Sites of Historical Memory: Using Re-memory to Expose Silence

Abstract

We are largely unaware of the invisible forces at work that shape both the space we inhabit and our experience of that space. Therefore, it is necessary to interrogate the physical markers that shape that experience. This thesis poses the question: what is the purpose of a site of memory? From the entry point of the Confederate monument, “Silent Sam,” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this thesis interrogates the silences inherent in sites of memory, how these silences came to be, and the memory strategies that attempt to reckon with them. The premise is that sites of memory serve to create and promote national identity through the distortion of memory. They are repositioned as sites of “historical memory” to illustrate how memory is manipulated through the production of history. The sites examined include the Relaciones Geograficas, maps commissioned in 1577 by King Phillip II of Spain to consolidate resources in New Spain and construct the place of the Americas, the Confederate monument “Silent Sam,” and two anti-monuments created in response to Confederate monuments, Unsung Founders, Bond and Free by Do-Ho Suh and Rumors of War by Kehinde Wiley. Using Michel-Rolf Trouillot’s formula of where silences enter in the production of history, this thesis examines where silences enter in the creation of these sites. The analysis is based in the theory of “re-memory,” piecing together the past and revealing silence to challenge dominant narratives. This thesis traces the coloniality of power that structures contemporary experiences of space and time, beginning with the attempted placemaking of the Relaciones Geograficas and examining how this placemaking manifests in the racialized space of Silent Sam. This examination continues with an analysis of how attempts to recover memory through the installation of anti-monuments, illustrated by Unsung Founders and Rumors of War, further distort and commodify memory. The final chapter argues how the recurrent production of knowledge around the Relaciones Geograficas and Silent Sam demonstrates the recuperative potential of “re-memory” and challenges the linear progress myth stemming from the “Discovery.”