Memorials

A memorial can be defined as a cultural artifact (such as a gravestone, a sculpture, a statue, a park) aimed at giving shape to a certain past. Usually, a memorial is devoted either to a group of people (soldiers, victims) or to an event (an earthquake, a terroristic attack, a war). A memorial is usually intended for commemorative purposes, and it functions as a symbolic marker that fixes forever (or at least over a long period of time) the shifting meanings attributed to an event. A memorial inscribes the event in public discourse, and in doing so, it contributes to the crystallization and legitimation of a certain version of the event that it commemorates. The different definitions of memorials are related to corresponding conceptions of the past and different definitions of memory. The definition of memorial depends on how the past is conceived. The past is often considered as something stable. It is something given once and forever. According to this conception, the past is an object—outside in the world out there—that one [Page 947]can discover, and a memorial is a “representation” depicting that past. However, many theorists have argued that the past is not self-evident, and it has not a unique potential meaning. Maurice Halbwachs, the first sociologist who dealt explicitly with the social context of the process of remembering, argues that the past is a social construction shaped by the concerns of the present. The memorial, in this perspective, represents the act of fixing the past in a specific cultural shape and is therefore a sort of “frozen” representation of the past.

In his book, The Collective Memory (1968), Halbwachs analyzes the relation between individual, collective, and social memory. The individual memory is that of a single person, the collective one pertains to a group of people who actively remember a certain past and share a common set of meanings of that past. The social memory is what comes before and after the collective memory. Memorials are a typical example of social memory. In this perspective, a memorial comes “before” the individual and collective memories because it can provoke and activate them. However, a memorial also comes “after” the individual and collective memories, insofar as it continues to exist when individuals and groups have forgotten its meaning.

In memory studies, the Halbwachsian definition of memory has become central, and it has inspired subsequent studies on this topic. Most of the literature dealing with social memories attempts to address the question of the socially constructed nature of the past by examining the social processes that affect and shape a certain representation of the past. Besides, memory studies consider the implications of the social nature of memory as a strategy for understanding how contrasting versions of a certain event, sustained by different social groups, compete within the public arena. A memorial, in this perspective, is the result of that competition.

How does the act of fixing the past into a memorial take place? Not all memories circulate in the public discourse in the same way: some of them are more successful than others in taking shape and therefore are more easily inscribed in public discourse. There is a competition among the memories of different events in the public discourse. Indeed, there are no memorials to commemorate most past events. That a specific event or group of people is selected for commemoration through a memorial does not depend on the gravity of the event, which is not self-evident.

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