Abstract
Memorials as a form of public history allow us to chart the complex interactions and negotiations between officially endorsed historical narratives, public memorials, privately sponsored memorials in public spaces and new histories. As Ludmilla Jordanova reminds us, ‘the state… lies at the heart of public history’. And this is evident in the public process of memorialisation. At one level, the state endorses certain narratives within which communities and organisations need to operate if they are to be officially part of the national story and its regional and local variants. Ultimate endorsement for memorials includes listings on heritage registers. Controls over the erection of memorials vary from official policies to process for the issue of permits for their construction in public places or their removal. The state, however, is not monolithic. Permissible pasts evolve over time given shifts in power and social and cultural change. This involves both ‘retrospective commemoration’ and ‘participatory memorialisation’. The presence and power of the past in peoples’ lives, too, means in practice that memorial landscapes will reflect, in truly democratic societies, the values, experiences and dominant concerns of its citizens.
Highlights
Its most powerful international manifestation has been the emergence and public visibility of Shoah memorials in a range of countries and the literature which has emerged to understand and explain them – materially, symbolically, politically and culturally.[2]. Those who have written on war commemoration and about particular memorials to World War I, World War II and – in Australia and the USA – Vietnam, have significantly advanced our understanding about commemoration as a cultural practice
They have developed insights into the nature and meaning of memorialisation in a range of ways previously not considered.[3]. This extensive literature has been complemented in Australia by Ken Inglis’ monumental work, Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape, which documents Australia’s war memorials from the Boer war to Vietnam but provides a context for their analysis and interpretation. These range from increasingly harsh political environments – such as the post World War I period which saw conservatives use war memorials to buttress their power – to the ‘cult of ANZAC’ in a multicultural society experiencing globalization.[4]
The focus on war has been useful and important to understanding Australia’s early embrace of the memorial to stand in for the absence of bodies after World War I, a war fought elsewhere, out of sight of most who would do the mourning for loved ones whose remains lay in battlefields or foreign graves
Summary
For example, has treated the history of the car while Simpson has produced a solid account of the work in media and cultural studies on the impact of cars and car crashes on film.[29] There has been a growth in public interest and concern with roadside memorials in recent years These have generated debate and a variety of official responses in both Australia and the United States but have received little attention to date from historians.
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