Memorialising May 4, 1970 at Kent State University: Reflections on Collective Memory, Public Art and Religious Criticism

Abstract

This essay explores the memorialising of the famous events of 4 May 1970, in which troops of the Ohio National Guard fired on demonstrators, killing four people and injuring nine. Despite the fact that the memorialisation process began almost immediately, in photographs, in popular song, in sculpture, in commemorative plaques and events, both the memory and the meaning of the events have been bitterly contested. Through the 1970s, and into the 1980s and beyond, individuals and groups called for a proper and official memorial to be made, while at the same time others criticised any effort to memorialise the events at all. Using Kent as a case study, and comparing it with the more recent case of the memorialisation of the Twin Towers attack on 9 September 2001, this argument considers the problems of commemoration, the limits of collective memory and the place of religious art—and thus religious meaning and religious criticism—in relation to public art and collective memory. In the end it suggests that, given the controversies surrounding both memorial sites, collective or pubhc memory cannot depend on social consensus. Rather, it may rather be more fruitfully imagined, at least in American culture, as an interrogative, dialogical form of engagement, within one's self and with one's fellow citizens. On Monday 4 May 1970, at about noon on a mild Spring day, in the central common area of the campus of Kent State University (KSU), troops of the Ohio National Guard (ONG) confronted KSU students and others who were present on the campus. Some of the crowd (estimates range from a few hundred to about two thousand) on the commons that day who met the ONG troops were protesting the United States' recent expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Some were objecting more directly to Literature & Theology © The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press 2006; all rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: joumals.permissions@oxfordjoumals.org The Author 2006. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.178 on Fri, 05 Aug 2016 05:01:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms