Contested Legacies of Modernist Memorialization: The May 4 Memorial

Tammy Clewell

Jump to Content

Chapter 15 Contested Legacies of Modernist Memorialization: The May 4 Memorial

in Grief, Identity, and the Arts

Autor:in:

Tammy Clewell

Tammy Clewell
Search for other papers by Tammy Clewell in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed

Art:: Kapitel

Seiten:: 233–246

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004158719_021

Über Institut einloggen

Sofortzugang erwerben (PDF-Download und unbegrenzter Online-Zugang):

42,00 €35,00 € excl. VAT

Add to Cart

Token einlösen

Abstract

Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927) participates in the creation of a new way of memorializing loss, one that refuses consolation and cutting ties with the dead. In rendering Lily Briscoe’s struggles to paint a tribute to the lost mother figure as an extended metaphor of Woolf’s own difficulties in writing the novel, To the Lighthouse grounds a practice of anti-consolatory mourning in the failure of her artist to derive recompense from the work of art. Just as Lily refuses to regard her painting as an aesthetic substitute for the lost mother, Woolf’s modernist text distances the reader from the recuperative function of literature itself. In the place of any consoling figuration, Woolf’s novel offers a detailed portrayal of the difficult process that Lily faces in the effort to memorialize Mrs. Ramsay, a process that is complicated by Mrs. Ramsay’s restrictive ideas about gender—her inability, that is, to see women beyond their role as wives and mothers. This attention to the process of memorialization generates a discourse of loss with implications for social reform in the present. This refusal of consolation has persisted in some of the most moving memorials dedicated since the early 20th century, including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982), the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (2005), and the 9/11 Memorial (2011), all of which ask us to sustain relations with the dead and embrace legacies of their lives and loss. As spatial structures, however, these memorials do not provide us with a record of the process of memorialization such as Woolf’s novel affords. Memorials—even anti-consolatory ones—do not help us remember the conflicts, disputes, difficulties, and contested visions over memorialization that went into their making, as was the case, for example, with the placement of the American flag at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the inclusion of unidentified human remains of victims of the 9/11 attacks at the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

Zitierungsangaben

Save
Cite
Inhalt per Mail versenden

Link teilen

Sie können einen Link zu dieser Seite per E-Mail senden:
Inhalt per Mail versenden
oder den Link direkt kopieren:

https://brill.edhh.ma/abstract/book/9789004158719/BP000029.xml
Der Link wurde nicht kopiert. Ihr aktueller Browser unterstützt das Kopieren über diese Schaltfläche möglicherweise nicht.

Link wurde kopiert

Reduzieren
Erweitern
Nach oben

Grief, Identity, and the Arts

A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Expressions of Grief

Reihe: Death in History, Culture, and Society, Band: 1

ISBN:: 9789004158719

Verleger:: Brill

Print-Publikationsdatum:: 15 Nov 2022

Fachgebiete

Front Matter

Part 1 Collective Religious Identities

Part 2 Personal Religious Identities

Part 3 National Identities

Part 4 Family Identities/The Inner Circle

Part 5 Social/Societal Identities

Part 6 Identities of a Genre/Artistic Identity

Back Matter

Kennzahlen

	Insgesamt	Letzte 365 Tage	In den letzten 30 Tagen
Aufrufe von Kurzbeschreibungen	1427	429	32
Gesamttextansichten	19	4	0
PDF-Downloads	5	3	0

Afrikanistik	Internationale Beziehungen	Nahost- und Islamwissenschaften
Altorientalistik und Ägyptologie	Internationales Recht	Pädagogik
Amerikanistik	Judaistik	Philosophie
Asienwissenschaften	Klassische Altertumswissenschaft	Religionswissenschaft
Bibelauslegung	Kunstgeschichte	Slawistik und Eurasienkunde
Biologie	Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften	Sozialwissenschaften
Biowissenschaften	Medienwissenschaft	Sprachen und Linguistik
Buchgeschichte und Kartographie	Menschenrechte und humanitäres Völkerrecht	Theologie und Christentum
Geschichte	Musikwissenschaft

Fachgebiete

Autor:innen

Open Access

Produkt-Informationen

Über uns

Kontakt

Chapter 15 Contested Legacies of Modernist Memorialization: The May 4 Memorial

Abstract

Zitierungsangaben

Link teilen

Grief, Identity, and the Arts

A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Expressions of Grief

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Kennzahlen

Kennzahlen