MA Thesis Abstract for Visual and Critical Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2012

Abstract from Contemporary Pastness: Affect, Gender, and National Memory in New York City's 9/11 Memorial Complex

The compulsion to commemorate in contemporary American culture is in overdrive, evidence of what author Erika Doss calls “memorial mania”; this commemorative compulsion is only amplified when set with the task of representing historical trauma. One such trauma, 9/11, has spawned a plethora of memorials, not the least of which is New York City’s Reflecting Absence and its surrounding structures, henceforth referred to as the “memorial complex.” But how does American public memory like Reflecting Absence contribute to trauma discourse? Looking at this memorial, this project aims to dissect the ways in which national memorials and their surrounding discourses allow for narratives of heroism, innocence, and sacrifice to inhabit and, in the case of something I will call “pathological patriotism” (which I will argue is a masculine affect), gender, the popular understanding of trauma. To what degree does the reinscription of gendered narratives of “acceptable” affects undermine our ability to be affected by sites of public memory?

In very real ways, the memory of the trauma of 9/11 surrounds us. Memorials are spaces of feeling, not to mention essential symbols of the American public imaginary of grief and mourning as much as history. I am interested in the tensions that exist between memorials as sites of history, but also as sites of complex, diffuse affect. Looking specifically at Reflecting Absence as one such site, I will then extrapolate some of the intricacies of American public memory in the larger context. How does affect connect us to history, and how can public memory facilitate or hinder that relationship? Unfortunately for loved ones of victims of the 1993 and 2001 World Trade Center attacks, the affective experience is overwrought and overdefined, suggesting an artificial, scripted experience that simultaneously produces certain affects while working to contain others. By examining the social context and history of the memorial competition, this project examines how exactly such narratives take shape in memorials, and suggests alternatives for a richer, more emotionally engaged memorial future.