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Collective Memory and Cultural Difference: Official vs. Vernacular Forms of Commemorating the Past

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17533171.2012.760832

1753-3171

Sabine Marschall,

African history and culture studies

Abstract In all societies, collective memory practices are integral parts of local tradition and culture. While the recent “memory boom” has resulted in a massive international proliferation of commemorative monuments and memorials, not enough attention has been paid to cultural differences in the ways societies remember. By comparing processes of commemoration and memorialization in postapartheid South Africa with selected case studies in the USA, this article highlights the definitive role that material culture and tangible objects as containers of memory play in American society, while among black South Africans, oral and performative modes of remembering have traditionally been more important. In both societies, museums and commemorative monuments are promoted as officially sanctioned sites of collective memory, but their public reception differs significantly. It is argued that official forms of commemoration are most successful when they are connected to; flow naturally out of; or stand in a meaningful, symbiotic relationship with, vernacular forms of commemoration. While the tangible aspects of specific commemorative cultures can easily be imitated internationally or cross-culturally, its intangible aspects can never be assumed to transfer automatically. Keywords: MemoryMemorialsCommemorationTangibleIntangibleVernacular Notes 1Most recently, in March 2011, Sonwabile Mancotywa, CEO of the National Heritage Council, issued a plea for the community to stop vandalizing historical monuments (see Anonymous, National preservation agency chief pleads). For a random sample of press reports about vandalism of commemorative monuments and memorials, see Taitz, Scrap dealers are trashing our history; Gosling, Rhodes Memorial sees red; Anonymous, Thieves damage Zulu memorial. 2Cubitt, History and Memory, 11. 3See e.g. Scruggs, “Music, Memory, and the Politics of Erasure” and Sobral, “Fragments of Reminiscence.” 4Hoelscher, “Angels of memory.” 5E.g. Jewsiewicki, “Painting in Zaire”; Fabian, Remembering the Present; and Barber, Readings in African Popular Culture. 6For a related, but slightly different characterization, see Stangl, “The vernacular and the monumental.” 7Greenspan, “A Global Site of Heritage.” 8Santino, Spontaneous Shrines. 9Linenthal, The Unfinished Bombing; Sánchez-Carretero, “Trains of Workers, Trains of Death.” 10Azaryahu, “The spontaneous formation of memorial space.” 11Senie, “Mourning in Protest,” 43. 12Goldstein and Tye, “The Call of the Ice”; Westgaard, “Like a Trace.” 13Santino, Spontaneous Shrines; Greenspan, “A Global Site of Heritage”; and Sturken, Tourists of History. 14Linenthal, The Unfinished Bombing; Sturken, Tourists of History. 15Savage, Monument Wars; Sturken, Tourists of History. 16Sturken, Tourists of History. 17Sturken, Tourists of History, 93–4. 18Sturken, Tourists of History. 19Winnicott, “Transitional Objects.” 20Forty, “Introduction,” 2. 21ibid., 4. 22Vladislavić, Propaganda by Monuments; see also Popescu, “Translations: Lenin’s Statues.” 23Coombes, History after Apartheid, 12. 24Savage, Monument Wars, 4 25Forty, “Introduction,” 4. 26Ngubane, “An Indigenous African Perspective,” 13, 66; Bunn, “The Sleep of the Brave”; Kamalu, Person, Divinity & Nature, 46–50. 27Hodgson, The God of the Xhosa. 28Marschall, “Transforming the Landscape of Memory.” 29Marschall, Landscape of Memory. 30E.g. Anonymous. AWB deface Biko statue; Nthite, Tshwane’s statue vandalized. 31Winter, “The Memory Boom,” 57/58. 32Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction, 35. 33Dubin, Mounting Queen Victoria. 34For instance, in March 2000, PAC president Dr. Stanley Mogoba reprimanded the community in Sharpeville for not looking after the graves of the victims of the Sharpeville massacre. The graves in the local cemetery were completely overgrown by long grass (‘Sapa,’ government plans to build monument). 35Hlongwane, Footprints; Simbao, “The Thirtieth Anniversary.” 36Hansen, “Public Spaces for National Commemoration.” 37Bilbija et al., “Introduction.” 38Simbao, “The Thirtieth Anniversary.” 39Kuljian, “The Congress of the People.” 40Bakker and Müller, “Intangible Heritage.” 41Simbao, “The Thirtieth Anniversary,” 64–5. 42Senie, “Mourning in Protest.”