Mandating the National Memory of Catastrophe

Abstract

This chapter explores the mandates of memory as represented in a handful of national memorial institutions and days of remembrance. By restoring the memory of these mandates' own coming into being, it hopes to reanimate them with their own dynamic genesis in real historical time. The “memorial mandates” examined here include Israel's day of Holocaust remembrance and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. It concludes with a brief reflection on the attempts to mandate memory of the 9/11 attacks in New York, as found in the World Trade Center Memorial design process.