The Presence of Displacement: Object Deposit at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Abstract

Abstract Visitors have left more than 400,000 objects at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial since its dedication in 1982. Memory, loss, and grief dislodge, but also re-settle here, these things in a practice that can result from three distinct kinds of separation. Objects—as do people—can suffer forced moves. The memorial, a product of excavation, opens a physical hollow that visually invites their addition. Their removal and storage by the National Park Service place them out of sight and off the market. Because the memorial space offers the stark contrast of stone and earth, the leaving of these things can mark merely the act of locating and sharing the presence of the unseen. They are the medium of exchange in a sacred, or separate, economy, one that lacks both deity and divinity. Displacement is a heuristic that permits analysis of an apparently random assemblage of people, things, and space as a system in which the purchase of presence consumes these objects.