terror, but in pandemic times, witnesses grasp the connection between literal and figural disease. “Shaken to its core,” by a punctual scene of police brutality that recapitulated a legacy of structural racialized violence, citizenry and denizenry from Sao Paulo to Sydney, from Cape Town to Hong Kong were galvanized into protest on the streets of global cities, like a collective body that “goes into revolution” (17 trans. modified). That summer, instead of heeding calls to shelter in place, people united across class and color lines to gather for protests and vigils, putting their bodies at the crossroads of a literal virus and the virulence of racism. Disproportionately Black and Brown frontline and essential workers, including the undocumented, protested against the infectious disease and the infection of a racialized regime of subjection. Already the most exposed, in the United States they took to the streets bearing signs such as “Racial Justice = Health Care Justice,” “Racism is the Pandemic,” and “Racism is the Public Health Emergency.” Citizens and non-citizens alike embodied and expressed a historical understanding of legacies of slavery, settler colonialism, and apartheids, figured as public health crises intersecting with Covid-19. Allegory in The Plague is an economy of visualization that makes certain bodies, histories, and conditions perceptible while screening others out. The novel revealed to its readers the contagion of literal and metaphorical violence, yet its viral poetics cordoned off colonial occupation and racial apartheid, aside from dim textual flickers. The interlocking plagues of authoritarianism, colonialism, poverty, and racism were sifted out and quarantined. The “bacillus that never dies” remains a powerful vector of memory to this day. The mutations of this figure adapt to disparate scenes of reception, but its political force remains located in the body. Covid-19 reanimated the memory of Camus’s figure as epidemiology and embodiment rather than allegory. Despite the perils of metaphorizing illness, the frontline workers who protested on the streets in pandemic times fully grasped that structural violence is an embodied condition, that figure touches flesh, that poverty, racism, and apartheid are viral conditions that compound the impact of a literal virus. The origins of Camus’s plague are as mysterious as the timing of its original return, for “the bacillus of the plague never dies,” whether in its epidemiological or ideological forms. In Camus’s allegory, everyone carries the virus and is a vector of memory and contagion. “Each of us has the plague within them; no one, no one on earth is free from it” (224; trans. modified). We are condemned to the exposure and aggression of vulnerability itself. This solidarity as complicity, this virality as vulnerability, this memory as resistance are the ties that bind in a global pandemic.

NOTES 1. On the novel as a survival guide, see White “Common Decency and New Conditions of Life: The Albert Camus Guide to Surviving a Pandemic”; on the novel as a resource for medical ethics, see Frances-Paredes “Albert Camus’s The Plague revisited for COVID-19”; on the novel as a philosophical resource for psychiatrists during Covid, see Banerjee et al. “Revisiting the Plague by Camus: Shaping the Social Absurdity of the COVID Pandemic”; as a serum for our times, see Marris “Camus’s Inoculation Against Hate.” 2. Gordon Teskey, for instance, proposes a powerful account of this separation of matter and meaning: “The greatest allegorical poets do not simply transform life into meaning. They exacerbate the antipathy between the living and the significant by exposing the violence entailed in transforming the one into the other.” (Teskey 24).

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3. Camus made this remark in the context of the Vichy regime, when French collaborators signed off on death and deportation warrants without grasping the consequences of written edicts and decrees on living, sentient beings. See Camus, Oeuvres Complètes, I: 922. 4. See Felman and Laub 93. 5. This remains a recurrent preoccupation under Covid. See, for instance, FacesOfCOVID, a twitter account honoring the pandemic’s victims and telling their stories. 6. The first recorded use of “raton” as a racialized epithet is in 1937. 7. On the unequal access to urgent care during Covid, see Stern “Cautions about Medicalized Dehumanization.” 8. President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, US President Donald Trump, Brazilian president Jair Bolsanaro to name a few. 9. Sontag states: “One feature of the usual script for plague: the disease invariably comes from somewhere else …. But what may seem like a joke about the inevitability of chauvinism reveals a more important truth: that there is a link between imagining disease and imagining foreignness” (Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors 48). See also Panzeri et al. “Does the COVID-19 War Metaphor Influence Reasoning?” 10. On the legacy of imperial figurations of epidemic, including in Camus, see Kolb Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror 1817–2020. 11. See Sanyal, “Concentrationary Migrations in and around Albert Camus,” in Memory and Complicity. 12. See the YouTube videos “Cuomo Calls Coronavirus the ‘Great Equalizer’ after Brother Chris Cuomo Tests Positive.” and “‘Covid is the Great Equalizer’ Says Madonna from a Petal-Filled Bath.” 13. See The Color of Coronavirus Project (APM Research Lab Staff).

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Soviet 1960s Cinema and the Nuclear Catastrophe: Mikhail Romm’s Ordinary Fascism and Nine Days of One Year LILYA KAGANOVSKY

In 1979, in what was to be her last interview, the filmmaker Larisa Shepit’ko spoke of a “genetic memory” that left a clear “trace” on her best-known film Wings (Kryl’ia, 1966). “We dared to pass judgment on the previous generation, on our fathers,” she said, and this imposed on us a particular responsibility. We needed to prove that we had the right to judge them … On screen, we began a conversation about the war-time generation. It was no longer possible for me to connect with the heroine—I didn’t have my own experiences to rely on. Instead, I worked from intuition, from a kind of intuitive genetic memory. If there really was such a memory—the memory of what happened during the war to my father and my mother and what happened to them in the difficult years after the war—then this memory is etched into the film. (181) Shepit’ko observation speaks to what I take to be the central theme of the films made in the USSR during the “long 1960s”: memory (specifically, traumatic memory, the memory of the war) and its relationship to the generation that came after, the generation that did not live through Stalinism or the Second World War, but that nevertheless felt itself to be responsible for the events of the past. This form of remembering has been called “postmemory,” and, as Marianne Hirsch and others have defined it, it describes the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right.1 For Hirsch, postmemory is distinguished from memory by generational distance and from history by deep personal connection. Postmemory is a “powerful and very particular form of memory” precisely because its “connection to its object or source

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is mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation.” This is not to say that memory itself is unmediated, Hirsch suggests, but that it is more directly connected to the past: “postmemory characterizes the experience of those who grow up dominated by narrative that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are evacuated by the stories of the previous generation shaped by traumatic events that can be neither understood nor recreated” (Family Frames, 22). Emerging from the field of Holocaust studies, the term “postmemory” resonates with Soviet cinema of the 1960s that, from the beginning of the Thaw to the onset of Brezhnevera Stagnation, set itself up against or counter to the cinema of Stalinism, with its utopian musical comedies, its grand historical films, its vicious traitors, and its epic battles for the victory of the Soviet Union on domestic and foreign fronts.2 On Soviet screens, the Thaw was reflected by the uses of a mobile, “liberated” camera, new youthful protagonists, and a general turn away from the precepts of Socialist Realism which had defined the previous three decades. Instead of monumentalism and the “grand style,” Soviet sixties’ cinema gives us daily routine and intimate, domestic lives.3 It showed us interiors of communal apartments whose crowded private spaces were always in the middle of renovation. It took us to wide, empty city streets where protagonists strolled in a way more reminiscent of the Baudelairian flâneur than the New Soviet Man. In opposition to Stalinist cinema, Thaw cinema’s distinctive visual features were the use of the handheld camera, moving smoothly from high crane shots to the extreme close up, the pan, the long take, and the use of the fisheye lens—an ultra wide-angle lens that provided a 180-degree sweep, keeping almost everything in focus at once, and visibly distorting the edges of the screen.4 But at the level of storytelling, Soviet sixties’ cinema was also marked by narrative fragmentation that spoke to an inability to tell a coherent story. Birgit Beumers points out specifically the ways in which all Thaw war films are fragmented in relation to time and chronology, relying on the flashback to structure—or more vitally—to deconstruct chronology and linearity (128). Time no longer flows in one direction (always toward a clear utopian future, as it had in Stalinist cinema), but instead is halted, frozen, rewound, fragmented, and erased. The trauma at the heart of Soviet sixties’ cinema is the trauma of the disjuncture of time marked by the gap between generations and “epochs”: the historical time of the past and the seemingly anchorless, futureless, present. Indeed, the change from the optimism of the Thaw to the pessimism of Stagnation happens in or around 1966/7: it is at this point that the censors, already nervous from a lack of clear ideological directives, ban a number of films whose non-linear, fragmented narratives appear to distort both Soviet reality and its heroic past.5 The temporal disjunctures at work in post-Stalinist cinema suggest that Soviet films of the 1960s were experiencing something that we might call, following Hirsch, “postmemory”: a working through of a trauma that “belonged” to the previous generation (those who had lived through Stalinism and the war), but that nevertheless continued to haunt the present. Soviet sixties’ cinema, on the surface, appears at first to be located entirely in the present. Its most representative films are not historical, but rather depict daily life, seemingly caught up in the contemporaneity of the present. Indeed, the films are so “unsaturated” by history, that they project a kind of anomie—a feeling that the characters live lives unconnected to the outside world, to history, or to the previous generation: “yes, we are cut off, and the link with the outside world is broken,” one character tells another in Marlen Khutsiev’s 1967 film July Rain (Iul’skii dozhd’).6 Yet this very lack of historicism is itself a manifestation of trauma as something that works against closure, that does not allow comprehension and instead interrupts or

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breaks down narrative. As Cathy Caruth has put it, “What causes trauma, then, is a shock that appears to work very much like a bodily threat but is in fact a break in the mind’s experience of time” (61). The films that are most clearly associated with the decade of the 1960s are all structured around an unnamed loss, something that can never be recovered or repaired, a loss that has its origin in a history that, as Kaja Silverman has put it, “manifests itself in a traumatic and inassimilable guise” (47). This story is about that and, more specifically, about the relationship between the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the threat of nuclear catastrophe that together shaped the immediate postwar Soviet generation. Here, I focus specifically on two films directed by Mikhail Romm that directly address the anxiety around the development of atomic power and the possibility of nuclear annihilation in relation to Holocaust memory, first in the 1962 Thaw classic, Nine Days of One Year (Deviat’ dnei odnogo goda) and then, in the groundbreaking 1965 documentary, Ordinary Fascism (Obyknovennyi fashizm). The films’ subject matter and style (from the stark black-and-white cinematography of cinematographer German Lavrov, absent or minimal musical score, and disjunctive editing), reflected the trauma at the heart of Soviet sixties’ cinema, raising questions about science, technology, memory, and forgetting. These are films, as William Guynn would put it, pervaded by a “crisis of memory”: “they struggle against historical neglect and political prohibition, they object to the artificial and self-serving mythologies of power, they expose the mendacity and distortions of sanctioned narratives, and they strive to rescue historical testimony from the brink of oblivion” (9). Memory in these films assumes the form of both “postmemory” and what we might term “prememory”: an anticipation of future catastrophe filtered through the lens of the past.

ORDINARY FASCISM Born in 1901 in Irkutsk to a Jewish family, Mikhail Romm grew up in Moscow, and spoke only Russian.7 During his long career in the cinema, Romm completed seventeen films—fourteen feature and three documentary—beginning in the early 1930s with Pyshka/ Boule de Suif (1934) and making his name with such classics of Soviet Socialist Realism as Lenin in October (Lenin v oktiabre, 1937) and Lenin in 1918 (Lenin v 1918 godu, 1939). Initially considered one of the “most Stalinist” of film directors, Romm was a five-time recipient of the Stalin Prize (in 1941, 1946, 1948, 1949, 1951). But after 1956, Romm became an outspoken critic of Stalin’s cult of personality—his speeches drew enormous audiences—and the teacher of the next generation of Soviet filmmakers.8 And it was the films Romm made during the Thaw, specifically, Nine Days of One Year (1962) and Ordinary Fascism (1965), that turned him from a merely competent Soviet director into a remarkable figure in Soviet film history, considered by his contemporaries as the “conscience” of Soviet cinema. Ordinary Fascism broke Soviet conventions of speaking about the Holocaust as an externalized event, something that happened to Jews in Europe, but which had nothing to do with Soviet memory of the Second World War. Foreclosed as a topic of discussion in the USSR shortly after the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, but already put under erasure during the war, the death of nearly 3 million Jews on Soviet soil was subsumed by the greater number of 27 million Soviet dead.9 Unlike in the West, where the Holocaust/Shoah emerged as the central cataclysmic event of the twentieth century and helped to shape West European and American postwar identity, the extermination of the Jews on Soviet soil was never acknowledged as a separate event from USSR’s

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experience of the war. Instead, those deaths became part of the larger narrative of Soviet sacrifice and victory, where the call not to “divide the dead” merged all the Soviet victims into a single unified whole. It was not Soviet ideology alone that was responsible for the perceived lack of responses to the Holocaust in the USSR. As David Shneer, Jeremy Hicks, Olga Gershenson, and others have pointed out, the Soviet Union was actually the first to document Nazi atrocities, and did so from the very beginning of the war.10 What Soviet troops uncovered as they moved West was not mere destruction, but the systematic murder of thousands and eventually, of millions of Jews, shot and left unburied in mass graves that lined the outskirts of towns and villages. As Shneer notes, although the name of Kyiv’s Babi Yar became famous worldwide as the icon of the Nazi war against the Soviet Union, “every town in Ukraine had a ravine (yar), pit (yama), or trench (rov) on its outskirts, to which the Nazis took the Jews to be shot” (141). Images of these became the symbols of “the Holocaust on Soviet soil.” As the Red Army liberated Western Ukraine and Belorussia from German occupation, Soviet photojournalists documented Nazi crimes, not only for the press and the Soviet reader, but also for the Extraordinary Commission that was charged with investigating the crimes that took place in each and every city formerly occupied by the Germans. To do this, Soviet journalists had to find a language (both visual and narrative) for speaking about the Nazi atrocities, a language that not only would serve as evidence against the Germans, but would help to bring a nearly destroyed nation together and drive the war effort. The phrase “peaceful Soviet citizens” helped to create a sense of unity against a common enemy, but it distorted the truth of the crimes the Soviets were trying to document. It also, unwittingly, opened up a space for doubt and the possibility of complicity and guilt: without directly addressing the Jewish question, Soviet accounts of Nazi atrocities could not explain why some “peaceful Soviet citizens” had been killed, while others had not. The decision not to “divide the dead” had vast ramifications for how survivors of Nazi-occupied territories were perceived both during the war and after (a legacy that persists into the present moment). The decision to suppress the specifically Jewish ethnicity of the dead was brought under particular pressure when Soviet troops liberated the Majdanek extermination camp in 1944 and were faced with thousands of specifically Jewish dead. Yet, of the professional photojournalists, writers, and filmmakers responsible for creating the story of Majdanek, many were assimilated Soviet Jews, who, for a variety of reasons, told a universal story of atrocity and human tragedy. Given the Soviet Union’s immediate postwar history of antiSemitism, it has been easy for Western scholars to dismiss the Soviet press’s evasion of the word “Jew” as simply one more instance of the state’s anti-Semitic policy.11 As Shneer makes clear, however, the history of the word’s usage is more complicated, touching on the problem of assimilation and difference, on the desirability of separating Soviet Jews from the millions Soviet dead, and on the need to mobilize the population against an enemy that threatened “all mankind” (169). Like many American Jews who used the war experience to finally make themselves into Americans, some Soviet Jews were trying to do the same. Placing emphasis on the dead as human beings rather than Jews was one way to accomplish this. Thus, even when the American Yiddish newspaper Der Tog published photo essays of Majdanek in August of 1944, the captions never mentioned that the victims were Jewish: “They are referred to as ‘people’ or ‘men, women, and children,’ which of course they were” (Shneer, 167). Indeed, as Hicks points out, unlike their counterparts in the West, the Soviets had been showing images of Nazi atrocities since 1941, both screening them at home and

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also sending them abroad, elaborating a set of visual conventions for representing such horrific sights. It was Soviet filmmakers who in 1938 made the first films about the Nazi persecution of the Jews, and it was Soviet filmmakers who first documented the two stillremaining death camps they discovered, before the camps were reached by the Allies. Yet when the December 1944 Soviet film of the Majdanek camp reached the West, it was either censored or treated with an enormous degree of suspicion. Unlike their Soviet counterparts, as late as 1944, American and British audiences had yet to see any visual evidence of Nazi atrocities. American newspapers and other press outlets had shunned graphic battle images and presented a generally sanitized picture of the war. They dismissed Soviet accounts of Majdanek as a product of Soviet propaganda—not only because of their mistrust of Soviet journalism but also because they did not yet have a narrative into which they could fit such catastrophic events. It was only with the Allied liberation of places like Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald that the other (Western), better known visual narrative of the Holocaust—of camps, survivors, of shock and emotional revulsion—took root. Ironically, it was precisely at this moment that the Soviet press stopped publishing pictures of Nazi crimes, with the last photo of the extermination camps published in the premier Soviet journal Ogonek on June 17, 1945. As a result, as Gershenson argues, our images of the Holocaust are largely shaped by certain cinematic conventions—“emaciated bodies, striped uniforms, barbed wire, crematorium ovens, and mounds of personal effects”—conventions that were dictated by the photographs taken by both Soviet and Allied forces when they liberated the camps (1). Yet because none of the camps were located on Soviet soil, the other images—of the ravines, the pits, the mass graves, of extermination by firing squad—of the “Holocaust by bullets” did not become part of the universal narrative language of the Holocaust, to be reproduced in photographs, movies, and museums. For the Soviet Union, which began to commemorate its victory over the Germans in elaborate Victory Day parades, the Holocaust was “externalized” to the places that held the camps, such as Poland and Germany. Thus, even though the Soviets were the first to photograph them, images of the camps are mostly absent from the Soviet visual record of the war. Instead, it was the American liberation of the camps, and the visual record produced alongside it, that became the official narrative of the Holocaust, a narrative told largely without its Soviet component. In this way, the extermination of 3 million Jews on Soviet soil has not formed part of the larger narrative of the destruction of European Jewry. Thus, while the USSR made a number of documentary films about the Second World War both during and immediately following the end of the Second World War—including, famously, the first films of the liberation of the concentration camps and the Nuremburg Trial—Romm’s Ordinary Fascism, in terms of both form and content, was a radical step away from official state ideology.12 Rather than externalizing the Holocaust as something that happened elsewhere in Europe, it brought it “home” to the Soviet viewer. Ordinary Fascism was assembled from never before seen segments of German newsreel, home movies, official press releases, photographs, and other documents, chronicled the rise and fall of the Third Reich through an intimate, almost conversational tone. Romm’s method of oral commentary—his gentle voice speaking off camera—created a new genre of documentary realism and historiography, a chance, as Romm put it, to have a cinematic “conversation” with the viewer with the aid of the photographic visual material.13 The film was culled together from Joseph Goebbels’s extensive private collection of films that the Soviet army seized in 1945 and brought to the Russian film archive, Gosfilmofond, and included Heinrich Hoffmann’s private photographs of Hitler that

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FIGURE 21.1  Hitler practicing before the camera (Ordinary Fascism, 1965; frame capture).

had been collecting dust for two decades on the floor of the Mosfilm studio, snapshots taken by SS officers, as well as incorporating documents from archives in Warsaw and Berlin and new footage shot in Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Buchenwald. The fragmented narrative is held together by Romm’s own voiceover, closely miked and spoken in a conversational, intimate style. Footage of Nazi atrocities was coupled with present-day pictures of young Moscow students worrying about taking exams, chatting with friends, falling in love, young Germans in East Berlin going about their daily lives, all shot by cameramen German Lavrov and Savva Kulish with a hidden camera, and interspersed with pictures of children (including Romm’s own nephew drawing a picture of a cat). This was a “compilation documentary” (montazhnyi fil’m), made in the style of Esfir Shub’s The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (Padenie dinastii Romanovykh, 1927), and like it, based on never before seen private documents, reassembled to tell a story they were never meant to tell. Going back to 1920s style cinematic montage, Romm detached film fragments, objects, and photographs from their original context, purposely loosening the connections between them, and creating new semantic blocks. As Romm put it in an interview: We decided to completely abandon the historical, temporal sequence, to violate it everywhere and deliberately, emphatically; to throw time forward and then backward, and if a sequence turned out to be internally consistent, then to break it up without fail, so that the viewer watches not the action on the screen but the complex development of thought …14

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FIGURE 21.2  Woman and child, near Ivangorod, Ukraine, 1942 (Ordinary Fascism, 1965; frame capture).

The film, as a result, lies somewhere between the documentary and the lyrical, more in the tradition of the new sixties’ documentary cinema (such as the cinéma vérité movement in France; or “free cinema” movement in the UK), than following the conventions of Soviet newsreel and documentary film, with their heavy reliance on a “voice-of-God” narration to deliver their ideological messages.15 The opening sequence shows us children’s drawings—first different drawings of cats, then a series called “My mother is the most beautiful” interspersed with shots of Moscow students and mothers walking with their babies in Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin. And just at the moment when the viewer is made complacent by the innocuous, almost banal images of mothers and children, Romm cuts to a close up of a photograph of an Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) shooting a woman and child, near Ivangorod, Ukraine, 1942, and the sound of gun shot. The spell is broken and we understand the full shocking force of an image removed from its historical context and given to us with no narrative support, as a kind of traumatic breach. From the photograph of the Soviet (Ukrainian, Jewish) mother clutching her child while a Nazi soldier shoots her in the back, we cut back to a moving image of a little girl, her hair being stroked by someone’s loving hand. The girl looks back at the camera and at us, and Romm once more freezes the frame to register her direct gaze. She is a witness, both to the atrocities we are about to see and to our own act of spectatorship, implicating us in the history the film is going to unfold. This direct look at the camera is clarified later in the film, when Romm shows us a series of photographs of the prisoners who entered Auschwitz, most never to leave. Noticing the pictures of people covering the hallways of the barracks, always taken in the same way by the official camp photographer—enface, profile, three-quarter turn—Romm was struck

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FIGURE 21.3  Girl having her hair stroked (Ordinary Fascism, 1965; frame capture).

by the look in their eyes, “sometimes defiant, sometimes lost, sometimes accusatory, sometimes contemplative.” Given access to prisoner files from the camp archives, Romm asked his cameraman Lavrov to slowly zoom in on each inmate’s photograph, moving from a neutral medium shot to extreme close up to capture the eyes looking back us: On the last day of filming, while Lavrov was setting up his lighting equipment, I—not for the first time—walked down the hallway of the barracks. The walls were covered with many small photographs. Each person captured in three perspectives: enface, profile, three quarters. These were official police photographs of the prisoners of Auschwitz. The hallway was poorly lit, the faces hard to see. Below each photograph— the prisoner’s number. In order to see it, you have to come very close to the picture. I leaned in to read and suddenly saw above the number the eyes of a woman—and was struck by her gaze. In it was fear and submission and something else, which at first, I did not understand. I looked at the picture of the man next to it, and again was struck by the gaze. Here there was hatred, and something else. Above and below, to the right and to the left, everywhere these photographs and eyes. Different faces looking with different expressions, and yet in their eyes there was something in common. There was death.16 As Vika Paranyuk has noted, following French film scholar Antoine de Baecque, we are witness here to “irruptions of history,” to the transference of the direct look-to-camera, first found in the footage of concentration camps that then finds itself a key element in modern film. Like Romm, de Baecque’s understanding of modern cinema was deeply shaken by watching, “one after the other,” Resnais’s Night and Fog (1956), Hiroshima, Mon amour (1959), and Roberto Rossellini’s Europa 51 (1952). It was at this point,

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writes de Baecque in his introduction to Camera Historica, that a “cinematographic form of history was first revealed to me,” adding, where did this gaze, this head-on intensity, come from? From history. Not specifically from the history of cinema—even though quite a few looks-to-camera had been cast at spectators in the days of silent movies, when burlesque films would wink in connivance with the audiences—but rather from a blind split of twentieth century history, its unrepresentability, which is nonetheless staring right at us. “The looks-to-camera in Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald, in Night and Fog, Europa ’51, and Hiroshima mon amour,” he writes, tells us that “cinema had to change” because nobody could remain innocent after these images, “neither filmmakers nor spectators, neither actors nor characters.” Moreover, “the eyes staring into the lens and at us are part and parcel of the century and its films, the highest evidence of the encounter of history and cinema” (3).17 As Romm says in his voiceover commentary, “we wanted to show you these pictures so that you could look into the eyes of those who perished at Auschwitz.” The violence is over, he notes, but the eyes are still living. The eyes are still looking at us.18 While Ordinary Fascism is not, of course, without its own forms of ideology and propaganda (following Soviet convention, Romm notes that the millions of people— almost never referred to as Jews—exterminated in German camps are nothing compared to what the Third Reich was preparing to build on the other side of the Ural mountains, in preparation for exterminating “sixty million Russians, along with other peoples”), the film’s main force comes not only from Romm’s ironic voiceover commentary on the events unfolding on the screen, but from the juxtapositions of images of everyday life

FIGURE 21.4  “The eyes of Auschwitz” (Ordinary Fascism, 1965; frame capture).

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with the atrocities of the Holocaust. The camp commandant’s diary, found along with pictures of his family and pictures of the bodies of exterminated Jews, details the process of extermination, while noting in the same entry the need to order a new pair of trousers or the tomato soup and the half chicken (with unlimited beer and vanilla ice-cream) that he had for dinner a long day of work. In this juxtaposition of everyday life and the “banality of evil” with the genocidal power of the state violence most Soviet viewers were able to draw a lesson not only about history, but about the present day, and not simply about Nazi Germany, but also about the USSR. The “eyes of Auschwitz” (as Romm came to refer to them) implicated the viewer, reminding them that besides Nazi concentration camps there was also the Soviet GULAG and besides the cult of Hitler, there was also the cult of Stalin. It is here that the film’s ending is particularly informative of Romm’s thinking about memory, trauma, and the forces of science and technology being harnessed for genocidal violence. While the ending of Ordinary Fascism is the most overtly political element of the film (and should have appeased Soviet critics, who were correctly suspicious of the film’s messaging), it also provides a way for us to link the past trauma of the Holocaust with the future threat of nuclear annihilation. The film ends not with the chapter narrating Hitler’s death, the defeat of the Third Reich, and Soviet victory, but with a chapter called, “Final, unfinished …” After a break separating the past from the present, Romm once more returns to images of children and the new peace-time generation, the generation that knows nothing about fascism or about the war, as well as the warning that despite the fall of the Third Reich, fascism as a concept, has not been defeated: “the cancerous growth has been cut out, but the metastases remain and are spreading.” We see footage of Nazi and neo-Nazi parties in West Germany, England, Argentina, and the United States. The “West” is marked as decidedly genocidal, with the atomic explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrating its full complicity with regimes of extermination. As Romm notes, even Truman didn’t hesitate to use the bomb when he had it. But what about the East? Are the images of atomic explosions we see archival footage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (or the Trinity test, or Bikini Atoll) or are they in fact of Soviet nuclear tests?19 What is the relationship between the advances in scientific research so valued by the Soviets and the threat of nuclear annihilation? To answer this question, we need to go back to the film Romm made before Ordinary Fascism, about a love triangle of three Soviet physicists, and the threat of radiation (and death) that comes from pushing the boundaries of science and technology.

NINE DAYS OF ONE YEAR Three years before the release of Ordinary Fascism, Romm made Nine Days of One Year (1962), after a protracted creative crisis that lasted for almost six years.20 His earlier film, the melodramatic thriller Murder on Dante Street (Ubiistvo na ulitse Dante, 1956), had been completely out of step with the new postwar, Thaw-era cinema: old fashioned in both form and content, it still reflected the ideology of Stalinist Socialist Realism that Romm had helped to construct. (To Romm’s credit, the film had been written in 1945, but not made until 1955.) It was during this creative crisis that Romm opened his mini-studio at Mosfilm, engaging in a conversation with his students about what a truly contemporary, truly modern cinema should look like. It was also during this period, as Paranyuk reminds us, that Romm watched Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour, which screened out of competition at

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the Moscow International Film Festival in August of 1959. As Paranyuk notes, Romm “found the film’s juxtaposition of the burnt bodies of the victims of Hiroshima with those of the two lovers ‘distasteful and offensive’,” but he took away from the film what he called “magnificent lessons in montage”: the creation of an intricate texture of onscreen memories. For Romm, this technique of “asynchronicity,” the “daring handling of the material,” and the “violation of all canons of dramaturgy, incisive juxtapositions of extremely contrasting material, and the subverting of the customary ways of joining shots,” forced the viewer to think, to see, and to hear.21 As Paranyuk puts it, for Romm, “the calamitous history of the twentieth century … necessitated deep thinking about past and present history, which, consequently, demanded a new filmic form” (20). His Nine Days of One Year, made two years later in 1961–2, was in every way the opposite of his earlier films. Sparse sets, canted camera angles, a minimalist or altogether absent score, and a focus on philosophical dialogue meant that the film appeared very “modern,” in the new tradition of postwar European cinema, not Stalinist Socialist Realism. Its plot was similarly “modern”: a love triangle between three young nuclear scientists: Dmitry Gusev, the experimental physicist (Aleksei Batalov); Ilya Kulikov, the theoretical physicist (Innokenty Smoktunovsky); and Lyolya (Tatyana Lavrova), the woman who loves them (we are not given her last name nor the branch of physics to which she supposedly belongs). At the start of the film, Lyolya is ready to marry Kulikov the theorist, only to find out that Gusev, the man with whom she has been in love for the last six years, has been accidentally irradiated for a second time during an experiment and only has one year

FIGURE 21.5  Cinematic modernism (Nine Days of One Year, 1962; frame capture).

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to live. So, she marries him instead. A third accident—which occurs toward the end of the film—means Gusev’s almost certain death. The film was part of the “physicists and lyricists” debates of the 1950s, and the perception that literature and the arts had been irrevocably compromised by their association with the cult of personality, their glorification of Stalin, and their complicity with state terror.22 Science on the other hand—and physics in particular—was seen as politically and ideologically neutral and therefore, more trustworthy. As Petr Vail’ and Aleksandr Genis put it, “The table of multiplication possessed the properties of absolute verity. Hard scientific knowledge seemed the equivalent of moral truth. Between honesty and mathematics there was the equal sign. After it had turned out that words could lie, formulas elicited more trust.”23 On the one hand, Romm’s film appears to echo the postwar generation’s trust in science as a way forward toward the (bright) future. And yet, at its core, the film is fundamentally about death from our advances in science and technology, about the consequences of pushing the boundaries of physics (and thermonuclear physics in particular) beyond the human limits and at the cost of human lives. A debate early in the film between Gusev and Kulikov makes the stakes of Gusev’s experiments clear. Gusev is looking for energy particles—energy that, as he puts it, gives us light, heat, and “even communism”; but Kulikov warns him that because of the threat of war, humanity will not be around long enough to benefit from his discoveries. Why does humanity need your energy? he asks. “Humanity” (chelovechestvo) already has everything: “it has reached such perfection that it can eliminate all life on Earth in 20 minutes.” Even if Gusev’s experiments have nothing to do with war (as he assures us they do not), the results, Kulikov argues, cannot be kept within the confines of one country, and soon the whole world will know about them. “Science advanced chemistry,” he says, “and the Germans invented poison gas; the internal combustion engine was invented— the English built tanks; the chain reaction was developed—and the Americans dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.” The pharaohs could only destroy 5,000, 10,000 people at a time, that’s nothing by modern standards: “no Genghis Khan could imagine the death camps and the gas chambers; he wouldn’t think of fertilizing his fields with human ashes, of stuffing mattresses with human hair, or making lampshades out of human skin.” The discourse and the links between the Holocaust and nuclear annihilation are thus made completely explicit here. There is no difference between the scientific methods of Nazi Germany and the development of the atomic and nuclear weapons (not only by the United States, but also by the USSR), no moment in which science could be turned back or used only for good. It is a radical statement to make, let alone in the context of postwar USSR, whose belief in science, rationality, and its socialist future countered the loss of faith in the Soviet system shaken by the destruction of the Second World War and the revelations of Stalin’s crimes. Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech,” delivered at the 20th Party Congress in 1956, served to undo Stalin’s cult of personality, but it was also meant to set the USSR back on the correct path toward socialism. And yet, six years later, this premise was being questioned by one of USSR’s top film directors, in a speech delivered by one of the country’s most beloved actors.24 Some more historical context maybe useful here. During the final stage of the Second World War, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, with the consent of the UK, as required by the Quebec Agreement. The two bombings killed 129,000–226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain up to the present moment the only use of nuclear weapons in the history of armed conflict. The first Soviet atomic device was

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tested on August 29, 1949; and in 1950, physicist Andrei Sakharov helped to develop the first megaton-range Soviet hydrogen bomb, using a design known as Sakharov’s “Third Idea” in Russia and the Teller–Ulam design in the United States. Sakharov’s “Third idea” was first tested as RDS-37 in 1955. A larger variation of Sakharov’s design was the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated, which was tested on October 1961. All in all, the Soviets set off 214 nuclear bombs in the open air between 1949 and 1962, when the United Nations banned atmospheric tests worldwide. Thus, by the early 1960s, when Romm was making Nine Days of One Year, Soviet nuclear physics had already demonstrated its annihilatory power. But just as importantly, Soviet scientists were not only making bombs, they were also openly speaking out against their own scientific breakthroughs, talking about the dangers of atomic power, and refusing to take part in the development of the hydrogen bomb. In the late 1950s, Sakharov had become concerned about the moral and political implications of his work. Politically active during the 1960s, he became an outspoken critic of nuclear proliferation. Pushing for the end of atmospheric tests, he played a key role in the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed in Moscow.25 Nine Days of One Year is partially based on real events, takes place in one of the “closed cities” of the USSR, and was partially filmed on location at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow.26 While Romm claimed that neither of the two physicists was based on any one person in particular, one likely model for Gusev was Igor Tamm, a Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics for the 1934 discovery of Cherenkov radiation, and who served as a consultant on the film. In late 1940s to early 1950s Tamm was involved in the Soviet thermonuclear bomb project; in 1949–53 he spent most of his time in the “secret city” of Sarov, working as a head of the theoretical group developing the hydrogen bomb. Another model for Gusev was Igor Kurchatov (for whom the Institute pictured in the film, was named) and who, from 1940 onward, worked on and contributed to the advancement of the nuclear weapons program in the USSR, and later also advocated for the peaceful development of nuclear technology. Kurchatov contributed to the development of the hydrogen bomb, based on Sakharov’s Third Idea. In January 1949 Kurchatov was involved in the catastrophe at Chelyabinsk-40. In an effort to save the uranium load and reduce losses in the production of plutonium, Kurchatov was the first to step into the central hall of the damaged reactor full of radioactive gases. He died of a cardiac embolism in February 1960. In the film, Gusev dates his first exposure to radiation to approximately 1947, while trying to obtain a critical mass of liquid uranium, back when “everything was done with bare hands and sheer enthusiasm,” as he puts it. Romm’s second direct reference to the threat posed by nuclear proliferation in the film is the conversation that Gusev has with his father, in which he admits to building the bomb, but believes it was worth it: without it, he says, we wouldn’t be here, because over half the world’s population would have been destroyed. (Presumably, meaning that without “mutually assured destruction” the United States would have bombed the USSR out of existence). Besides, once an idea is born “it cannot be unthought,” he says. If forgotten, it will be rediscovered. At this point, the film cuts to a close up of Lyolya’s face from the next room, as she takes in what Gusev is saying. It is here, through her reaction that we fully understand the horror that underpins the joys of scientific discovery when the theoretical turns practical and the practical turns genocidal. Throughout the film, Lyolya has provided the outsider point-of-view through her voiceover interior monologues that give psychological depth to

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a film that is otherwise all about geometric patterns and reflective surfaces, mathematical formulas, and philosophical debates. A third member of the film’s erotic triangle whose presence guarantees that the homosocial does not slip into the homosexual, Lyolya may seem like an afterthought, but her role is that of observer/spectator/witness. Her point-ofview (often literalized through shot/reverse shot editing) provides the distance necessary to see Gusev’s blind belief in science as a destructive force, and Kulikov’s pessimistic philosophizing as yet another example of postwar Soviet “Hamletism” (gamletizm)—the perpetual search for meaning reflecting an existential crisis.27 At a crucial moment in the film—when Gusev’s experiment seems to have succeeded and all the people in the institute are eagerly looking through viewfinders and TV screens at “Gusev’s neutrons”— she turns to look at Gusev instead. She understands (as we do) that the experiment’s success means certain death for Gusev, and possibly, for the planet. A repeated set of images—Gusev looking into an electron microscope—should, as Paranyuk has noted, remind us of the “eyes of Auschwitz”—the “irruptions of history” in the form of the direct look-to-camera that implicates us in the act of witnessing (49). In this case, we are witnessing both the positive advances of science and their horrific consequences: the same neutrons that allow Gusev’s experiment to succeed are also what kills him and threatens humanity’s future, poised on the brink of nuclear annihilation. As Kulikov, the moral and ethical center of the film, says early in the narrative, Somewhere, on the other side of the planet, there are people making all the decisions. Whether or not I will live or die. Whether or not I will have dinner. We are physicists and know that you can keep increasing the temperature by increasing the pressure, but not indefinitely. Sooner or later there is going to be an explosion. And our planet has now reached critical levels. According to the actor Aleksei Batalov, who played Gusev, the final version of the film excluded a number of the “darker” episodes shot for the film but rejected by the censors, including Gusev’s visit to his mother’s grave, and—perhaps most vitally for us—Gusev’s radiation poisoning leading to permanent blindness. This final result of Gusev’s illness underscores the degree to which this film was in fact intended by Romm to be about “vision”: vision of the future, the ability to see and watch and bear witness. He will repeat all of these tropes three years later in his extraordinary Ordinary Fascism.

“FINAL, UNFINISHED …” Recalling the making of Nine Days of One Year, Romm comes back to the period of “film famine” in the late 1940s and specifically, the year 1951 when many films which were already in production were shelved, including ones by such major directors as Oleksandr Dovzhenko.28 All the filmmakers were having health problems: Grigori Alexandrov had high blood pressure; Mikhail Chiaureli had something wrong with his heart; Romm broke his leg. He recalls that meetings of the creative staff opened with hospital updates reporting on everyone’s health; the Mosfilm studio—the largest film studio in the USSR— stood empty. As Romm’s biographer Mark Zak notes, the connection between this memory and the making of Nine Days of One Year might not be obvious at first, but then we understand: the film is saturated by historical events, even if on the surface it seems to be all about the contemporary moment and the ultra-modern profession of atomic

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FIGURE 21.6  Happily ever after (Nine Days of One Year, 1962; frame capture).

physics. The film is “saturated” by both history and memory, “post” and “pre”: bearing witness to the horrors of the past so that they might not be repeated in the future. In the end, Nine Days of One Year, like Ordinary Fascism (and Romm thought of these films together as part of a trilogy29) turns away from cinematic realism and historical trauma to take refuge in art—children’s art, specifically. The final image of the film is a stick figure drawing of Gusev, Lyolya, and Kulikov, holding hands, in an imaginary utopian future. The crudeness of the drawing is very much its point: it allows us to turn away from history’s traumatic and inassimilable gaze and instead, take brief comfort in fantasy.

NOTES 1. For detailed discussion of postmemory as it relates to the Holocaust, see: Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory” and Family Frames as well as Bal et al., eds., Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. 2. The chronological limits of the Thaw are usually marked by events in Soviet political history: the beginning of the Thaw is associated with the death of Stalin in 1953, and Nikita Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” at the 20th Party Congress in 1956 that brought on the period of de-Stalinization. The end of the Thaw is marked by Khrushchev’s removal from office in 1964 and the USSR’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Thus, in a sense, the Soviet 1960s actually cover two historical periods—the end of the Thaw and the

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beginning of Stagnation—and the films of the decade articulate the transition from the one to the other. On the “long 1960s” see: Semerchuk; Kozlov and Gilburd; and Dumančić. 3. Stalinist “grand style” is best represented by “The Seven Sisters” (Stalinskie vysotki / Stalin’s high-rises), a group of seven skyscrapers in Moscow designed in the Stalinist style, built from 1947 to 1953 in an elaborate combination of Russian Baroque and Gothic styles; as well as by the palatial architecture of the Moscow metro, built in the 1930s–50s. In sculpture, the best example is Vera Mukhina’s monument to the “Worker and Peasant” (Rabochii i kolkhoznitsa, 24.5 meters in height) initially created for the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. 4. Developed for use in meteorology to study cloud formation and called “whole-sky lenses,” fisheye lenses quickly became popular in general photography for their unique, distorted appearance. They are often used by photographers shooting broad landscapes to suggest the curve of the earth. In fisheye lenses, the visual angle is close to or more than 180 degrees in at least one direction. 5. See Prokhorov. 6. For a discussion of Soviet sixties’ cinema and postmemory, see Kaganovsky, “Postmemory, Counter-memory: Soviet Cinema of the 1960s.” 7. Natascha Laurent’s chapter on Mikhail Romm in Kinojudaica reexamines the career of this well-established Soviet filmmaker in terms of his relationship to his Jewish roots, and his identification as a Jew during the darkest days of the Second World War. 8. The All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), the main Russian film school, played a major role in the production and development of new cinematic talent in part because its instructors in the 1960s included major figures of the older generation— some going all the way back to the 1920s and Soviet avant-garde cinema—such as Sergei Gerasimov (who trained Kira Muratova) and Oleksandr Dovzhenko (who trained Larisa Shepit’ko). But it was Mikhail Romm’s workshop or “mini-studio” within Mosfil’m (opened in the late 1950s but was shut down in 1960) that provided the initial infrastructure for new and experimental projects and made possible the careers of a new generation of filmmakers, including Andrei Konchalovsky, Gleb Panfilov, Shepit’ko, Vasilii Shuksin, and Andrei Tarkovsky. As Ian Christie has put it, Romm launched the Soviet New Wave. See also, Oksana Bulgakowa, “Cine-weathers: Soviet Thaw Cinema in the International Context,” in The Thaw, 436–81. 9. The total number is between 1.5 and 3 million Jews and depends on how one counts the partition of Poland at the start of the war. 10. Shneer’s study of Soviet photojournalism, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes; Hicks’s First Films of the Holocaust; Gershenson’s The Phantom Holocaust all work together to produce an archive of filmic documents that significantly expands our understanding of the Holocaust, both in the East and in the West. Valérie Pozner and Natacha Laurent’s substantial edited collection, Kinojudaica (2012), places these studies of the Soviet Holocaust in a broader historical setting: the representations of Jews on Russian and Soviet screens from 1910s to 1980s. 11. In 1948, a campaign targeting Soviet Jews began: the “cosmopolitan campaign” attacked Jewish writers and art critics, leading to expulsions, arrests, and the murder of the great Jewish theater actor Solomon Mikhoels.

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12. The earliest documentary films date from the initial liberation of the southern Russian city of Rostov-on Don in November 1941, followed by newsreels of short-lived liberations of the towns of Livny, Kerch, and Barvenkovo, and the ground-breaking feature length documentary Defeat of the Germans near Moscow, a version of which—rewritten and reedited—was widely shown in the United States and won the Oscar in 1943. Soviet filmmakers continued to make newsreels throughout the war, culminating in records of death camps at Majdanek, following its liberation in July 1944 and the one at Auschwitz in January 1945. 13. Mikhail Romm, “Obyknovennyi fashizm”: http://scepsis.net/library/id_1174.html. The script was written by Maya Turovskaya and Yuri Khaniutin. See: Romm et al. 14. Mikhail Romm, “Obyknovennyi fashizm”: http://scepsis.net/library/id_1174.html 15. On the “voice of god” in Soviet documentary, see Hicks, “Challenging”; on the culture of the radio, see Lovell. 16. Mikhail Romm, “Obyknovennyi fashizm”: http://scepsis.net/library/id_1174.html 17. See also Paranyuk, 21. 18. On the “eyes of Auschwitz,” see also Genri. 19. For an illustrated history of nuclear weapons’ use, see: https://www.sonicbomb.com 20. See Romm, Izbrannye proizvedeniia and Zak, 188–9. 21. Paranuyk, 7; see Romm, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, v. 1, 273–90. 22. Coined after Boris Slutsky’s 1959 poem “Fiziki i liriki” (Physicists and Lyricists), inspired by the debate between two cybernetic physicists, Igor Poletaev and Aleksei Liapunov with the writer Ilya Erenburg that took place on the pages of the newspaper Komsomolskaya pravda. The poem laments the rise of physics and the downfall of the lyric (Slutsky would later attenuate his position in a follow up poem, “Liriki i fiziki” (Lyricists and Physicists). 23. Vail’ and Genis (100) quoted in Paranyuk, 23 fn. 51. 24. On the cult of Innokenty Smoktunovsky, see Bulgakowa, “Vocal.”. 25. For primary source documents related to the Soviet development of nuclear weapons, see https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/79/soviet-nuclear-history 26. Closed cities were established in the Soviet Union from the late 1940s onwards and comprised relatively small communities with sensitive military, industrial, or scientific facilities such as arms plants or nuclear research sites, as well as border towns. Like the GULAG, closed cities became part of the larger discourse of de-Stalinization—the hidden spaces within the USSR. 27. Virtually absent from the stage and from school curricula during the Stalin period, Hamlet (both character and play) became ubiquitous in the post-Stalin era, “a symbol of independent-mindedness and skepticism” and “one of the most celebrated icons of the sixties” (Dumančić, Men Out of Focus, 138). Indeed, Smoktunovsky (who plays Kulikov in the film) would go on to play Hamlet in the famous 1960s Soviet film adaptation of Shakespeare’s play (Gamlet, dir. Grigori Kozintsev, 1964). 28. Postwar xenophobia, paranoia, and the start of the Cold War all led to a precipitous drop in film production, which, alongside the bans on films, produced the so-called “film famine” or “film anemia” (malokartin’e) of the late 1940s. If in the 1930s film production had been around fifty feature films per year, it would drop to under ten by 1951 (a number particularly striking when compared to the yearly output of 400–500 films

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produced in Hollywood or the 200–300 films a year made in India or Japan during the same period). 29. The third film of the trilogy was the unfinished documentary, And Still I Believe (I vse-taki ia veriu …) completed by Elem Klimov, Marlen Khutsiev, and German Lavrov. The film tells the history of the twentieth century, with Romm’s voiceover commentary cutting off after narrating the history of two world wars, before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Mapuche Hunger Strikes as a Performance of Re-membering ETHAN MADARIETA

Having wrested the determination of his death from the hands of the state throughout a 108-day hunger strike-turned dry strike (not consuming liquids, and thus a strike unto death), Machi1 Celestino Córdova and nine other hunger strikers performed a re-membering, what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o theorizes as the repeated reconnecting of cultural memory through embodied practices and language. These hunger strikers’ memorial performances sought to disclose ongoing Chilean state violence simultaneous to asserting Mapuche corporeal presence as a reclamation of their unceded ancestral territories. Through this intentional, hetero-referential (multiply directed beyond the body as opposed to the auto-referential dying of suicide), and slow destruction of the body, the hunger strikers made of their dying bodies a sacrificial mnemonic and a locus for re-membering. On the 100th day of Machi Córdova’s strike, his death imminent by his turn from hunger to dry strike, he recorded what he thought would be his final words: To the Mapuche Nation and indigenous people, to all non-indigenous people across the world. All peoples who fight for their spiritual beliefs, for their territories, for their freedom, for the right to dignify its people. Always striving for the optimum balance that our Mother Earth, Ñuke Mapu, has supernaturally bestowed upon all of Humanity and that is sadly not yet valued as it deserves. I very much regret that I must deliver this, my final message, in the last remaining days before my final sacrifice. […] So that my death may be quicker, I plan to resume my hunger and thirst strike, so that my end will not be as slow as the state, the current government, and business sector in general hope. Until my very last day, I will remind the Chilean state … of the massacre of our ancestors and the spiritual, cultural, and socioeconomically impoverishment cruelly forced upon our Mapuche Nation since the arrival of the invaders. […] Finally, my only hope is that you keep demanding, in every way possible, the restitution of our ancestral Mapuche territories and the settlement of all historic debts

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owed by the Chilean state to all indigenous peoples, and demand that no autopsy be carried out upon me following my death. Chaltumay, thank you so much. —Machi Celestino Córdova, August 11, 2020.2 Over the last twenty-plus years, hunger strikes have been a notable form of political performance, representational strategy, and mnemonic for the Mapuche, Indigenous Peoples whose territories, Wallmapu, both precede and exceed national borders (spanning what is now south-central Chile and south-western Argentina). This essay examines Mapuche hunger strikes as acts of generative violence in the service of a nourishing, sustaining, and innovative cultural memory. These enactments are dynamic mnemonic (per)formatives that call attention to ongoing devastations of colonial violence and deny the state an instance of its necropolitical force by wresting one’s life, and processes and timeline of dying, from the state. In doing so, I argue, the Mapuche hunger strike is not to be read primarily as an act of resistance but rather as the emergence of Mapuche presence that precedes and exceeds settler colonial historical memory by which the state claims territorial precedence. The hunger strike defies the very logics by which the state stakes its claims of territorial sovereignty, and thus can be read as resistance only within a settler colonial logic that deems Mapuche presence as always already oppositional. This argument coheres through a theoretical structuring that reads together Allen Feldman’s work on a “sacrificial model of memory formation,” María Fernanda Libro’s theorization of the metonymic entwinement of Indigenous bodies and land, Ana Bacigalupo’s study of Mapuche practices of “disremembering,” and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s theorizations of “dismemberment” and “re-membering.”

MAPUCHE CULTURAL MEMORY AND THE COLONIAL CONTINUUM The Mapuche hunger strikes are apposite political performances that announce the ongoing and targeted violences of the state and their formation of institutional memory by which these violences are justified. Violence is pluralized here to signify what the Mapuche historian Fernando Pairican describes of the Mapuche experience as multiply targeted violences of colonial dispossessions emerging from European colonization (6). These violences appear presently as intensified military occupation in the service of a privatized conglomeration of ultra-neoliberal extractionist policies and multinational corporations who require Mapuche “elimination” (see Wolfe “Structure and Event,” “Settler Colonialism”). In this temporal framing, Mapuche hunger strikes are iterative performances occurring within what poet Daniel Borzutzky has called the “colonial continuum” (22) and scholar Macarena Gómez-Barris has called the “past-present” (“Mapuche Mnemonics” 90–1). These violences were and are directed at the Indigenous body and its relation to land—of a colonially conceived uncivilized proximity to land while demanding the simultaneous separability of the Mapuche from land. The hunger strikes do not merely represent a refusal and defiance of the state’s necropolitical force but also incisively draw attention to the hidden sociogenic systems of structural racism. As I have argued elsewhere, these violent systems underly the long processes of environmental devastations the environmental humanist, Rob Nixon, describes as “slow violence” (Madarieta).

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What gives the hunger strikes their re-membering force is the insistence of a Mapuche conception of land-as-mapu, as a dynamic and sacred matrix of relations, refusing (neo)colonial definitions of land and body as property and extractable resource. While Mapuche hunger strikes are brief relative to the centuries-long unfolding of slow violence, they re-member Mapuche cultural knowledges, what the Mapuche name kimün, as the dynamic relationality of the body and land-as-mapu. Land-as-mapu articulates a Mapuche understanding of land as balanced interrelationships, figuring Mapuche as an eco-constitutive subjectivity. This ontological condition is fundamentally antagonistic to the state’s necropolitical “economies of dispossession” (Byrd et al. 2). In MapucheTehuelche activist and author Moira Millan’s 2019 novel El tren del olvido (The Train of Forgetting), the protagonist Llankaray describes the Mapuche relationship with land through the memorial constitution of their nominal self-identification: che, “people,” of mapu, “the land.” She shares that mapu is not just tierra/land but “es el mundo tangible y el mundo perceptible, el mundo bajo nuestros pies y también el de arriba, y el que está alrededor nuestro” (is the tangible world and the perceptible world, the world under our feet and also the one above, and the one around us) (11). Millan’s formulation describes a sociality and subjectivity as emergent from and entwined with land. If landscape is a cultural construction, mapu is a formation of Mapuche cultural memory, and one ontologically distinct from the state’s constitution of that same geographic space (Donoso Aceituno and Espinaza Solar 69). Mapuche hunger strikes are both embodied performance and discursive dissemination of this specific relationality and should thus be understood as a “[form] of indigenous representational legibility [that is] its own form of cultural memory,” what Gómez-Barris has described as “the location of innovation and engagement that produces social and sacred connections to the natural world” (“Mapuche Mnemonics” 92, 91; emphasis mine). We might therefore consider Mapuche cultural memory as emerging from a specific eco-constitutive subjectivity and dynamic planetary relationality. In this matrix, the hunger strike emerges as an assertion of Indigenous corporeal and territorial presence that defies the signifying center of state necropolitics and its global capitalist infrastructure. For the state, biopolitical control is tantamount but it is materially and epistemologically undermined by the Mapuche hunger strikes that re-member the interrelationality of body and land-as-mapu. The hunger strike thus foregrounds the continued presence and innovation of Mapuche cultural memory not in resistance to, and therefore not emergent from, the state’s necropolitical force. For this reason, the cultural memory performed in the hunger strike stands always already in opposition to the state’s assertions of ontological supremacy, exemplified by how it defines the Mapuche land, body, and memory. This is the onto-epistemological landscape within which the hunger striking body becomes a sacrificial mnemonic, a memorial (per)formative. The (per)formative indexes both the mnemonic doing of violence—its performativity as the ability to make one remember—and the formative nature of this violence in the constitution of the political subject. Here, memory must be read as performance as its significance is opened up in a phenomenological and epistemological constellation of prior iterations, the interpretations of which shift with every subsequent mnemonic act (that which spurs the what and how of memory) and practice of re-membering (as a way of moving, an affective state, and a narrative formulation as Ngũgĩ theorizes). While the hunger strike is an act of memory always in relation with a sacred conception of land as constitutive of Mapuche subjectivity, it is also a strategy for representing and intervening in the continuous violences of dispossession because of its intrinsic opposition to these violences. Violence

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on the body, too, either self-inflicted or perpetrated, in relation to slow violence or the structural violences of the state, is thus a particular kind of (per)formative remembering in “the constitution of a political subject” (Feldman 62). The intentional, self-destructive violence of the Mapuche hunger strike becomes that which constitutes the Mapuche as political subject. It is not resistance to the directed violences of the state but a re-membering of Mapuche being in its reclamation of a Mapuche corporeal and political autonomy that defies the “inscribed” sociogenic descriptions of Man, to echo Sylvia Wynter. At the same time, the hunger strike is a representational strategy for exposing the effects of what Wynter calls the “sociogenic principle,” which has made and promises to make Indigenous territories, and life itself, unlivable. Wynter develops the sociogenic principle as a way of understanding the shifts, or epistemic battles, over the predominant “descriptive statement … instituting … each genre of the human” (318). These descriptive statements, Wynter writes, “remain inscribed within the framework of a specific secularizing reformulation of that matrix Judeo-Christian Grand Narrative”—a narrative foundational to the Chilean nation state’s political formation where colonial Christian Man as political subject morphs into the post-eighteenth century “bio-economic subject” we might identify with Foucault’s homo-economicus in the state’s dictatorial move to wholesale neoliberalism (318). The hunger strike is thus not a performance of a memory or specific memories related to this colonial epistemological process but rather a performance of memory itself; an act, in and of itself, of re-membering a people and land beyond the descriptive imperative that produced the bio-economic subject. In other words, the hunger strike is an active re-membering of Mapuche cultural memory that appears in colonial context as a fundamental opposition to the state’s (mis)conception of land as economizeable object and body as bio-economic subject, or economic Man. As such, it ought not be misunderstood as reaction or resistance to physical and epistemological state violence but as a Mapuche constitutive re-membering. The hunger strike is a constitutive re-membering that precedes, exceeds, and is simultaneous to the state’s (mis)recognition of the performance. The state (mis)recongnizes the striking body in the act of resistance based upon its subjugation of the Mapuche body as an object irredeemable as bio-economic subject. To move beyond the hunger strike’s legibility by the state as resistance, we might rather understand it as drawing upon what critical Anthropologist Kwame Edwin Otu describes as “the nourishing archive of cultural memory” (personal conversation). To draw upon this “nourishing archive” suggests that the hunger striker denies food while taking and generating another form of sustenance (etym. “sustain”). Otu asks if this act of nourishment might be an act of “rehabilitation” for the striking body, and in doing so reveals a generative slippage by which the strike’s engagement with the “nourishing archive” of Mapuche cultural memory is simultaneously a representation of the re-habilitation of land-as-mapu. Through such framing, what the state understands as resistance becomes a method for drawing upon and generating Mapuche cultural memory, insisting on what is to be remembered and how it is to be remembered. In other words, this self-inflicted violence becomes mnemonic. The violences of an ongoing colonialism and the self-inflicted sacrificial violence of the body through hunger strike are also entwined metonymically. As María Fernanda Libro writes, “la corporalidad indígena se ha constituido históricamente como un territorio de posesión y dominio. Desde las violaciones a las mujeres, acometidas por los conquistadores/colonizadores, hasta las orejas que los soldados cortaban para certificar la cantidad de indios muertos en combate, el cuerpo ha sido concebido a partir de una operación metonímica con el espacio a dominar” (Indigenous corporality has been historically constituted as a territory of possession and dominion. From the rape of women

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committed by the conquistadores/colonizers to the ears severed to certify the quantity of indios dead in combat, through a metonymic operation the body has been conceived of [by the state] as a space to dominate) (25). In other words, possession and dominion over the Indigenous body was metonymic possession and dominion over land. The physical and psychic marking of the body correlates to the state’s possession of land, a perpetrative violence by which bodies (or parts of bodies) acted as a mnemonic for the colonizer and, through traumatic remembrance and the facts of dispossession, Indigenous Peoples. The colonial conception of the Indigenous body as a space of possession and dominion was the invention and reification of Chilean historical memory where the Mapuche body both is and is not the land, due to a fundamental misconception of Indigenous Persons and land. The correlation between the state’s violent and multitudinous dispossessions and its accrual of land and/as extractable resources constitutes its historical memory whereby the Mapuche body is already racially and culturally marked as abject. This long, racializing project supplies legal justification for continued violent dispossessions such as continuous land seizure, state-sanctioned murders, criminalization, and imprisonment (Madarieta). This is evidenced by the state’s innumerable and continuous violences against those Mapuche who continue to live in and refuse to leave Wallmapu. A very brief list of examples are the carabineros’ 2021 murder of twenty-nine-year-old CAM (Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco) member Pablo Marchant Gutiérrez; their 2018 murder of twenty-fouryear-old farmer and local youth activist Camilo Catrillanca; their 2008 murder of twentythree-year-old student activist Matías Catrileio; their continued harassment and attendant unsubstantiated searches and seizures of Machi Linconao, charged and acquitted three times for the same settler deaths for which Machi Córdova has been unjustly imprisoned. All these actions have been justified by the state through the same metonymic mathematics that equate the severance of Mapuche from land as the accrual and possession of land. But while state historical memory is always being rewritten to form justification (and define “justice”), from the colonial geo-graphy (earth-writing) of territorial borders to the physical wounds of attendant dispossessions, that which is being marked and written over—the body and land—continues to innovate and assert its presence through actions such as the hunger strike (Sparke). The correlate of colonial power is present in its every act of violence—that is, the peoples and lands dispossessed simultaneous to every possession, their autonomous refusal simultaneous to every appropriation. Thus, the Mapuche body becomes the site from which to re-member Mapuche cultural memory and relationality to land-as-mapu, as “ancestral Mapuche territories,” “Mapuche Nation,” and “ñuke Mapu” (“100 Days”). As Mapuche-Tehuelche writer and hunger striker Héctor Llaitul asserts, the hunger strike, because it is an embodied and autonomous action, “es lo ultimo que podemos hacer para manifestarnos, nuestro cuerpo es lo único que nos queda para protestar” (is the last thing we can do to present ourselves (demonstrate). [O]ur body is all we have left with which to protest) (Baeza Donoso 140; emphasis mine). The hunger striking Mapuche body, by defying the biological regulation (biopolitics) of the state, presents itself as a demonstration of Mapuche presence. The political force of the dying hunger striker’s body is generated in this landscape of memory, at the locus where a state-propagating historical memory encounters a Mapuche cultural memory that both exceeds and precedes the nation (a particular conception of temporality, land, and body). Córdova’s poignant last words excerpted above present Mapuche cultural memory in this borderland of legibility across two ontological positions: as a constellation of a colonial continuum, Machi sacrifice and spiritual duty, a capacious and sacred Mapuche subjectivity, and ñuke mapu as planetary Indigenous territory. Through this specific

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language, what Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o calls “a communication system and carrier of culture by virtue of being simultaneously the means and carrier of memory” (20), Córdova entwines Mapuche cultural memory with a mode of sacrifice Banu Bargu theorizes as a weaponization of life. While Córdova brings Mapuche cultural memory into language in his last words, he utilizes “the corporeal and self-destructive techniques of [a people’s] struggle” to assert corporeal and territorial presence (Bargu Starve and Immolate 14, xii). Within the historical context in which Mapuche subjectivities precede, exceed, and are entwined with both colonialism and the nation state, this self-directed violence takes on a particular cultural memorial significance. It is this significance that the hunger striking body re-members, that (per)formative act of memorial sustainment and innovation that draws upon and elaborates a Mapuche “nourishing archive.” By drawing upon this archive, the hunger striker is enacting the “symbolic detoxification of the colonized body” (Otu). For example, what Córdova names in the demand for the restitution of “ancestral Mapuche territories” by means of his hunger strike must not be misunderstood as the delimited geographic space constituted through the naming and possession by the Chilean state and multinational corporations, but rather through the lens of ñuke mapu as land “re-membered” by the Mapuche body. It is the entwinement of the body and memory, these long and short memories along the colonial continuum, that Aymara feminist poet Julieta Paredes so poignantly describes as the location of Indigenous feminist auto-constitution. She writes that these Memorias que las podemos llamar ontológicas y filológicas respectivamente, estas memorias corporales están construidas en las historias y prehistorias de nuestros pueblos y sus movimientos sociales. Por lo tanto, nuestro feminismo quiere comprender desde nuestros cuerpos a nuestros pueblos, buscar … el vivir bien en comunidades con la humanidad y con la naturaleza. (“Hilando fino” 120) Memories that we can call ontological and philological respectively, these bodily memories are built on the histories and prehistories of our peoples and their social movements. Therefore, our feminism forms an understanding of our Peoples from our bodies, to seek … to live well in communities with humanity and with nature. It is clear in the recorded last words of Machi Córdova that his “bodily memories,” inherent in his role as and continuation of a long line of Machi, form an “ontological and philological” understanding of the People, humanity, and nature. In its specificity, Machi Córdova’s strike relates directly to his lof (community), but his call for “the restitution of our ancestral Mapuche territories and the settlement of all historic debts owed by the Chilean state to all indigenous peoples” suggests that these “bodily memories” that remember a People and its ancestral territories also far exceed his lof.

THE SACRIFICIAL MNEMONIC AND RE-MEMBERING Allen Feldman has described a perpetrative method of violence in the service of prescriptive memory as unfolding through specific socio-historical contexts within which particular bodies, and particular acts of violence, accrue social meaning. This suggests that the meaning forwarded through an act of violence, as well as the enduring significance of the physical and narrative effects of that violence on the body, must be read as

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culturally specific and culturally (per)formative. The particularity of mnemonic violence is culturally informative as these acts of violence carry with them a social memory tied to past repetitions of such violence, a present rupture that is also an iteration of ongoing colonial violence. Furthermore, once a particular act of violence is carried out by or upon the body, the body becomes a representation and mode of dissemination for the significance of these repetitions. Each act of violence, and each body transformed by violence, becomes another citation, spatially and temporally significant, in a long history of such acts. Mnemonic violence, therefore, acts as a spatio-temporal suture whereby past action is affectively understood within a specific socio-cultural landscape and is presently responded to within the environment of its present reverberations. For example, the constitutive violence of colonialism by which the Mapuche become “indios” is written and re-written, over time and space, on both land and body in the present unfolding of Chilean state and multinational extractive capitalist violence. As Ngũgĩ writes, “Europe has also planted its memory on the bodies of the colonized” through its imposition of names upon place and body as a way of remaking both in the colonizer’s image, thereby institutionalizing this primary colonial violence (9). Ngũgĩ continues by remarking on the master narratives of colonial classification while also revealing the potential to rend these narratives’ coherence by the process of re-membering. He writes, “[n]ames have everything to do with how we identify objects, classify them, and remember them,” thus Córdova’s naming of the earth as ñuke mapu, as “ancestral mapuche territories” of a “Mapuche nation,” appear, in the act of re-membering, as an assertion of a prior and future Mapuche presence (9; emphasis mine). Here, the invocation of a Mapuche relationality between body and land in defiance of the imposition of colonial memory through (re)naming the Mapuche nation re-members a Mapuche cultural memory that presents (presenter, to make present to) its ancestral territories. What this reframing of presence by re-membering reveals is that ongoing Mapuche cultural memory is not only formed in and by the accrual of racialized dispossessions that emerge from the imposition of a settler colonial epistemology (which signifies land as property and thus requires the elimination of the Indigenous body and its sacred relation with land-as-mapu), but in and by the (f)act of ongoing Mapuche territorial presence and relation with mapu. Let us thus consider how this mnemonic of colonial violence, its mark on Indigenous bodies and land, is in tension with the presence-making of the Mapuche hunger strike. We might better understand this seeming contradiction of dying and presence through Allen Feldman’s elaboration of Nietzsche’s “sacrificial model of memory formation” and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s description of colonial dismembering as fundamental to colonial dispossessions (62). I draw on Feldman’s work as it specifically addresses Córdova’s language of “sacrifice,” “memory,” and “restitution,” within another, albeit non-racialized, anticolonial struggle. Feldman’s sacrificial memory maps onto the Mapuche hunger strike at the intersection of representational violence and its intervention in the discursive politics of colonialism where memory is mobilized as a “political technology,” and “violence … become[s] the premier … medium for inscribing social memory onto the political landscape” (61). As the body is both representatively determined through processes of subjectivation and the “holding place of social memory,” violence on the body (coloniality inscribed upon the body) also becomes read as a mark of alterity, abjection, and divergence from colonially described Man within a colonially forged landscape of memory. Feldman’s conception of the confluence of memory, violence, and sacrifice attends to a popular social memory and the potential for historical intervention, but in doing so it insists upon an intrinsic relationship between colonial and anticolonial violence as relationships of power

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within the totalizing epistemic structures of colonialism and the nation-state. What this formulation occludes is the possibility of a cultural memory that describes a (transitive) proper legibility through the subject-forming relationality between body and land that not only precedes colonialism but continues to exceed it—a “nourishing archive” of cultural memory that the Mapuche hunger strike generates and draws upon. Feldman describes the sacrificial model as “one where emblematic scenarios and bodies are made to encapsulate the prescriptive memory for an entire collective,” as “the positivity of memory is underwritten by material transformations of the body and the theatrical iconography that such disciplinary applications on the body afford to a community of witness” (62). The Mapuche hunger strikes are public sacrifices, both communal and popular, because they are a representational strategy targeted simultaneously at Mapuche Peoples, the Chilean state, and a global “community of witness.” But the performative aspect of the hunger strikes is prescriptive inasmuch as a Mapuche public act of dying through the prolonged destruction of the body recalls the long history of their extreme poverty and imposed fasting brought about by continuous colonial dispossessions. While the Mapuche were never “conquered” by Spain, the Spanish colonial state of Chile was precedent for the terror and massacres unleashed on the Mapuche by the independent nation-state in the service of modernity, expansion and occupation, and national cohesion. The hunger strikes are the inverse of this devastation, constitutive of Mapuche presence and a cultural memory of life-in-plenitude as the relation of body and landas-mapu. What emerges as generative in these acts of willful self-destruction are both the presentation of Mapuche cultural memory as the ground upon which the strike is performed and the reclamation from the state of one’s life and processes of dying. We might therefore consider the Mapuche hunger strikes as enacting a positivity of memory. For Nietzsche, the “positivity of memory,” the substantive form of memory, is generated “through violent interventions in the structure of sentience and bodily integrity” (62). These violent interventions, as inscribed on the body, accrue significance and their (per)formative force as components of what Feldman calls the “necrographic map of prior violence inflicted on and by the body” (62). The mark on the body, then, signals the perpetrative act entwined with both corporeal and territorial devastation, as we see in Libro’s formulation of metonymic constitution above. What is revealed in this (per)formative act, the prescriptive aspect of the sacrificial mnemonic, is the representational surface of violence imposed on the body. But underlying this perpetrative violence, this representational surface, is the bodily integrity that re-members the constitution of the Mapuche body within the dynamic relationality with mapu as distinct from the colonial metonymy. Sacrificial violence, thus, occurs at the intersection of perpetrative violence and social memory, with the mnemonic potential to reveal the imposition of colonial remembering that Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o describes as dismemberment. In Something Torn and New, Ngũgĩ explains dismemberment as a two-part colonial action that recalls Libro’s metonymic entwinement of body and land: (1) removing the Indigenous person’s body from their land and forcing them to work on stolen Indigenous People’s lands for the colonizer, and (2) severing their memory from their individual and collective body through this removal and the memorial imposition of the state through subjectivation (see Althusser 56; Foucault “Subject and Power” 781; Butler 5; Rodrigo 146–7). What results, Ngũgĩ writes, is not only separation from one’s land and labor, “but also from [one’s] very sovereign being” (6). Therefore, what is of interest memorially for Ngũgĩ appears to be the practice of re-membering as the inverse, not the reverse, of colonial dismemberment. While dismemberment focuses on acts of colonial violence, Ngũgĩ’s theory of re-memberment

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opens a space for cultural memory that does not emerge from or in response to those violences but, through its continuous practice, representationally stands in opposition to dismemberment. Ngũgĩ writes that the European colonialist “dismembered the colonized from memory … burying all the memories they carried … [and] plant[ing] their own memories on whatever they contacted” (7). In this Indigenous theory of memory, Ngũgĩ presents colonial severance of an ante-colonial cultural memory (cultural memory that precedes, exceeds, and is sustained within, colonialism), through analogizing the body as land. This is because this particular form of embodied cultural memory is constituted by its relation with land in a specific cultural conception of both land and relationality. In other words, embedded in this analogy is the potential for a distinction between the Mapuche body’s specific relation to land within a memoricity (understood within a cumulative cultural memorial environment rather than the silos of historicity) that precedes and exceeds colonialism, and that of the colonial conception of land as “property” and “resource” which requires the dispossession and extraction of the Indigenous body from land. The corporeal removal and material “resource” extraction in the service of industrial capitalist expansion and European Modernity, Ngũgĩ writes, produced a “division of the African from his land, body, and mind” (6). This division is analogized as dismemberment by the colonizer when “The head that carries memory is cut off from the body and then either stored in the British Museum or buried upside down” (6). If not ending up in a museum, the head, here as the representative site of cultural memory and its ties to the social body, is “buried upside down.” This inversion metaphorizes the violent re(pro) duction of the relation of Indigenous body and land, which is then “planted” within settler colonial memory and reified as history, as well as its literal institutionalization through placement in a museum. The correspondence between these images reveals the subversive coherence of Mapuche memory generated in the hunger strike that defies the institutionalized colonial delusion that the colonized enter history first and only through the colonial encounter and the loss of a preceding cultural memory. What the metaphoric planting upside down does temporally is assert that the last, the colonial encounter, becomes the first, the event from which Indigenous cultural memory begins. What the hunger strike asserts in its performance of dying and vital presence is, rather, that the “individual and collective body” can be re-membered as historical precedence by its relation to land-as-mapu—a relationality that continues to carry and generate an antecolonial Mapuche cultural memory (6).

(DIS)RE-MEMBERING In the chapter “Re-membering Visions,” Ngũgĩ tells the story of Isis’s act of “reconnecting the dismembered” Osiris through embodied practice and memorial narrative. This corporeal-discursive reconnection translates the body and land, here Osiris and Egypt, across time and space from before the dismemberment through to the present of his re-membering (35). For Machi Córdova and all Mapuche hunger strikers, this act of re-membering is particularly significant and might be understood by what Gómez-Barris has described as the “innovation” of Mapuche cultural memory (“Mapuche Mnemonic” 91). In Ana Bacigalupo’s article “The Paradox of Disremembering the Dead,” she writes of a paradox of remembering, a specific memorial innovation, that we might understand as re-membering. Through her extensive work with Machi Francisca Kolipi and her lof, Bacigalupo describes how for the spirit of the Machi to be reborn into (re-membered

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by) another Machi, the person who embodies the spirit must be disremembered. To be disremembered is not to be forgotten, but to have one’s character and life story detached in social memory from their being Machi. The person must be disremembered by the community so that they can be re-membered as Machi through an entwinement with other, past Machi in a specific lof’s genealogy (150). This strategic forgetting is an act of remembering that allows the Machi to carry Mapuche cultural memory across time and space through a sacrificial act, or as Bacigalupo writes, “to intervene in the present and to engage history once again” (152). The Machi, like the hunger striker, chooses when and how they die, and thus chooses the moment in which the re-membering will be most generative (Bacigalupo 149). This strategic temporal intervention is an effect of the constant “innovation” of Mapuche cultural memory translated across time and space. Re-membering does not happen in response to colonial dismemberment but always already stands in opposition to its onto-epistemological impositions. Bacigalupo writes that “Mapuche narratives fuse and mythologize personal lives and historical events in order to distinguish Mapuche shamanic history from Chilean history, while also connecting the Mapuche collective memory to the experiences of the living” (150). This separation of Chilean history from Mapuche shamanic history is another act of re-membering that emerges from Córdova’s hunger strike. It allows the Machi and the hunger striker, who sacrifice their physical life, to sustain a “Mapuche collective memory” distinct from the memorial impositions and historical timeline of the state. Seen through this lens, the hunger strike itself becomes a present act within a transtemporal series of interventions across all prior Machi into an indefinite future. This is an incisive framing as concerns Córdova’s hunger strike. If he had died in the hunger strike, his body and personal experiences would die but his spirit knowledge carried over and gained while living as Machi would be reborn into another. For this process to be successful, and for the Machi to be in good physical and spiritual health, the community must disremember the person as individual. As Machi are “mediat[ors] … between the worlds of the living and the dead, and between the past, present, and future,” so Córdova’s strike becomes the force of Machi memories (shamanic knowledge) memories that he carries until his death, and which will reemerge in future Machi and be re-membered by the community (Bacigalupo 149). In this way we can understand the hunger strike as part of Córdova’s intervention into the present and a continuance of an intervention by the Machi spirits whose knowledge he carries and adds to in his life in relation to Mapuche lands and his community. Likewise, the mnemonic (per)formative of the Mapuche hunger strikes, generally, transforms the striking body into a political subject whose corporeal and linguistic (Paredes’ “ontological and philological”) messages and demands exceed the body both in life and in death. The (per)formative of the Mapuche hunger strike is, as Banu Bargu writes, not “the mimicry of sovereign violence through the politicization of life but as the politicization of death” (Starve and Immolate 82). As an act of disremembering, the politicization of death demands that the performance of these violent conditions be the force of change which enables the continuation of life and Mapuche cultural memory. The practice of disremembering is a generative practice akin to Ngũgĩ’s re-membering, as both disremembering and re-membering emerge from an Indigenous cultural memory translated generationally through an ante-colonial mode of landed sociality (body, land, spirit). In other words, both disremembering and re-membering are reformations of subjectivity within a colonial time and place but which exceed and precede a colonial time and place.

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CONCLUSION The Mapuche hunger strike is a political performance emerging from, but directed beyond, the body. It is not legitimized by the state but is rather a generative violence that is an act of re-membering the body and land-as-mapu, asserting counter-formations of territorial and corporeal sovereignty. The hunger strikes are directed at the state policies that determine the body in life (for the Mapuche, the body’s reciprocity with land), and to death. But the Mapuche hunger striker in this responsive act, always in relation to the state, is also simultaneously affirming a subjectivity that cannot be interpellated by the state. The hunger strikes are in the service of a larger cosmovision that memorially constitutes the land-as-mapu, and thus the people within a set of social relations not bound by the nation-state and its conception of time and space, that is, of territory (Rifkin). On May 4, 2020, Machi Celestino was accompanied in his strike by fellow Mapuche political prisoners Sergio Levinao, Víctor Llanquileo, Fredy Marileo, Juan Queipul, Juan Calbucoy, Danilo Nahuelpi, Reinaldo Penchulef, and Anthu Llanca (another started his strike on May 18) in Angol prison. Eleven more Mapuche began their hunger strikes on June 18 from a prison in Lebu, and then ten more imprisoned in Temuco began their hungers strikes on July 19 (Reynoso and Alonso 182–3). These 2020 strikers remember not only the 2007–8 hunger strikers Patricia Troncoso, José Huenchunao, Jaime Marileo, Juan Millalen, and Héctor Llaitul, but also the Mapuche who have endured over a century of food shortages and scarcity due to territorial dispossession and colonial resource extraction. Machi Córdova’s last words also recall the language, what Ngũgĩ calls the “means of memory,” and intent of Troncoso’s January 22, 2008, open letter: “Desde este lugar quiero animarlos a seguir defendiéndonos de este sistema económico depredador, de la poca naturaleza que nos queda, inhumano porque cualquier proyecto económico en nuestro territorio mapuche vale más que nosotros, e inmoral porque nos ha dejado como única meta humana el dinero y el consumismo.” (From here, I want to encourage you to continue defending us from this predatory economic system that is seeking to pillage the little bit of nature we have left, and it is inhumane, because any economic project in our Mapuche territory is considered more valuable than we are, and immoral because the only human goals it leaves us are money and consumerism.) As the self-destructing body of the Mapuche hunger striker is seen as the effect of these entwined racial/ecological traumas, intensifying the Mapuche political cause, the striking body becomes reflective of, and remembered in relation to, these ongoing acts of state violence. But as GómezBarris writes in her article on the “hunger acts” of Patricia Troncoso and her fellow strikers, the hunger strike is an “identifying with ongoing coloniality and dispossession [as a] means of survival [and as] the basis for a furious refusal and disidentification with the history of material and symbolic losses and efforts at forms of recovery” (“Mapuche Hunger Acts” 121). This “identifying” should not be misunderstood as the becoming of a Mapuche subject via coloniality but a representational strategy that emerges from a Mapuche conception of being re-membered in the hunger strike itself. While many continue to insist on political acts such as hunger strikes as a form or mode of resistance, this essay asserts that the hunger strike is a non-reactive assertion of presence that draws upon and generates the “nourishing archive” of Mapuche cultural memory, and that its effect is not emergent from the violence of the state and ongoing colonialism. It rather theorizes the Mapuche hunger strikes as the memorial (per) formative of Mapuche corporeal and territorial autonomy always already in opposition

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to the violent colonial inscriptions and descriptive impositions of Man. As Banu Bargu poignantly states, the corporeal enactment of an unjust, and hence untrue, life by way of self-directed violence functions as the public indictment of those that have perpetrated that injustice. It is a remonstration, calling for a reconsideration of values that inform conventional ethics and politics. That remonstration also contains an alternative conception of a “true life.” … Paradoxically, the space for justice is opened up by the visceral protestation of injustice, just as the space for a new subject is born upon the performative destruction of the old. (“The Silent Exception” 28) I close here with Bargu’s words as it is from the generative violence of the Mapuche hunger strikes and their constitutive re-membering, not from the devastating violence of an ongoing colonialism, that the Mapuche’s “alternative conception of a ‘true life’” through “the performative destruction of the old” emerges.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wrote this essay while in the unceded territories of the Lenape and Haudenosaunee, of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi, Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, Fox, Kickapoo, and Illinois Nations, as well as the lands of the Blackfeet and Shoshone-Bannock Nations. Holding this fact present changes the way I write, research, and teach—how I live, the quality of my relations, and how I remember my life. As I am not Mapuche, I am not capable of arguing the intracultural significance of a Mapuche mnemonics. I hope I have here performed a worthy intervention into cultural memory studies by attending to the unfixity and non-universality of “culture,” “cultural practice,” and Peoples defined by such means, while honoring the Mapuche Peoples and their knowledges with careful inarumen and good faith. Chaltumay, gracias, eskerrik asko, thank you. Thanks to Brett Ashley Kaplan who not only gave me the opportunity to write this essay but whose continued guidance and intellectual mentorship has enabled me to do the critical work necessary to write it. I also thank Delali Kumavie for her critical interlocution and for the recommendation that I read Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Something Torn and New, both of which proved essential to the writing of this essay. Finally, I want to thank Kwame Edwin Otu for his careful and generous reading of this essay, and for the subsequent comments and conversation in which the “nourishing archive” and “detoxification” emerged.

NOTES 1. Mapuche healer and spiritual leader of a specific lof (community) in Wallmapu, Mapuche territories. Machi emerge from a long ancestral line of prior Machi. For more reading on the Machi and their unique role in Mapuche life past and present, see the robust archive of work by Ana Mariella Bacigalupo. 2. Excerpted from the original recording and transcription. Emphasis mine. Translation by Mapuche International Link. The original recording and transcription in Spanish can be found on multiple sites online, such as: radio.uchile.cl/2020/08/11/las-palabras-dedespedida-del-machi-celestino-cordova. All other translations mine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Hölderlin’s Memory, and Keats: Reading “Andenken” and “Mnemosyne” JEREMY TAMBLING

This paper discusses a relationship between madness and a crisis in memory, concentrating on a great and difficult poet, Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), whose psychosis made him a casualty. It particularly considers two poems about memory: “Andenken” (“thinking of,” usually translated as “Remembrance”: I give my own translations of Hölderlin), and “Mnemosyne” (Ferris 158–97). Although it is hard to pair Hölderlin with an English poet—attempts have been made with Milton, Blake, and Shelley—it will be useful to make comparisons with John Keats (1795–1821), a “simpler” example of a writer on memory and with a productive life even shorter than Hölderlin’s: like Hölderlin, he was preoccupied by a Greece neither of them saw. The two have been compared before, for example by Paul de Man (41–60), and by Haverkamp. Keats writes on memory in his poems Hyperion: A Fragment (Autumn 1818–Spring 1819) and The Fall of Hyperion (begun Summer 1819). While Keats gives the fullest sense of what memory may do, positively, Hölderlin sees memory as gone, confronting its loss as a personal and modern crisis; “Mnemosyne” speaks of “the death of memory” (George Hölderlin’s Hymn 282). Ultimately, the comparison makes Keats a wonderful but more “conventional” poet affirming memory, while Hölderlin disturbs with premonitions of what modernity may mean: his poetry anticipates traumas which challenge poetic language altogether. Born in Swabia, Hölderlin studied at Tübingen theological seminary, sharing a room with Hegel (1770–1831) and with F.W. Schelling (1775–1854), with both of whom he formed an enduring intellectual friendship. He caught Schiller’s attention between 1794 and 1801, and stayed in Jena in 1795, suddenly leaving it in a way which the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche reads as indicating that Schiller was the patriarchal figure who activated or re-awoke a crisis in Hölderlin in relation to his own absence of a father. Laplanche argues that “the name of the father” is needed as the godlike guarantor of the anchoring power of the “symbolic order” of language, which allows the synthesizing power of memory as that which makes life and the self, and experience cohere. Laplanche, whose critique by Foucault will be discussed later, argued that the father was missing for Hölderlin, his place being either too near or too far. The opening of “Patmos,” one of Hölderlin’s greatest hymns, indicates an ambiguity—is God, as the Father, present—too

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present—or is he graspable in a way which allows poetry?: Nah ist/ Und schwer zu fassen der Gott. (George Friedrich Hölderlin “Patmos” lines 1–2) (Near is, and hard to hold fast, is the God.) Hölderlin struggled financially, working as a tutor, particularly in 1796, with the Gontard family in Frankfurt. He formed a deep attraction, which was mutual, to Gontard’s wife Susette; the crisis here meant that he left employment with the Gontards in 1798, seeing Susette last in 1800: she died in June 1802. His most intense period of writing comes after 1799, in poems, essays, and writing and revising a tragedy about Empedocles on Etna. And he was a wanderer: in January 1801 Hölderlin walked to Hauptwil in Switzerland for a new job, but was back in Germany (Nürtingen, his mother’s home) later that year. He received news of Susette Gontard’s death after another unsuccessful tutoring sojourn, in Bordeaux (December 1801–May 1802). He had returned on foot from Bordeaux to Strasbourg via Paris where he saw in the Louvre the new treasures acquired by Napoleon from Italy. He was already showing signs of mental disturbance and was certified as mentally ill by 1805, and in 1806 was admitted to Autenrieth Clinic in Tübingen. Richard Sieburth quotes an eyewitness account of the violence of how he was confined, taken from Homburg, where he had been given a sinecure as a court librarian: This morning they took poor Hölterling [sic] away to his relatives [i.e. to the Autenrieth Clinic in Tüblingen]. He did everything he could to throw himself out of the vehicle; but the attendant in charge pushed him back in again. Screaming that he was being abducted by military guards, and redoubling his efforts to escape, Hölterling scratched the attendant with his enormously long fingernails until the man was completely bloodied. (10) In 1807 he was put into the care of Ernst Zimmer, a cabinet-maker in Tübingen, who offered him a room as an alternative to confinement, and he died in that room in 1843, at the age of seventy-three, remaining virtually silent in poetic terms through those years. The last scene of Peter Weiss’s play Hölderlin (1971) shows the young Marx coming into Hölderlin’s presence, having read his novel Hyperion, which had been published in two parts in 1797 and 1799. Hyperion is revolutionary: its subject being the Greek revolt against Turkish rule; and indeed, Hölderlin was accused of being a Jacobin, a supporter of the French Revolution (overturning the father’s rule) in Germany. There seems to be a relationship between the violent political repression and authoritarianism it caused, and his madness which is glimpsed at in Sieburth’s quotation.

HESIOD AND PLATO We should start with Hölderlin’s name for the hymn “Mnemosyne,” one of the last he wrote, and in one draft, called “The Nymph” (Hamburger 803). Who is Mnemosyne? In Hesiod’s Theogony (late eighth century BCE—the name means “the birth of the Gods”), Mnemosyne is mentioned three times. First we learn she was mother to the Muses who were born in Pieria in Thessaly to her, as the queen of the foothills or corn-fields of Eleutherae. The father of these Muses, who slept with Mnemosyne over nine nights, was the son of Kronos (i.e., Zeus). Mnemosyne means “memory,” but the moment she is mentioned we hear the gift she and her daughters confer: “oblivion of ills and respite from care” (Hesiod lines 54–5). Memory and forgetfulness go together: Mnemosyne

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confers the healing power of Lethe (Vernant 75–105). Second, Mnemosyne is one of twelve Titans born to the union of Gaia, who is Earth, with Heaven (Ouranos) to whom Gaia is both mother—calling him forth to enclose and cover her—and partner (Hesiod line 153). Third, she is said to have beautiful hair (Hesiod line 915). Mnemosyne’s daughters, the Muses are named in lines 77–9, perhaps for the first time in Greek writing, for Homer never names them. M. L. West translates their names adjectivally: Clio (Fame-spreading), Euterpe (Entertaining), and Thalia (Festive), Melpomene (Singing), Terpsichore, who in the middle of the nine means “Dancedelight,” Erato (Lovely), and Polyhymnia (Rich in themes), and Ourania (Celestial), and Kalliope (Beautiful voice). The Theogony is given to their praise, and to the praise they give. They are, as Heidegger writes, “drama and music, dance and poetry” (Heidegger 11). They permit remembering, making sense of dreams, allowing verbal interaction, and the creation of literature that praised the divine. In Pindar’s Isthmian Ode 6. 74–6 (before 480 BCE), the Muses are “the deep-bosomed daughters of golden-robed Mnemosyne”; the effect of their singing has been to cause a spring to arise (Pindar 2: 192–3). Hölderlin both used, and translated, Pindar. Mnemosyne re-appears in Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus (c. 380), where she not only has mothered the Muses, but has a gift for mortals: Imagine that our minds contain a wax block, which may vary in size, cleanliness, and consistency in different individuals, but in some people is just right …. And let us say it is a gift of Memory [Greek: Mnemosyne], the mother of the Muses, and that whenever we want to remember something we’ve seen or heard or conceived on our own, we subject the block to the perception, or the idea and stamp the impression into it, as if we were making marks with signet rings. We remember and know anything imprinted, as long as the impression remains in the block, but we forget, and do not know anything which is not imprinted (Plato 191c–d, 99–100) We will return to this image of memory being inscribed in the mind, but something else: Memory is a woman; another to add to those named by Nietzsche—who, significantly, at the age of seventeen, in 1861, when Hölderlin was little known, called him “my favourite poet” (Krell and Bates 31). In Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, Life is a woman (272). In Nietzsche Contra Wagner, Music is a woman (Portable Nietzsche 668). In the Preface to The Gay Science Truth is a woman (38). Thus Spoke Zarathustra makes Wisdom a woman (Portable Nietzsche 153). These ascriptions show that patriarchal discourse may try to possess these qualities, but cannot; life, music, truth, wisdom are all “other”; they cannot be held, subordinated; they do not yield to patriarchal possession. If we set aside the essentialism of “woman,” memory as feminine (with all those Nietzschean qualities) makes it “other” to anything phallocentrism can grasp; memory is not in the control of a body of power which thinks in positivist terms of the past; memory is plural, and includes counter-memory. Plato’s Theaetetus says that Mnemosyne confers two gifts. She is the mother of all inspiration, all creativity, and she allows people to have memories, of what they have seen and heard, things which may be the result of empirical memory, and which may be objectively true—but also to remember what they have imagined. If Mnemosyne lets people hold in the mind both experiences and conceptions, if she lets people remember, so creating history, and gives the ability to create and to imagine, then definitions of memory must expand. Mnemosyne and imaginative power become

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equivalents: Mnemosyne names a potential whose richest quality is her giving. As a woman, Nietzsche’s point holds: memory is a gift no-one can claim authority over, nor possess. Memory comes and goes, according to her own laws, and remembering and creating are both gifts.

KEATS In What Is Called Thinking? (Was heisst Denken?), a 1951–2 lecture-course, Heidegger relies on the name Mnemosyne to change the neuter of the German die Gedächtnis into the feminine; the translation Englishes this rather poorly as “Dame Memory.” Heidegger wants to connect memory with thinking, which is possible since Gedächtnis (mind, memory) comes from gedenken, to commemorate, from the verb denken, to think. The word survives in Hölderlin’s hymn “Andenken.” Heidegger sees memory as a gift, enabling “the gathering and converging of thought”; it (re)collects thoughts: keeping concealed within it that to which at each given time thought must be given before all else, in everything that essentially is, everything that appeals to us as what has being and has been in being. Memory, Mother of the Muses—the thinking back to what is to be thought is the source and ground of poesy. (11) That last sentence asks about memory’s relation to poetry. To comprehend this, we can evoke Keats. He knew the eighteenth-century arguments which interpreted the Theaeteus making the image of personal memory as an inscribable surface in the mind and meaning that the mind was a mere tabula rasa, passively receiving the imprints of experience on it, as Locke had taught. The corollary, that what is not impressed is forgotten, Keats resisted, as he resisted Locke generally. His reaction to Locke appears in Hyperion, a Fragment, which, conscious of Hesiod, thematizes the defeat of the Titans, particularly Saturn, by the Olympian gods. Hyperion, the sun-god, is one Titan, to be replaced by Apollo. Mnemosyne is said to be “straying in the world” (Keats Hyperion 2.29) because she is seeking the new-born Olympian god Apollo whom she finds in Book 3. Apollo is newly aware of other worlds and experiences which he has not had, which induce symapthetic sorrow in him. On seeing her, he feels he has seen her before, “or I have dreamed” (3.61). She says: “Show thy heart’s secret to an ancient Power Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones For prophecies of thee, and for the sake Of loveliness new born.” Apollo then, With sudden scrutiny and gloomless eyes, Thus answered, while his white melodious throat Throbbed with the syllables: “Mnemosyne! Thy name is in my tongue, I know not how …” (3.76–82) It is as if he gives birth to a new concept: that Mnemosyne/memory means awareness of what has not been personally given, what goes beyond such empirical awareness, being inseparable from intuitions, inklings, Anhungen; thinking which remembers what it has

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not personally known, nor inscribed. Apollo does not know why he is sorrowful amidst so much beauty; his intuitions are of tragedy, and, continuing to gaze on Mnemosyne, he says “I can read / A wondrous lesson” in “thy silent face” (111–12, my emphasis). Here, there appears the value of the Theaetetus argument, but it is less restricted. The memory has indeed, like a waxen block, been inscribed, and that is apparent on the face of the very woman who embodies memory. Conjoining this point with Heidegger, that writing which marks Mnemosyne, creates poetry. Keats knew this: so, as Apollo exclaims: Names, deeds, grey legends, dire events, rebellions, Majesties, sovran voices, agonies, Creations and destroyings, all at once Pour into the wide hollows of my brain, And deify me, as if some blithe wine Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk, And so become immortal. Thus the God, While his enkindled eyes, with level glance Beneath his white soft temples, steadfast kept Trembling with light upon Mnemosyne. (3.116–23) Reading what is written on her face gives a potential knowledge of other experiences than he can possibly know which flood and convulse him, making him “die into life” (3.130); while “during the pain Mnemosyne upheld / Her arms as one who prophesied” (3.133–4). Keats’s “Fragment” breaks off there, with Apollo, the spirit of the poet, the new sun-god, undergoing a death wherein Memory, nurse- or mother-like, sustains him, and proves prophetic. For memory does not just recall the past, but points to, and gives, a future whereby poetry dies into life. Without memory, no future. Something of the artificiality of Miltonic epic induced in Keats the need for his writing to discard older poetic methods, making for a re-writing in The Fall of Hyperion, where now it is not a mythical God, but Keats himself who knows he must “die into life,” under the guardianship of the veiled goddess, who has witnessed the desolation of Saturn. Although she is also called Mnemosyne (Fall 1.331, 2.50) the poem more frequently names her Moneta, so associating her with wisdom. And as before, Memory unveiled is the faculty to remember, and what has been remembered, and the potential to remember, anticipate, or grasp all that can be experienced, and to have further intuitions. All that is focused in her face, and the stasis induced by the oxymora in the following extraordinary lines, gives the sense of memory, which has been prompted by horrifying, tragic events, which cannot turn into forgetfulness, and which have been imprinted on her face: Then saw I a wan face, Not pined by human sorrows, but bright-blanched By an immortal sickness which kills not. It works a constant change, which happy death Can put no end to; deathwards progressing To no death was that visage; it had passed The lily and the snow; and beyond these I must not think now, though I saw that face— (1.256–63)

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Much here recalls Shakespeare’s King Lear, especially the Quarto’s account of Cordelia’s weeping (4.3.10–32); the tensions in whose lines express beauty which is inseparable from unendurable and perduring pain. Memory of suffering works a “constant change,” being inescapable, like trauma, being “constant” in that; it keeps changing, increasing its hold, intensifying pain. Historically, Keats had nursed and seen his brother Tom die of tuberculosis, and knew he was following him into death. Keats, in the Fall of Hyperion, wanted to know what passes through the brain of the “Shade of Memory,” as he calls her (1.282, 290), so that what follows is the revelation of what is inside Moneta’s brain (her gift), as if that continually rehearses what has happened to her and which she has witnessed. But we cannot see this, for this poem too is a fragment. The demand placed on memory, and its—or her—achievement, is to register such disasters as have happened (the fall of the Titans) as tragedy, transmuting them into something contemplatable, generating a beauty which may suffice to view the world while confronting imminent dissolution. Memory is not described adequately, for Keats, as what belongs to a specific happening in the past. Similarly, Derrida calls it “memory of the other,” adding that it “defies any totalisation” (Memoires for Paul de Man 29). The unique singularity of what is to be remembered finds itself affected by signs of something other within that memory; this, inside memory, makes memory, Mnemosyne, never discrete, single, graspable, able to be possessed. As was argued before, via Nietzsche. Memory gives a “distant premonition of the other” (6). In saying that, Derrida quotes Hölderlin’s “Mnemosyne.” While there is memory, the self is constituted by what is other to it.

HÖLDERLIN In Keats, memory sustains, as adequate for holding him together during the compulsion to consider his own death; it even had the power to restrain excessive thought (“beyond these / I must not think now,” 1.262–3); it protects from trauma. The obliteration of memory which death threatens, is avoided by memory being written, and readable “when this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave” (Fall 1.18). But this restorative power cannot work for Hölderlin, for, first, he questions what written memory can teach. In the poem “Stimme des Volks” (“The Voice of the People,” c. 1800), he contemplates people’s capacity for self-destruction, telling how the people of Xanthos, in 42 BCE, as related by Plutarch, set fire to their city and killed themselves rather than yield to Brutus besieging them, even though he offered them reasonable terms. These Xanthians had remembered another narrative, from Herodotus’s histories, of how their ancestors, besieged previously (sixth century BCE) by the Persians, had done exactly the same: burned the city down. Remembrance produces only repetition; not learning, re-thinking. The Xanthians had heard of the precedent burning down, memorialized in “Sagen” (legends) which are good: denn ein Gedächtnis sind Dem Höchsten sie, doch auch bedarf es Eines, die heiligen auszulegen. (George Friedrich Hölderlin 340) (for they are a memory of the highest, yet also it is needful for one to interpret sacred texts.)

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Memory in the form of earlier writings is good but it must not induce mere repetition; sacred texts must be read critically, which is the work of the poet, who must let memory have that full place in people’s lives. Second, whereas Keats uses a consistent and secure mythology, Hölderlin does not, cannot. His breakdown symptomizes his subject-matter since for memory to be consolation is harder for him than for Keats. A primary sign is Hölderlin’s paratactic mode of writing, as noted by Adorno (2.109–49), marked, for example, by the modal particle “aber” (but), as if one statement is always contravened by another, or else as if the tone always needs to change, or as if one statement could never be deemed subordinate to another. The paratactic mode relates to metonymy, to statement being laid alongside statement, disconnected, and in that it means a failure in articulation, implying even a lack within memory’s collecting and arranging separate images. I italicize the word in the opening of “Andenken,” written in Germany perhaps in the spring of 1803: Der Nordost wehet Der liebste unter den Winden Mir, weil er feurigen Geist Und gute Fahrt verheisset den Schiffern. Geh aber nun und grüsse Die schöne Garonne, Und die Gärten von Bourdeaux Dort, wo am scharfen Ufer Hingehet der Steg und in den Strom Tief fällt der Bach, darüber aber Hinschauet ein edel Paar Von Eichen und Silberpappeln; Noch denket das mir wohl und wie Die breiten Gipfel neiget Der Ulmwald, über die Mühl, Im Höfe aber wächset ein Feigenbaum. (George Friedrich Hölderlin 558, lines 1–16)

(The North-east blows, dearest amongst winds to me, as it promises fiery spirit and good travel to sailors. But go now and greet the lovely Garonne, and the gardens of Bordeaux, there, where on the step bank the path leads on and the brook falls deep into the stream; but above it a noble pair of oaks and white poplars looks on. Still well I remember this, and how the wood of elms bends its broad peaks over the mill. But in the courtyard a fig tree grows.) The opening varies between the presence of Geist in the wind, which may suggest an authoritative spiritual power, but it then switches subject-matter to recall the Garonne river, joined by the Dordogne below Bordeaux, flowing out to the Atlantic, where sailors will go. And continuity of memory fails; in the midst of recalling features of the Bordeaux landscape—rivers, and trees—comes a specific detail of the fig-tree, introduced by “aber” (but). This paratactic detail challenges memory’s coherence: it emanates from it but does

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not relate easily or spontaneously to a narrative; the line seeems marooned. It calls for interpretation, beyond what would be expected in a romantic lyric; and that is typical of everything in “Andenken.” The discontinuity indicates that memory may be too much, or too little, and we cannot be sure things have interpretability. Their placement seems arbitrary, as if memory has gone astray. The poem continues with memories of French village life, at Marchtime, “Märzenzeit”— the time of the equinox, when days and nights are equal. In his present situation, and in a desire to stabilize himself mentally, (“damit ich ruhen möge”—“that I might rest,” 28) he asks for a glass of “dunkeln Lichtes”—dark light (26), red wine (from Bordeaux) which keeps the trace of Dionysos, the wine-god, and of the fiery sun which has ripened the vine, but which in its oxymoron recalls day and night as equal, as different potentialities, afflicting and illuminating together. Images of the gardens of Bordeaux are succeeded by: Mancher Trägt Sheue, an die Quelle zu gehn. (many feel shy about going to the source, 38, 39) The source—the origin—is an essential thought for Hölderlin, the “source” being memory itself. The two rivers have plural sources, but the mariners voyaging to the Indies suggest something else: Hölderlin is, at all times, attracted to Greece, like Keats, yet knows that the Grecian Dionysos came from the Indus; that is, European Greece is primordially Asiatic, a source many are shy about acknowledging, because it puts an otherness, or foreignness, at the heart of Europe, and Greece, making the Asiatic the privileged source of European culture. The mariners voyaging to the Indus as the source ends conversation, the latter always a positive for Hölderlin; voyaging, traveling means exile, under an “entlaubten Mast” (defoliate mast, 46), that is, a tree lacking fertility, barren, unlike the trees in the lines quoted earlier. As the Garonne and Bordeaux are sources for the poet, so that he says he is still thinking of this (13), so rivers are the source for the sea, which is the source for rivers; memory being all-pervasive. Rivers in Hölderlin give, typically what rushes onward, following a death-drive; it was true of “Stimme des Volks.” Hence, in this first strophe, the brook falls into the river as if suicidally, attracted to destruction, or oblivion; forgetfulness, a state which seems wished for by the poet at certain moments in the text. Being on the edge echoes what is folded into the name Bordeaux, whose name implies the border of the waters (eaux), plus two (deux), rivers, like Bordeaux’s wine’s dark-light. We are between opposites, and working in two languages. The last verse follows, and again I mark the “aber”: Nun aber sind zu Indiern Die Männer gegangen, Dort an der luftigen Spiz’ An Traubenbergen, wo herab Die Dordogne kommt, Und zusammen mit der prächt’ gen Garonne meerbreit Ausgehet der Strom. Es nehmet aber Und giebt Gedächtniss die See,

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Und die Lieb’ auch heftet fleissig die Augen, Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter. (49–59) (But now, the men have departed for the Indians, there, on the airy/windy peak, on grape-hills, where down the Dordogne comes, and together with the splendid Garonne, sea-broad, out goes the stream. But the sea gives and takes memory, and love also holds the eyes tight, but what endures, the poets establish.) This ending, comprehending so much, and so with so much sense of distances, remembers rivers coming down to the sea and going out, where the sailors have gone out, all distinctions of names and landmarks being lost. The sea gives memories of a life onshore which has had to be left behind, but this is perhaps primarily negative since memory is of what is lost. As the sea absorbs the river’s waters, which suffer dissolution and loss of identity, it takes memory; all co-ordinates of time and space seem missing. The sea’s work, giving and taking memory, leaving no landmarks, but affecting the soul with the sense of what it has lost, gives another abyssal potential, continuing from the river’s desire to reach the abyss. Love tries to hold things in place, but poets, in the poem’s last line, attempt to secure what remains of memory: for only writing, as Keats knew, can secure permanence for heroic deeds, or love-remembrances.

“MNEMOSYNE” “Andenken” struggles to articulate a memory but its writing, prompted by the wind which promises the fieriness of going south, toward the sun, is not shy of going to the source, however impossible. It knows that what is in the poem is of “the source,” but that is elusive, and Hölderlin has less confidence than Keats in being able to name it. Hölderlin’s visit to Bordeaux contained something traumatic not remembered here: for back in Germany, Hölderlin writes in late 1802 to his friend Casimir Ulrich Böhlendorff (1775–1825), an unsuccessful writer whose life also ended in madness, and suicide, that the tremendous element, the fire of the sky and the silence of the people, their life within nature, and their limitedness and satisfaction, has continually affected me, and as it is said of the heroes, so I may say that Apollo has struck me. (Pfau 152) He has been damaged by the sun-god. The gods—including Apollo and Dionysius— embodying patriarchal power, stand in opposition; this recalls Hölderlin’s sense of tragedy, announced in his notes to his translation of Oedipus: The presentation of the tragic rests primarily on the tremendous [das Ungeheure]— how the god and man mate and how natural force and man’s innermost boundlessly unite in wrath—conceiving of itself [rests] on the boundless union purifying itself through boundless separation. (Pfau 107) This tortured, broken syntax carries the sense of the heavenly and the human coming over-close, in an unlimited boundlessness and anger, perhaps a moment of unlimited

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creativity; then separating in a caesural and traumatic moment, which now impels a sense of the gods’ absence, an infinite loss. In contrast to this loss, another poem, “Dichterberuf” (“The Poet’s Calling”) ends “Gottes Fehl hilft”—“God’s absence / default / lack helps” (line 64). This idea is challenged, perhaps, in “Mnemosyne.” Checking my marginal notes written in my earliest copy of Hölderlin, I found (I had forgotten) I had written under the poem’s title (“= mental coherence”). That is what is threatened. “Mnemosyne” was written in several versions, perhaps around 1806. Hamburger and George translate one version, Sieburth (116) another, which permits this opening, expressive of a separation which seems like a burnt-out state after the gods and humans have come over-close, or descriptive of a state of the gods’ absence: Ein Zeichen sind wir, deutungslos, Schmerzlos sind wir, und haben fast Die Sprache in der Fremde verloren. “A sign we are, without meaning, or interpretation; painless we are, and have almost lost language in foreign parts.” But foreign lands are essential; Hölderlin argued in a previous letter to Böhlendorff (December 4, 1801) that the Greeks—so giving an example for the modern (German) self—could not use what was natural or near to them (their fieriness). They had to disappropriate themselves of that, using what was foreign to them (Pfau 149–50, Lacoue-Labarthe 236–47). Hence the sailors in “Andenken” must voyage out, disappropirating themselves. Memory cannot be a natural affirmation of the self’s resources; it must remember what is other to it, and even what it would not, perhaps could not, remember. Things lack familiar markings, and “Mnemosyne” speaks of the difficulties in day-to-day living, when the gods are absent. The second strophe, however, speaks of the “day’s signs” (Tageszeichen, 24), appearing in an Alpine setting, pronounced good, and perhaps meaningful. I quote from there to the end, with lines which, however difficult, show a memory of the other emerging: Denn Schnee, wie Majenblumen, Das Edelmüthige, wo Es seie, bedeutend, glänzet auf Der grünen Wiese Der Alpen, hälftig, da, vom Kreuze redend, das Gesezt ist underwegs einmal Gestorbenen, auf hoher Strass Ein Wandersmann geht zornig Fern ahnend mit Dem andern, aber was ist diss? Am Feigenbaum ist mein Achilles mir gestorben, Und Ajax liegt An den Grotten der See, Am Bächen, benachbart dem Skamandros. An Schläfen Sausen einst, nach Der unbewegten Salamis steter Gewohnheit, in der Fremd, ist gross Ajax gestorben

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Patroklos aber in des Königes Harnisch. Und es starben Noch andere viel. Am Kithäron aber lag Elevtherä, der Mnemosyne Stadt. Der auch als Ablegte den Mantel Gott, das abendliche nachher löste Die loken. Himmlische nemlich sind Unwillig, wenn einer nicht die Seele schonend sich Zusammengenommen, aber er muss doch, dem Gleich fehlet die Trauer. (George Friedrich Hölderlin 574, lines 25–51) (Snow, like lilies of the valley, indicating the noble-minded wherever it be, half gleams on the green meadow of the Alps, where a traveller, talking of a cross set for one dead, goes, angry, distantly intuiting with the other, but what is this? By the fig tree, my Achilles died to me, and Ajax lies near the grottoes of the sea, near streams, neighbouring the Scamandros. From buzzing in the temples, once, after the unmoved steady custom of Salamis, in foreign parts, great Ajax died, but Patroclus in the armour of the king. And there died many others. But on Kithairon lay Eleutherae, Mnemosyne’s city. From her also as God laid down his mantle, the Evening ones afterward loosed her locks. The Heavenly ones, namely, are angry when one does to spare his soul does not collect it, but he still must nonetheless, like him, mourning fails.) These “signs of the day”—snow, and the lilies of the valley—are shortlived. Perhaps on that account they seem to indicate dead heroes, like those of “The Voice of the People.” Snow contrasts with the green of the Alpine mountain, as this looks south, while the traveler ascending to the summit, as if wanting a total vision, passes signs remembering the dead, intimated in a wayside cross. The traveler is angry, or frenzied, which itself seems an intimation of madness, and looks back to the anger wherewith, in tragedy, gods and men meet. Is the anger then, at the god’s failure to turn up? Perhaps the traveler seeks the unbound, and companionship with the hero whose presence, anger, and death he dimly intuits. Such a sense of the other, perhaps deriving from this sign placed commemorating the fallen, furthers Derrida’s sense of memory as being awareness, or intuition, of an other. The last strophe of “Mnemosyne” opens remembering dead heroes. Anger remains key for Achilles (line 36) was primarily angry: Homer begins the Iliad addressing the Muse; “Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus” (Lattimore 59). Achilles is dead, by the fig tree, whose presence ties this poem to “Andenken,” where it also appeared. The fig tree outside Troy was noted in relation to the battle between Achilles and Hector (Book 22.145: Lattimore 439). It is also biblical, a sign to define the seasons in an ongoing salvation-history (Matthew 24.32). The fig tree replaces the wayside cross of the second stanza, but despite noting these connections, its significance remains not interpretable, perhaps a sign without meaning. “My” Achilles—the identification is complete—is followed by Ajax, the hero second only to Achilles, who wanted to possess his armour after his death, and who was driven mad from his anger at being denied it, becoming suicidal (Hölderlin translated part of Sophocles’s play which shows this). Ajax’s suicide makes him one who loses everything in foreign lands, away from Salamis, his home, dying near the river Scamandros. The third death is that of Patroclus, who fought in Achilles’s armour: the armour which Ajax wanted to possess profited Patroclus not at all.

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He died when Apollo struck him (Book 16.789–805: Lattimore 351); perhaps Hölderlin remembers this when telling Böhlendorff of Apollo striking him. These names are those like the unnamed “Edelmüthige,” these noble, or magnanimous heroes are succeeded by the understated, laconic line, “and many others died as well.” There follows the reminder of the past existence of Mnemosyne’s city, on the slopes of Kithairon. Pausanias (second century CE), in his Guide to Greece, has this record: [A]t Eleutherai there were still ruins of the walls and the houses; the city built a little above the plain towards Kithairon (Cithareron—the mountain) is clearly Eleuthererai. (1:109) Hölderlin quotes from Pausanias, who seventeen centuries earlier had noted the ruin of the city which Hesiod had spoken of so joyfully. Memory is memory of loss for Pausanias, and doubly so for Hölderlin. Two catastrophic actions follow: God laying down his cloak, and the darkness cutting, or loosening, Mnemosyne’s hair—which Hesiod had singled out for beauty. The first may be interpreted as an evening-action: God laying down that which conceals him, but which gave signs of the day, and now implying his disappearance as a centring power. The second, spine-chilling in giving the death of the woman, shows Mnemosyne ritually marked out for death. The power of evening makes the night coming on one where the world is bereaved of memory in all her aspects, and those gifts Mnemosyne gives. The last lines contain several cruxes. The heavenly—named only as such, and the term indicates their remoteness—are angry—in another manifestation of this affect—if one has not pulled himself together to spare his soul. The impossible demand is to stay sane, or sober, stressed in “aber er muss doch.” The human is under compulsion; the absence of the gods’ nearness shows itself in a call to a damaging, repressive, self-disciplining. And mourning fails, or is in error, or is perforce absent. Mnemosyne as a woman is herself essential for mourning, which keeps things in memory. Women mourn when men do not. Ophelia’s madness in Hamlet connects with the court’s failure of mourning for her father, and repeats the determination of Sophocles’s Antigone—another essential figure for Hölderlin—to bury her brother. Mourning, and memory, are left to women as the bereaved. In that, “womankind” remains “the everlasting irony in the life of the community” (Hegel 288). Yet Ophelia and Antigone are both suicides, and for both Hölderlin’s line, that it is not good to resist heroes—or heroines—is relevant: mourning rushes to death. This interdiction of mourning by the heavenly ones in context includes not mourning for the loss of Mnemosyne. Mourning and memory are etymologically connected. No memory: no mourning. No mourning: no memory. Such conditions, which seem like a double-bind, are urged as an absolute stoicism, to keep a person safe; but they seem likely to be conditions inducing anger, madness, and Ajax’s suicide. A more conventional sequence had occurred in the elegy “Brod und Wein” (“Bread and Wine”), written in late 1800, which treats of the disappearance of the gods: Als der Vater gewandt sein Angesicht von den Menschen, Und das Trauern mit Recht über der Erde begann … (George Friedrich Hölderlin 406, lines 127–28) (As the Father turned away his face from men, and mourning, rightfully, began over the earth.)

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“Mnemosyne” shows the loss of such ongoing continuity. The splitting apart of the human and the mortal, which Hölderlin finds basic to tragedy, is the caesura (Pfau 102): it is an absolute break, implying the de-articulation of history, where what is “mit Recht” (with right) has gone, and we have instead a strange world lacking continuities or connections. Mourning, of necessity, and though it fails, must appear for what has gone though interdicted, and even if its name and contents are unspecifiable. Its absence means the end of the Muses, and so of poetry, which in “Andenken” was said to establish whatever remains in memory. For Freud in “Mourning and Melancholia,” failure of mourning generates the onrush of melancholia, wherein the self feels a failure of memory—the melancholic “knows whom he has lost but not what he has lost in him” (Standard Edition 14: 245), and in that absence, turns to something else. Walter Benjamin may help here: “the only pleasure the melancholic permits himself … is allegory” (Origin 185). In allegory (unlike symbolism), nothing stands in to represent, adequately, what should be said. One arbitrary object stands in for arbitrary object; objects, whose relationships with each other do not cohere, are left to be brooded over (140). In such thinking, “any person, any object, any relationship, can mean absolutely anything else” (175). Melancholy dwells on ruins, like the broken walls of Mnemosyne’s city, ruins from which memory has departed; images whose meanings seem lost. This state exceeds saying that memory is harder to access because it must be a memory of what is other to the self; actually, memory has died. Michel Foucault’s essay “The Father’s No” discusses Laplanche’s Lacanian thesis about Hölderlin, that customarily the Father is the stabilizing figure who regulates “space, rules, and language” (Essential Works 15). “Spacing” is missing within the idea of boundless union being followed by boundless separation in Hölderlin’s sense of tragedy. Spacing orders language in differential terms, signs, and signifiers acquiring meaning by their relation to other signs, rather than having their meaning inherent in themselves. Such spacing disappears in “Andenken” and “Mnemosyne,” and the contrast with Keats’s fluency could hardly be greater. The father’s absence is the form his “no” takes, and it is toward that vacancy that, Foucault writes: the unwavering line of psychosis is infallibly directed; as it is precipitated inside It, the abyss of its meaning, it evokes the devastating absence of the father through the forms of delirium and phantasms, and through the catastrophe of the signifier. (16) That catastrophic state was hinted at in the line “Ein Zeichen sind wir, deutungslos,” which opened one version of “Mnemosyne.” Language beyond meaning. Modernity, whose twentieth- and twenty-first traumas often find that memory cannot act as a sustaining force, produces as a corollary to this crisis either silence or a profusion of language, which, in this absence: assumes a sovereign position; it comes to us from elsewhere, from a place of which no-one can speak but it can be transformed into a work only if … it directs its speech towards this absence. In this sense, every work is an attempt to exhaust language. (19) There seems to be an incipient delirium in modern writing, following this argument of Foucault, because of a gap at the heart of what can be said, or represented. Language holds onto nothing concrete: Benjamin’s comments on the allegorical language of melancholy

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come to mind. Hölderlin finds language failing; Keats escapes it, perhaps because of his early death; but the point that both Keats poems we have discussed are fragments, intimates that something may be amiss with the confidence his poems show. For Foucault, Laplanche’s psychoanalytic explanation remains perhaps inadequate in depending on biography. It is less a personal dilemna, and less the father’s absence but the “death of God” of Nietzschean thought. The absence is of anything centring life, and hence memory. Perhaps the death of God as he lays down his cloak marks that double loss of which Nägele speaks, and equals the death of memory. The absence of a stabilizing force and the consigning of memory to the grave, which forbids mourning or even anger, are the same, failures of what creates coherence.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When All Else Seems Lost, There Is Memory: Poetry and Politics in Kashmir and India SUVIR KAUL

We take as self-evident the idea that memory enables identity—whether individual, communitarian, or national (to mention only the most salient categories of contemporary identity). Having said that, it becomes immediately clear that the processes by which “memory” enables “identity” are unfathomably complex, and that they operate differently at different scales of understanding. We know individual memory, for instance, to be hitor-miss: I can swear that a college friend was at a concert with me forty years ago, but she insists that she has never heard the performer sing! At its simplest, this example is a reminder that we can give shape to uncertain memories or invent others, and we do so in order to bolster our sense of who we were at a particular stage in our lives. Our desires, our self-regard, reshape our remembrance. Or we hear someone else define their experience of a moment, one so close to our own desired or actual history, that after a while—without deliberation of any kind—we inhabit that moment, that experience. As Mieke Bal puts it, “Memory … is a verb, a transitive one, and its mode is active. It is something we do. It has a subject and an object. [It is an] act takes place in the present.” Which is another way of recognizing that memory, even individual memory, which we think of as private, is produced, modified, and forgotten or repressed to suit desires and motivations that have to do with our relational understanding of self: we are who we are because we are part of larger groupings, and our identity is the product not only of individual remembrance but of those supplied in conversations and in writing, or indeed in forms of private and public commemoration, by others in our life. Individual memory is, in fact, relational. The fraught process by which memory contributes to identity is just as complex when we think of the making of community identities. Although some stories are celebrated as the unifying logic of communities, the elements emphasized, marginalized, or seen as constitutive change over time. Each retelling advocates a particular sense of things past, present, and to come, and this is true when a grandparent spins a biographical tale to a listening child, or a historian produces volumes of writing that define a period

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and a people. This is who I am, this is who we are, because this is what happened to me, and it is a part of what happened to “us.” Are the processes by which the memory of individuals, communities, or nations are composed always benign or scrupulous in their attempts to narrate truthfully? Not always, if only because memories and identities are always shaped vis-à-vis, if not defined against, others whose actions have shaped our lives and histories. Scholars of memory have pointed to examples of community or national memory that seem competitive, even combative, and are designed to reinforce identities that authorize the operations of power across time. Or conversely, memories are generated to remind those who have been subject to the oppressions of the powerful to not forget their suffering—for them, to remember is crucial to mobilize, to work for change. These are the public forms of memory, those which Michael Rothberg has defined as “multidirectional: as subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing; as productive and not privative” (3). Scholars have been sharp in delineating the ways in which the nation-form, which has for the past two centuries been the dominant form of territorial, political, and economic organization across the globe, develops authorized mechanisms for crafting its memories, and hence its putative identity. We analyze the textbooks in history and social studies, even in literature and language, produced by state institutions; we recognize the statues and marked-off sites that transform public space into everyday pedagogy; we critique the nationalist commemorations that tell us who to celebrate, who to worship, and what to applaud, for such cultural uniformity is supposedly necessary to bind together very disparate peoples across vast territories. National memories are precisely that—they “nationalize,” often in coercive ways, by ignoring local differences and marginalizing vernacular and provincial forms of remembrance and social being (see, for instance, Jain). They are, for the most part, conservationist and conservative. In contrast, scholars of memory have also learned to pay close attention to the languages in which demands for change are made, particularly by minority communities, and to recognize that each of these demands invokes particular histories that require redress. Memory and identity are interwoven in these narratives, and in that weaving lies their resistant claims against the consolidating, centripetal force of the modern nation-state. For minorities in particular, the past, and often the present, is riven with such unspeakable violence that accounts of suffering legitimize mobilizations toward reparative justice. * In this essay, I turn to two poems that feature the term “memory,” and that invoke its capacity not just to recreate past and ongoing events, but to generate a sense of collective, politicized identity in the present. Both Agha Shahid Ali’s “Farewell” and Aamir Aziz’s “Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega” (“All Will Be Remembered”) are poems written in response to violent political crises. Both these poems are akin to those assembled by Carolyn Forché in an anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. In her “Introduction,” Forché offers a simple and powerful rationale for the collection: all the poems are written by poets who “endured conditions of historical and social extremity during the twentieth century” (29). Forché argues that these poems “bear the trace of extremity within them, and they are, as such, evidence of what occurred. They are also poems which are as much ‘about’ language as are poems that have no subject other than language itself” (30). Forché points to what we might think of as a particular poetics, a poetics of memorialization, mourning, and anger, of political angst and hope for change. Language seems at its most potent here—a poem

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does not only provide witness to an event, it crafts the experience into being and makes it available for dissemination and examination. But the form and idiom of a poem are not designed for clarity or certainty, and poetry showcases ambiguities of meaning and the pitfalls of reference, till the very idea of “witness” becomes less than certain, and the poem perhaps no more than a howl in the wilderness. When the present weighs so heavily and demands urgent remedy, what work can a poem do, after all? But it must be written. As Aamir Aziz says, in a video in which he meditates upon his identity and creativity as a young Muslim man in Hindu-majoritarian India, “This poetry, this song, is a compulsion” (Aziz, “My Name”). * Agha Shahid Ali’s volume of poems, The Country without a Post Office (1997), is tense with the violence that marked Kashmir in the 1990s, after an armed movement for independence, led by young Muslim men, broke out in December 1989. As the military, paramilitary, and police forces of Hindu-majority India retaliated, Kashmiri lives were ripped apart. Almost all the minority Kashmiri Hindus (known as Pandits), a small but influential community, left Kashmir in fear and lived as refugees in India, while Kashmiri Muslims lived under siege. As battle lines hardened over the decade, ideological oppositions were embellished and cemented: Pandits blamed Kashmiri Muslims at large for threatening them and pushing them away; Muslims began to believe that the Pandits had left to allow the Indian military to conduct their operations in congested neighborhoods without fear that they would harm the Hindu families that once lived there. Shared lives and values, the everyday intimacies of long-settled multi-religious communities, gave way to acute suspicion and fear as Kashmiri life began to know, as Sumantra Bose puts it, the “peace of the graveyard” (46). The situation in Kashmir has only worsened in the intervening thirty years. The Indian government has, most recently, reduced the state of Jammu and Kashmir to two Union Territories (Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh), both ruled directly from New Delhi. Over a hundred thousand Kashmiri Muslims are estimated to have been killed, wounded, or caused to disappear, and thousands languish in jail, with little or no recourse to law courts. The Kashmiri Pandits who left suffered difficult lives in refugee camps, and very few of them have returned to their homes in Kashmir even after the violence of the 1990s abated. Relations between these communities have deteriorated to the point that there is little agreement between them about events that transpired in these years. However, there is no shortage of self-serving (self-preserving?) stories that explain the conflict in ways that implicate the other. In fact it might be said that these narratives, designed to offer separate viewpoints, are so interwoven with explanations of the culpability of the other community that they seem like distorted images of each other. There is after all no gainsaying the historical links between these two communities—their sense of self is crafted from the difference that emerges from a common (not just a shared) history, language, culture, and geography. In “I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight,” Agha Shahid Ali invokes this polarization, and does so from the point of view of the Kashmiri Muslims who now face the firepower of the military (24–6). The poem mourns, and writes into memory, Rizwan, one of the many young men killed by military interrogators. In the poem, Rizwan is “a shadow chased by searchlights,” flitting across well-known Srinagar streets and bridges till it—the shadow—slips back, in search of its body, into interrogation cells (“on the edge / Of the Cantonment, where Gupkar Road ends”). In the cells, torture crafts a

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continuous present tense: “Drippings from a suspended burning tire / are falling on the back of a prisoner, / the naked boy screaming, ‘I know nothing.’” Five hundred miles away in New Delhi, uncannily, the poet hears Rizwan’s call, “Console Me.” But the poet has no assurance, no consolation, to offer; when he sees the shadow by moonlight he can only repeat his name in horrified recognition: “Rizwan, it’s you, Rizwan, it’s you.” As the journalist Muzamil Jaleel tells us, there is a deeply personal element to this figuration of Rizwan in the poem: Agha Shahid Ali knew a Rizwan, the son of Molvi Abdul Hai (a family friend to whom the poem is dedicated), who was killed by soldiers. Rizwan lives on in several poems in this volume. In “Dear Shahid,” written in the form of a letter sent to the poet from Srinagar, the correspondent writes: You must have heard Rizwan was killed. Rizwan, Guardian of the Gates of Paradise. Only eighteen years old. Yesterday at Hideout Café (everyone there asks about you), a doctor—who had just treated a sixteen-year-old boy released from an interrogation center—said: I want to ask the fortune-tellers: Did anything in his line of Fate reveal that he webs of his hands would be cut with a knife? (43) Thus, when in “I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight,” Rizwan’s shadow speaks and asks to be remembered, we could be hearing the poet’s injunction to himself: “Each night put Kashmir in your dreams,” he says, then touches me, his hands crusted with snow, whispers, “I have been cold a long, long time.” (25) As the poet wanders with Rizwan’s shadow, he notes the devastation rippling, like flames, through the city: and snow begins to fall on us, like ash. Black on edges of flames, it cannot extinguish the neighborhoods, the homes set ablaze by midnight soldiers. Kashmir is burning: (25) Rizwan’s is not the only shadowy presence running through the streets; he is joined by crowds of mourners who scatter when their processions are fired upon by soldiers. Their blood marks the road, as do the hundreds of shoes left behind in their panicked retreat; the sounds of grieving mothers can be heard. As the poet follows Rizwan through these streets, the two of them notice others: By that dazzling light we see men removing statues from temples. We beg them, “Who will protect us if you leave?” They don’t answer, they just disappear on the road to the plains, clutching the gods. (25)

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Rizwan’s death, his shadow, haunt the poet back into Srinagar and its atrocities. At the conclusion of the poem, the poet is once again in New Delhi, conscious of his distance: no news escapes the curfew, nothing of your shadow, and I’m back, five hundred miles, taking off my ice, the mountains granite again as I see men coming from those Abodes of Snow with gods asleep like children in their arms. (26) “I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight” is one of the poems in The Country without a Post Office that notes the loss of the Kashmiri Pandits. Shahid grew up in a Srinagar where some of his best friends, as those of his family, were Pandits, and he continued to have lifelong relations with them. It is thus no surprise to note the bewildered and disappointed tone in which his poems meditate upon their displacement from Kashmir. This “disappointment” is a complex affect, compounded of many elements: they left, and he is saddened for the losses they suffered and for the loss Kashmir suffers in their absence. He mourns for them, but also, in his intimacy, begs the question, “Who will protect us if you leave?” This is not a question to be taken literally, given that the Pandits were at best 4–5 percent of the population. But it is a question which recognizes the massive implications of their exile: their moving away makes it easy for the Indian government to insist that the historic movement for freedom in Kashmir is sectarian, driven by Islamic fundamentalism, and instigated by Pakistan. In the past, a few prominent Kashmiri Pandits had argued that Kashmir should remain independent or at least autonomous from both India and Pakistan, even though the vast majority of the community had identified with (Hindu) India, and, after 1947, lived as willing citizens of a constitutionally (but only putatively) secular India. They left, and what might have been understood as a political movement for freedom came to be represented as a violent campaign for Muslim domination. The suggestion of bitterness in the unanswered question “Who will protect us if you leave?” surfaces again in the opening poem of the volume, “Farewell,” which is composed as a lover’s lament. In “Farewell,” the force of contemporary events transforms the benign and familiar tropology of love songs: the lover-poet pining for his absent beloved, the lover’s recognition of the distance that separates them, the lover’s sense of his beloved’s alienation. Here, the lover-poet mourns, but does so with the awareness that it is not only love that has soured once the beloved has gone—in the absence of the (Hindu) beloved, the state (here the army) has declared open season on all who remain in Srinagar: At a certain point I lost track of you. They make a desolation and call it peace. When you left even the stones were buried: The defenceless would have no weapons. (21) The quotation from Tacitus, on the spread of the Pax Romana in Britain—“They make a desolation and call it a peace”—makes a startling link between contemporary Srinagar and an older mode of imperial pacification. This allusion and a single, brief mention of

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military power, of the passing of “Army convoys all night like desert caravans,” are the only directly political references in the poem. Srinagar now knows the peace of the desert, and only glimmering shadows remind the poet of what once was: In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other’s reflections. Have you soaked saffron to pour on them when they are found like this centuries later in this country I have stitched to your shadow? (22) These images set the stage for a moving meditation on community and its disruption by one who remains in Srinagar, rueful about another who is home no more. We do not hear why the absent beloved leaves; indeed there is nothing to suggest that this absence is not voluntary (the phrases “When you left,” and “In your absence” indicate no causes). Indeed political references are eschewed in favor of an exploration of personal loss, of the loss of self, as the poet dwells on the dynamic, changing relationship between himself and his lost beloved: At a certain point I lost track of you. You needed me. You needed to perfect me: In your absence you polished me into the Enemy. Your history gets in the way of my memory. I am everything you lost. You can’t forgive me. I am everything you lost. Your perfect enemy. Your memory gets in the way of my memory: (22) The stark simplicity of these lines refuses any detail about what constitutes “history” or “memory,” but these terms define the modalities of individual and collective being in the poem. The repetitive, even obsessive circularity of these lines sharpens the paradoxes of melancholic self-constitution forced upon Kashmiris in these times of violence and retribution: the “I” and the “You”—the twin markers of a sundered community—still cleave, no longer as lovers, but, even more closely, as enemies. The poet speaks not only about, but to, the absent beloved—who else is there who might hear? And yet it is the absent one who we are told has “polished” the poet “into the Enemy.” This tone of resentment is a reminder that this is not only a poem of romantic loss— though that is its primary idiom—but a poem saturated with the political differences that sundered communities in Kashmir in the 1990s. The paradoxes and ironic turns the poem stages are sharp with bitterness, and no reconciliation is in sight. If the absent beloved is in fact the Kashmiri Pandit, then their dislocation is here also figured as defection, one that robs Kashmiri Muslims of community protections against the violence of a sectarian state (“When you left even the stones were buried: / The defenceless would have no weapons.”). Ironically, this enmity itself is figured as a metaphoric extension of past ties, of intertwined memories: My memory keeps getting in the way of your history. There is nothing to forgive. You won’t forgive me. I hid my pain even from myself; I revealed my pain only to myself.

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There is nothing to forgive. You can’t forgive me. If only somehow you could have been mine, what would not have been possible in the world? (23) The declarative sentences in these verses switch subject and object, the “I” and the “You,” in trying to stabilize a grammar of the un-broken self. Forgiveness becomes key, both in the poet’s plaintive and repeated assertion “There is nothing to forgive” and in his immediate awareness that his beloved will not and cannot forgive. Written at a time when the situation in Kashmir allowed no optimism, this poem, even as it memorializes a shared culture and identity, is unable to intuit a rapprochement of any kind between its key terms: memory, history, forgiveness, the “I” and the “You.” The only closure available is that provided by the terms of elegiac longing: “If only somehow you could have been mine, / what would not have been possible in the world?” * The injunction to remember is necessarily an injunction to memorialize, to curate, to choose what must live on, and not in thought alone, but in more material, tangible forms. Slogans, poems, novels, wall plaques, sculpture and statues, preserved buildings, museums, legal systems, and ritual commemorations commemorate differently, but each of these forms is designed to allow particular memories, ideas, conceptions of self and others, to live across, and thus shape, generations to follow. Some years ago, Susan Sontag, writing of photographs, stated categorically: All memory is individual, unreproducible—it dies with each person. What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds. Ideologies create substantiating archives of images, representative images, which encapsulate common ideas of significance and trigger predictable thoughts, feelings. (85–6) Sontag’s assertions, particularly her argument that “ideologies” (i.e., institutional practices) create collective memory, have since been debated. Aleida Assmann, for instance, argues for a more fluid, less immediately institutionally mediated, process in which individual memories are continuously re-inscribed and reconstructed as they are reiterated and circulated by the communities within which we live (63–6). Memories that might begin in individual recollection are shared, re-narrated, corrected or modified, reworked in circulation, till some version—not identical with the original articulation, but fuzzily in keeping with the historical and political priorities of the community—settles into the set of easy references that define collective identity. Where does Agha Shahid Ali’s poetic vision of men leaving with their temple gods cradled in their arms fit into such explanations of the processes that create community memory? It is important to note here that Shahid’s The Country without a Post Office has become enormously popular in Kashmir, his poems read as documents of the destruction wrought in the early 1990s, and as aids to self-understanding. Young people in particular find in his lines the intense feelings and affects, and the vocabulary of resistance, that define their lives. (I quoted lines from “Farewell” at a talk I gave to the English Department at

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the University of Kashmir in June 2019, and many in the audience joined me in reciting his lines. Such memorized accompaniment, so to speak, is often a feature of mushairas, public recitations of their work by well-known poets in India, particularly those who write in Urdu, but I have not before this seen such devotion to a poet who writes in English.) As I have noted above, “Farewell” meditates almost compulsively on the relation between memory and history—in the poem, both terms are understood as personal rather than official, and as powerful precisely because personal experience and understanding are cherished as the living refutation of official narratives or diktats. Thus, the loss of Kashmiri Pandits is couched in the language of betrayed intimacy: my memory, your history, your memory, my history—never separate, never separable, even in these circumstances. In a note to the poem, Shahid confirmed its mode of address, and indeed its form: “This poem at one—but only one—level is a plaintive love letter from a Kashmiri Muslim to a Kashmiri Pandit …” (Ali 93). Cleaving together, cleaved apart—as Shahid modulates the idiom of passion and pain, desire and loss, he finds a way to suggest the weight of the historical divide here, but to do so in the language of unrequited love. That is the witness of this poem: “Farewell” memorializes the trauma and the tragedy of Kashmir, but its primary images of loss are not those of military violence; they are far more intimate, and circle around—they are unable to break away from—the sundering of community. Today, almost two generations of Kashmiris have grown up without Pandits in their midst. After three decades of being brutalized by the Indian security apparatus and the oppressive policies of the state, few of them are interested in accounts of the lives their grandparents shared with their Pandit neighbors. For them, Shahid’s “Farewell” reads as a song of betrayal rather than a poem suffused with longing, where loss is synonymous with love, and regret an inevitable component of utopian hope (“If only somehow you could have been mine, / what would not have been possible in the world”). They are not alone in such a partial reading—not surprisingly, Pandit readers have complained that Shahid’s references to coexistence, to “temples and mosques” locked “in each other’s reflections,” do not make up for what they see as his partisan depiction of their decision to flee Kashmir. They argue that they had no option if they were to survive, and that Shahid’s lines suggest that they chose to leave, to willfully abandon the lives they shared with their Muslim neighbors. In both these readings, there are only two operative terms—history and memory—for the intricate processes of remembrance and loss that swirl through the poem. No attention is paid to the third term, which is equally, if not more, important, to the poem: forgiveness. “I’m everything you lost. You won’t forgive me;” “There is nothing to forgive. You won’t forgive me;” “There is everything to forgive. You can’t forgive me;”— how do we understand these repeated lines, if not to see, in their colloquial immediacy and bewildered uncertainty, the pain of lost intimacy? To that extent, “Farewell” is both a meditation upon a fractured relationship and a hope for renewal. In my reading of the poem, I have followed its logic and idiom in order to emphasize the idea that poems are reservoirs of affects and political feelings that can be mobilized by different readers and communities to ratify their sense of their place in the world. But further, to show that poems also refuse singular witness, that their language and artistry encode a challenge to their readers. Consider meanings other than the ones you seek, they seem to say, think again about your certainties, reconsider your attempts to realign the past to accord with your present, and know that the language of loss and mourning cannot be reduced to the vocabulary of division and separateness. To that extent, poems, and those by Agha Shahid Ali are no exceptions, are injunctions to remember—one of the meanings of “Shahid,” the poet used to say, is “witness” (73–74)—but also to eschew the singularities of meaning that are required when remembrance is stipulated

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(as Sontag puts it) and codified into community memory. On occasion, and this is one of them, poems originate in trauma, but they are enunciated in a linguistic and formal structure that makes possible the transformation of individual experience into shared or collective consciousness (along the lines suggested by Assmann). The poem circulates as a stand-in for memory, but its performative language is a reminder that memory is crafted, reconstructed, and only thus transformed into a form that can allow sharing. But that process of linguistic crafting, of poem-making, also brings into being constellations of ideas and suggestions, contradictions and paradoxes, that cannot be reduced to axioms or slogans. A poem both enables, and challenges, the fixities or orthodoxies of “collective memory”; to read a poem is not so much to confirm “predictable thoughts” (as Sontag suggests) but to have them examined, rendered more complex. * I turn now to a different poem, Aamir Aziz’s urgent “Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega” (“All Will Be Remembered”), a poem that became one of the anthems of the protests that were precipitated by the passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in December 2019 by the right-wing, Hindu-majoritarian government of India (for an explanatory account, see the analysis by Malik et al.). This new set of laws, particularly in conjunction with a new National Register of Citizens (NRC), targets Muslims in India, and represents a significant legal and political step in the attempt of this government to make them secondclass citizens (Vishwanath and Sheriff). Citizen’s groups mobilized against these laws, and for weeks people sat in protest in encampments. The government cracked-down: the police raided camps of protestors, thrashed students and others who supported them, and arrested activists and participants alike. Vigilante groups, encouraged by government functionaries and Hindu-identified politicians, attacked Muslim neighborhoods. During those months, even though it felt as if non-violent protest would have no impact, given the ruthlessness with which the government used its coercive and judicial powers against protestors, citizens gathered and marched to preserve India’s constitutional, democratic, secular values. In this time of great political turmoil and civic violence, Aamir Aziz’s poem offered a stirring refrain: “All Will Be Remembered.” Aziz is not a published poet (he makes a living as an actor), but his fiery performances of this poem, amplified by social media postings, brought him to public prominence (for an instance of his performative power, see S. Bose). This poem too has not been published, and its text is collated from various performances by Aziz. “All Will Be Remembered” insists that the actions of the government, and those allied with them, will not be forgotten, and that such memories have to be preserved because there will come another time, a future in which these state actors will be understood as perpetrators of crimes against humanity. The poem is angry, but also mournful, as it speaks on behalf of those who have suffered the violence of the state. And its call to remember is purposive, as it looks forward to and affirms a more egalitarian, just future. It provides confidence, and hope, at a time when both were hard to come by, and it does so by stating, in the face of oppressive power, that memory has the capacity to bring about change. But first, the poem (in my translation, which prioritizes literal meaning over some of the alliteration, rhyme, and repetition—all emphasized in performance—that is a feature of the Urdu original): You write the night, we’ll write the moon You shove us into jail; “leap over the walls,” we’ll write

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You write a FIR, we’ll write “we are ready” You murder us, we’ll become ghosts, and write We’ll write all the evidence of your murders You write little jokes while sitting in courts We will write justice on the streets and walls So that the deaf also hear, that’s how loud we will speak So that the blind also read, that’s how clearly we will write You write a black lotus We will write a red rose You write oppression on this earth Revolution will be written on the skies All will be remembered Just everything will be remembered My comrades who have been killed by your sticks and bullets In their memory, we’ll preserve our ravaged hearts All will be remembered We know well that you will write your lies in ink But even if it is with our blood, the truth will certainly be written All will be remembered In the full light of day you shut down mobiles, the internet In the cold, dark night you lock down the entire city With hammers you suddenly break into my home You batter my head, my body, my simple life You thrash my beloved in the middle of the crossroad, Then mill around in uncouth mobs, smiling All will be remembered Just everything will be remembered During the day, you say the sweetest things to us All is well, you lisp in every tongue But when night falls you beat and shoot those who demand their rights You attack us, and then call us violent Everything will be remembered On my bones I’ll have written all these events You who ask me for papers to prove my existence You will certainly be given proof of my being For this fight will be fought till you breathe your last And All will be remembered

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It will also be remembered just how you conspired to break the homeland It will also be remembered with what intensity we wished to hold together our homeland And when anywhere in the world there is talk of cowardly ways, your actions will be remembered And when anywhere in the world there is talk of life-ways, our names will be remembered That there were some whose resolve was not broken by hammers of iron That there were some whose conscience was not sold for the coins of the powerful That there were some who stood their ground till the deluge rushed past That there were some who lived even after the news of their death arrived Even if eyelids forget to flicker over eyes Even if the earth forgets to rotate around its axis The flight of our broken wings and the cry from our torn throats— they will be remembered So that for ages to come your names will invite curses So that your statues might be slathered with black paint— Your names and your likenesses will be kept alive (“Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega”) Aamir Aziz’s poem, written and performed at the height of the protests, is full with topical references: the police manufacture first information reports (FIRs) against protestors, comrades are arrested and denied bail by indifferent judges, Muslim men are lynched by predatory gangs of Hindu vigilantes, homes are broken into, and their inhabitants terrorized (for a sense of the moment, see Frayer). All the while government ministers blame “anti-national elements” for planning to break apart the country, a canard Aziz turns on its head by pointing out that ordinary citizens, particularly Muslims, are fervent in their desire to preserve a secular, multi-religious nation. But Aziz’s poem recognizes that at this moment in history, the state and its vigilantes have the upperhand; it is hard to fight back effectively, so the poem promises only this, that nothing will be forgotten, and that a time will come when these carefully curated memories will be used to call perpetrators to justice. In an ironic twist, however, the last three lines promise also to keep alive the names of the perpetrators of violence so that they can be subject not to judicial but to community sanction, in word and in deed. The power of the state is deployed to protect the powerful and the violent, but the state cannot control community memory, which will preserve these instances of undemocratic, majoritarian violence. Thus the refrain, “Sab Yaad Rakha Jaayega” (All Will Be Remembered), is also a forward-looking pledge to continuing political resistance. In that, this poem is a reminder that “memory” belongs not only to the past, but it is produced in the present as a promise to the future. And also, that the call to remember is part of an ongoing political mobilization, collective in imagination and in practice, where the poet—bardic in his address and his power—curates the past into living memory and thus crafts the future. *

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Both the poems I have discussed here center around memory, and both see it as a powerful resource for communities or peoples whose lives have been disrupted by political violence. In Agha Shahid Ali’s poem, memory is a restless force, one that disrupts self-understanding  as much as it allows for the consolidation of community memories—memory betrays, renders the past uncertain; memory codifies, brings particular histories into being. Memory has sharp edges here—the poem is a love song, but one in which the beloved’s betrayal (not an uncommon theme in songs of lost love) is not only the loss of a shared relation but the prelude to sustained assault by a punitive state. And the poem is fully aware that the same events are processed very differently: the poet writes as the abandoned lover, but knows that his feeling of abandonment is shared by his beloved, but as an inversion. The beloved, fearful and feeling betrayed, goes into exile. And forgiveness and reunion seem nowhere in sight; only the violence is at hand. When Aamir Aziz invokes memory, he does so in a much more forthright, purposive fashion. His poem is a check-list of atrocities and discriminatory actions performed by state actors, or vigilantes they support, and he writes on behalf of persecuted peoples across the nation. We will not forget, his poem reiterates, and our time will come, a time in which the perpetrators of violence—now kept alive in memory—will be the object of public shame and scorn. His poem draws upon the legacies of Urdu satiric and protest poetry, but his language eschews poetic cultivation and sophistication in favor of registers of everyday speech, indeed of the simplicity and urgency of the slogan (which is what “Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega” has become, repeated at venue after venue, at gathering after gathering). In an India beset by majoritarian politics and violence, the repetition and circulation of this poem, its call to be part of a community that remembers and will do so till matters are rectified, give hope. * One last word: critical commentary, such as this essay, is also a part of the productive “ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing” (to repeat Michael Rothberg’s terms), that constitute the afterlives of any memory. My own turn to these poems—my motivations, the readings I have offered here—are subject to the same scrutiny as the work of these two poets. And that is the last point to be made here: as a Kashmiri Pandit, albeit one who lives far away from his birthplace, the loss of community between Pandits and Muslims there has been almost as dispiriting as the continuing violence enacted by state forces in Kashmir. I therefore read and reread Agha Shahid Ali to find in him not only the desolation of a ravaged land and the hope of a time without soldiers, but also memories of a more peaceable time, the time of my grandparents, and even parents, who were at home there (see Kaul). My “memories” of Kashmir are not only those they bequeathed, or the products of my own experiences there, but they are composites produced by reading and thinking, and “Farewell” is a poem I have meditated upon often. As I read my own analysis, I see the play of desire—the poet’s desire, my desire—as aligned, as parting ways, as, finally, inextricable from each other. What more than that can be evidence of shared community, but the impossibility of separate memories? And then there is my response to Aamir Aziz’s poem, an anthem of the protests against the CAA and the NRC, a refusal to legitimate the majoritarian, vindictive laws of the Narendra Modi government now in power in India. As a citizen of India who lives in the United States, I too feel as Aziz does, with the difference that my politics is necessarily inflected by my Hindu identity. To read of the lynching of Muslims and other minorities

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is gut-wrenching, to watch elements of the government machinery and politicians, far from acting to combat such vigilantism, actually legitimize murderers, feels like the death of any “national” values I hold. And then to see the government translate its anti-minority positions into law only confirms the need to find ways to resist, in speech and in act, in conversation and in writing, in private and in public. That process of resistance, and the hope and even the certainty, of a better future, is what Aamir Aziz’s poem enables: do not forget, and let your memories enable the mobilizations that will prove transformative. In this poem, the immediate past and the present are held hostage by what seems like overwhelming force, but as long as we continue to speak about the “flight of our broken wings and the cry from our torn throats,” the future remains rich with potential. *

ACKNOWLEDGMENT I thank Ania Loomba, Brett Kaplan, and Sanjay Kak for their suggestions, and Teren Sevea for vetting my translation.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Sunny DAVID WRIGHT FALADÉ

Sunny remembers everything. Not just events, but details. It’s been eight years since Poppy died and still, now, here together, she will remember ways he was, things he said, how he said them. My mind holds memories like a colander does water: just the residue of moisture, the feeling that something has passed by here before. Watching an African street vendor serve us hot dogs, his long fingers tickling the wax paper which ripples in the wind, Sunny makes me remember Poppy’s hands with just two words: “Remember riding?” Poppy drove a cab and riding with him was like the promise of candy. He’d offer it like a treat, something special, which not every kid could have, not even his own kids, unless they behaved. We’d sit, all three in the front seat, whether there was a fare in back or not, Sunny in between and me on the end. Poppy’s hand—not his arm, draped over the seat-back, but his hand—seemed to stretch the width of the car, all the way to me, his fingertips grazing my outside shoulder. When we’d get a fare, his hand never moved, never had to. Sunny and I would fight to be the one to pull the orange mail-flag arm of the meter, Poppy’s voice reproaching, impatient but rarely harsh, “One at a time, now. Boy, you let Sunny go first.” Poppy’s fingers could stretch like rubber bands around a basketball. Without Sunny, I wouldn’t even remember that. I tell her, “Yeah, I remember,” and I smile. I watch as Sunny pays the man, three one-dollar bills extended from her fingers, long like Poppy’s. Considering how it turned out—Poppy getting killed in a robbery—I guess riding was indeed something special, and he was right to never let what we considered a treat to become habit. Sunny and I eat our hot dogs and walk the long block towards her building where, as we approach, the doorman, a brother in a stylized uniform, funny policeman’s hat and all, opens the door. “That’s right,” Sunny calls to him, “you see me coming.” He laughs. “Oscar,” she says, “this is my brother, Bryan.” “Hey now, Bryan.” He offers his hand, the sound of his gullet-voice grinding out words. “You in town for awhile?” “Two or three weeks,” Sunny answers for me. “He’s back from living in Australia.” “Australia?” Oscar says. “Wow, man, that’s all right.” But then an older white couple approaches through the lobby and Oscar stiffens. “Mr. Pound. Mrs. Pound,” he says to them as they pass, a greeting which they return to

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him formally, unspeaking, acknowledging him only in a glance. The couple says nothing to Sunny, doesn’t acknowledge her in any way. “Tst!” Sunny says once they’ve passed from view, stretching her body erect, affecting the prurient air of a Pekinese. We all three laugh. “All right now,” says Oscar. “Don’t you start.” “We’ll talk to you later,” Sunny says, and she and I go to the elevators. I don’t remember Sunny like this—gregarious, playful in public. I’m not sure how I remember her. I thought I remembered her like she was at JFK, as I got off the plane and saw her before she saw me. She looked mouse small in the crowd, although she was as tall as any man there. But her quiet called out, the way the silence of the one timid child in a raucous maul shouts loudest of all. Then she saw me, and she smiled. In high school, Sunny always seemed sad. Not unhappy, but the one who had few friends, who spent most of her time with her boyfriend, who didn’t do after-school things—sports, band, whatever. She was beautiful—every boy I knew wanted to date her—but a loner, and among teenagers that’s a sign of failure. I was captain of the basketball team, Mr. G.W. High. Inseparable as children, we’d become such different people. I’ve been gone for four years now, but really it’s been nine since Sunny and I have lived together, since we’ve known each other like a brother and sister do. A year older, she left our home in Saint Louis the summer before my senior year to go to college in Washington state. The next year, I went to school in up-state New York and, because ball kept me out there winter breaks, I only got home summers. She stayed in Seattle summers. After I left for Australia, we hardly saw each other at all. Two day lay-overs in Seattle, en route to Chicago, where I’d spend my month-long off-season with my woman friend, Ei. Sunny’s been in New York City seven months now, making mad loot working for an investment consulting firm. But I’m having a hard time recognizing this person here in front of me. In her apartment, we’re greeted by an ugly Pekinese, yawp-yawp-yawping at our entrance, and I see where Sunny has learned her rich-folk’s strut. “Shut up, Millie!” Sunny says, but the dog bounces around, nipping at Sunny’s heels and following her from one room to the next as she takes off her coat. “Goddamn, girl,” I say. “You got a Pekinese. Negroes don’t own Pekinese.” “I’ve paid my dues,” says Sunny. “I’m not negro anymore.” And we laugh. “Besides, Millie’s lowbrow. She thinks she’s mongrel.” Even as kids, we were never really affectionate, so when I sit down in the middle of the couch, I’m not surprised to see Sunny go to the chair opposite. But I notice it. We haven’t seen each other in so long. “So, my baby brother came back to the world to get married.” “Not just to get married,” I say. “To get a life, a job, all that.” “Didn’t you like Australia?” “I liked it okay.” “Why didn’t you just have Eileen move there?”

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Sunny hasn’t yet met Eileen, I don’t really even talk about her to Sunny, so it’s strange to hear her mouth speak Ei’s name. “Naw. Australia ain’t all that,” I say. “I got tired of it. And I can’t play basketball forever. It’s not my life.” And besides, Ei never wanted to live there. Ei has helped keep me grounded here. “Hnn,” says Sunny, which could be either dissent or approval, I can’t tell. She looks around the apartment, offers me something to drink, something more to eat. “Naw, thanks,” I say. “Twenty hours in the air! All they do is feed you.” “I’ll fix you up a bed,” she says. “Hope you don’t mind the couch.” As she does this, putting on sheets, getting me a pillow, she explains that she goes to work early, usually tries to be there by seven or seven-thirty. It’s already past ten, and for her, that’s late. But she tells me that she’ll call at noon. I hardly slept the length of the flight from Sydney and don’t plan on being awake much longer either. The couch is just barely long enough to accommodate me, my feet flat against one arm, the crown of my head viced against the other. I hear Sunny in her room, rummaging around, light music in the background, but soon the apartment is silent, dark. Two walls of her living room are windows, so New York City filters in: the aura of too many lights lit all the time; horns, sirens wailing, always within earshot. I’d called Eileen from the airport in San Francisco, to let her know I was home and to tell her that I’d call tomorrow, but I can’t fall asleep, so I cross to the kitchen and call her from the phone there. She picks up immediately after the first ring. “Hey, girl,” I say as a way to identify myself. “I hope I’m not calling too late.” “Bryan.” The initial tension on the line releases, her voice settling to a smooth embrace, a warmth that always surprises me, pleasantly, and that I look forward to, because I know I’ll always be caught off-guard, a little surprised and relieved by the comfort of it. “My parents are up, reading in bed,” she says. “It’s all right.” After getting her graduate degree, Ei was set on returning to Chicago to be close to her family. She moved back in with her parents. Now that I’m back, we’ll get a place together. “Mimi and John D. all right?” I ask. “Just fine,” she says. “They’re getting a kick treating me like a teenager again. Momma even gave me a curfew the other night.” “No she didn’t …” “She tried to play it off, saying that you wouldn’t want me out past twelve anyhow.” We both laugh. I tease Ei about her family, but I love what they are—she and her three sisters and their parents—for each other. “How’s Sunny?” she asks. “Oh damn, girl. She’s got it going on. Lives in this skyscraper, the same one where Rush Limbaugh lives …” “That’s not really an endorsement.” “No, but you can imagine the kind of loot that lives in this place,” I say. “They have a health club in here, and doormen, and in the laundry room, there’s a, like, coke machine, but that you rent videos from.” She laughs. It’s really a giggle, but energetic and protracted. “Like the Jeffersons.” “Yeah,” I say, “a de-lux apartment in the sky.”

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We continue talking for awhile, about everything and nothing, the things two people say to each other when they’ve been separated for too long but have remained intimately in contact over the length of that time. Then her voice coos, “I’ve got to get to bed, baby,” and I know she must be exhausted and that I’m keeping her up. She asks, “I’ll see you this weekend?” “Probably more like next week,” I say, remembering what Sunny said to Oscar. She expects me to stay more than just three days. “In a week or so.” “Hurry,” she says. I tell her to kiss her parents for me, and her sisters when she sees them, and we hang up. I’m still wide awake. I lay back down on the couch, listen to the city sounds, far away, redolent of a life that, in the dark of this room, escapes me, and I conjure images of Eileen. She is my best me. I don’t know who I’d be if it weren’t for her. She was my best friend in college before I realized that, in fact, she wasn’t really a friend at all, that she was much more than a friend, and that, without her, I’d be very small. We’ve been together ever since. At some point during the night, I guess I fall asleep. It feels like being awake though, except the apartment goes from darkness to daylight to darkness, Sunny standing before me, first in an elegant suit and heels, then in sweats and we’re sharing a meal—Chinese food in take-out boxes, with chopsticks. I may even have talked to Ei again on the phone; her voice lingers on my mind. I finally really wake up to Sunny, dressed in an oversized wool sweater, jeans ripped at the knees, and a black baseball cap. She’s saying, “Come on, boy … Take a shower, brush your teeth or do whatever it is dumb jocks do to get ready …” “Ready for what?” I am reaching for my pants and shirt which lay heaped on the floor by the couch and which Millie, Sunny’s ugly dog, has claimed as a bed. She licks my hand as I pull the shirt from beneath her, but she doesn’t move. “I made plans for us to have dinner with some friends from work,” Sunny says. “Yesterday. Since you slept through that, I postponed it til today. Steve’ll be by at seven.” The clock reads quarter till. “Steve?” “My boyfriend,” she says. There is a silence between us where, I expect, she’s feeling she should be trying to explain and I should be grilling her. I rub the sleep from my eyes. “You been going out long?” “Four months,” she says. “Off and on. Now, go.” There’s a towel for me on the toilet. I get undressed and turn the spray on high and hot and step into the shower. I probably should be hurrying. I don’t feel pressed. The spray of water is harsh and pulls my muscles long, relaxing them. My mind relaxes, too, and, like it does so often when I’m with Sunny, it wanders naturally to Poppy. Such a weird name: Poppy. And my memory surprises me: I remember calling him that because Sunny did; and Sunny called him that, Mom explained to me, because Sunny was born in France, learned her first words there, and when she learned to say “Daddy,” she said it like French kids do, “Pappy,” which is pronounced, “Poppy.” It always sounded natural to me and we never called him anything else, even after other kids teased us about it.

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Sunny speaks good English, better than I do, but she still sometimes says “vah-KNIT-tee” instead of “vanity.” She never completely shook some of the French-isms she learned from Mom, who lived in the Midwest for twenty years but never lost her accent, only watched it evolve to a bastard mutation, a Missouri twang punctuating French overtones. But it was always me who most resembled Mom, much more than Sunny. Mom has an iron will. She divorced Poppy when we were five and seven, but even though she had nothing—no family, few friends, just two coffee-and-cream colored kids who didn’t care where they lived and probably would have enjoyed France just as well— she stayed in the States because she thought we’d have a future here. Iron-willed. Poppy wasn’t reliable for child support, so Mom raised us alone. She worked, ran the house, and made me and Sunny into the people that we are. Me, my strength has always been commitment, too. Sacrifice. I always wanted to be a ballplayer but whereas Sunny is five ten, tall for a woman (she was taller than me until my sophomore year of high school), I had to settle for a compromise between Poppy’s sixfour and Mom’s five-three. I’m six feet even and so I trained myself to substitute Poppy’s antelope grace for hoop savvy and a Marine Corps determination. I was a linebacker in trunks and a tank-top who would post up with anybody but who could hit it from three. That didn’t fool a top college program into taking me. Still, second rate New York Central was convinced I could help them win. I guess I did. I started four years, and we won. And when it was all done, the team from Sydney United, one of the premier clubs in Asia, paid me good money to come live in Australia for a few years. Dressed and dried, feeling fresh and fearing that I won’t be able to sleep later because I’ve slept so long, I look for some lotion in Sunny’s medicine chest but find a stack of rubbers. The only consolation to my discomfort is that the red wrappings have faded orange from age. But that’s no consolation at all. I come out of the bathroom, saying, “Sunny, I looked in your medicine chest but couldn’t find any lotion,” but there’s a strange whiteboy sitting on the sofa next to my sheets, which have been pushed into a pile at one end. “Hey,” he says, standing and extending a hand. “I’m Steve. You must be Bryan.” Naw, I want to say, I’m the nigger from the woodpile. But instead I say, “What’s up?” “She’s out walking Millie. Should be back in a second.” He’s dressed like Sunny: jeans ripped at the knees; an oversized sweater; scuzzy baseball cap, the bill overformed. Some sort of yuppie after-hours uniform, I guess. He says, “So you play basketball in Australia …” “Played,” I say, tucking my NIT Runner-up T-shirt into my trousers. He wrinkles his brow. “On an American team?” “No. The teams were Australian, part of a world basketball federation. But each team could carry up to three Americans on its roster.” “How were they,” he asks, “the Australians?” I’ve grown accustomed to this smile. It’s the one that wants you to start describing the slap-stick high-jinx of foreigners trying to play a game that the smile imagines only Americans can play with any ability. It’s also the smile that condescends to your inability to cut it with the real hoopsters here, in the NBA. “They suck,” I say, “but the pay’s okay.”

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Just then, Sunny walks in followed by Millie, yawping and bouncing around the apartment. She says, “Bryan, this is Steve.” “We just met,” Steve says to her. “Hang on a second and I’ll be ready.” Sunny disappears into her room. I lean over to put on my high-tops, focusing my attention downward and not on Steve. “Bry,” she calls from the other room, “did you have time to get ready?” Steve calls back, “All of New York has had time to get ready, Michelle.” Michelle: it’s been so long since I’ve heard her called this that I’ve almost forgotten it’s her name. “You’re the only one who always has a last-minute thing to do.” I look up at him, at this man who calls my sister Michelle and who is smiling at me complicitously, and I call back, “Yeah, I’m about done.” I resume slowly lacing up my shoes. “So,” Steve says, “did you like living in Australia?” “Loved it,” I say. “Really sorry to be back.” “All right,” Sunny announces, emerging from the back room. “Let’s go.” Steve is up on his feet. I finish with my laces. “Is it cold out?” I ask Sunny. “It’s a little chilly …” “Not too bad,” Steve corrects her. Smiling. “I don’t know if I’ve ever known anyone more sensitive to the cold than you, Michelle.” She smiles in return. I cross to my bag. Rustle through the pile of clothes for my jacket. Pull it out, and a sweater, and put the sweater on. I put on a scarf, too—which is meant to serve as an exclamation point to my response to Steve. “All right,” I say. “I’m ready.” For the better part of the evening, I watch silently as this man belittles my sister. Doesn’t matter where we are or with whom: just us three, when we’re joined by others, even when Sunny isn’t around, he seems to get a kick out of making himself big by making Sunny look small. She always laughs at his jokes, putting on a fake-angry face in response or just playing dumb—the bimbo who doesn’t catch on. It’s like a currency they use, a business they do that allows them to confirm to each other who each one is. But that isn’t Sunny. Maybe it’s Michelle, but it isn’t Sunny. “Oh goddamn, Ei,” I say into the phone, “he’s such an ass.” I speak in a whisper, a rerun of this afternoon’s Ricki Lake on as background noise, because Sunny is in her room, asleep I think, but if she isn’t, I don’t want her to hear. Ei says, “Do you like any men aside from your teammates?” “I don’t even like them,” I say. Rikki Lake’s audience is yelling down three men—two white guys and a brother—for cheating on their wives with other men. I don’t know if it’s the betrayal or the homosexuality that riles them. I ask, “Ei, did you ever see a white dude?” “Sure,” she says. “Several.” “No, I mean seriously see. I’m-your-girlfriend/you’re-my-boyfriend see?” “Once,” she says. “In high school. Is that strange?”

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On TV, the audience, many standing, scream and point, as Ricki, portable mike clutched and arms crossed over her breasts, looks on disapprovingly from the side. “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I just hadn’t imagined it. You’re so down, you know.” I don’t think I would be down if it weren’t for Ei. She laughs. “Down women can’t go out with white men? Or maybe white men can’t be down?” “No,” I say, “it’s not that …” “And don’t tell me you haven’t gone out with white women.” She has me there, so I say nothing. “That’s what I thought.” When her voice is like this, she’s being playful but serious. “You win,” I say and let it drop, my feelings still unformed, not yet ideas I can articulate. Which is why I never mentioned to her the fading condom wrappers in the cabinet. Or that all Sunny’s friends call her Michelle. Or the funny feeling I got after one of them asked if we all wanted to get high and Sunny shot back, No. She later justified her reaction by saying that she just couldn’t get high in front of her baby brother. Ei and I are still for a moment full with a silence it can’t contain. Then she says, “What are you watching?” I lower the volume with the remote. “Some sit-com,” I lie. She teases me when I tell her that I like to watch talk-shows when I’m home, that they help keep me in tune with everyday America—what people talk about, what they think. Ei says they’re obscene. “You better get some sleep,” I say, even though I can’t and I’d love to stay up and talk to her all night. She says, “You okay?” “I’m fine. I’m just getting used to being back, to being with my sister.” “I can’t wait to meet her.” “You’ll love Sunny,” I say, although I hadn’t really considered that they would actually meet someday—although, of course, they must. I press a quiet kiss over lines too long to accommodate it, and we say goodnight. I stretch out as best I can on the too-tight couch, turn up the volume on the TV. For all the hurly-burly, it might as well be muted. Distinct voices become indistinguishable against the whole, Ricki Lake trying but losing control. Soon the quick-cutting images too shift to just bursts of light and dark against the contours of the larger surrounding darkness— bookcases, the branches and leaves of a hanging plant, a long and lean halogen lamp. Sunny. Michelle. Michelle Marie: that’s the name she was christened with, but even at her high school graduation, the principal called out Sunny Simms when it was time for her to receive her diploma. Because that’s who she was: Sunny. Not bimbo Michelle, too dumb to know that a Fuzzy Navel isn’t a non-alcoholic drink, that Peach Schnapps has alcohol in it—sitting there getting drunk and not knowing it, and just giggling when she finds out. Growing up, Sunny was like a genius to me, the kid I looked up to, admired. She was playful, wry, sometimes a little mean, always smiling. I remember the Sunny from Tuesday, standing in the crowd outside the sliding door at JFK, her face still, sad. And her

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smile when she finally spotted me among the arrivals. There, in that smile, was the little girl I knew, the one who’d do the Whop or the Swim and make the surrounding adults laugh. In that smile was also the girl who’d punch my stomach on a whim, to see if she could and get away with it, then begging begging begging me not to cry so loud that Mom could hear. That was Sunny. Sunny. Poppy had named her that, just as she’d named him Poppy. Josiah Rinehart Simms: Cornbread to his friends, Man to his mom and to ours, but always Poppy to Sunny and me. Once, when she came home from Millie Johnson’s birthday party and Mrs. Johnson had said she was beautiful in her white party dress with the pink ruffles, Poppy’d said, “Little black girl shouldn’t be so bright,” her sandy face brilliant in the aureole of a tight black afro. She brought home A’s from grade school and Poppy’d say, “Damn! Little black girl shouldn’t be so bright,” smiling, always smiling. I brought home A’s and that was all right, too. But Poppy, holding her in his arms, would say, “Sunny. My little Sunny girl.” Poppy, as he was leaving, never had to tell me to take care of her. Just like he’d never told me my A’s were anything other than what they were—what was expected of me. And that’s what I remember understanding, crouched there holding my stomach but trying not to cry too loud: because even though I wanted Mom to dash in the room and pity me and scream at Sunny and, by her screaming, relieve my shame, I likewise didn’t want Sunny to get caught either. The girl with the capricious fist, that was the sister of my memories, the one I knew, not this woman who lies like floorboard before a whiteboy who calls her out her name, smiling a clown’s sad smile, all make-up and conspicuous clothing. Michelle, not Sunny. I ask her about it the next day. “So what’s up with you and this whiteboy?” We’re walking Millie during Sunny’s lunch break which, she’s explained, she can’t spend with me because she has her weekly appointment with her “shrink.” “Niggahs are tired,” Sunny says, her smile only half joking. “Show me one black man that’s going somewhere.” I point to myself. “I can’t go out with you!” As we’re crossing Broadway towards Central Park, Millie lagging behind the full extension of her leash, a taxi turns off a side street and nearly hits me and Sunny. My reaction is to reach for her, to pull her out of the way, but Sunny stops and pounds the hood hard—Shpop!—with the flat of her hand. “Watch how you drive, asshole!” Whoa. I just stare at her, then at the taxi driver, a dark-skinned brother who dismisses us with a jerk of his head and a flick of the wrist. Millie is bouncing in the middle of the road, yawp-yawp-yawping after the cab as it pulls away. “Damn, girl,” I say as we continue to cross, not as a reproach, but to remark that I’d noticed. Sunny looks suddenly timid and apologizes. “I’ve become a New Yorker.” In Central Park, Millie is the focus of attention of every passing child and of every adult not too fearful to speak to strangers. Ugly dogs aren’t supposed to be so vibrant. Two children in identical parkas with the hoods up are petting her as I ask, “What time is your appointment?” as a way to ask something else that I don’t know how to. “I see my shrink at twelve-thirty.”

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When she says “shrink,” she says it like the punch-line of a joke. She doesn’t say anything more though, so I say, “How long have you been seeing this man … woman … your therapist?” I want to ask her what’s wrong with her but don’t know how. “Off and on for years,” she says. “I know, I know, colored folks don’t go to psychiatrists.” Then she faces me. “Boy, when did you get so black?” I don’t say anything. She says, “I went to one my senior year of high school a couple of times, don’t you remember?” I don’t. “I saw a woman at college, too. But most haven’t been very good. One thing about New York, all this madness breeds good head-shrinkers.” I’m confounded by this woman standing before me in the sun and this city. We stay there like that, each in our separate silences while Millie’s bowel movement chases the two kids away, ooh-ing and laughing. Sunny gives me Millie to take home, as she’s running late. At the curb, she hails a cab with a look and a snap of her hand into the air. She kisses my cheek and climbs into the back. Her cab disappears into the panoply of cars flowing north, mixing and melding into one wide roaring stream. It’s funny: Sunny was always all-black before. The dudes she saw in college were always only brothers. She told me once that she thought black folks had a responsibility to the community, especially folks that were in college, those who had, or would have, good jobs. I was always all-ballplayer and I saw everyone of every kind whose blood pulsed and who seemed interested in seeing me. When I first started seeing Eileen, it wasn’t about her race, about her being black, but I remember being aware of that. And it felt good. Felt right. Ei helped open my eyes, see the thing that Sunny had recognized. Sometime in the interim, though, Sunny had started seeing whiteboys, and if the pictures from her photo album are any indication, that’s about all she sees anymore. In high school, I disliked her boyfriends ipso facto, white black red or yellow, didn’t matter and wouldn’t have. To me, they were all just rogues not to be trusted. This Steve guy, I don’t like him either, but differently. All I see is his whiteness with little black Sunny—Michelle—looking on and smiling. I greet Oscar as I enter Sunny’s building, Millie leading the way. “What’s up, my man,” he says. We shake hands. “You liking New York so far?” “It’s all that,” I say, trying to keep Millie on her rein. “Until you have to live here,” he says, the sound like sandpaper. Millie pulls me the length of the lobby to the row of elevators, where an elderly couple waits for one to arrive. They are bundled up in long coats and scarves and look as though they’re visitors in the building and not residents. Millie is sniffing the man’s leather shoes, so I pull her to me and pick her up. A ring announces the elevator’s arrival. I climb on behind the couple, who huddle in one corner. As it accelerates upward, the man leans over to the woman and says in French, “Si je vois bien, en Amérique les domestiques se promenent là où ils veulent.” I see that, in America, domestics aren’t obliged to take the service elevator. I smile, but don’t say anything—just glance at them to make them doubt. I tell Eileen when I call her, we laugh about it, and I can’t wait to tell Sunny. But it has to wait, as she works late and doesn’t come in until after I’ve dozed off on the couch.

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The next day, Saturday, we’re at the corner diner before seven, this Korean spot that specializes in Southern style breakfast—biscuits and gravy, grits. When I tell Sunny the story of the French couple, though, her face twists angry. “Why didn’t you say anything?” “I don’t know.” I can’t understand her reaction. “I mean, what was I going to say that would make any difference to old whitefolks twice my age?” “I would have given them a piece of my mind,” she says. “And in French, so they knew better the next time.” The diner is quiet. I watch Sunny pick at her waffles, the strawberries already eaten, and I don’t know what to say. I didn’t mean to disappoint her. Sunny looks up and says, “So, Bry, you didn’t like Steve, did you?” “It’s not that, really.” I chase blotches of yellow egg over the white plate with the outside tine of my fork. “I just …” “You didn’t like him.” “I didn’t like him,” I say, and we both laugh. I say, “He’s kind of an ass, Sunny. I mean, with you. The way he treats you. You know. Acting big, making himself look big by making you look small.” “Kind of like Poppy with Mom,” Sunny says. I remember then how Poppy, when he and Mom were getting along, would always act like Mom didn’t have any common sense. He’d say as much, and she would play along. “Yeah. I guess like that.” “My shrink tells me so too, and I know it. I always choose men who are bad for me.” But she says it like a statement of fact, not like she’s going to dump Steve or do anything about it. She takes a long drink of her orange juice, staring into the bottom like a little girl finishing a favorite soda, then says, “Hey Bry.” She looks up and back down again. “D’you remember when Poppy came and lived with us?” Not really, but I say, “Sort of.” “Sure, you do,” she says. “I was in third grade, you were in the second, with uh … What was her name, the teacher you loved? Mrs. Hutsell.” I remember Mrs. Hutsell as clear as day, but I don’t even remember where we lived then. The shack behind Mrs. Pearson’s, or the little house, or the apartment on Losey Avenue? Sunny continues, “At, uh, what was the name? Alberts Grade School? Just after we moved into the little green house.” Yes, green. I usually just remember it as words, “the little house,” which is what we always call it when we refer to those days. But it was pea green with sunshine yellow shutters and a yard but no fence—the only real house we ever lived in when we lived on our own, just Mom and Sunny and me. Sunny looks down at her plate. “Poppy came back from Mississippi and lived with us for like, six months.” I remember now: he never worked and Mom wouldn’t tolerate it. I guess he thought we’d all get back together or something, though I don’t think Mom had any intention of that ever happening. Poppy drank, especially when he wasn’t working, and Mom, after she finally forced him to leave, explained to us that she had put a period on that part of her life.

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“Yeah,” I tell Sunny. “I remember.” “You and me used to sleep on the hide-away bed in the couch?” “Sure,” I say, “and didn’t Poppy sleep on a cot?” “An old Army cot in the corner.” She picks at her plate. “That’s what I think I remember.” Sunny looks me in the eye then down into her glass, empty of everything but orange pulp and the memory of juice. But she doesn’t say anything. “What’s to remember, Sunny?” She is silent, a long time quiet, picking at crusting syrup and waffles with a fingernail, the width of a table away. “What’s to remember?” I say. “Nothing,” Sunny says. “What would there be?” Then she changes the subject abruptly, talking about everything and nothing—“I have an errand to run later”—making jokes like she always does, and I’m not even listening, just responding by rote, grunts and nods and chuckles. “I’ll pay the bill,” and she springs up and strides to the cash register. We get back to her place, get ready to spend the day in museums, and Sunny goes to shower first. I wait in front of the TV. Sunny’s nakedness, two rooms and a closed door away, makes me uncomfortable. I go to shower when it’s my turn, smiling at Sunny as we pass in the hall. I get in, get out of the shower. Towel and dry. Sunny and I spend the day at the Frick and at the Met and at F.A.O. Schwartz and later meet with her friends, and I have all the appropriate responses at all the appropriate times, grunts and nods and chuckles, but nothing feels right. I’m all blank inside, and I just can’t wait to get back to her place and to sleep. Steve comes up with us when we return to her building, his staccato voice rat-a-tattatting, trying to make conversation that just won’t come. Eventually, he leaves. Sunny walks him to the door. When she’s back, we both pretend we’re exhausted and head for our beds. But I say, before she closes the door, Sunny, you all right? I think that’s what I said, now, laying on the couch, still uncomfortable by our intimacy, two rooms away. And I think Sunny made a joke of it. Why wouldn’t I be, dumbass? But I’m not sure this has happened at all, any of it, the doing and the not done. All I know is that I didn’t hug her when we said goodnight, I didn’t know how to, or how to touch her or what to do. I don’t call Ei. I just lay there, the shadowy reflections of New York strewn like an unending dusk of city lights and discordant sounds over the walls and counters, the bookcases and books of Sunny’s apartment. I try not to think, try to sleep but to not dream, pulling down the memories, and I do sleep, I must be asleep, because the pulsing shadows that remain, shifting like the panes of a kaleidoscope, feel unreal. The wall clock reads half past four. I am awake. I want to call the airline right now and book my flight to Chicago for as soon as possible, Monday even. Sunny works ten-hour days all week anyway. And I toy with the idea of it. The only thing holding me back is the shame, by my leaving, of failing Sunny yet again. The next day, Sunny goes to some resort area—the Hamptons—with Steve. I claim to be still feeling run-down from my trip and she lets me off the hook, not because she

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believes me but because she thinks I can’t stand to be with her boyfriend. I let her believe this. I rent movies from the machine downstairs, mindless ones I’ve already seen. Ei, on the phone, tells me I seem distant. “Hey,” Sunny says. Her face is red from the sun, she is removing a scarf. “Don’t tell me you haven’t moved from the couch all day.” “Sure, I did.” I smile. “I went to the video machine.” “Hnn.” She sits in the chair opposite me, watching the screen. “I saw this at the movies when it first came out. I thought it was stupid.” “It is stupid.” “I walked out,” she says. “But where would I walk out to?” We watch in silence. After a while, Sunny rises and leaves the room. I hear water running, then Sunny calls, “I’m going to bed, Bry. Good night.” A door clicks closed. I want to call the airline and book my flight. Again, I hardly sleep all night or, if I do, it feels like merely being restlessly awake—the kind of sleep that’s dark and dank and not like sleep at all. When I hear Sunny rustling around, getting ready for work, I pretend to be out cold. She leaves. I don’t get up. I don’t sleep. Later, the phone rings and when the machine clicks on, it’s Ei. She says she’s calling from work and wants to make sure I’m all right. I don’t pick up. Sunny calls, too, says to meet her with Millie in the Park at noon. I don’t pick up. It’s ten, it’s noon, it might be whenever. I pull on my jeans, a shirt. Slip out, down the elevator, past grinning Oscar. Into throbbing streets, rank exhaust and a loud wind. There are vendors with fingers long like the hot dogs they hawk. There is traffic, honking and agitated. Sometimes I feel like I can feel the roaring trains underground, vibrating the earth as they pass. All the people, rushing by and not staring. People, like the clumps of crying pigeons scattering at my feet, careful to not see me—under-dressed, the wind piercing. Shadow everywhere. All of tight Manhattan, hazy brown and too vertical. Too much screaming. I start at a taxi’s horn, specific, shrill and blaring and tires squeal. I stop in the walk, sudden rage rising, and I face the driver, and through the glass of the windshield remember Poppy—three bullet holes in the side of his head, curt lines of blacker skin on black skin in the quiet casket, capped one morning for fifty-two dollars and change—and I wish this man ill. I strain to see Poppy through the glass, and I wish the man ill. He honks again, rides it long, and passers-by turn to stare. I leave the intersection the same way I entered. The people, some turning away again, stare through me, beyond me, at the whole scene engulfing me. I’m not sure what they see. I’m not sure what I’ll say to Ei. I don’t know what to say to Sunny. I walk as I walked before, among the shadows and the pigeons, and find myself in front of Sunny’s office building. Which is where I knew I was coming. I watch across the street, across traffic and an uncovered manhole, roped off in orange plastic, and as though I had willed it, there she is in the doorway before I can wish it otherwise. A long overcoat, and two men in coats too, all three with briefcases. But Sunny resplendent—her smile the smile of those who don’t have to speak in order to be recognized.

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And underneath the smile? She’s as tall as the other two, long legs stockinged black, striding on heels. Queenly like a spider. Unhurried. New York, the whole world before her. “Sunny,” I call across traffic. Then more loudly. And I move into the street, toward the manhole and past, cars slowing, honking—and the honking attracts her attention. When she sees me, she turns and her smile falls into a question mark, her face unsettled. “Where’s Millie?” she says. “You didn’t kill my dog, did you?” It’s a joke. “Millie’s fine.” Her face remains unsettled. A composite pieced in a way I’ve never seen. One of the men says, “We’ll see you later, Michelle,” and the two walk away. And here we are. I say, “Hey, Sunny.” She doesn’t make a joke. The passers-by stare. “Hey, Sunny,” I say. Of all people, Oprah walks by. A paisley print scarf tied over her head and in dark glasses, she looks like Jackie-O. “That was Oprah,” I say. Sunny doesn’t look. “I didn’t see her.” She turns toward the traffic coursing by. “You want lunch? There’s a great Cuban-Chinese I know near here.” Cuban-Chinese? “Sure.” I don’t know whether to expect rice and beans or stir-fried noodles. Sunny’s smile breaks, pushing all the pieces together into a familiar order. We go the way Oprah went, side by side though not touching, our easy walk gathering from the air a live tradition, a vision that does not falter. THE END

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PART SEVEN

Digital Memory

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Digital Afterlives JULIA CREET AND SILKE ARNOLD-DE SIMINE

Your digital self will outlive you, but who will control your digital remains? A booming industry, driven by commercial interests and technological innovation, specializes in storing, advancing, digitizing, and personalizing our digital legacies, from algorithms that can respond and post on our behalves from beyond the grave to interactive 3D avatars and pseudo-holograms. The “afterlives of data” refers to digital remains in two senses: first, as data that lingers on the internet after the users who posted it have died (e.g., social media profiles), raising the pressing question of what happens to these data after death; and second, to digital legacies which are either purposefully created as such by users themselves or reanimated, sometimes even from analogue material, by those left behind. “Digital death managers” (Sisto “Digital Death”) can now advise us on how to administrate and archive a digital legacy either before one dies or help the bereaved to manage the digital legacy, the digital traces left behind by a deceased loved one. Specialized start-ups promise digital immortality in the form of text messages or a disembodied voice, such as chatbots trained on a person’s online presence or on digitized analogue material, or even a visual presence in the form of posthumous virtual avatars. In any case, their aim is to extend the contact with the deceased into the future through ongoing interaction with the living, projecting the deceased’s future responses based on their digital remains. What kind of memory culture will we create from this “hybrid mortality” (Moreman and Lewis) in which our digital remains will go on to have an active digital afterlife over which we only have very limited control? One implication of our lack of control over our digital afterlife is that it projects a persona of the deceased into the future that is fixed at the time of death. Even as it similuates a continued and evolving relationship with those who interact with this mirage, that persona is a finite set of data that doesn’t allow for any change of opinion or character that we would experct or experience with a living actor. Even as it appears dynamic, the data set is fixed, and works in quite opposite fashion to human memory which modifies the content of a memory for the context in which it is remembered (Creet and Kitzman). Data, it seems, is the new antidote to death (Kasket). Are we headed for an uncanny Black Mirror nightmare of “Be Right Back,” in which a grieving wife continues her marriage with her husband’s social media avatar, which she has locked in the attic because he is not life-like enough but cannot bear to delete because he is too life-like to discard? Or, are we comforted by the notion of digital immortality (Roberts)? Central to the these new formations of digital memory is the concept of “continuing bonds”: these bonds are dynamic and ongoing, influenced by the belief system of the survivor(s), that is, how individuals establish an inner representation of the deceased to maintain a link or some

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sort of relationship after their death. This is complemented by the aim to externalize this ongoing bond with the help of new media technologies that have historically always been invested with the hope that they would allow us to contact the dead (Cann; Steinhart et  al.; Lingel; Klass et al.). This combination of technology with the afterlife raises a number of questions for memory studies, which we pose here. With these questions, to which we are just beginning to formulate answers, we want to map out the terrain that delineates this rapidly growing field of research: ●●

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How do users participate and interact on platforms and through interfaces that allow them “to engage” with the dead? How do family and friends experience “continuing bonds” with digital manifestations in the wake of death? Do “digital afterlives” provide alternative forms of working through grief with the help of online communities of geographically dispersed mourners, of building resilience in the face of vulnerability and mortality? How do issues of privacy and data retention intersect with these new and emerging practices of mourning, remembering, and commemorating the dead? Does the phenomenon of digital afterlives signal a means of denial or transcendence of the human corporeal condition, enabling an experience of self that is non-finite and non-linear? What are the digital afterlife industries? Who owns, designs, and controls the infrastructure, algorithms, and datasets? How have they been embedded and applied in the private and public sector (e.g., social media, cultural institutions)? What are the diverse motivations, opportunities, and ethical dilemmas that need to be navigated in the creation of posthumous virtual personas, especially considering the fact that the algorithms that speak for the dead are susceptible to design flaws, systematic biases, and data degredation over time?

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How has Covid revealed the technologies of online grief and memorialization?

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What are the possible futures of digital afterlives?

Broadly framed, we need to ask: who benefits or profits from these digital afterlives; who suffers and who is comforted by these “continuing bonds,” and what are the ethical implications? In 2013 Brazilian sociology professor Dolores Pereira Coutinho sued Facebook to have her daughter’s “memorialized” site deleted. Facebook first set its “memorialized pages” policy in 2009 in reaction to the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings (McCallig). This meant that users can opt to have their profile preserved and turned into a memorial page upon their death, where existing contacts can leave messages and share memories. Prior to that Facebook deleted accounts thirty days after the company was informed that a user had died; the new policy allowed pages to remain forever. Coutinho’s daughter, Juliana Ribeiro Campos, a journalist, had died unexpectedly in surgery at the age of twenty-four. She had been very active on social media and her friends continued to post on Facebook long after she died, provoking intense grief for Coutinho, who pleaded with the court. “This ‘wailing wall’ just makes me suffer too much.” Ordering Facebook to delete the site, the judge in the case ruled that making the daughter’s profile into a

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“memorial wall” went against “the right of personal dignity and inflicted great suffering on the mother” (Puff). In a case with similar timing in Germany (in which the family remains publicly unnamed), the parents of a fifteen-year-old-girl who died falling in front of a train sued Facebook for access to their daughter’s site, hoping to learn whether or not she had been bullied to death. In both cases, Facebook fought back, claiming that the rights of the dead both to their continued online presence and to their contractual agreements after death trumped the rights of next of kin. Facebook ultimately lost both cases. The latter case was finally settled in the parents’ favor after a grueling six-year battle. In appeal, the highest German court ruled that contracts with sites could be inherited (Oltermann). Unfettered access to the social media sites of the dead causes almost as much havoc. Vanessa Nicolson, a British mother whose daughter Rosa died of a seizure, was deeply upset when she saw that her daughter’s former boyfriend had a new girlfriend. She sent him a furious message—from her dead daughter’s social media account to which she still had access. He was scared out of his wits that Rosa seemed to have been watching him from beyond the grave (Nicolson). And, in perhaps the most disturbing situation of all, as internet trolls hounded Hollie Gazzard on her Facebook page after her death for being in an interracial relationship (Kasket), her parents had little control over the hundreds of photographs Hollie had posted of her and her boyfriend together, despite the fact that her boyfriend had murdered their daughter. It took a year and a petition with 11,000 signatures for Facebook to take down the photographs. According to the CEO of digital security company AVG, JR Smith, “the vast majority of children today will have online presence by the time they are two-years-old—a presence that will continue to build throughout their whole lives.” Pre-cradle (posted ultrasound images) to beyond-the-grave digital lives have arrived, and with them very complicated and very public questions of how this mass of data can be managed in a sensitive and ethically responsible manner. Carl Öhman, a former researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, estimated in 2019 that there were already 30 million dead people on Facebook and, if the network were to continue to expand at current rates, this number would exceed 4.9 billion by 2100, an increase largely fed through users from non-Western countries (Öhman and Watson). In 2015, Facebook created a “digital legacy” policy, recognizing that it was rapidly becoming a digital graveyard (Brubaker and CallisonBurch). In April 2019, Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg announced that as a “result of feedback we heard from people of different religions and cultural backgrounds as well as experts and academics,” the platform would now preserve a deceased’s original timeline as well as a new “tributes section” on memorialized sites. While social media companies have had to become more transparent (though not necessarily less controlling) about digital remains, our aggregated data, much of it scraped without our knowledge, remains entirely under the control of the companies that have acquired it and, in a technological extension of Maurice Halbwachs’ theory that all memory is social, ours is so emeshed with the data of others that disposal upon death is a near impossibility. These stories of grief and social media highlight the emerging ethical dilemmas and the conflicting interests at work in the digital afterlives industry and the struggle for control over “digital remains,” both the wide trails of our digital lives (searching, buying, reading on the internet) and more intentional interactions on social media sites. These cases highlight the extent to which our digital afterlives are currently controlled by corporate interests and individual legal battles rather than an evolved discussion of public interest

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and regulation in an ethical framework. This overview essay can only point to these conflicts, and the need for a vigorous new avenue of memory studies. Social media is only part of the phenomenon of digital afterlives. At its most futuristic, other manifestations of digital afterlife are much more instrumental in that they are intentionally designed to provide “liberty from death via digital immortality” (Rothblatt 6). In an early experiment by Microsoft Research, MyLifeBits, Gordon Bell compiles a digital record of his life with the help of a Sensecam which he wears constantly. This camera takes a photograph whenever it senses a change in its environment. Although this is still just an archive, what Sisto calls a “one-way digital immortality” (Online Afterlives 39), the next step would then be to combine this limited data set that was recorded during a life time with machine learning to create an interactive avatar which would be active and communicate after his real-life counterpart has died. The real “two-way digital immortality,” however, can only be achieved by allowing self-learning algorithms to create new data (i.e., new responses)—ideally on the basis of an unlimited dataset—a goal of the Terasem Movement. “Death is optional” declares Martine (formerly Martin) Rothblatt, one of the founders of the Terasem. LifeNaut.com, Terasem’s public site, offers everyone “digital resurrection technology” (Carroll “Digital Resurrections”), the capacity “to create a digital backup of their mind and genetic code.” LifeNaut promises to safekeep “mindfiles and biofiles of lifenauts for future revitalization in accordance with their consents and technology advancements, while also spreading the good word that software people are people too—not having a body makes you differently abled, not subhuman” (LifeNaut). “Bina48” is the ambassador of digital immortality, a humanoid robot built to live on after the death of Bina Aspen, Rothblatt’s wife, as a comfort to Rothblatt and their children (Rothblatt; Miller). LifeNaut might be considered fringe except that Rothblatt is the highest-paid female CEO in the United States (she wouldn’t have made the list as a man) and one of her most prominent supporters and collaborators is Ray Kurzweil (Ptolemy; The Singularity Is Near) of Calico, a Google-owned pharmaceutical company dedicated to understanding the biology that controls lifespan. Calico’s genetic database is largely supplied by AncestryDNA consumers (“AncestryDNA”; Creet). Resurrecting ancestors might be closer than we think and Ray Kurzweil plans to bring his father back first. A more modest reality of a digital afterlive that already exists is James Vlahos’s 2017 Dadbot, a chatbot based on hours of MP3 recordings of his father’s memories gathered through a family oral history project conducted by James and his siblings after their father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Originally intended for a commemorative book, Vlahos used a program called Pull-String to simulate a written conversation with his father. Instead of restricting himself to the limited dataset of his father’s reminiscences, James made the Dadbot more dynamic in his responses by using the recorded material as inspiration to script branching responses based on the recordings and his intimate knowledge of his father’s style of speaking. Dadbot’s ability to create new responses suggests a true speaking from beyond the grave. But one of the most completely fabricated digital afterlives is a virtual reality recreation of the sevenyear-old Nayeon Sung who died in 2016 of blood cancer. Her mother Jang Ji-sung is tearfully interacting with a simularcrum of her daughter in virtual reality, produced by one of South Korea’s largest broadcasters, Munhwa Broadcasting Corp, for the purposes of making the documenatry Meeting You (2020). While this virtual reunion between a grieving mother and the digital ghost of her daughter seems highly exploitative and produced to satisfy the sentimental expectations of a primtime audience, it is not designed to deny the finality of death or to enable ongoing interactions with the dead: at the end

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of the VR experience the little girl is transformed into a white butterfly and drifts away, signalling an end of her digital presence. Another example of a virtual encounter that aims to allow for an exchange beyond death are the interactive testimonies produced by the USC Shoah Foundation in association with the Illinois Holocaust Museum Dimensions in Testimony (2014–ongoing). They are designed to take the place of face-to-face encounters as the last Holocaust survivors near the end of their lives. Unlike Shoah Foundation’s traditional video testimonies, which were fixed at the time of recording, the interactive testimonies are an interplay between the questions asked (and processed through natural voice recognition) and the algorithms that choose the answers from a finite pool of data (the prerecorded responses provided by the survivors). In addition, the interface has the potential for a 3D projection display, described by Stephen Smith, the Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation, as a recording that anticipates a future projection technology which can create a threedimensional avatar of a survivor. The virtual survivors and their human-like responses that mimic a life-like conversation are the result of highly sophisticated recording technologies animated by algorithms. The aim is to evoke stronger relational empathy than videotaped testimony or archival evidence could achieve (Kansteiner; Zalewska). Here, the digital afterlife is didactic but its ethical pitfalls are nevertheless evident. These interactive Holocaust testimonies present museum visitors with the simulation of a live face-to-face dialogue with survivors, some of whom are already deceased. In the exhibition Speaking Memories—The Last Witnesses of the Holocaust (Stockholm History Museum, January 25–December 8, 2019), for example, audience members were encouraged to address their questions to the virtual survivor, with some “icebreaker” sample questions provided as a starting point. As the algorithms and their operational parameters determine how the conversation will play out in each individual interaction, there is no stable artifact. Unlike the video testimonies, which recorded the process of giving testimony at a specific moment in time, the testimony of the virtual survivors will always be reassembled out of the limited dataset of prerecorded answers. While the customization of the testimonial encounters with Pinchas Gutter’s and Eva Schloss’s digital avatars is inevitable, the only way to avoid a similar “narrowing” of their responses, is to create rule-based connections (if Question #1, then prerecorded Answer #1, …) which are static but create a more predictable agent, with the machinelearning AI only directed onto a better understanding of the question (through natural language processing). This means that questions that can be voiced in various variations get linked to a limited set of possible answers. However, as certain questions are suggested to audiences (such as “How did you survive?” to which the computational operation provides six different alternating answers), pathways to specific answers get strengthened and through algorithmic reinforcement that material is more likely to be prioritized as potential answer for related questions. The false promise of wanting to communicate with the dead has not only presented itself with the new age of the virtual survivors. Historically, people have used whatever recording technology was at hand to remember and sometimes communicate with the dead. Victorian death photography placed the dead in living poses propped beside living family members, and this is hardly surprising, as most emerging media technologies have been used to facilitate an ongoing relationship or communication with the dead (Mendelyté; Arnold et al. 16–29). We might consider this an early form of analogue afterlife (and antecedent to the “funeral selfie”). Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s

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1895 discovery of X-rays produced “ghostly pictures” that immediately captured the imagination of people who for sixty years had associated photography with ghosts. The “belief that the photographic plate could detect ghostly rays invisible to the human eye appeared prophetic in light of Röntgen’s discovery” (Grove). Phonographs, telephones, radios, and television have all been imagined as conveying the voices of the dead (Kasket); photographs and film themselves have deathly qualities, capturing as they do people in a moment that is at once alive and dead for eternity (Barthes Camera Lucida; Mulvey). Now the dead live on in digital technology, spurring a new field of thanatology (the study of death), “thanatechnology” and “cyberthanatology” (Sofka et al.; Sas et al.; Pitsillides; Sisto “Digital Death”; Beaunoyer and Guitton). Are “digital afterlives” the same phenomenon or something quite new? This is not just a new media technology, or a switch from the analogue hopes of communicating with the departed to the digital realm of conjuring up the spirits of the dead. What we have called “digital afterlives” forms a completely new media dispositif, a network of heterogeneous media industries with their corporate interests, start-ups driven by technological innovation and personal mourning, and changed attitudes of how we perceive our identities in and through time. One of the “existential facts about modern media,” argues John Durham Peters in Speaking into the Air, “are these: the ease with which the living may mingle with the communicable traces of the dead, and the difficulty of distinguishing communication at a distance from communication with the dead” (149). Even as we eschew death in physical ways, removing death “from our public sphere, from streets, squares and the home, death is becoming more and more showcased in the media” (Hirdman et al.). As Artificial Intelligence (AI) develops, the dream of interacting with the dead is becoming a reality, making it harder to distinguish between data created by the living or by algorithms that “speak” for the dead. Philosophy professor Eric Steinhart believes that we need a new philosophy of “digitalism” to understand these “digital ghosts,” a strategy that uses “new computational ways of thinking to develop naturalistic but meaningful ways of thinking about bodies, souls, universes, gods, and life after death” (Steinhart et al.). Memory studies is one field through which we might examine some the technological, human, and sprititual implications of digital ghosts and holographic realms, via the expanded notion of communicable traces of the dead. Similar to the history of memory studies that engaged the institutional (museums, archives, etc.) and state (statues, curriculum, holidays, etc.) production of public memory, in the case of digital afterlives, we must pay attention to the commercial interests that dominate the delivery of these new memory formations. The services provided by “Digital Afterlife Industries” can be distinguished into information management services, posthumous messaging services, online memorial services and “re-creation services” (Öhman and Floridi “An Ethical Framework”). They commercialize and exploit digital remains of deceased internet users by offering digital endurance, digital animation, or even digital resurrection. The digital human remains that they are working with include (1) digital traces, that is the digital footprint left by deceased users, for example web searches; (2) a digital will that indicates the deceased wishes regarding their digital assets; (3) digital remains, for example memorialized social media profiles which were created by users during their lifetime but not necessarily intended as legacies; (4) digital legacies, purposefully created by users or by specialized start-ups (about forty companies from AfterNote.com to YouMattered.com) that promise digital immortality to the user (Carroll “Digital Death”) and comfort to those left behind; (5) digital counterparts, designed often by friends or family without the knowledge or consent of the deceased

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to act as stand-ins for the dead, either by emulating their online behavior (tweeting, chatting, posting) allowing for an ongoing, open-ended interaction between the living and the dead or, in the case of famous popstars and actors, by resurrecting them as pseudo-holograms on stage or in film; and, finally, (6) their DNA such as LifeNaut’s BioFile, which collects the sample with the intent to clone clients as soon as this become scientifically possible (and legal) (Savin-Baden and Mason-Robbie). The Digital Afterlife Industry (DAI) promises to resurrect not only those who have left a considerable digital footprint but, retrospectively, also those who have come before in an attempt to allow for a—quite literally—more animated relationship to the dead. FOREVER Identity offers the installation of 3D “holograms” of famous historical figures in a form that lets museum visitors dynamically interact with them. Are those left behind comforted by a continued dialogue with the digital intersubjects of those they mourn or admire (L. Edwards and Harbinja; Buitelaar; Harbinja)? Several well-known bot projects suggest that they are, effectively allowing grieving relatives and friends to continue or rather simulate a relationship that in this interactive form is objectively over (Newton; Replika; Vlahos). The question is if they act as transitional objects that allow mourners to slowly come to terms with the loss they suffered or if they are facilitating a form of denial that enables those left behind to deny the realities of physical death by reducing their loved ones to digital ghosts. Facebook, MySpace, Virtual Eternity, and MyDeathSpace are a few examples of websites “that enable continued ‘dialogue’ between the mortal and postmortal by allowing ‘interaction’ with the deceased” (Church; Öhman and Floridi “The Political Economy of Death”). But what happens when a start-up does not succeed? Ironically, mortality rates among digital death sites themselves are somewhere between 25 percent and 42 percent (Shavit; Carroll “Digital Death”). Do the dead suffer a second death when digital graveyards are abandoned? Patrick Stokes distinguishes between the “self, understood as the subjective, first-personal locus of experience, and the person, understood as an intersubjectively constituted unity of physical, psychological, social, historical and narrative forms of continuity” (Stokes). So if the dead are still active online, Stokes argues, this confers posthumous personhood on digital remains akin to a corpse that lives on. Deletion therefore constitutes a “second death,” which means that we are ethically bound to preserve the electronic artifacts of the dead. So is there then an obligation to preserve digital remains? Or, in contrast, do the dead have a right to privacy? The right of the dead to privacy is virtually unregulated (Creet). Who controls our personal data after we die may not be determined by our legal heirs or descendents, but instead set by companies who are designing “digital legacy” and retention policies that may or may not serve us well. Scholarship, law, and public policies can hardly keep up with a rapidly developing sector in which new technologies and practices become embedded with very little public or government scrutiny. While some people want to live forever, as their family, friends, or fans might wish as well—famously, music legends such as Tupac Shakur, Roy Orbison, Frank Zappa, Ronnie James Dio, Jonny Cash, and Amy Winehouse have been resurrected—to tour as pseudo-holograms, to be digitally forgotten may be more difficult to achieve (Mayer-Schönberger; Zuboff). Robin Williams, for example, was the first actor/celebrity who in his will banned the posthumous use of his image to digitally resurrect him in some shape or form, and a new documentary on the life and suicide of Anthony Bourdain has created a furor over the “deep fake” of forty-five seconds of Bourdain’s voice in which he speaks words he never voiced in that way while alive. Aside from the very basic “right to be forgotten” established by The EU

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General Data Protection Regulation (“Right to Be Forgotten” 2018), there are limited possibilities which ensure that data voluntarily or involuntarily left behind on the net are actually deleted. To complicate things further, a lot of “our” digital legacy is enmeshed with the data from other people (e.g., the conversations on social media) resulting in an entanglement of interpersonal data and data that are produced and managed by human and non-human actors. Big data and AI enable a hyper-connectivity between the living and the dead, human and non-human actors, that redefine existing notions not only of personal agency but also of memory. The way AI has infiltrated our lives means that many of our personal and collective acts of remembering are “distributed” across a network of human and algorithmic actors. They cannot be conceptualized with existing concepts of collective memory which only take into account mediations authored by human actors. The majority of research in the area of digital remains has been published within the last ten years. It is a rapidly evolving field of multidisciplinary inquiry situated at the interstices of human-computer interaction (HCI), philosophy, psychology, media culture, digital ecology, consumer culture, business ethics, death studies, and memory studies. Understanding the dimensions of digital afterlives demands a multidisciplinary methodology to explore the deep entanglement between technological, commercial, social, and narrative relations in Digital Afterlife Industries. The subject also demands a global approach given that there is a global circulation of data but a local specificity of what is adopted as mourning and funeral practices (e.g., the Japanese cemetery of Ruriden www.ruriden.jp).

CONCLUSION According to Öhman and Floridi (“Ethical Framework”), our digital remains can be understood as estate, as preserved memory, as an ever-evolving dynamic interaction or as an artificial agent. The latter two require a new theoretical framework that goes beyond concepts such as “mediated memory” or “prosthetic memory” (Landsberg Prosthetic Memory). As Andrew Hoskins argues, “It is not easy to grasp the digital’s transformation of memory” (1; also see Pitsillides et al.), Floridi, for example, predicts a “fourth revolution” that anticipates a future in which artificial agents will be in charge not only of data collection (storing memories) but also of the process of memory production, the actual remembering (Floridi). At the moment, remembering is still a hybrid process based on human-computer interaction, the process of “distributed remembering” is in its infancy, and audiences lack the experience or the insight into the computational underpinnings to understand the psychological, social, and political consequences of these new forms co-remembering. Whereas older mediated artifacts were static texts, the data that make up our digital afterlives feed into constallations that are constantly in flux and are dynamically co-created by human and non-human agents which make the joint issues of informed consent and ownership so much more difficult to navigate. The posthumanist understanding is that the human subject is no longer an extractable entity in the assemblage of organic, technical, and social elements (Stiegler). Therefore, recent work in memory studies, such as Michael Rothberg’s notion of the “implicated subject” (Implicated Subject 1), needs to be extended to better understand participants’ implication not only in social and historical structural processes but also in the interaction between humans and artificial agents, in order to empower audiences to critically interrogate their positionality, agency, and ethical responsibilities in these new forms of “distributed remembering.”

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However, the Digital Afterlife Industry (DAI) is not really transparent and consumers find themselves veering between the dystopian scenarios of “just-around-the-corner” science fiction narratives such as Black Mirror and the exhilarating new realities of small start-ups that provide what can still only be described as highly innovative niche services, often motivated by deeply personal experiences with grief and mourning. Technology giants such as Facebook and Google, on the other hand, simply saw the need to adapt their primary business models with features that could accommodate the growth of deceased users who were nevertheless still embedded in digitally active networks on their online platforms. While the start-ups provide a form of “digital resurrection” that is predominantly initiated by and geared toward comforting the bereaved, the tech giants’ provision is a form of ongoing or extended customer service that transcends the end of a business relation traditionally signalled by the death of the customer. In both cases, death is not seen as the endpoint—neither of a life lived digitally nor of the kind of bonds and communications facilitated by online networking. Storing digital remains is costly and companies need to find ways to make them financially viable with means they have a vested interest in encouraging the posthumous interaction between the living and the ongoing digital presence of the dead. We come increasingly closer to realizing the elusive promise of older media technologies to overcome the finality of death and provide a continuing interactive exchange between the living and the dead—a prospect that seems to engender both feelings of hope and comfort as well as uncanniness and revulsion.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Cartographies of Suffering: Mapping Holocaust Memory SHARON B. OSTER

Can Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies be brought to bear on Holocaust testimony to create a counter-cartography of the Holocaust (Esri)? What is the memory work of creating GIS maps? To what extent can digital GIS maps help us visualize the tumultuous forced journeys of Holocaust survivors and witnesses? And for all that maps show, what can’t they represent? Introducing their book Geographies of the Holocaust (2014), Albert Giordano, Anne Knowles, and Tim Cole describe the Nazi genocide as a “profoundly geographical phenomenon,” rooted in specific physical spaces, times, and landscapes, one that created a “geography of oppression” that was “materially implemented at all scales of human experience” (Knowles et al. 1, 4). GIS mapping technologies help chart this geography of Holocaust violence and collective oppression on continental, national, and local scales, from a distance—the scope, trends, and patterns of Nazi genocidal programs over broad swaths of time and space. Yet distant reading of human suffering risks appropriation, even elimination, of individual voices, unique circumstances, and traumatic memories of Holocaust victims. We must therefore ask: on the scale of the individual, to what extent can we translate into a spatial or cartographic medium, experiences of suffering located in what Charlotte Delbo calls “deep memory” (13)? And most importantly, how can we best utilize digital mapping to help students navigate what Hannah Pollin-Galay calls the “black holes” of memory and radical physical disorientation that many victims of the Nazi genocide experienced (246)? In what follows, I argue that digital GIS StoryMaps may lack the capacity to represent the most harrowing, emotional aspects of individual survivor testimonies; however, the process of creating maps engages students in a profound experience of critical thinking and reflective remembrance. In “Mapping Holocaust Memories,” a project I have taught at the University of Redlands since 2013, groups of English undergraduate students create StoryMaps: digital web maps that integrate maps, legends, text, quotations, photos, and video clips into a multimodal, geographical, visual medium. The goal is to translate the forced journey of an individual Holocaust survivor into a GIS map, based on the study of their videotestimony in the USC Shoah Foundation Video History Archive (VHA). Students first create a base map (like a Google map), then “publish” it in the StoryMap application, which allows viewer interaction in both a linear and non-linear fashion,

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using pop-up informational windows, “swipe,” and a timeline (“What Can You Do with a StoryMap?”). The project combines close reading, literary analysis, spatial inquiry, and historical research, as students explore the extent to which GIS technology can illuminate dynamics of individual experience and systemic persecution. Simultaneously, the project challenges students with how to translate memories of pain, deprivation, and radical disorientation into a cartographic visual medium. As I will show, the resulting interactive digital maps successfully reveal the vast scope and scale of the Nazi genocide. Simultaneously, making maps provides opportunities for critical reflection on the VHA testimonies—their structure and form as a unique genre of Holocaust account—as well as on the limits of GIS technologies to “map” the aggregate memories of suffering and dislocation that Holocaust survivors articulate. The VHA testimonies have provoked much recent scholarly debate about their status as expressions of “embodied” Holocaust memory, their individual uniqueness, their relation to the archive and institution that houses them, and their overall value for knowledge of the Holocaust. The VHA archive’s searchable “index” in particular raises disciplinary, methodological, and epistemological questions about language and context, and the relation of part to whole. These questions are relevant for efforts that seek to “mine” the VHA testimonies for “usable” data for mapping, since mapping processes depend upon the index as a gateway to reliable information that can be “disaggregated” from the whole to detect linguistic patterns across testimonies (Knowles, et al. 222, 218). Following the work of Todd Presner, Knowles and her colleagues use the index to extract “usable data” from VHA testimonies and to map those patterns—to “scale up” from individual accounts to generalizable spatial phenomena (222). The VHA interface encourages such approaches, since it digitizes the speaking survivor, and boxes them in a visual frame surrounded by a fracas of informational boxes, so that their humanity can seem overwritten by data. As viewers are encouraged to read text and image “interdependently,” as one might read graphic narrative, the VHA screen subordinates the primacy of the survivor story to the larger one of its relation to contextual information (McCloud 155). In response, scholars such as Jeffrey Shandler explore the value of individual VHA testimonies on their own terms, each as complex, unique, and “full of surprises” (1). Noah Shenker reminds us that the individual memories conveyed in these testimonies are fragmented, “constantly mediated, contested and fragile acts of remembering,” inherently shaped by institutional priorities and archival frameworks of knowledge (1). And Henry Greenspan has shown that recalled memories are complicated by issues of privacy and agency, so that when Holocaust survivors determine which are “tellable” for them and “hearable” for any given audience, those choices shape their account into a “story” (2). How, then, can students best regard videotestimonies critically and reflectively; represent their complexity; navigate narrative gaps; and chart what Simone Gigliotti, Marc J. Masurovsky, and Erik B. Steiner refer to as “emotional geographies” across a physical terrain within seemingly objective GIS maps (Gigliotti et al. 215)? The pedagogical approach my course takes is aligned with what Margaret Wickens Pearce refers to as “critical cartography,” which seeks to incorporate narrative into the map “to express the geographies of human experience and place,” “place” meaning “lived space” that is “shaped by human experience” (Pearce 17). We then take this one step further: we use mapping technology to create “dialogue between the verbal and the spatial,” as Pollin-Galay argues we must do (Pollin-Galay 246). Accordingly, the course begins with literary methodology focused on the study of narrative, close reading of rhetorical strategies, and exploration of figures of speech in published

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memoirs, followed by critical analysis of the VHA testimonial form and structure. By the time students are introduced to GIS tools, they are already engaged in the study of text and context: analyzing each testimony as a whole (the unique voice, speaking style, and language of individual speakers) in relation to the VHA institutional protocols that shape their structure. These literary methods foreground distinct emotional textures of individual voices, studied in relation to literary patterns, unique historical circumstances, and prevailing debates within Holocaust and Memory Studies. “Mapping Holocaust Memories” thus places literary analysis at the center of study, with secondary emphasis on historical and geographical research. On one hand, StoryMaps allow students to incorporate both historical information and individual voice into the digital web map by placing text, direct quotations, images, and video clips from the testimony into geo-referenced side panels, and to show temporal progression as the StoryMap moves alongside the side-panel narrative. Yet on the other hand, by separating individual narrative from the map itself, StoryMaps can seem like glorified PowerPoint presentations, where narrative panels on one side take precedence, while maps on the other (though large) serve as “accessories,” or geographical illustrations (or potentially, vice versa, when maps take over the viewer’s attention). In this sense, the project risks falling short of what Albert Giordano and Tim Cole call a truly “relational” approach that integrates narrative into spatial analysis (Giordano and Cole 670). Because the narrative panels compensate for what maps cannot do, the StoryMaps sidestep the greatest challenge to cartography: how to visualize, let alone map, accounts of individual pain, suffering, gaps in memory, or memories of disorientation and dislocation. I argue, therefore, that the project’s value lies in the mapmaking process, rather than in its product, the maps themselves. For anyone trying to get a sense of place using the digital media available, the technological demands of GIS mapping exact a unique commitment to remembering the story, and to the person who tells it: to aim, above all, “to get it right.” The interactive effort required to endow GIS maps with individual voice and emotional depth, to make maps behave narratively while exploring the vast geographical span of one person’s harrowing Holocaust odyssey, invites us to imagine “cartographies of suffering” that extend memorialization beyond the maps themselves. After rehearsing key debates and disciplinary divides about the VHA archive and index and mapping Holocaust accounts, I offer an overview of the “Mapping Holocaust Memory” project, including student reactions and examples from VHA videotestimonies. This project, I hope to show how, exemplifies the fruitful crossing of Digital Humanities with Memory Studies to create profound experiences of what we might call “engaged remembrance.”

THE VHA ARCHIVE AND TRANSGENERATIONAL MEMORY Holocaust survivor accounts raise key questions about the relationship between videotestimony and spaces of memory, one that gets heightened when mapping different scales of experience. On the broadest scale, the Nazi genocide took place across an entire continent, establishing new zones of occupation and national borders, reconfiguring and renaming Europe and its cities according to the militaristic map of Nazi domination, with global repercussions. Holocaust geography helps us see that unlike open and unrestricted “spaces,” “places” are a constructed part of complex social formations—in geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s words, “centers of felt value, where biological needs … are satisfied” (4). In

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this sense, Holocaust places were not simply neutral locations for where things happened. Their very construction was part of what happened: the concentration camps, but also the vast number of internment sites across Europe that were pressed into the service of genocide which, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum fourvolume Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, number at over 44,000. GIS maps can convey these spatial dimensions of continental and global scale. But to what extent can they address what Oren Stier calls “spatial frameworks” of memory in videotestimonies, including “archival space, virtual space, the recording space, and the spaces indexed in the course of the testimony” (673)? Is it possible to map the “landmarks of memory” that mark survivor experience (679)? And for any given testimony, can a map visualize the felt value of specific remembered spaces, such as ghettos, boxcars, roll call arenas, barracks, bunks, latrines, showers—places pressed into the service of terror, designed to attack spatial and bodily boundaries and privacy? To begin to address these questions, I will focus on discussions of memory in the source, Holocaust videotestimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation VHA archive. Scholars have praised the invaluable memorial function of Holocaust videotestimonies as a genre, with their seeming immediacy, the power and extent of their reach, and the fruitful  ways they rupture the genre of narrative. In Holocaust Testimonies (1991), a landmark study of the Fortunoff archive, a key collection of approximately 4,400 testimonies recorded between 1979 and 1981, Lawrence Langer emphasized the spontaneity and immediacy of memory in videotestimony. He argued that we see witnesses “struggle” to make their “camp experience coalesce with the rest of their lives,” the “unintended, unexpected” failure of which is inevitable (Holocaust Testimonies 3). The methodology of the Fortunoff archive stresses a witness-centered process, marked by the “leadership role of the witness in structuring and telling his or her own story” with an emphasis on “open-ended questions” (Fortunoff Video Archive). Langer thus described the Fortunoff testimonies as escaping “the restrictions imposed on them by the interview situation,” and providing “refreshingly new texts that, precisely because of their  indifference to ‘conclusions,’ free the imagination” (“Interpreting Survivor Testimony” 39). Looking within the same archive, Aleida Assmann claims that videotestimonies “shatter the biographical frame,” disarming viewer desire for redemptive, sentimental narrative (“History, Memory, and the Genre of Testimony” 264). As a genre, Assman argues that videotestimonies provide storable and transferrable “memorials of individual human suffering and surviving,” granting Holocaust survivors both “the right to their own individual memories” and the ability to “address numberless viewers and listeners” (267, 270). In doing so, they create a “transgenerational link” between victims and viewers, while the archive preserves the potential to prolong “transgenerational memory” indefinitely into the future (261, 271). While Langer and Assman see spontaneity and immediacy in the Fortunoff interviews, Pollin-Galay and Stier emphasize the mediated nature of testimony, including the shaping effects of what Pollin-Galay calls “ecologies” of memory in places where testimonies are given—differences in language, cultural values, and ideology in the United States, Israel, and Lithuania (Pollin-Galay, Ecologies of Witnessing 2–6). Such effects are particularly evident in the VHA archive testimonies, given the structured protocols of the Shoah Foundation’s interview process and shaping influence of its institutional context. Established by Steven Spielberg in 1994 specifically to create an archive, The Shoah Foundation recorded over 51,000 Holocaust survivor testimonies across fifty-six

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countries in thirty-two languages between 1994 and 2000, making it the largest and most widely available collection of video recordings of survivor stories (USC Shoah Foundation VHA Online, “About Us”). As charted by Annette Wieviorka, and later Shenker and Shandler, the Foundation was initially funded by proceeds from Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List (1993), then formally integrated into USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in 2006, and restructured as the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. At that point, the archive became public and digitally available as a resource for the University’s faculty and students. The entire archive (almost 55,000 testimonies of genocide) is available by subscription to institutions around the world, but viewers anywhere can access over 4,000 (English-language) testimonies for free through the VHA Online. Scholars disagree on the memorial function of the VHA and the narratives the testimonies convey. This debate hinges on the ways and extent to which survivor narratives are mediated: how and where stories were collected and recorded; how those methods shape narrative structure; and as we will see, how testimonies are indexed, stored, accessed, and disseminated. The imminent deaths of a generation of living Holocaust survivors lent indisputable urgency to the project, but as Shenker claims, a push to record 50,000 testimonies in the first few years came “at the expense of developing a more refined methodology for conducting, cataloguing, and disseminating interviews” (114). Therefore, although interviewers underwent brief training to ensure consistent practices, individual approaches tended to vary. Interviewers collected answers to a pre-interview questionnaire, then used guidelines to move chronologically; to avoid a Q&A format; to try and pinpoint events and places witnessed first-hand; and to strike a balance between letting an interviewee speak freely and steering them back on course when they digressed too far or long from a given topic (Shandler 10–11; Shenker 118–23). Despite additional degrees of variation in style, length, and focus in interviewees’ responses, scholars still emphasize the standardizing effect of the Shoah Foundation’s institutional guidelines, which reveal a tendency toward “redemptive, didactic,” even Hollywood-inspired, Holocaust narratives (Shenker 128–9). For example, Shenker claims the VHA Archive emphasizes interviewees’ adherence to firsthand knowledge and chronology, restricting the structure and function of survivor memories. The focus on coherence, continuity, and keeping interviewees “on track” also means that interviewers’ intrusions interrupt the workings of “deep memory” to bring both witnesses and viewers back to “common memory” (6, 123). As Langer described it, deep memory “tries to recall the Auschwitz self as it was then,” whereas “common memory … restores the self to its normal pre- and postcamp routines” (Holocaust Testimonies 6). For Shenker, coherent, linear narration may not entirely “exclude the emergence of deep memory,” or moments that disrupt narrative flow with traumatic recollection (126). But the “structuring of questions” is designed to contain “the often shattering events that surface when testimonies are shared” and to elicit responses “that fit into the record of common memory” (128). Such recollections present missed opportunities where interviewers might give more space to spontaneous, associative, or otherwise unexpected, recollections. When looking across multiple testimonies, one can certainly detect structural repetition—a clear beginning (life before the war), middle (during the war), and end (after the war to the present)—and historical repetitions such as the passage of antisemitic laws, local violence, arrests, roundups, ghettoization, transport, concentration camp internment, death marches, liberation, Displaced Persons camps, life afterward, and so on. Concluding with life “after,” including family photos and visits on set, the

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VHA interview structure seems to celebrate the very fact of survival, and those who “have survived the shipwreck of war” (Wieviorka 111). However, Assmann makes the crucial point that such repetition also reflects the “structure of the Holocaust itself in its murderous teleology through the stages of exclusion, persecution, imprisonment, and extermination” (“History, Memory,  and the Genre of Testimony” 256). In other words, it echoes the “dismal monotony” of the “deadly pattern of dehumanization, persecution, and destruction that drew the lives of the victims into its vortex to crush or deform them” (265). Historical context is thus essential for framing individual testimonies, but so is the context in which a Holocaust recollection is narrated and recorded. As Greenspan has shown, Holocaust “accounts” are situated in the space and time of their recording; he uses the term “account” over “testimony” for this reason, since survivor accounts can change in different moments in time; with different people, given levels of comfort and trust; and as survivors “‘make a story’ for what is ‘not a story’” (3–4). Social, but also spatial, context shapes videotestimony. For example, the fact that VHA interviews were filmed in survivors’ living rooms contributes to what Stier calls the “domestication of testimony,” the use of domestic settings to “ease the discomfort of witness and viewer alike” (677–8). There is no denying the shaping influence of VHA interview protocols on Holocaust survivor memories, not to mention layers of cultural mediation. Yet each videotestimony is still unique, “document[ing] a singular encounter with an individual who takes a distinct approach to the task of recalling the past” (Shandler 1). As Shandler shows, interviewees also challenge the medium with creative expression, by referencing popular works of Holocaust culture; using Yiddish and other expressions; and showing bodily scars, tattoos, or personal, material objects. Their narratives are thus shaped by an amalgamation of individual and collective tropes of memory; popular-cultural Holocaust references; prompts by interviewers; and individual agency, factors that shape both memory and story. On one hand, I agree with Shandler that the VHA archive is a “work of public memory vast in scope, yet made not of stone but of digital media … a monument experienced not in space but in time” (34). On the other, I would disagree when Shandler calls the archive a “countermonument,” simply because it is not quite akin to what James E. Young describes as “brazenly, painfully self-conscious memorial spaces conceived to challenge the very premises of their being” created by artists “probing the limits of … their artistic media” (Young Texture of Memory 27). That said, within the archive’s memorial, monumental aim, individual accounts can certainly be said to create countermonumental moments that complicate a clear shape of the memorial process. To consider the multiple contexts that shape each VHA testimony is a monumental task beyond the scope of both this essay and the mapping project. However, students need a basic awareness of videotestimony mediation. Although VHA interviews are unedited, with pauses taken only to switch tapes, it can be a revelation (for students) that these seemingly spontaneous recollections are actually accounts produced through lengthy processes of reflection and information-gathering in response to pre-circulated questions and prompts (Shenker 124). This mediation in no way minimizes the archive’s memorial function, no less than the editing and revision of written genres. Nor does it diminish the experience of a person seeming to “speak directly” to the viewer, so that we may feel addressed personally. The fact that each interviewee is an ordinary person, moreover, rather than a celebrated author, allows us to feel we are in the presence of a unique story, one in 50,000, that perhaps no one else, or few others, may ever hear. In my teaching

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experience, this creates a tremendous sense of responsibility among students to remember the story they encounter. My aim with “Mapping Holocaust Memory,” therefore, is to help students balance a sense of reverence with careful close listening skills to detect moments that reveal crucial tensions between individual agency and interview protocols. Given the contextual impact on videotestimonies, we must develop ways to read and listen against the grain for disruptive, countermonumental moments, for when interviewees diverge into deep memory. To do so, we might develop and teach what Shenker calls “testimonial literacy,” forms of careful viewing to help sense the “layers, ruptures, and tensions” of traumatic memory that unsettle institutional protocols in video accounts of the Shoah (2). In this sense, despite the consistency of VHA protocols, questions, and overall epistemological framework, viewers can look for ways that interviewees assert their own agency, go “off track,” and break through the confines of common memory. A key goal of the “Mapping Holocaust Memories” project is to attend to these tensions, between interviewer and interviewee, between questions and responses, between the messiness of memory and the structuredness of narrative. It aims to expose what it cannot redress: the distance between the human disarray, gaps, and holes of memory and the cold, digital, technological platform into which memory is translated. This requires a holistic approach.

THE VHA INDEX AND MAPPING As the VHA website boasts, archived testimonies are digitized and searchable via an indexing system, a database of terms based on approximately 64,000 keywords assigned to time codes within testimonies where those words are uttered or the topics discussed. The VHA index is a digital tool that accompanies each interview and highlights key words as they are spoken. Alongside it, a second digital tool, a small box containing a Google map, highlights place names with pins that appear on the map as they are spoken. Together, these sources of metadata surround the visual box of the interviewee speaking, suggesting the Shoah Foundation’s intention to provide a widely accessible archive for both thematic and geographical research. The index is searchable and citable, enabling viewers to seek out “relevant parts” of any given testimony. At the same time, it is controversial, because by design it encourages an atomistic, fragmentary approach to any given testimony. From a literary standpoint, taking snippets of commentary out of context can distort meaning, because close reading depends upon the relation between part and whole, the whole taken as a unified, organic thing. We might also consider the ethical implications of treating someone’s memory as “data,” which risks dehumanizing the story and the one who tells it. Visually, the VHA interface subordinates the survivor’s story to a larger one that engulfs it as one source of “data” among many, lexical and geographical. The video box is central, and can be expanded to full-screen view, but many buttons and options enable viewers’ power to manipulate and control the narrative, to skip or edit at will, a problem exacerbated by the index. If neither organicism nor unity can be attributed to accounts of memory, specifically traumatic memory which, by definition, ruptures the whole and fragments the narrative, then the index presumes the same fallacy of unity by allowing cherry-picking of representative parts (each taken to represent the whole). As Greenspan rightly argues, however, Holocaust survivor accounts are less fixed and finished than “contingent and accidental” (3). They involve a “double transaction” of “inner” and “outer dialogue” so that “the part is not the whole. The account has to be measured against what was judged

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not tellable or hearable” (5). Memory also changes over time because different things will be told differently in different contexts. It may need to be repeated to be “made a story,” and no story is the whole story (13). When we map experiences based on patterns of spatial terms in a testimony, we are mapping accounts of memories of spatial experiences and, depending upon the speaker, partial, contingent, or incomplete versions of that memory. These implications have acute relevance for scholars applying GIS mapping and other digital humanities methods to Holocaust studies. In their recent turn to the VHA archive, for example, Anne Knowles et al. use multiple methods of what Franco Moretti has termed “distant reading” to detect patterns across testimonies and create more nuanced maps (Moretti, “Conjectures on World Literature” 56–8; Distant Reading). They approach the VHA archive as an underexplored “data mine” that holds potential for bridging the divide of scales between victim and perpetrator perspectives (Knowles et al. 217). Using “big data techniques” such as “corpus linguistics” and “Natural Language Processing” (NLP), they engage the VHA index with computerized searching and analysis to detect word patterns across a large corpus (223, 220). The group thereby aims to create an “integrative history” that provides a “large-scale social perspective of Holocaust victims” while preserving “the strands of the individual whose interviews collectively provide skeins of information” (219). That is, the group includes individual voices in their maps, but mainly as sources for patterns of spatial experience at multiple scales. An advantage of this approach is that it enables a broad view of linguistic patterns across potentially thousands of testimonies in the archive pertaining to experiences of “place.” The group claims, moreover, that their methods allow for “a radical disaggregation of historical memory, and a means of reaggregating disparate interviews for study, without disturbing the original form of each interview” (218). With data derived systematically rather than anecdotally, the approach thus validates and authorizes victims’ memories, to help counterbalance a historical emphasis on perpetrator perspectives, a redirection that could change the stories we tell about the Holocaust. Yet while the group claims their methods do not disturb “the original form of each interview,” the overall processes of “text mining” and “geoparsing” still involve cherry-picking terms potentially out of context (217, 231). Contra Greenspan, this approach treats a Holocaust survivor “testimony” as a stable, precise, or accurate utterance, given one and for all. But it cannot account for what is left out, for the exigencies of survivor memory and agency. It depends upon the integrity of the VHA index as an accurate indicator of content, based on consistent logic and practices of inclusion. However, as a resource created by different volunteers over time, the index in fact suffers from lack of uniformity and rigorous methodology for how terms were selected and translated from across the 50,000-odd testimonies. In this sense, maps created by parsing indexical terminology may reflect the priorities, values, and goals of the mapmaker over those of the victim who chose to tell her story.

MAPPING HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR ACCOUNTS Given the challenges posed by social scientific approaches that rely upon the index, my course and project take a different approach, one that focuses on the integrity of a Holocaust survivor’s account on its own terms. This approach addresses both ethical and epistemological problems raised by turning narratives of memory, or fragments thereof, into maps. In her recent discussion of incomplete memories of Holocaust victims, Hannah Pollin-Galay lays out the ethical problem eloquently. If digital maps reveal their “capacity

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to translate verbal stories into visual presence,” Pollin-Galay proposes we do the reverse, to translate maps back into narrative, beginning with the maps on the VHA online website placed next to faces of interviewees, which encourage us to “seek out spatial coordinates” as we listen (244, 245). This “reverse-translation” process reveals the “value claims” underlying conventional cartography, specifically those that prioritize presence, objectivity, and certainty (245). In thus “humanizing the digital,” Pollin-Galay reminds us of the ethical stakes and risks of dehumanization when turning a human being’s memory into data, no matter how noble or educational the end (245). She reminds us of how geography shapes the very process of memory, that is, how “divergent memory ecologies” in which Holocaust survivors recall their experiences (given repeated mass migrations during and after the war) structure their cartographic lenses, and our own, as we rely upon their VHA testimonies (245). The course “Holocaust Memoirs: Reading, Writing, Mapping” introduces students to a variety of interdisciplinary questions, methods, and resources through which to explore the subject of Holocaust persecution, and the relationship between testimony and memory. As noted, we primarily investigate literary questions of representation and rhetorical technique: how Holocaust survivor accounts help us to see language enmeshed in structures of power, to witness traumatic violence, and to imagine the affective experiences of pain, terror, and loss that exceed representation. Yet even as we approach first-person survivor accounts through a humanistic, literary lens, we encounter spatial questions of perspective, scope, and scale. For example, in written accounts by survivor-authors Primo Levi, Charlotte Delbo, and Elie Wiesel, we explore the radical contraction of time and space: from the relocation of entire communities to circumscribed ghettos (within mere days, sometimes overnight); to the seemingly endless time of transports in packed, airless cattle cars (days, sometimes weeks); to the total disorientation upon arrival at concentration camps; to the exceedingly regimented, tortuous roll call rituals, experienced as the reduction of space to one’s own body; and in that body’s monotonous, repetitive tasks, the obliteration of time itself. Simultaneously, from a historical perspective, we look at how the Nazi genocide took place across an entire continent, crossing national borders, establishing new zones of occupation, and transforming Europe’s rural and urban landscapes and transportation routes according to a militaristic map of Nazi domination marked by tens of thousands of sites of internment. With the project “Mapping Holocaust Memory,” students map these multilayered spatial dimensions of Holocaust geography with GIS tools to see just what can and cannot be visually represented. As students explore the span of a single survivor’s story from the VHA archive, they also identify meaningful places of memory. Then, in small groups, they engage in historical research about those places to situate the survivor’s narrative in geographical context and to juxtapose memory with located history. Finally, they learn to create ArcGIS webmaps and publish them in the StoryMaps application to create georeferenced visual representations of the Holocaust survivor’s story of a forced journey. Different groups, respectively, study accounts by Jewish people, gay men, lesbian women, Roma, Sinti, or members of the resistance. In mapping them, students become attuned to the spatial dimensions of memory, as they experiment with voice and perspective, and explore the scope and multiple scales of genocidal processes that took place across Europe. The project’s approach resembles what Shenker calls a “visual pedagogy,” in which “seeing is believing” (117–18). Yet the challenge remains how to “map” the invisible— abstractions and fragments of memory—into a tangible, visible, positivist, digital medium.

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As they try to convey a story of their own about the survivor’s testimony, students grapple with individual narrative discrepancies—contradictions, silences, confusing gestures or incomplete descriptions—often with uneven results. The process of creating StoryMaps thus exposes tensions between close reading and “distant reading” in which “the reality of the text undergoes a process of deliberate reduction and abstraction” (Moretti Graphs, Maps, Trees 1). In other words, as digital maps reveal the vast scope and scale of individual Holocaust odysseys, we must work to maintain the concrete specificity of a survivor’s story, language, perspective, and form of expression. Maps show how Nazi genocide destroyed self-conscious communities and reconstructed vexed, fragmented ones, circumscribed by traces of barbed wire and boxcar confines, and whose members came to share common experiences of arrest, imprisonment, and torture. Yet even if such communities were re-mappable, the project insists we ask how to render spatially the invisible terrains of pain, trauma, shame, and rage, and unique struggles with piety, or faith in God. These experiences, which register more fully in literature—through narrative, metaphor, substitution, strategic absence, or sentient silence, best discovered with close reading and attentive listening—seem to resist visual pedagogy. Nonetheless, there is great value for memory-work in these challenges. StoryMaps are not what Pierre Nora has termed “lieux de mémoire,” or “sites of memory”: monuments, museums, and archives that freeze processes of memory-work with their materiality like “boundary stones of another age”; nor are they nostalgic “devotional institutions” that mark the “rituals of a society without ritual” (Nora 7, 12). If such memory-places do the work of remembering for us, StoryMaps can remain rough, contingent, unfinished products, with the mapping process engaging us in what Young calls ongoing “memorial activity” (Texture of Memory 15). In my class, students engage with an individual’s story for weeks at a time, and only at the semester’s end do they discover patterns across the many lives we study, transformed by the violent upheavals of Nazi persecution. The methodological question of how to adapt GIS to Humanities research has preoccupied key researchers in the field for some time. David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris made it the focus of their edited collection, The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship (2010). As an essentially social scientific, spatially deterministic tool, which uses samples to derive general truths and universals, GIS seems ill-suited to the humanities, and specifically literary study, which prizes the particular and contingent; assumes imprecise, incomplete, or fragmentary evidence; and resists totalizing claims. These divergent methodologies point to basic epistemological differences: GIS roots societal and landscape patterns in an actual, knowable geography, and is engaged in cartographic mapping, whereas narrative and literary analyses lend themselves to conceptual and metaphorical mapping, which register ambiguities, aporias of knowledge, uncertainties and errors, and remain self-conscious of the limits of representability. As narrative relies upon time as an organizing principle, its spatial-temporal relationship is difficult to visualize in GIS maps. In recent years, ESRI has developed and improved its educational mapping tools in ways that address some of these problems. In 2013 University of Redlands English students created maps in ArcGIS Explorer Online, the most readily available ESRI mapping tool for educational use at that time. It was accessible from any web browser, but one needed to create and upload data spreadsheets to populate the map with information such as latitude/longitude coordinates for key locations, key quotations from survivors, and place name translations. The process made us think about what it meant to convert a Holocaust survivor’s narrative into “data,” but it was onerous. We had to figure out precise textual

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formulae or the program could not translate the “data.” This frustrating process delayed progress sometimes by weeks, deepening the divide between stories of the humans at the center of the project and the digital maps surrounding them. As ESRI technology has evolved, we can now create “base maps” directly in ArcGIS Online and present them with the StoryMaps application. Training is streamlined to leave time for critical reflection, to attend to spatial orientation and any discrepancies, gaps in knowledge in a survivor’s narrative, or in the case of Anna Bergman, for unanswered questions. In her 1997 VHA interview, Bergman (née Anka Kaudrová), a Czech-born Jewish Holocaust survivor, describes an extraordinary experience of giving birth to her daughter at the entrance to the Mauthausen concentration camp, an account filled with gaps and holes. Bergman survived three years of internment in the Czech concentration camp at Terezín (Theresienstadt) between 1941 and 1944, where she suffered the loss of her first child (see Figure 27.1). After choosing to become pregnant again, Bergman also chose to follow her husband to the Auschwitz concentration camp on October 1, 1944, unaware of what awaited her, where her husband was subsequently murdered. Bergman was shipped ten days later to Freiburg, a subcamp of the Flossenburg concentration camp in Germany, and forced to manufacture bombs. On April 26, 1945, Bergman was part of a mass evacuation from Freiburg to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Bergman recalls when, by now a “pregnant skeleton,” she saw the sign for the notorious camp of Mauthausen, just as she began to feel labor pains (Bergman, Segments 22–23, 18:46, 20:30). She and other ill and weak prisoners were put on a cart and pushed up the grassy hill toward the camp (she doesn’t know by whom) (Seg. 23, 20:30–21:10). She describes the moment of 8 p.m. on April 29, 1945, this way: “the sun was shining …. It was cold something awful, but beautiful spring evening” (Seg. 23, 21:20–21:35). She saw the Danube (the town of Mauthausen lies on its banks) and thought it the “most beautiful place in her life” as she went into labor right there in the open on the cart, without assistance (Seg. 23, 21:39–21:57). She describes being moved from one cart to another, then to the infirmary among women with typhus and lice: “it was just beyond” (Seg. 23, 22:00–22:40). Then she recounts: “suddenly the baby came without moving, without shouting, without screaming, without anything, and I really couldn’t care less what happened, what didn’t happen, it was out” (Seg. 23, 22:40–22:52). “I probably screamed” and she recalls how the SS man said, “you can scream as much as you want to, he was very benevolent, lovely” (Seg. 23, 23:00–23:11). Then a surgeon from an OB hospital cut the cord, and pronounced, “you have got a little boy,” as they wrapped the baby in paper and she hugged it, “happy as can be under those circumstances” (Seg. 23, 23:37–24:00). Bergman recounts how, twelve hours from giving birth, she was able to nurse her baby, and “there was so much milk that I could have fed five babies, not one,” and how the baby remained wrapped in paper (Seg. 23, 24:47–24:54). It was several weeks after May 5, 1945, when Mauthausen was liberated by US Armed forces (“Liberation of Mauthausen”), that Bergman asked a nurse to bathe her little boy, and learned only then that her baby boy was, in fact, a little girl, Eva, who also survived (Bergman, Seg. 25, 5:28–6:30). This remarkable episode in Bergman’s narrative has astonished students, who express uncertainty in how to understand her successful pregnancy under such conditions, and that she didn’t know the sex of her baby for three weeks. Nor does Bergman offer any commentary. When her daughter, Eva Nathan Clarke, now a college administrator in Cambridge, England, joins her at the interview’s conclusion, neither does Eva explain the unique circumstances of her birth. Instead, she recalls early memories of a Christmas eve

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in Prague, of her knowledge of her biological father, and her pride in her origins and of her mother (Segment 34). How are we to include such a complicated episode on a digital map? Whereas past groups have described the episode as one impossible to parse without distortion or simplification, the Spring 2022 group made a creative choice. Instead of mapping the place where Bergman gave birth, they featured a still from a Nazi propaganda film showing children’s wooden toys to promote the false idea of Theresienstadt as a safe “family camp” for Jewish people. They then juxtaposed this image with a summary of how Bergman was forced to sign a consent form to euthanize her first son (it ended up not happening), then chose to get pregnant again. In doing so, the students used the Storymap format to let Bergman’s narrative challenge the Nazi narrative without using a map at all, and to emphasize their claim about the immense value that Bergman’s account places on creating and preserving her family. Another challenge arises when an interviewee describes a moment of actual geographical disorientation. Pollin-Galay calls such moments literal “black holes” in a testimony, which reflect a crucial aspect of victims’ experience, the “damage that Holocaust violence did to [their] capacities to orient and understand space” (245). Vera Laska (née Vera Oravec), born in Košice, Czechoslovakia, in 1928, describes one such black hole on the day when, as she describes, “I liberated myself”; she knew neither where she was nor could she remember the date when she escaped (Laska, 1996 VHA Interview, Segment 49, 20:35– 20:38). At age fifteen, Laska was arrested in 1943 as a political member of the resistance. She was caught smuggling Jewish families across the mountainous border of Slovakia, one of “a dozen such trips leading political and Jewish refugees as part of an underground railroad from Slovakia to Hungary to Yugoslavia and beyond” (“The Incredible Life of Vera Laska”). She was imprisoned, then deported to Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1944, Laska was sent from Auschwitz to the Gross-Rosen labor camp near Dresden, then to Nordhausen in central Germany to do labor in Mittelbau-Dora. Then, in March, 1945, Laska was sent on a forced evacuation, a “hunger march” as she called it, or a

FIGURE 27.1  2022 University of Redlands student Storymap by Olive Manson, Brianna Martinez, Casey Gaitan, and Mary-Kate Shary, based on the USC Shoah Foundation Video History Archive interview with Anna Bergman, 1997.

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“death march” as they were commonly called, to Mauthausen. She describes walking for three days and nights until she escaped: during the march, she fell into a pile of manure (a “sign of good luck”) and ran into a large barn. She then ran up a ladder and did “one of the smartest things in my life,” she climbed up and pushed the ladder to the other side of the barn and stayed there “quiet as a mouse” (Laska, Segment 116 27:00–27:35). Four and a half days later, she heard a Ukranian laborer shouting, “woman, come down, war kaput! Hitler kaput!” and she walked toward whom she thought were Russian soldiers, later realizing they were Americans (Segment 118, 00:43–00:53). When Laska collapsed asking for water, they looked at her “like the Loch Ness Monster or something. So that’s how I liberated myself” (120, 2:08–2:25). She didn’t know what town she was in, just that she was in a meadow and was free. Laska went on to become a university historian, whose profession shaped the historical and geographical context she uses to frame her account of resistance and survival. She has also written a book about women and the resistance. Nonetheless, she admits that she cannot remember “some of the most important dates in [her] own life,” specifically, the time and place of her own escape from Nazi terror (Laska, Segment 49, 20:22– 20:34). The interviewer asks Laska about the epilogue of her book, where she writes of other memories she recalls only “in solitude, because people around [her] wouldn’t comprehend” (21:20–21:30). Laska affirms: They wouldn’t. You wouldn’t [comprehend] and you work in this field. Because there is something very hard to express in books. And Elie Wiesel cannot express it, Primo Levi cannot express it, as good as they are, and several women who are even better cannot express it. It’s the constant feeling in your stomach of fear. I cannot express it either …. I’m trying to approximate it, the smells you cannot reproduce, and the whole atmosphere of this—what I call—phantasmagoric atmosphere. Dante’s hell would be nursery school compared with it. To live—not every day, but every hour, every minute, every second—that you don’t know whether the next moment you won’t be marching up the chimney, or being shot, or die of typhoid fever or something. Nobody can convey that. (Segment 140, 21:31–22:42) Laska is clear: there are emotional memories so totalizing that words cannot capture them, so she does not, will not, share them. In other words, she tells us her story is incomplete. If there are things she believes she cannot communicate in words, how are we (and who are we) to try and communicate them on a visual map? When the 2013 group confronted these challenges to mapping Laska’s account of her escape, they used mapping tools creatively to call attention to their flawed knowledge of Laska’s geography, based on her own. Lacking a precise location for a place point, they created a green circle to represent the approximate location of Laska’s death march, then used a pop-up window to explain the circle’s meaning in Laska’s own words (see Figure 27.2). This represents one of the more effective, creative uses of mapping tools I’ve seen in the classroom. Rather than ignore that which could not be mapped, the group chose to map the unmappable by representing a visual trace of absence. As indicated in their final presentations and papers, this moment in Laska’s story, for all its challenges, seemed most memorable to them. Finally, a third categorical challenge to mapping is that where an interviewee describes traumatic events, for example, witnessing the loss, disappearance, or death of loved ones.

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FIGURE 27.2  2013 University of Redlands student ArcGIS webmap by Katrina Ford and Lauren Zehner, based on the USC Shoah Foundation Video History Archive interview with Vera Laska, 1996.

Diana Golden (née Galante), born in 1922 on the island of Rhodes into a small, orthodox Jewish community, narrates a harrowing ordeal of occupation, arrest, and deportation to Auschwitz, first by boat to Greece, and then by a horrifically long train transport from Athens northward. She lost several family members along the way and witnessed gruesome suffering. Golden offers elaborate detail about conditions of pain and depravity during different phases of transport but is more reticent when narrating the traumatic deaths of her grandmother, then her father. For example, she describes eight days of stop and go among about 650 people in the steerage hold of a ship from Rhodes to Piraeus, with babies dying for lack of milk, buckets for restrooms, no privacy, and people vomiting from seasickness (Golden, 1997 VHA Interview Segment 19, 11:09–12:05). By the end of the first day, “babies died, mothers had no milk, so it—it was absolutely a horror. To see. Ah. The screams of the children,” at which point she takes a pause (Segment 19, 13:02–13:24). She goes on, “It was such pain to see ourselves in such a degree of loss of self-esteem and we wonder, God, what did we do wrong? We are not guilty of anything,” except to be of the Jewish faith (Segment 19, 13:58–14:20, 14:38–14:40). After waiting three days in Piraeus, the men and women were separated, whipped, sent on trucks to Athens, then pushed inside railroad boxcars with up to ninety people in each. She recalls the heat, the floor “littered with straw,” the smell of animal feces, people perspiring, “buckets” sloshing, diarrhea, body and head lice; it was a “living hell” (Segment 21, 22:06–23:15).

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By contrast, when Golden’s grandmother’s life “expired” in Piraeus, a loved one with whom she lived all her life, Golden briefly remarks that her family said “the Shema Yisroel” and cried, thankful that she found peace by “just dying” (Seg. 20, 19:26–20:20). They dug a shallow grave and buried her. Golden later mentions how her father died in Yugoslavia, possibly Bosnia (Seg. 21, 24:50–25:06). He had been delirious, dying of thirst, screaming for water, with lice, typhus, fever, and dehydration. When he died, they again cried, but thought, “on the other hand, Papa, you are no longer suffering” (Seg. 21, 25:09–25:46). Death was “the only consolation that we had” (Seg. 25, 25:47–25:49). When asked about further mourning, Golden changes the subject, discussing bathroom conditions again. The interviewer asks what they did with her father’s body, but she only says, “they took it away,” they said “kaput,” and he was taken out and buried (Seg. 21, 26:49–27:00). We may wonder, buried where? And by whom? Golden concludes, “it—it—it was something that can never be forgotten,” and trails off into silence (Seg. 21, 27:17–27:34). Golden’s vagueness surrounding this unforgettable moment is a striking contrast to the elaborate detail elsewhere in her testimony. When unable to map such gaps in survivor narratives of traumatic memories, students turned to their own narratives. In final reflective essays, they explored how traumatic memory happens in a “no place,” or at least no place that can be located on a map. Where maps could not accommodate traumatic experiences, which risk becoming invisible, students used writing to make visible what they could not visualize. In addition to what could not be seen, they considered what was not said: what they didn’t hear; what seemed left out; topics avoided; or moments where interviewees changed the subject or remained vague. But this is productive, too. As Pollin-Galay notes, geographical thinking—here, the attempt to map—calls attention to “these memories of disorientation,” illuminating the very fact that “the witness’s indexical knowledge of the world … was forcibly suspended” by the processes of genocidal violence (258). Since places of trauma do not always bear physical markings of the psychical tortures that occur there, mapping such places would provide the mapmaker and viewer a level of confidence and orientation, even understanding, that clearly did not exist for the victim. As my experience with students has shown, there are creative ways to make these very challenges visible using GIS tools. For example, in a pop-up window on the webmap one can quote a survivor’s words or illustrate places of historical and personal significance with photographs. To interpret memory visually, one can devise custom legends using symbols consistently to suggest categories of places: labor camps, ghettoes, death camps, places of forced marches. This allows one to place data and information directly on the webmap. In the interactive StoryMap application, one can use a timeline to create narrative progression and then quotations in the “sidecar” panels or using the “quotation” tool to overlay a survivor’s voice over the map to show any breaks in coherence. The sidecar enables organization of narrative chunks in the side panel, while the map moves alongside it, changing locations as viewers proceed from slide to slide. While the text can include links to places on the map to “snap” to a closeup of that location, maps can also zoom in and out, use custom lines for different types of movement, and contain popups to indicate approximations of both time and space, as we see in the 2022 student Storymap of the account of Greek Jewish survivor, Eli Benyacar (see Figure 27.3). Sidecar panels can also be used to feature video clips, integrated into the Storymap to make it more interactive and to capture the interviewee’s voice. Ultimately, the final StoryMaps may be imperfect or inexact, but I hope I have demonstrated the depth of the process, and the key role played by supplemental narrative.

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FIGURE 27.3  2022 University of Redlands student Storymap by Cristina Bayne, Chloe Rodriguez, and Brandley Simms, based on the USC Shoah Foundation Video History Archive interview with Eli Benyacar, 1996.

Like all maps, StoryMaps are interpretations. They may represent approximations: lines drawn show imperfect estimations of journeys, some of which were neither straight nor direct, and legend symbology often represents student group preferences and predilections for certain icons. Sometimes they are hard to follow or zoom so quickly from location to location that it is hard to see relationships between places, and in others, images take up the entire space where a map might appear. These choices are all valuable parts of the process. In final reflective and integrative essays, students comment on how specific places shaped survivors’ memories; on how the Holocaust was implemented “through” space; and on how space was itself “a weapon of oppression,” with some places integral parts of the “Final Solution” at different scales, rather than empty canvases onto which it was mapped. Mapping also provides a powerful sense of scope and scale, such as with Diana Golden’s story. Golden lived in a provincial village on the Greek island of Rhodes most of her life and would likely have died there had not the war and the Nazi genocide radically reoriented her place on the globe. She was deported from Rhodes at age twentytwo, then sent through more than nineteen cities, concentration camps, ghettos, and displaced persons camps in an astounding eleven countries within only four short years, to settle finally in Vancouver, Washington, more than halfway across the globe, never to see Rhodes again (see Figure 27.4). The students who created this map could not believe the extent of Golden’s harrowing odyssey. Many believed the Holocaust took place only in Germany, or perhaps only in Europe. This map illustrates the global reach of the Nazi genocide, and for just one person’s life. One student wrote, “Before taking this course, the amount of people killed [in the Holocaust] and the lives affected was just a number in my head. I now see each number as an entire Journey and experience …. I had no idea [of] the scale.” Students also commented on the project’s visual utility for providing a broad-scale, two-dimensional context for spatially rendered concentration camp experiences in memoirs we studied.

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FIGURE 27.4  2022 University of Redlands student Storymap by Kendall Bolock, Madeline Kildee, Gemma Lang, and Cy Mendoza, based on the USC Shoah Foundation Video History Archive interview with Diana Golden, 1997.

As one remarked: “Mapping helped me better visualize the long distances traveled by prisoners. It helped give me a sense of space, because I have only seen images of barracks, chambers, and fences.” Among the most “eye-opening” aspects of the course, students wrote, were how “Through mapping … the stories became more real to me”; how learning to represent memories with maps made them more “tangible”; and seeing how these “horrible places” we read about “exist somewhere in space.” Yet at the same time, many felt that the “person” whose story they mapped got somewhat lost, that even though the map “tells a story that words alone could not,” emotionally much gets “lost in translation.” One student wrote at length: I could not fathom completely stripping the emotions and meaning behind each place [David] Abrams experienced. It felt unfair and unjust. Through the map you cannot put as many words to describe your reaction to seeing Abrams’ voice choke up or when his face would light up when he would speak of something that brought him so much happiness. I feel as if the map alone does not give the full story. Yes, you can see where they went, but you cannot see what they experienced and how it affected them. For this student, mapping was not as significant as “listening.” It was “difficult working with such fragile and important information,” but in writing, she concludes, she was able to “do [her] best” when the map “did not do [the story] justice.”

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In sum, mapping Holocaust accounts engages students from start to finish. Even those who neglected other assignments showed up for their groups and completed their maps to the best of their effort. The videotestimonies struck the students profoundly, personally, and, as many indicated in reflections, made them feel “responsible” to the survivor to “tell [their] story correctly.” Students’ unwavering commitment to this project, even in the face of technological snags and challenges, tells me that mapping makes us devoted witnesses, engaged in a profound experience of remembrance. Mapping may use the cold tools of technology, but it allows users and viewers to glimpse the warmth of the survivors and the specificity of their lives, remapped by the Nazi genocide. For these reasons, I ask students to participate in final presentations of their interactive maps to the larger Redlands community. In 2022, this public event, sponsored by a grant from the Holocaust Education Foundation of Northwestern University (HEFNU), enabled students to demonstrate their maps’ unique features and limitations and the stories of Holocaust survivors to Redlands students, faculty, and staff, to friends, family and community members, in honor of Yom Ha’Shoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. These acts of retelling allowed them each to share with a larger community the story of one Holocaust survivor’s life that they came to know so well, translating individual into collective remembrance. To conclude, ArcGIS maps render the scope and scale of a survivor’s experience in ways that a personal account cannot and provide space for multimedia engagement with Holocaust testimony and history. However, a map alone is not enough, or at least not one made in the technologies currently available. The StoryMap can depict the extent of outward journeys, but less so the inward, emotional ones: marked by pain, fear, nausea, stench, terror; by the grief of watching loved ones suffer and die in front of you; by the guilt of living; by traumatic memory; by the ineffable. But the project is worth the effort because the process is more valuable than the product. Creating digital maps pushes us to ask crucial questions and explore how quantitative and qualitative methods can productively complement one another. The final product may not be enough, but as we see here, the process fosters an intense commitment to the stories themselves, helping us to commit them to memory, as Primo Levi would have it, to “engrave” survivors’ words on “our hearts,” and to “repeat them” to our children, to be passed on and on (Levi, “Shema,” Survival in Auschwitz).

AFTERWORD TRANS/FORMATION(S): A Poetic and Speculative Meditation on Imagining Repair and Remembering Possibility (in four disparate parts) NONI CARTER

A dear teacher and friend, Marianne Hirsch, once said that “postmemory’s connection to the past is mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation.” Our ability to imagine repair and remember possibility begins with this investment. The following is a piece that was written and performed for an event dedicated to this topic. Trans (or what we still refuse to name) You want me to join you in your push for the communal transmutations of ourselves into a better species. You want me to bear witness to your DNA-level transpositions (epigenetic regulations) realized through the type of body/mind work that could potentially guide us towards what you call evolution. But how exactly do I do this when you keep telling me that my ancestors did not have PTSD (or any variation thereof)? For PTSD was only good for the soldier and everything that came after him, the psychological business of the 20th and 21st centuries. What of the before? What of the transmigration

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the transmogrification the transubstantiation (“By which process, Christina Sharpe tells us, we might understand the making of bodies into flesh and blood” (30))? What of the symptoms of those who can feel the translucent ache of shipwrecked bodies, this massive buried history disintegrating under the weight of unresponsive archives? And even our dictionaries are silent on the matter running rife with excuses of not be able to afford the luxury of a diagnosis of the transported the transitioned the trans-atlantic-ed. Or is it that this diagnosis is really a mutable, threatening thing? One we shouldn’t be reaching for as damaging as it might be to feel ourselves becoming (human), becoming elucidated through the colonizing effects of the Word? Still, we search. We search for ways of capturing in tangible measure the things unspoken (the non-transparent) in the interest of our own transcendance in the interest of or own transforming We search. Look to the Music (or what Covid did not know…) …that beyond the deadly grip of a virus that bound its spiky mutations in variation to hungry cells once twice three times our bodies yet and still carry Song.

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…that somewhere amidst the excretions of pineal glands flow another set of rhythmic pathways, subtle and primal twitches of perception, these Songs our bodies carry. These Songs our bodies carry that temper genetics flowing through veins that echo the unrelenting contradistinction between our light and our darkness that bleed warning signs into the compositions of our dreams whispering that maybe, just maybe, we’ve forgotten how to thrive we’ve forgotten how to thrive in our efforts to simply survive, to belong, to be! Longing for possibilities of foreclosed relation in a world of disorientation, these s t a c c a t o notes of a reality that doesn’t really know what to do with us that doesn’t really know how to parse the fleeting crescendos of our exploded dreams so loud in our generational repetitions that we push the Songs to the wayside but…. Pianissimo (shhhhhh) we learn to slow we learn to return to Song. We are Hiromi Ueharas in studios alone the darkness our masks teasing symphonic Silver Lining Suites remediations to soothe the cacophony of the untuned strings that caught in our throat centers the moment we realized the damning limits of our language. We reach for the Songs choking on the urgency to slow the fuck down (for our lives depend on it) choking on the hasty repetition of words thought so often they lose meaning: isolation - the unknown - drifters- fortitude- uncertainty - someday- Jumpstart- 11:49pm

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that time outside of time when the musicians found a way to transcribe these silver lining suites reminding us of what COVID did not know or what COVID could not touch like… When it first began out here on these streets it was a deep-boned rumble that drumming in our chests that sang to us of the ways in which the manifestations of our excess just might be haunting us in the now. Our bodies found ways of moving anyway, against and with annihilation, moving in Song, Song that echoed the bachatas in our bones the zouk in our hips the gwara gwara in our feet that return us to the same static refrain Love me, love me, love me Say you do Let me fly Away with you… And all at once The optics got so bad that the Songs in our bodies took us to the streets shuffling past parquet floors onto concrete lamp lights flashing in the windows to keep track of the bodies they were not counting (for their insurance battles over the living dead had already been lost circa 1783) Flashing lights counting bodies (One two three - one two three) in rhythm with the burning in our guts, the raging, the mourning of things we couldn’t understand things we can’t understand

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as we find ourselves purchasing Penitentiary Degrees; convocation be the sound of pandemics overlapping (the sound of pandemics over/lapping) and our bodies humming ancient lullabies hinting that maybe we’ve been here before. 2020 was the year her song became memory (my grandmother) slipping into a post mortem abyss not unlike that of the Alzheimers that had pulled her left of center for nearly two decades. The progressive loss of this Earthly knowing; no name recall little face recognition memories like dust. And yet place a radio before her crank up the music of her childhood the music of her blood and suddenly… perfect recall. She begins to sing… perfect recall. A post mortem da capo al coda, this Alzheimer’s hum in my memory giving way to images of Next to the Last card game trophies hanging on the wall stacks of Turrentine records and down south hymnals pulling at the songs in my body beckoning beckoning like ah 1 (snap) ah 2 (snap) ah 1 2 3 4 Sometimes I feel like a motherless child A long long way from… Home need not be found anywhere other

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than this microcosm of worlds collapsing and birthing themselves anew here, within the undefined parts of ourselves, here, within these scattered parts of ourselves that carry the possibilities of revision, of repair in the form of Song. Repair (or the safe-keeping of intergenerational herstories) My little one can commune with the dead. Except she doesn’t call them this. She calls them transformed mediums of love and light La luz de las almas My little one says to me in languages that eschew the spoken word: “Mommy” I wanna learn how to be here in a way you don’t yet know how in communion with the pieces of me they’ve tried to ban from my psyche. I wanna shift my anchor of self-knowing from where this world placed it and be courageous enough to drop it into the bright blackness of the unknown where real possibility resides. I wanna be fearless enough to exist Mommy inside the vision of what I (of what we) could be, daring enough to hang out in the “quantum mode of possibility” (for, as Dr. Joe says, “it’s only logical that for something new to appear, the known and the familiar has to fall to the wayside.”) I don’t wanna just see love reflected back to me in the eyes of lovers and kin Mommy. I wanna be free. I wanna be Josephine soaring in a “second skin” untouchable. I wanna be unscathed by the politics of a humanity that in its own confusion misfigures me Mommy. I really don't wanna be undercut by the recluse places of a psyche that didn’t know how phenomenal it was

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like the Phyllis Hymans of our time. I wanna know how she made it to the moon when she said meet me there. Was it something the boat people knew when they cliff-hopped their way towards freedom? I wanna know. I wanna reconstruct the troubled genius of Maya Ayim who took Europe by the lapels and shook it clean before she jumped. I wanna know the secrets that they knew, that they whisper to me, the ones that left us too soon. What is it exactly that they reclaimed when they took back their right to choose? Can you protect me from the world's denials of my right to choose, to choose my life? And if they deny it anyway, certainly there has to be another way another way to be alive isn’t there Mommy? And Mommy, how do I tell you that I can sense this stench of us rotting under imperial projects gone right, under colonial visions realized perfectly this stench that makes us forget how to think together without our brains how to breathe in unison without these lungs for what else can save us from ourselves but our breath, this commodity some think they have the right to hand out just to take back again. Garner told me this, Mommy. Eric and Margaret told me to look for another way. Can you teach me how to smile when I glance in the mirror not because I’ve succeeded on this journey of finding myself in the midst of a world of despair but because I learned to succumb to the pull of the Song of joy that cannot be snatched from me? the pull of freedom elusive but/and/possibly within reach …

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And oh, I meant to tell you that I learned a new word today: Eleutheromania this longing for freedom this longing that makes us too sane when what we really wanna do what we really crave to do is to feel the relief of our breaking apart together in broad daylight without shame without remorse without regret, to close our eyes and strip ourselves bear without fearing that the harm of their judgements can touch us that the toxic reverberations coming from the mismanagement of their pain can stifle us. What we want is to feel ourselves breaking without fear so we might see in real time these stories we cling so tightly to under the false impression that the freedom we crave exists outside of ourselves. Mommy, I wanna unlearn everything you gave me. I wanna learn to breathe underwater (to honor the Octavia Butlers and Alexis Pauline Gumbs). I wanna forget how to tell myself apart from the stranger beside me. I wanna know how I can practice dreaming with my eyes open. How can I exist beyond the crutches of my limited senses? How might I move about in this world somewhere somehow far beyond the cartesian dualism that doesn’t belong to my spiritual bloodline? How Mommy? And will you be there when I’m done with all this unlearning? So I might return to you and share everything that I still don't know and everything that I do. So I might tell you one day how I learned to Janelle Monae Archandroid my way from survival into possibility?

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Letting go (or what the pain and the beauty of transformation has taught me) My mother used to recite to her not so religious children the story of the Footprints in the Sand. A man, walking along the sands of life with God beside him, comes across a difficult period after which he looks back to the sand to see only one pair of footprints trailing behind him. Why he asks God did you leave me alone in my darkest hour? God replies, I was there with you at every moment carrying you every step of the way. When the racket of Covid arrived, my body felt it several months prior. It was a cantankerous stripping of all ground beneath me that I thought was solid. And yet somewhere deep in my psyche, I knew this was not the first time. It was not the first time my body, my aura, had anticipated a large-scale transformation in our world prior to it happening. What I understand now that I wish I understood when I was younger, that I hope my children might understand one day, is that there are other ways of being here, of being near some essence of ourselves we forgot to know that we indeed know. And therein lies our remembered possibilities. To transform does not simply mean to change. Trans represents a movement beyond, a slippage of the self away from where it thought it should be towards the uncomfortable stretching of metamorphoses so that one day we might find ourselves unburdened long enough to begin to desire (where once we could not) to carry each other without losing ourselves etching new footprints into the sands of life.

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CONTRIBUTOR BIOS

Silke Arnold-de Simine is Reader Emerita in Memory, Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research is located at the interface of museum, memory, and digital media studies with a special interest in processes of remembering and commemorating difficult, dissonant pasts. Her many publications trace the pathways and the transnational flow of practices of remembrance across different art forms, media outlets, and institutions, more recently with a special interest in immersive and interactive digital media technologies such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. She is the author of Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan 2013, paperback 2016) and co-editor of Picturing the Family. Media, Narrative, Memory (London: Bloomsbury 2018) and of Adapting the Canon. Mediation, Visualization, Interpretation (Oxford: Legenda 2020). La Tanya S. Autry, cultural organizer and independent curator, has exercised her liberatory curatorial praxis through developing exhibitions and programming in institutional spaces, such as moCa Cleveland, Yale University Art Gallery, Artspace New Haven, and non-institutional collaborative freedom projects, including the Social Justice & Museums Resource List, The Art of Black Dissent, Museums Are Not Neutral, and the Black Liberation Center, who is completing her PhD in art history at University of Delaware, is examining the interplay of race, representation, memory, and public space in her dissertation The Crossroads of Commemoration: Lynching Landscapes in America. Angelika Bammer is Professor of Comparative Literature at Emory University in the United States. She has published on twentieth-century literature and culture, film and photography, and utopian thought. Her volume on The Future of Scholarly Writing: Critical Interventions and an expanded new edition of her Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s appeared in 2015. She is the editor of Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question (1994) and the producer of a multi-media installation on Memory Sites: Destruction, Loss, and Transformation (2003). Her book, Born After: A German Reckoning (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), traces the transmission of history across four generations in form of a personal narrative was a PROSE award finalist. Her new work, In the Storms of History: Encountering Other People’s Pasts, asks how to engage with one another’s histories across myriad differences. Lucy Bond is Reader in English Literature at the University of Westminster. She is the author of the Routledge New Critical Idiom Guide to Trauma (2019, with Stef Craps) and Frames of Memory after 9/11: Culture, Criticism, Politics and Law (Palgrave 2015). She is the co-editor of Planetary Memory in Contemporary American Fiction (Routledge 2018, with Jessica Rapson and Ben de Bruyn), Memory Unbound: Tracing the Dynamics of Memory Studies (Berghahn 2016, with Stef Craps and Pieter Vermeulen), and The Transcultural Turn: Interrogating Memory Between and Beyond Borders (de Gruyter 2014, with Jessica Rapson). Along with Jessica Rapson, Lucy is currently working on the BA/Leverhulme funded “Processing Memory: Heritage, Industry, and Environmental Racism on America’s Gulf Coast.”

CONTRIBUTOR BIOS

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Stef Craps is a Professor of English literature at Ghent University in Belgium, where he directs the Cultural Memory Studies Initiative. His research interests lie in twentieth-century and contemporary literature and culture, memory and trauma studies, postcolonial theory, and ecocriticism and environmental humanities. He is the author of Postcolonial Witnessing: Trauma Out of Bounds (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Trauma and Ethics in the Novels of Graham Swift: No Short-Cuts to Salvation (Sussex Academic Press, 2005), a co-author of the New Critical Idiom volume Trauma (Routledge, 2020), and a co-editor of Memory Unbound: Tracing the Dynamics of Memory Studies (Berghahn, 2017). He has also (co-)edited special issues of journals including American Imago, Studies in the Novel, and Criticism on topics such as ecological grief, climate change fiction, and transcultural Holocaust memory. Julia Creet, B.A., History, University of Victoria, MA History and Philosophy of Education, University of Toronto, PhD, History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz. Julia Creet is Professor of English at York University in Toronto. On the cusp of literature and history, she is a leading scholar in Memory Studies having been involved in the development of the field since the 1990s. Her research projects are broadly interdisciplinary including the history of the Holocaust, literary studies, archival studies, public history, and more recently, data privacy and direct-to-consumer genetics. She is the author of The Genealogical Sublime, a history of the longest, largest, most complete, most lucrative, and most rapidly growing genealogy databases (U Mass Press, 2020); co-editor (with Sara Horowitz and Amira Dan) of Shadows over the City of Lights: Jewish Writing in Post-War Paris (SUNY, 2021) and H.G. Adler: Life, Literature, Legacy (Northwestern UP, 2016), winner of the Jewish Thought and Culture Award from the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards; and co-editor (with Andreas Kitzmann) of Memory and Migration—Multidisciplinary Approaches to Memory Studies (U Toronto Press 2011). She is also the director and producer of MUM: A Story of Silence (38 min 2008), a documentary about a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who tried to forget and Data Mining the Deceased (56 min 2017, HD), a documentary about the industry of family history. Chase Dimock is an Associate Professor of English at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, California. He serves as the Managing Editor of As It Ought To Be Magazine. His debut book of poetry, Sentinel Species, was published in 2020 by Stubborn Mule Press. Individual poems have been published previously in Waccamaw, Rappahannock Review, Faultline, Roanoke Review, New Mexico Review, and Flyway among others. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois and his scholarship in World Literature and LGBT Studies has appeared in College Literature, Western American Literature, The Lambda Literary Review, and several edited anthologies. David Wright Faladé is the author of the novel, Black Cloud Rising (Grove, 2022). His first book, Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers, was one of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Best Books of 2001. His second, Away Running, was named an Outstanding International Book by the US Board on Books for Young People. His stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Newsday, and elsewhere. A 2021-22 NYPL Cullman Center Fellow, he teaches at the University of Illinois. Dina Guidubaldi grew up in Kent, Ohio, which has its own issues with memories. She graduated from Texas State’s MFA program in 2001, published How Gone We Got, a book of stories in 2015, and now teaches at St. Edward’s University in Austin. Amy Hassinger is the author of the novels Nina: Adolescence, The Priest’s Madonna, and After the Dam. Her writing has been translated into six languages and has won awards from the

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American Best Book Awards, IPPY, Creative Nonfiction, Publisher’s Weekly, and the Illinois Arts Council. She’s placed her work in many publications, including The New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Amy teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois. She is currently working on a book of creative nonfiction about singing and the pursuit of joy in the face of climate apocalypse. Marianne Hirsch writes about the transmission of memories of violence across generations, combining feminist theory with memory studies in global perspective. Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at Columbia University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her recent books include The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust (2012), School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference (2020), co-authored with Leo Spitzer; and the co-edited volume Women Mobilizing Memory (2019). Hirsch teaches Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at Columbia University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. With a group of artists, activists, and scholars, she is currently working on the “Zip Code Memory Project: Practices of Justice and Repair,” a community-based Covid project in Upper New York City. Helen Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in Art History, Theory, and Curatorial Practice at Monash University. She was a 2019–20 Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art. Her research focuses on Australian and British art, both historical and contemporary. Recent publications include: Double Displacement: Rex Butler on Queensland Art (co-edited with Francis Plagne, 2019); Tom Nicholson: Lines towards Another (co-edited with Amelia Barikin, 2019); and Mutlu Çerkez: 1988–2065 (co-edited with Charlotte Day and Hannah Mathews, 2018). Lilya Kaganovsky is a Professor in the Department of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her publications include The Voice of Technology: Soviet Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1928–1935 (Indiana, 2018) and How the Soviet Man Was Unmade (Pittsburgh, 2008); the edited volumes Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos (with Anna Stenport and Scott MacKenzie, Indiana, 2019); Sound, Speech, Music in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema (with Masha Salazkina, Indiana, 2014), and Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style and the 1960s (Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Lilya Kaganovsky, and Robert A. Rushing, Duke, 2013); as well as numerous articles on Soviet and post-Soviet cinema. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, and the Associate Editor for film and media at The Russian Review. Her current projects are on Soviet women’s cinema, and Soviet cinema of the postwar period. Brett Ashley Kaplan directs the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies at the University of Illinois where she is a professor of Comparative and World Literature. She publishes in Haaretz, The Conversation, Salon.com (picked up from Conversation), Asitoughttobemagazine, AJS Perspectives, Contemporary Literature, Edge Effects, The Jewish Review of Books. She has been interviewed on NPR, the AJS Podcast, and The 21st, and is the author of Unwanted Beauty, Landscapes of Holocaust Postmemory, Jewish Anxiety and the Novels of Philip Roth and Rare Stuff (a novel). She is at work on a second novel, Vandervelde Downs, about the recovery of Nazi-looted objects found in a Vietnamese Refugee Center in provincial England. Please see brettashleykaplan.com for more information.

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Sayed Kashua is a Palestinian, citizen of Israel, writer. He is the author of the novels: Dancing Arabs (Grove Press, 2002), Let It Be Morning (Grove Press, 2005), Second Person Singular (Grove Press, 2010), and Track Changes (Grove Press, 2017). He is the creator and the writer of the TV series: Arab Labor (Keshet TV, 2007–12) and The Writer (Keshet TV, 2015). Suvir Kaul is A. M. Rosenthal Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Of Gardens and Graves: Kashmir, Poetry, Politics; Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Postcolonial Studies; Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire: English Verse in the Long Eighteenth Century; and Thomas Gray and Literary Authority: Ideology and Poetics in Eighteenth-Century England. He has edited The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India and co-edited Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. He teaches eighteenth-century British literature and culture, South Asian writing in English, and critical theory, including postcolonial studies. Ethan Madarieta is Assistant Professor of English at Syracuse University and affiliate faculty in Native American and Indigenous Studies, LGBTQ Studies, and Latino/Latin American Studies. His current book manuscript, The Body Is (Not) the Land: Memory, Translation, and Territorial Aporias, investigates Indigenous anticolonial political and representational strategies in literature, translation, and radical political performance in what are now Chile and Argentina. He has articles and essays in the Latin American Theatre Review, A contracorriente: una revista de estudios latinoamericanos, Critical Times, #MeToo and Literary Studies: Reading, Writing, and Teaching about Sexual Violence and Rape Culture, and exhibition catalogues on performance artist Emilio Rojas. Philippe Mesnard has been Full Professor of Comparative literature at UCA (University of Clermont Auvergne) for twelve years and Membre of the “Institut Universitaire de France.” From 2010 to 2015, he directed the Auschwitz Foudation in Brussel. He has been working on testimony and memory topics from the end of the ’90s, and he created the Academic Journal Mémoires en jeu (Memory at Stake) in September 2016 and runs it. He has published a ten books, among them a biography of Primo Levi (Le Passage d’un témoin, 2011, Fayard editions, Paris) and, in October 2021, an essay about the issue of contemporary discourses and representation of collective memory (Les Paradoxes de la mémoire, Le Bord de l’eau editions, Lormont). Caroline Morris is a writer who lives in Austin, Texas. She’s been a resident at Yaddo and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work has been published in American Book Review and the Tulane Review. She has an MFA from the University of Oregon and a JD from the University of Virginia. She is currently the Associate Vice President for Undergraduate Programs at St. Edward’s University. Sharon B. Oster is Professor of English at the University of Redlands. She is author of No Place in Time: The Hebraic Myth in Late-Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Wayne State University Press, 2018). She has published essays and reviews on American, Jewish, and Holocaust literatures in ELH, Prooftexts, Journal of Holocaust Research, MELUS, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Her next book project is “Living Death: Rethinking The Muselmann in Holocaust Literature and Visual Culture” (Wayne State University Press). Audrey Petty is the editor of High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing (Voice of Witness/Haymarket Press) and co-editor of The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working

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Toward Freedom (Haymarket Press). Her writing has appeared in in Saveur, Oxford American, Poetry, Callaloo, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook (Belt) and the Best Food Writing anthology. Formerly on faculty in the Creative Writing Programs at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Knox College, Petty has served as the Simon Blattner Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction at Northwestern University and the Tin House Writer-in-Residence at Portland State University. She is currently a Fellow at the Invisible Institute and a member of the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project. Jessica Rapson is a Senior Lecturer in the department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. She is the author of Topographies of Suffering: Buchenwald, Babi Yar, Lidice (Berghahn 2015) and a range of chapters and articles on the politics of commemoration. She is the co-editor of Planetary Memory in Contemporary American Fiction (Routledge 2018, with Lucy Bond and Ben de Bruyn), and The Transcultural Turn: Interrogating Memory between and beyond Borders (de Gruyter 2014, with Lucy Bond). Along with Lucy Bond, Jessica is currently working on the BA/Leverhulme funded “Processing Memory: Heritage, Industry, and Environmental Racism on America’s Gulf Coast.” Debarati Sanyal’s publications include Memory and Complicity: Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance (Fordham, 2015) translated into French as Mémoire et Complicité: Au Prisme de la Shoah (PUV, 2019) and The Violence of Modernity: Baudelaire, Irony and the Politics of Form (Johns Hopkins, 2006). She has guest-edited an issue of Critical Times titled Time and Politics in Contemporary Critique: Entanglements and Aftermaths and co-edited of Noeuds de mémoire: Multidirectional Memory in Postwar French and Francophone Culture (Yale French Studies 118– 19). Her current book project, Arts of the Border: Voices of Migration from the Edges of Europe, is supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship (2021–2). Miryam Sas is Professor of Comparative Literature and Film & Media at the University of California, Berkeley. She began as a scholar of the experimental arts of the early twentieth century with a focus on modernist poetics and literary theory in Japan and France in Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and Japanese Surrealism (Stanford University Press, released in 2001). She has a strong interest in the cultural wave of the 1960s–70s which she has explored through studies of theater, film, photography, and dance (Experimental Arts in Postwar Japan: Moments of Encounter, Engagement, and Imagined Return, Harvard University Asia Center Publications, 2010). Her new book on media theory and intermedia art in Japan, Feeling Media: Potentiality and the Afterlife of Art (Duke University Press, 2022). Concurrently with her interests in Japanese and European experimental arts, she has been teaching courses on topics of post-Holocaust memory and memorialization in literature and film, and has been completing the collaborative/ archival memoir Finding Zbaraż, from which the chapter “Hanka” in this book is an excerpt. Leo Spitzer, the K. T. Vernon Professor Emeritus at Dartmouth College, is a cultural and comparative historian and writer in the interdisciplinary field of memory studies. Employing personal and familial oral history, photography, and wide-ranging testimonial materials, he writes about responses to colonialism and domination as well as postmemories of subordination and genocide. He is author of Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism (1998/2021); Lives in Between: The Experience of Marginality in a Century of Emancipation (2000); and co-editor of Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (1998). Together with Marianne Hirsch, he has also co-authored Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory (2010) and School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference (2020). Currently he

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is writing The Americanization of Poldi, a series of stories, some autobiographical, about Jewish refugee children emigrating from Latin America to the United States in the decade of the 1950s. Steve Stern is the author of several novels and story collections, including Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven for which he won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish fiction, and The Wedding Jester, for which he received a National Jewish Book Award. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation grant and a Fulbright Fellowship. His forthcoming novel is The Village Idiot, based on the life of the artist Chaim Soutine. Marita Sturken is Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, where she teaches courses in visual culture, cultural memory, and consumerism. She is the author of Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (1997), Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (with Lisa Cartwright, third edition 2018), Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism From Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (2007), and Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums, and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era (2022). Jeremy Tambling studied at York, Nottingham, and Essex Universities, and was Professor of Comparative Literature in Hong Kong, and Manchester until retirement, but is now Professor of English at SWPS Warsaw. He is editing The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literature and Psychoanalysis. His most recent book was The Poetry of Dante’s Paradiso: Lives Almost Divine, Spirits That Matter (Palgrave 2021). His interest in Hölderlin produced Hölderlin and the Poetry of Tragedy: Readings in Sophocles, Shakespeare, Nietzsche and Benjamin (Sussex Academic Press 2014). Sonali Thakkar is Assistant Professor of English at New York University. She works in the fields of postcolonial studies, human rights, race and ethnic studies, and Jewish and Holocaust studies. She is completing a book project titled The Reeducation of Race: Jewishness, Plasticity, and the Politics of Antiracism in Postcolonial Thought. Her articles and essays have appeared in Social Text, the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, and WSQ, among other venues. Jenny Wüstenberg is Professor of History and Memory Studies and Director of the Centre for Public History, Heritage and Memory at Nottingham Trent University (UK). She is the co-founder and Co-President of the Memory Studies Association, as well as Chair of the COST Action on “Slow Memory: Transformative Practices in Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change” (2021– 5). She is the author of Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany (Cambridge UP 2017, in German LIT Verlag 2020) and the co-editor, most recently, of Agency in Transnational Memory Politics (with Aline Sierp, Berghahn 2020), the Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism (with Yifat Gutman, 2022), and De-Commemoration: Making Sense of Contemporary Calls to Remove Statues and Change Place Names (with Sarah Gensburger, forthcoming in English with Berghahn, in French with Fayard). Her research interests concern the contentious politics of memory, slowmoving change, and methodology in memory studies. She is currently working on a comparative study of how state-driven family separation policies are remembered. James E. Young is Distinguished University Professor of English and Judaic Studies Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Founding Director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at UMass Amherst. He is the author of Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 1988), The Texture of Memory (Yale University Press, 1993), which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1994, At Memory’s Edge: After-images of the

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Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (Yale University Press, 2000), and The Stages of Memory: Reflections on Memorial Art, Loss, and the Spaces Between (University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), which won the National Council for Public History Book Award for 2017. He was also the Guest Curator of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City, entitled “The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History” (March–August 1994, with venues in Berlin and Munich, September 1994–June 1995) and was the editor of The Art of Memory (Prestel Verlag, 1994), the exhibition catalogue for this show. In 1997, Professor Young was appointed by the Berlin Senate to the five-member Findungskommission for Germany’s national “Memorial to Europe’s Murdered Jews,” which selected Peter Eisenman’s design, finished and dedicated in May 2005. More recently, he was appointed to the jury for the “National 9/11 Memorial” design competition, won by Michael Arad and Peter Walker in 2004 and opened on September 11, 2011. His articles, reviews, and Op-Ed essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Book Review, and Op-Ed pages, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Forward, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, among other newspapers, as well as in scholarly journals such as Critical Inquiry, Representations, New Literary History, PMLA, Partisan Review, The Yale Journal of Criticism, Annales, SAQ, History and Theory, Harvard Design Magazine, Jewish Social Studies, Contemporary Literature, History and Memory, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Prooftexts, The Jewish Quarterly, Tikkun, and Slate, among dozens of other journals and collected volumes. His books and articles have been published in German, French, Hebrew, Japanese, and Swedish editions.

INDEX

Abernathy, Ralph 199, 204 Abrams, Stacey 204 Abu El-Haj, Nadia 29, 39–40 Aceituno, Donoso 283 Ackerman, Diane 70 Adams, Jessica 86, 92 Adorno, Theodor 141, 299 Aesthetics 2, 5, 6, 25, 34, 36, 50–4, 71, 136, 142–8, 152–3, 177, 258 AIDS epidemic 4, 243–6 Agamben, Giorgio 145 Akoto-Bamfo, Kwame 52–4 Aksoy, Suay 18 Alabama 41–55, 95, 197–9, 206 Alberti, Léon Batista 142 Aleichem, Sholem 227 Alexandrov, Grigori 276 Algeria 249–60 Ali, Agha Shahid 307–19 Allegory 249–60 Allen, Barbara 80, 82, 83 Allen, James 53 Alonso, Jorge 291 Althusser, Louis 288 Altinay, Ayse Gül 107 Andersen, Hans Christian 75 Anderson, William C. 20 Ando, Tadao 165 Angelou, Maya 19 Anitblackness 13–23, 204 Anthropocene 61–79 Apartheid 42, 251, 258, 260 Apollinaire, Guillaume 143 Apter, Emily 258 Aquinas, Thomas 223 Arab communities 213–19, 249–60 Arafat, Yasser 216 Arasse, Daniel 142 Arendt, Hannah 216 Armenian genocide 7, 115–18 Arnold, Michael 341 Arnold-de Simine, Silke 6 Art of Black Dissent 12, 14–15

Aschrott, Sigmund 154–7 Asian communities 81, 91 Assmann, Aleida 2, 142, 313, 315, 350, 352 Assmann, Jan 142 Auschwitz 141, 144–5, 267–72, 276, 351, 357–8, 360 Autry, La Tanya 4, 13, 17 Aziz, Aamir 307–19 Azoulay, Ariella Aïsha 109–10, 112 Babi Yar 7, 266 Bachelard, Gaston 174 Bacigalupo, Ana 282, 289–90 Baeza Donoso, Alfonso 285 Bal, Mieke 307 Balog, James 75 Bammer, Angelika 5 Bargé, Case 20 Bargu, Banu 286, 290, 292 Barnouw, Erik 87 Baronian, Marie-Aude 116 Barthes, Roland 108, 120, 145–6, 257–8, 342 Barton, Jake 45 Bass, Ellen 174 Batalov, Aleksei 273, 276 Baynes, Chris 72–3 Beaunoyer, Elisabeth 342 Bell, Alexandra 20 Bell, Gordon 340 Ben-Gurion, David 218 Benjamin, Walter 109, 148, 251, 305 Benner, Katie 20 Benyacar, Eli 361 Berber communities 255–8 Berg, Maggie 66 Bergen-Belsen 28, 35–6, 145, 271 Bergman, Anna 357–8 Bernstein, Michael André 112 Bernstein, Sidney 145 Beumers, Birgit 264 Biale, David 228 Biden, Joe 94 Bishop, Claire 169

410

Black communities 4, 7, 11–23, 25, 41–55, 63, 79–95, 112, 198–210, 259–60 Black Liberation Center 12, 19–23 Black Lives Matter 7, 63, 204 Blake, William 293 Blackmon, Douglas 81 Blanchot, Maurice 141 Boas, Franz 30 Bodenhamer, David. J. 356 Böhlendorff, Casimir Ulrich 301–2 Boltanski, Christian 147–8 Bond, Lucy 2, 5, 7, 79 Bormann, Tammy 14 Borzutzky, Daniel 282 Bose, Sumantra 309, 315 Bou, Stéphane 144 Boudjedra, Rachid 249 Bourdain, Anthony 343 Boyer, Dominic 72, 74 Boym, Svetlana 183 Branch, Ben 196 Brand, Dionne 18 Brand, Stewart 70 Brattain, Michelle 26 Brauman, Rony 145 Bright, Sheila Pree 20 Britain 144, 167, 311 British Museum 289 Brod, Max 229 Brooks, Daphne 36 Brooks, Peter 34 Brown, Adrienne 30 Brown, Aleia 13, 16 Brown, Michael 1, 13 Brubaker, Jed 339 Buchenwald 158–60, 267–8, 271 Buik Kirsten P. 20 Buitelaar, J. C. 343 Bullard, Robert 80, 84 Bunyan, John 168, 250 Burns, Andrea 16 Burtner, Matthew 75 Butler, Judith 72–3, 288 Buzinde, Christine 86 Byrd, Jodi 283 Cade, Octavia 69, 75–7 Cahan, Susan 16 Calbucoy, Danilo Nahuelpi 291 Calle, Sophie 178 Callison-Burch, Vanessa 339 Campos, Juliana Ribeiro 338

INDEX

Campt, David 14 Camus, Albert 249–60 Cann, Candi 338 Carroll, Evan 340, 342, 343 Carruthers, Mary J. 177 Cartography 347–64 Caruth, Cathy 265 Carson, Rachel 70 Cash, Johnny 343 Catrileio, Matías 285 Catrillanca, Camilo 285 Cavell, Stanley 178 Celan, Paul 122 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 62, 64 Charumbira, Ruramisai, 66 Chateaubriand, François-René de 3 Chauvel, Patrick 175 Cheng, Anne Anlin 30 Chéroux, Clément 144 Chiaureli, Mikhail 276 Chicago 205–10 Chile 5, 281–92 Chomski, Marvin 141 Chraïbi, Driss 249 Church, Scott 343 Cicero 142 Cinema 263–77 Clarke, Eva Nathan 357 Clayton, Susan 70 Climate change 18, 57–95 Cognet, Christophe 146 Cohen, Leonard 226 Cole, Ernest 53 Cole, Jefferson 49 Cole, Tim 347, 349 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 251 Colvile, Robert 59 Community activism 79–95 Como, Perry 198 Cooks, Bridget 16 Córdova, Machi Celestino 281–2, 285–7, 289–91 Corrigan, John 356 Coulthard, Glen 63 Countermemorials 125–36, 151–66 Coutinho, Dolores Pereira 338 Covid-19 pandemic 2, 7, 20, 59, 70–1, 75, 107, 249–60, 338, 366, 368 Cox, Aimee Meredith 20 Crabapple, Molly, 46 Craps, Stef 2, 5, 7, 60–2, 79 Creet, Julia 6, 337, 340, 343

INDEX

Critical Black Memory 11–23 Crownshaw, Rick 79 Cruikshank, Julie 72 Cullors, Patrisse 204 Cunsolo, Ashlee 70, 72, 74–5 Curatorial practice 11–23 Dachau 141, 144–5, 267 Daly, Natasha 70 Danye, Serge 141 Daoud, Kamel 253–4 David, Lea 60 Davis, Angela 15 Davis, Colin 255 Davis, Laura 174 De Baecque, Antoine 270–1 De Bruyn, Ben 79 Decolonization 12, 14, 18–19, 23, 107 Defoe, Daniel 250 Delbo, Charlotte 2, 347, 355 De Man, Paul 251, 293 De Massol de Rebetz, Clara 64 Deo, Steven 108, 112–15, 123 DeLoughrey, Elizabeth 77 Derrida, Jacques 182–3, 298, 303 Der Meguerditchian, Silvina 108, 112, 115–18, 123 DeSoto, Hernando 82 Dick, Philip K. 173 Didi-Huberman, Georges 141, 145 Digital afterlives 337–45 Digital memory 337–64 Dildilian Photographs 116 Dimock, Chase 4 Dio, Ronnie James 343 Displaced persons camps (DP) 28, 35–6, 351, 362 Dorsey, Thomas Andrew 195–204 Doss, Erika 41 Dovzhenko, Oleksandr 276 Dresden 129 Du Bois, W. E. B. 41 Duchamp, Marcel 177 Dutceac-Segesten, Anamaria 66 Eberswalde 162–4 Ecological grief 69–77 Edwards, Edwin 83 Edwards, Lilian 343 Earle, Sam 259 Eichmann, Adolf 145 Einaudi, Ludovico 75

411

Eisenhower, Dwight D. 144 Eliasson, Olafur 74 Eliot, George 37 Eliot, T.S. 228 Ellis, Erle 70 Ellis, Neville 70 Eng, David 36 Engelke, Peter 59, 61 Enright, Robert 172–3, 181 Environment 5, 59–104 Environmental racism 79–95 Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) 41–55, 95 Eriksen, Thomas Hyland 64–5 Erll, Astrid 2, 7, 60 Faladé, David Wright 4 Fanon, Frantz 12 Farmer, Paul 50 Farocki, Harun 145 Faulkner, William 3 Feldman, Allen 282, 284, 286–8 Feminism 12, 20, 24, 27, 31, 32, 34, 39, 107, 286 Film 263–77 Finley, Cheryl 2 Fisher, Mark 182–3 Flaherty, Robert 87 Fletcher, Kami 16 Floridi, Luciano 342–4 Floyd, George 4, 20, 259 Forché, Carolyn 308 Foucault, Michel 142, 148, 245, 284, 288, 293, 305–6 Franklin, Aretha 196 Freeman, Tina 75 Friedberg, Bernard 18 Friedrich, Ernst 143 Freud, Sigmund 31, 35, 72, 130–6, 177, 221, 226, 230, 305 Freudenberger, Nell 45 Friedlander, Saul 153 Fuller, Samuel 144 Funderburk, Karla 2 Fusco, Coco 18 Gagné, Karine 72 Gannett, Lisa 26 Garde-Hansen, Joanne 64 Garner, Eric 13 Garza, Alicia 204 Gazzard, Hollie 339 Gender equality 11–23

412

Genewein, Walter 119–22 Genis, Aleksandr 274 Gensburger, Sarah 60 Geographic Information System (GIS) 347–64 George, Emery 293, 294, 299, 302, 303 Germany 5, 40, 52, 62, 108, 116, 120, 125–36, 144–64, 266–74, 294–302, 339, 357–62 Gershenson, Olga 266–7 Gervereau, Laurent 144 Ghosh, Amitav 61–2 Gibbons, Joan 174 Gigliotti, Simone 348 Gilger, Kristin 93 Gilliam, Terry 71 Gillman, Susan 33 Gilroy, Paul 25, 27, 29–32 Giordano, Albert 347–9 Glacier funerals, 69–77 Gladstone, Brooke 51–4 Global South 108, 257 Gluck, Christoph Willibald 255 Godard, Jean-Luc 141 Goebbels, Joseph 267 Golden, Diana 360–2 Gómez-Barris, Macarena 282–3, 289, 291 Graetz, Heinrich 224 Grayson, Richard 167 Greenberg, Clement 177 Greenspan, Henry 348, 352–4 Groes, Sebastian 79 Grossman, Mendel 119–23 Grove, Allen 342 Guidubaldi, Dina 4 Guitton, Matthieu 342 Gutiérrez, Pablo Marchant 285 Gutman, Yifat 61 Gutter, Pinchas 341 Guynn, William 265 Hackett, Ann 87 Hagen, Trever 6, 7 Hagerty, Michael 94 Halbwachs, Maurice 2, 142, 339 Haley, Alex 38 Hall, Stuart 25 Hallowell, Christopher 82–4 Hamburg 125–36 Hamburger, Michael 294, 302 Handy, John 94 Haraway, Donna 27, 31–3, 131, 135 Harbinja, Edina 343

INDEX

Harney, Stefano 19 Harris, Michael W. Dorsey 202–3 Harris, Trevor M. 356 Hartman, Saidiya 12, 15 Harvey, Emily Dennis 18 Hasian, Marouf 41, 48, 53 Hassinger, Amy 5 Haverkamp, Anselm 293 Hawkins, Michael 86 Hegel, G. W. F. 293, 304 Heidegger, Martin 295–7 Heitmann, Sine 63 Hesiod 294–6, 304 Heywood, Scott W. 83 Hicks, Jeremy 266 Hindu communities 309–19 Hinton, Anthony Ray 43–4 Hirdman, Anja 342 Hiroshima 129, 272–4 Hirsch, Marianne 2, 5, 38, 107, 108, 263–4, 365 Hitler, Adolf 127–8, 267–8, 272, 359 Hobbs, Allyson 45 Hobbs, Kathy Allen 93 Hodgkin, Katharine 7 Hoffmann, Heinrich 267 Hoheisel, Horst 5, 151–66 Hölderlin, Friedrich 293–306 Holocaust 2–7, 25–8, 34, 40–2, 60, 64, 107, 118–22, 132, 135–6, 141, 151–8, 185–93, 213, 227, 249, 251, 255, 258, 264–7, 272–4, 341, 347–64 Holleman, Marybeth 75 Homer 135 hooks, bell 12 Hoskins, Andrew 2, 6, 344 Houshamadyan 115–17 Howe, Cymene 72, 74 Hrdlicka, Alfred 125–36 Huber, Matthew 82–3 Huenchuano, José 291 Hughes, Helen 5 Hurwitz, Leo 146 Hussein, Saddam 216 Hutcheson, J. N. 92 Huyssen, Andreas 2, 107–8 Hyde Park 205–10 Ifill, Sherrilyn 42 India 6, 252, 307–19 Indigenous communities 12, 63, 77, 81, 82, 84, 108, 112–15, 281–92

INDEX

Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies 6 International Council of Museums 18 International Sites of Conscience 14 Involuntary memory 2–3, 148 Ionesco, Eugène 71 Irvine, Jaki 180 Israel, Nico 168, 179 Israel-Palestine, 1, 34, 36–9, 153, 186, 213–19, 222, 228, 350 Jackson, Kuntrell 47 Jackson, Mahalia 196–8 Jain, Kajri 308 Jakobsdottir, Katrin 74 Jameson, Fredric 177, 183, 249 Jamail, Dahr 73 Janouch, Gustav 222, 228 Japan 165, 274, 344 Jetñil-Kijiner, Kathy 74–5 Jewish communities 5, 28, 30–40, 64, 108, 119, 120, 132–5, 144–66, 185–93, 215– 18, 221–31, 255, 258, 265–72, 355–64 Ji-sung, Jang 340 Johnson, Lacy M. 71 Johnson, Lyndon 200 Johnston, Frances Benjamin 112 Jones, Jonathan 168, 173–4 Jones, Kevin 52 Jones, Norah 209 Jordan, June 14 Jung, Carl 222, 230, 235, 239, 240 Jünger, Ernst 143 Kaka, Franz 5, 222, 226–31 Kaganovsky, Lilya 5 Kahan, Claudine 145 Kansteiner, Wulf 341 Kashmir 5, 307–19 Kashua, Sayed 5 Kasket, Elaine 337, 339, 342 Kassel 151–66 Kattago, Siobhan 7, 59 Kaul, Suvir 5, 6, 318 Keats, John 293–306 Keenan, David 183 Kelley, Mike 174–5 Kennicott, Philip 51 Khalidi, Walid 214 Khrushchev, Nikita 185, 274 Khutsiev, Marlen 264 Kiefer, Anselm 136

413

Kimmelman, Michael 50–1 King, Amanda D. 20 King, Dana 52 King, Jr., Martin Luther 14, 196–204 Kirchner, Franziska 133, 135 Kirsch, Adam 37 Kitzman, Andreas 337 Klass, Dennis 338 Klein, Ezra 44, 55 Kleinman, Arthur 136 Knigge, Volkhard 158 Knitz, Andreas 5, 151–66 Knowles, Anne 347–8, 354 Knox, Paul 63–4 Kobe 165 Kolipi, Machi Francisca 289 Krauss, Rosalind 177–9 Kulbak, Moshe 227 Kulish, Savva 268 Kundera, Milan 227 Kupferminic, Mirta 108, 112, 118–23 Kurchatov, Igor 275 Kurzweil, Ray 340 Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe 302 Landman, Karen 72, 74 Landsberg, Alison 2, 45–8, 344 Langer, Lawrence 136, 350–1 Lanzmann, Claude 141, 145 Laplanche, Jean 293, 305–6 Laska, Vera 358–9 Latinx communities 82, 84, 91, 94 Lattimore, Richmond 303–4 Lavrov, German 265, 268, 270 Lavrova, Tatyana 273 Lawrence, Elizabeth 49 Lee, Key Jo 20 Lee, Pamela 179 Lefranc, Sandrine 60 LeMenager, Stephanie 79 Lentin, Alana 26 Lerner, Steve 80, 85 Leonardo, Shaun 20 Levi, Primo 145, 355, 359, 364 Leviano, Sergio 291 Levy, Daniel 2 LeWitt, Sol 134–5 Libro, María Fernanda 282, 284–5, 288 Lichtenstein, Jacqueline 142–3 Lin, Maya 160 Linconao, Machi 285 Lindeperg, Sylvie 144

414

Lindsay, D. Stephen 174 Lingel, Jessa 338 Llaitul, Héctor 285, 291 Llanca, Anthu 291 Llanquileo, Víctor 291 Lódz ghetto 119–22 Loftus, Elizabeth 174 London 74, 145, 167–83, 250 Łopatyn 185–93 Loraux, Nicole 131, 135 Lorde, Audre 12, 15, 19, 22 Louisiana 80–95 Lucas, Anthony 82 Luria, Isaac 223 Lusso, Emilio 143 Lynas, Mark 70 Lynching 4, 20, 41–55, 94 Machi 281–92 Madarieta, Ethan 5, 6, 282, 285 Magnason, Andri Snær 74 Majdanek 266–8 Małczyński, Jacek 79 Malek, Malia Alia 254 Malik, Aditi 315 Manger, Itzik 227 Mapuche Nation 281–92 Marileo, Fredy 291 Marileo, Jaime 291 Marin, Louis 147 Marder, Elissa 34 Margalit, Avishai 135 Markovitz, Jonathan 53 Markowitz, Gerald 85 Marks, Laura 110 Márquez, Gabriel García 3 Marsoobian, Armen 116 Martell, Luke 67 Marx, Karl 294 Mason-Robbie, Victoria 343 Masurovsky, Marc 348 Matter Studio Gallery, Los Angeles 2 Matt’s Gallery 168–82 Mauthausen 144, 357, 359 Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor 343 McCallig, Damien 338 McCloud, Scott 348 McDemid, Charles 256 McDonald, Laquan 13 McNeil, J. R. 59, 61 McPherson, Vanzetta, 44 Mehretu, Julie 1

INDEX

Melosi, Martin 83–4 Melancholia 5, 34, 72, 75, 108, 125–36, 236, 246, 305, 312 Memphis 221–31 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe 64 Memory Studies Association 6, 7, 66 Mendelyté, Aténé 341 Mendick, Heather 67 Menning, Nancy 73 Mesnard, Philippe 5, 145 Metcalf, Stephen 252–3 Millalen, Juan 291 Millan, Moira 283 Miller, Glen 198 Milton, John 293, 297 Mnemonics 6 Mobley, Izetta 20 Mock, Brentin 42 Model of Architecture Serving Society (MASS) Design Group 50 Modlin, E. Arnold 86, 92 Molnar, Daniela 75 Mondzain, Marie-José 146 Montagu, Ashley 27, 28, 30–2, 40 Monuments and memorials 7, 41–55, 61, 64, 125–36, 151–66 Moore, Porchia 18 Moreman, Christopher 337 Moretti, Franco 354, 356 Morgan, Kelli 19–20 Morris, Caroline 3 Morris, Robert 175 Morrison-Reed, Mark 199 Morrison, Toni 12 Mort, Helen 75 Moscow 265–77 Moten, Fred 19 Moulin, Chris 175 Mourning 2–5, 44, 69–77, 125–36, 252, 303–6, 308, 314, 338, 342–5, 361, 368 Mulvey, Laura 342 Murawski, Mike 16, 17, 18 Murphy, Michael 50–1, 54 Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland 19–20 Museums 11–23, 85–95, 289 Museums are Not Neutral 12, 15–19, 23 Muslim communities 167, 258, 307–19 Nachman of Bratslav 225, 229–31 Nadeau, Barbie Latza 4 Nagasaki 129, 272–4

INDEX

Nakba 213–19 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 41–2 National Memorial for Peace and Justice 4, 41–55 Nauman, Bruce 181 Nazism 4, 6, 26, 31, 35, 107, 119–30, 141, 144, 153–66, 249, 252–7, 265–74, 347–64 Nelson, Alondra 39 Nelson, Mike 5, 167–83 Neubacher, Stefan 163 Neumann, Erich 223, 229 New Delhi 309–11 Newton, Casey 343 Nicolson, Vanessa 339 Nietzsche, Friedrich 136, 287–8, 295–6, 306 9/11 41–3, 46, 73 Nishnaabeg, Michi Saagiig 12 Niviâna, Aka 74–5 Nixon, Rob 61–5, 70, 79, 81, 282 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 281–3, 286–90 Nguyen, Viet Thanh 2 Nora, Pierre 356 Norvell, Patsy 179 Nunning, Ansgar 7 O’Brien, Connor Cruise 258 O’Hagan, Sean 168, 180 Öhman, Carl 339, 342–4 Oil 79–95, 206, 208 Olick, Jeffrey 6 Olien, Roger 82–3 Oltermann, Philip 339 O’Neill, Maggie 67 Onitz, Don 144 Oran 249–60 Orbison, Roy 343 Orlowski, Jeff 75 Ortel, Jo 114 Orwell, George 252 Oster, Sharon 6 O’Sullivan, Simon 167, 179 Otu, Kwame Edwin 284, 286 Pairican, Fernando 282 Palestine and Palestinians 213–19 Paliewicz, Nicholas S. 41, 48, 53 Paranyuk, Vika 270, 272–3, 276 Paredes, Julieta 286, 290 Parras, Ana 94 Parras, Juan 94

415

Patterson, Henry 49 Parks, Rosa 45 Partners in Health 50 Pawel, Ernst 228 Pearce, Margaret Wickens 348 Pearson, Chris 79 Penchulef, Reinaldo 291 Peretz, I. L. 227 Peters, John Durham 342 Petty, Audrey 4 Pezzullo, Phaedra 79–80, 93 Pfau, Thomas 301–5 Photography 108–23, 141–8, 214, 341–2 Phuc, Phan Thi Kim 147 Picard, Charmaine 53 Pindar 295 Pitsillides, Stacey 342, 344 Plagemann, Volker 130 Plato 177, 253, 294–5 Poe, Edgar Allan 145 Pollin-Galay, Hannah 347–8, 350, 354–5, 358, 361 Pontecorvo, Gillo 141 Postmemory 38, 107, 123, 263–5, 365 Povey, Ghislaine 63 Povinelli, Elizabeth 35, 37–8 Prague 222–9, 358 Pratt, Joseph 83–4 Pratt, Richard Henry 113 Presley, Elvis 198 Presner, Todd 348 Price, William 86–7 Proust, Marcel 2–3, 148 Psychoanalysis 28, 31, 34, 109, 130–6 Puff, Jefferson 339 Queer studies 107, 243–6 Queipul, Juan 291 Quintilian 172 Race 4–5, 11–55, 79–95, 205–10, 249–60 Racial terror 41–55 Radstone, Susannah 7 Rahier, Jean Muteba 86 Raiford, Leigh 12 Raiford, Teressa 20 Ramos, Mary 82–3, 87 Ramoutsaki, Ionna 203 Rancière, Jacques 142 Rapson, Jessica 2, 5, 79, 86 Read, J. Don 174 Reardon, Jenny 26

416

Resnais, Alain 249, 270–3 Reynoso, Carlos Alonso 291 Rice, Samaria 20 Rice, Tamir 13, 20 Rich, Adrienne 22 Rich, Nathaniel 70 Ricks, Alan 50 Rifkin, Mark 114, 291 Rilke, Rainer Maria 173–4 Rivette, Jacques 141 Robecchi, Michele 176 Roberts, Pamela 337 Robinson, Peter 63 Rodrigo, Federico 288 Rodriguez, Dylan 22 Roemer, Charles E. 85 Romm, Mikhail 263–77 Ronck, Catherine 86–7 Röntgen, Wilhelm Conrad 341–2 Rosa, Hartmut 65 Rossellini, Roberto 270 Roth, Karl 154, 156 Rothberg, Michael 2, 308, 318, 344 Rothblatt, Martine 340 Rose, Jacqueline 259 Rosner, David 85 Ruscha, Ed 178 Russell, Adrianne 16 Rwanda 7, 42, 50 Ryan, John Charles 72 Sacks, Oliver 201 Sakharov, Andrei 275 Saltzman, Lisa 136 Samudzi, Zoé 18 San Francisco Plantation 80–95 San Jacinto Monument and Museum 80–95 Sandberg, Sheryl 339 Sanneh, Sia 42, 51 Santos, Carla Almeida 86 Sanyal, Debarti 5 Sas, Corina 342 Sas, Miryam 5 Savage, Charlie 20 Savin-Baden, Maggie 343 Schechter, Patricia Ann 13 Schelling, F. W. 293 Schiller, Friedrich 293 Schloss, Eva 341 Scholem, Gershom 225, 228 Schwartz, Howard 225, 229–30 Sebald, W.G. 3, 34, 165

INDEX

Second World War 30 Seeber, Barbara 66 Seforim, Mendele Mocher 227 Sellars, John 203 Selma 45, 195–204 Semprun, Jorge 2 Serra, Richard 50 Settler colonialism 81, 82, 85, 94, 258, 260, 282 Shafak, Elif, 2 Shakespeare, William 298 Shakur, Tupac 343 Shandler, Jeffrey 348, 351–2 Sharpe, Christina 12, 20, 366 Shavit, Vered 343 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 293 Shenker, Noah 348, 351–2, 355 Shepit’ko Larisa 263 Sheriff, Kaunain 315 Shneer, David 266 Shub, Esfir 268 Sideris, Lisa 70, 72 Sieburth, Richard 294 Silverman, Kaja 265 Silverman, Max 2 Simonedes 173 Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake 12, 18, 63 Singerman, Howard 174 Sisto, Davide 337, 340, 342 Sivan, Eyal 145 Slavery 4, 7, 19, 23, 25, 41–55, 80–95, 260 Slow memory 3, 59–67 Smith, Frank Dabba 120 Smith, Stephen 341 Smithson, Robert 179, 181 Smoktunovsky, Innokenty 273 Social Justice and Museums Resource List 12–14 Social media 337–45 Sodaro, Amy 48 Sofka, Carla 342 Soil Collection Project 43–4, 52 Solar, Espinaza 283 Sontag, Susan 141, 144, 146, 257, 313–15 South Africa 42, 53 Soviet Union 6, 144, 147, 152, 163, 183, 185–93, 263–77 Sparke, Matthew 285 Spielberg, Steven 141, 350–1 Spitzer, Leo 5, 107, 108 Srinagar 307–19

INDEX

Stalin, Joseph 263–77 Starovoitov, Sasha 72, 74 Stein, Joal 72 Steiner, Erik 348 Steinhart, Eric 338, 342 Steinle, Matthias 144 Stengers, Isabelle 66 Stephens, William 49 Stern, Steve 5 Stevens, George 144–5 Stevenson, Bryan 41–55 Stiegler, Bernard 344 Stier, Oren 350, 352 Stokes, Patrick 343 Strong, Denise 93 Sturken, Marita 2, 4, 41 Sung, Nayeon 340 Svenningsen, Gabriella 14, 15 Swarns, Rachel 15 Sznaider, Natan 2 Tacitus 311 TallBear, Kim 39 Tamarkin, Noah 40 Tambling, Jeremy 6 Tate Britain 167–76 Tatlin, Vladimir 168, 183 Tatum, Goose 207 Taylor, Diana 2 Taylor, Dorceta 85 Temple, John 44 Terdiman, Richard 172, 178 Terrorism 41–55, 218, 249, 251, 257 Texas 80–95 Thakkar, Sonali 4 Tharpe, Rosetta 198 Thek, Paul 181 Thomas, Chip 14 Thomas, Hank Willis 52–3 Thompson, William Irwin 230 Time and temporality 3, 5, 25, 31, 46, 54, 59–67, 79, 87, 107–23, 135, 172, 179, 183, 249, 251, 254, 255, 264–8, 282, 289–91, 301, 308, 338, 340, 347, 352 Tira 213–19 Tometi, Opal 204 Tota, Anna Lisa 6, 7 Trauma 2, 6–7, 11, 23–5, 37–8, 48, 50, 61, 107, 110, 112, 126, 136, 174, 179, 263–5, 269, 272, 277, 285, 291, 293, 298–306, 314, 347, 351–64 Trimberger, E. Kay 39

417

Troncoso, Patricia 291 Tuan, Yi-Fu 349 Tubman, Harriet 12 Tucker, Irene 30 Tucker, Marshall Guy 208 Turner, Frederick Jackson 85–6 Ullman, Ellen 27–9, 33–40 Ukraine 4, 7, 185–93, 266, 269 United Nations (UN) 26 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 26, 30 University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Video History Archive 347–64 Ut, Nick 147 Vail’, Petr 274 Veidlinger, Jeffrey 7 Venice 71, 167, 181 Vermeulen, Pieter 2, 7 Vernant, Jean-Pierre 295 Victor, Fay 20 Vishwanath, Apurva 315 Visweswaran, Kamala 25 Vlahos, James 340, 343 Voluntary memory 2–3, 148 Wagner-Pacifici 60 Wagoner, Brady 7 Walden, Hans 129–30 Wall, Jeff 110 Wallace-Wells, David 70 Wallis, Clarrie 169, 173 Watson, David 339 Weiss, Emil 144 Weiss, Peter 294 Wells, Ida B. 12, 13, 41 Wenzel, Jennifer 62 West, M. L. 295 Wheeler, Roxann 30 Whitney Museum, New York 1 Whyte, Kyle 77 Wiesel, Elie 355, 359 Wieviorka, Annette 351 Wild, T.C. 64 Williams, Geneve 195–204 Williams, Linda 34, 38 Williams, Paul 48 Williams, Robin 343 Williamson, Erlend 180 Winehouse, Amy 343

418

Wolfe, Patrick 282 Wright, Beverly 80, 84, 85 Writers for Democratic Action 2 Wüstenberg, Jenny 3, 5, 60, 61, 64, 66 Wynter, Sylvia 284 Yale University Art Gallery 13 Yang, Regina 50 Yates, Frances 172–3 Young, James 5, 130, 135, 352, 356 Yusoff, Kathryn 79

INDEX

Zak, Mark 276 Zalewska, Maria 341 Zappa, Frank 343 Zelizer, Barbie 145 Zilcosky, John 32 Zionism 36–7, 215, 218, 224 Zip Code Memory Project 2 Zimring, Carl 80, 81 Zizek, Slavoj 183 Zöttl, Afred 129 Zunz, Leopold 224

419

420