UC Berkeley

Places

Title
On Memory, Trauma, Public Space, Monuments, and Memorials

Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4g8812kv

Journal
Places, 21(1)

ISSN
0731-0455

Author
Bonder, Julian

Publication Date
2009-05-19

Peer reviewed

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University of California
On Memory, Trauma, Public Space,
Monuments, and Memorials
Julian Bonder

Society is the miracle of moving out of oneself. Cultures of Memory

—Emmanuel Levinas1 Since the 1980s, Western societies have developed a
fascination with memory. In its many forms, memory
As events and circumstances unveil in the present, has become a marker of global culture: in historiography,
a memorial’s destiny is to recall the past and provide psychoanalysis, visual and performing arts, and media—
conditions for new responses in the future. As our psycho- and particularly in urban studies, public art, landscape
political and ethical companions, memorials should help design, and architecture. The pursuit of memory is
us consider trauma and rethink and reactualize the past. evident in the way real and mythic pasts are re-presented,
They should encourage critical consciousness, committed remembered, or forgotten, marking contemporary poli-
memory-work, and the possibility of engaging with the tics and global culture.
world through transformative practices. Perhaps, as the literary critic Andreas Huyssen has
The word “memorial” corresponds to “commem- suggested, “the obsessive pursuit of memory may be an
oration”—“something that serves to preserve memory or indication that our thinking and living temporality are
knowledge of an individual or event”; but it also corresponds undergoing a significant shift, as modernity [has] brought
to “memento”—“something that serves to warn or remind about a real compression of time and space yet also
with regard to conduct or future events.” Is it possible to expanded horizons of time and space beyond the local.”2
conceive of memorials that focus on that warning as the key In a not so distant past, the discourse of history guar-
element of concern connecting the past and the future? Can anteed the relative stability of past events. Built space
we build memorials that, while addressing events and honor- (museums, monuments, palaces, etc.) represented material
ing victims and survivors, contribute to acts of remembrance, traces of this historical past, and history was the back-
demand proactive engagement, and envision a better world? ground of modernity. But, according to Huyssen: “today

62 Bonder / On Memory, Trauma, Public Space, Monuments, and Memorials

 Recovering

we think of the past as memory without borders rather Tomb and Monument
than national history within borders; today memory is When we find a mound in the woods, six feet by three feet,
understood as a mode of re-presentation and as belonging raised to a pyramidal form by means of a spade, we become
to the present.” 3 serious and something in us says, someone was buried
An important aspect of this culture of memory is the here…That’s architecture.
way the struggle for justice and human rights and the —Adolf Loos5
remembrance of traumatic events—with the Holocaust as
a paradigmatic example—have been coupled, as nations The Viennese architect Adolf Loos claimed, at the
seek to create democratic societies in the wake of mass beginning of the twentieth century, that only a small part
exterminations, apartheids, segregation, military dictator- of architecture belongs to art—the sepulcher and the
ships, and totalitarianism. 4 monument. What Loos meant, according to Massimo
The construction of memorials and museums and the Cacciari, was that art takes place in the idea of the sep-
ever-increasing growth of memorial acts across the globe ulcher and monument, the idea of a place of exception
is significant in their sheer number, as well as the sig- that life has led up to, but that transcends or reopens life’s
nificance they hold for affected communities. Examples function.6 More important to Loos was the ethical func-
include the creation of official and community-based tion: that a confrontation with death prevents us from
memorials and museums, the emergence of spontaneous going on with the usual business of life, that it carries us
memorials in places of recent tragedy, pilgrimages to sites to another place, a place, usually submerged, within the
of memory, and other commemorative practices. self. What matters is not who lies buried there, but that a
Though the culture of memory has spread around the human being lies buried there.
globe and the political uses of memory are varied, at its The art historian Alois Riegl has observed, “A monu-
core the use and abuse of memory remain tied to official ment in its oldest and most original sense is a human
histories of specific communities, nations, and states. Yet,
while residues of mythical meta-narratives, histories of
victors, and self-aggrandizing monuments, which served Above and opposite: The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark
in the nineteenth century to legitimize nation-states, may University, Worcester, MA: Julian Bonder, architect. On a pivotal site between the
still be present, the cultures to which they speak have university’s main campus and the historic Woodland Street Neighborhood, the project
become infiltrated by repressed local or group memories; combined extensive renovation of an 1899 Colonial Revival residence and construction
they have been subverted by forgotten micro-histories, by of a new library/reading room and memorial garden. The project did not seek to
the appearance of vanquished others, by those who bear represent the Holocaust, but to make room for echoes of the past in an environment
witness to personal and historic traumas, and by the trans- of humane reflection, study, and dialogue. Through architecture, it presents a mode
formation of official monuments into monuments other. of being in sharp contrast with the story at its core. Photos by Tom Lingner.

Places 21.1 63
creation, erected for the specific purpose of keeping significance lies in the public dimension and the “dialogic
single human deeds or events…alive in the mind of future character of memorial space,” as Holocaust scholar James
generations.” 7 Instead of a form, a shape, or an image, Young has aptly noted—the space between the stories told,
monumentality may well be a quality: the quality that or the events remembered, and the act of remembrance
some places or objects have to make us recall, evoke, (memory-work) they help frame.
think, and perceive something beyond themselves. As with Loos, it could be argued that memorial spaces that
a place of memory-work and common remembrance, a deal with public trauma may present a difficult yet inter-
monument or memorial is produced to be historically esting challenge, for they are places of exception, which
referential.8 Yet, as embodiments of art in the public life, or the destruction of life, has led up to. These places
realm, their value is not just derived from the artwork, but of exception/memorials can also function as mourn-
from their ability to direct attention to larger issues. Their ing sites, as when the traces of catastrophe are present,
or when tombstones are absent. Time is the matter. A
monument’s ethical function arises from its capacity for
Above: Hoboken, New Jersey, September 11 Memorial: Wodiczko + Bonder. One establishing dialogues with, and presenting questions
of four finalists in the competition for the Memorial at Pier A Park on the Hudson about, the past (and the future).
River, the design proposed alterations to the pier’s southern edge, which was directly These places of exception often become surrogate
exposed to the trauma of the Trade Center towers’ collapse. This edge would be environments upon which political, ethical, and artistic
remade to bear and reveal traces of this memory, establishing a relation, across the concerns are projected (and fought over). In addition, the
water, between the site and Lower Manhattan, and emphasizing the flow of attention, ways artists and architects frame their positions vis-à-vis
on that day and every day—and of memory and healing. A key element was a path, “monuments” and “monumentality,” the memories and
linking spaces for commemoration, contemplation, awareness, and silence. audiences they encounter, and the actual sites of memory

64 Bonder / On Memory, Trauma, Public Space, Monuments, and Memorials

 Recovering

encompass specific approaches to design and public illuminated with generational piety, intellectual honesty,
space.9 To work on these sites of memory raises issues and ethical respect.
and questions that are not merely architectural but also After an enormous eruption of art, museums, and
moral, ethical, and philosophical. Among them are the memorials based on both figural and abstract representa-
way history, memory, and trauma will be “appropriated,” tions of death, despair, destruction, pain, and horror, new
“re-presented,” and “inhabited.” attitudes may now be possible. Wary of the expectation
that meaning can be generated instantaneously, these will
Roles/Attitudes/Positions acknowledge the limitations of our practices and the impos-
How do we convey the critical significance of design sibility of representing traumatic experiences. And while
in conceiving and creating democratic public spaces and recognizing our inability to propose meaningful answers,
democratic memorial spaces? How can we elaborate on they may sustain the dilemmas of representation, the neces-
the ethical implications of Hannah Arendt’s description sity for more questions, and a resistance to closure. Such
of the public sphere as “the space of appearance”? How do projects require a persistent attempt to work within (and to
we position ourselves as architects, artists, teachers, and transform) the public sphere; they involve establishing clear
students when working on such projects? critical-ethical frameworks in which to position ourselves
The architectural historian Alberto Pérez-Gómez has as engaged witnesses; and they demand precise, dialogic,
suggested that the architect’s historic role has been to cre- and committed attitudes toward design, toward techniques
ate a theater for memory capable of embodying truths that and materials, toward sites of memory, history, and the
make it possible to affirm life and contemplate a better voices of others. As Levinas has suggested, those others,
future.10 Our work often lies in unveiling—uncovering who are not an object of comprehension but an enigma,
as well as anchoring—histories and memories. It is in need to be present in our democratic public spaces.12
the face of catastrophes, historic traumas, and human Philosophers like Giorgio Agamben have theorized
injustices that the architect’s and the artist’s roles become the position of the witness as the basis of ethico-political
increasingly complex, problematic—and necessary. relations insofar as the witness answers to the suffering
Yet we need to be wary of instant metaphors and arti- of others without usurping their place.13 Witnessing is a
ficial meanings, because often (and especially in the wake way of seeing and listening that requires an acceptance
of catastrophe) a redemptive aesthetic emerges in affected of vulnerability. It requires a renunciation of the will to
communities alongside public acts of commemoration mastery, because, as the trauma theorist Cathy Caruth has
aimed at creating regenerative spaces. The risk is that this argued, to bear witness to suffering is to bear witness to
kind of aesthetic asks us to consider art as a correction of incomprehensibility.14 Since by definition the event that
life, that art may repair inherently damaged or valueless caused psychic trauma—a wound inflicted on the mind—
experience. As Leo Bersani has written, “The catastrophes was so overwhelming that it could not be fully known or
of history [appear to] matter much less if they are some- experienced at the time, the victim suffers from incompre-
how compensated for in art.” 11 hension. For the witness to claim to know the experience
Neither art nor architecture can compensate for public is to betray the victim. This poses a problem for repre-
trauma or mass murder. What artistic and architectural sentations that want to respond to the suffering of others.
practices can do is establish a dialogical relation with those Traumatic suffering creates a need for a new kind of
events and help frame the process toward understanding. witnessing—what Caruth called the witnessing of impos-
Hence, it seems important to conceive of these projects sibility, the impossibility of comprehending the trauma.15
as roadmaps, as spatial topographies, condensing voices, These views raise important questions for design.
opening spaces for study, re-presentation, and dialogue How can we make room for the voices of those others to
with a measure of spatial clarity and architectural depth. “appear” in public without attempting to speak for them?
To do so, it is crucial to inhabit the uninhabitable distance What about those who can speak—those who can bear
between ourselves and those events. These projects need witness, and those who cannot—or those who don’t have
to be understood as questions—which put us in question, the possibility to appear, or who we painfully know will
in the sense offered by the French philosopher Emmanuel not re-appear? How can we welcome those others who
Levinas—while offering the prospect that the chronologi- address us from the deep wells of history and from the
cal limbo, the no-man’s land, the space between the tomb present memories of our democratic societies?16
of memory and the womb of history, may be traversed and Such questions call for a conscious and humble

Places 21.1 65
 Pont Anne-de-Bretagne Entrance to passage Commemorative ground Passage (center of plan) Main entrance stair
information area below Glass emerging to surface

Mémorial à l'abolition de l’esclavage (Memorial to the abolitionist movement—by Victor Schoelcher, Toussaint
Abolition of Slavery), Nantes, France L’Ouverture, and the Abbé Grégoire, among others—
Located along the Loire riverfront, this project by will be inscribed along its length, alternating with areas
the author and Krzysztof Wodiczko will constitute a of plate that will be sandblasted, mirrored, and altered
memory of slavery and the slave trade for new genera- with other processes. The passage will be accessed at both
tions who may have difficulty fathoming their historical ends: on the west through a narrow stair, and on the east
reality. As a working memorial, it will provide space for through a monumental opening where the text of the 1848
remembering slavery and the slave trade as a crime against Act of Abolition will be inscribed.
humanity, commemorating all forms of resistance to The magnitude of the slave trade and the memory of
slavery, celebrating the historic act of abolition, and evok- slave-ship dockings will be further commemorated above
ing present-day struggles against new forms of slavery. ground. Between Pont Anne de Bretagne and Passarelle
Commissioned after an invited competition by the City of Victor Schoelcher plaques will be set into excavated por-
Nantes and its mayor, Jean-Marc Ayrault, it will transform tions of the Quai, listing the names of the 3,829 French
elements of the existing Quai de la Fosse, where French slave-ship expeditions (of which 1,745—nearly half—sailed
slave ships once docked. Through its spatial and symbolic from Nantes). The plaques will note the dates of their
link to the Palais de Justice, it will emphasize Nantes’ departures and the numbers of captives they took (along
commitment to human rights. with the number lost in transport), as recorded in the
Visitors to the memorial will descend to a long archives of the city. The memorial will include an infor-
underground passage between the nineteenth-century mation area where visitors may orient themselves to its
embankment and the twentieth-century concrete struc- elements, including a concise presentation of slavery, the
tures that replaced it. These found and transformed slave trade, and its abolition. Along the passage, a space
spaces, which suggest the confinement of maritime acting like a “situation room” will document present-day
transport and provide an uncanny proximity to the struggles against slavery and the slave trade — a feature
water, will convey the emotional force of housing and reinforced by a responsively programmed system of
transporting slaves. Like a great spade, a slanted glass illumination over the Loire. Beyond these instructive and
plate, representing the rupture of abolition, will slice symbolic aspects, the memorial will also provide space for
down into this space, uncovering and exposing its testimony and for special meetings during the biannual
volumes and shapes and bringing out the hull-like foun- Nantes human rights forum.
dations of the river embankment. Selected texts of the

66 Bonder / On Memory, Trauma, Public Space, Monuments, and Memorials

 Recovering

Maison de la Mer (exhibitions)

Commemorative ground

approach, which I characterize as “ethical deferral.” This

approach involves inhabiting distance as one’s place for
action—the distance between act and remembrance, Passerelle Victor-Schoelcher
recollected worlds and worlds to be transformed. It entails
asserting presence and authorship through a dynamic
interaction between conceptual and material worlds
within (and without) the work, with the goal of self- Working Memorials—Memory-Works
effacement. It means attempting to frame and illuminate Memorial, memento, monument, like “monitor,” or a
presences through materials beyond materiality, through guide, suggest not only commemoration, but also to be
language beyond representation, through art beyond art, aware, to mind and remind, to warn, advise, and call for
through space beyond space. action. We think of these as “working memorials” that
This is the attitude I have tried to bring to my memo- invite collective engagement. They are not projects for
rial projects, and to collaborative work with the artist and silent and symbolic sites of memory but agents for active
MIT visual-arts professor Krzysztof Wodiczko. Images dialogue. Their premise is that a memorial that truly
of several of these projects accompany this article. The speaks to traumatic memories—not only of the past, but of
approach involves understanding art, architecture, and today—should come to exist through a process of engage-
landscape as nonrepresentational mediums—yet medi- ment with the communities who share a vital interest in it.
ums capable of shedding light on a limited set of truths While addressing a plurality of publics and generations,
in a space between the questions, the publics, and the memorials should become site-specific vessels for thought,
instruments of our practices.17 It involves contributing
to the construction of a democratic and agonistic society,
as authors, designers, architects, and sentient subjects, Above: Plan of the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery, Nantes, France:
through an ethics of deference to the “other”—that is, Wodiczko + Bonder. The site is across from the Palace of Justice designed by
“moving out of ourselves,” following Levinas—when pro- Jean Nouvel. Construction is scheduled to begin by the end of 2009, with a targeted
posing transformative actions in the public sphere. completion in 2011.

Places 21.1 67
68 Bonder / On Memory, Trauma, Public Space, Monuments, and Memorials
 Recovering

for transformative working-through, for healing, and for

pedagogic discourses. They should articulate “response-
ability” vis-à-vis the past and the future. Even when built
without such a conscious intention, they should be per-
ceived as having this monitory and critical function.
Yet most memorials are inactive and incapacitated. To
quote Krzysztof Wodiczko: “Monuments and memorials,
in their speechlessness and stillness, look strangely human,
while traumatized humans, in their motionlessness and
silence, may appear strangely monumental. Speechless
survivors living in their shadows face the blank facades and
blind eyes of our public buildings and memorials, those
speechless witnesses to present-day injustices.” 18

Notes
1, Emmanuel Levinas, “Ethics and Spirit,” in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism,
trans. Seán Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 9. 12. Levinas, “Ethics and Spirit.”
2. Andreas Huyssen, “Introduction,” in Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics 13. See Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (New
of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 4. York: Zone Books, 1999).
3. Huyssen suggests that national memory debates are always shot through with 14. Cathy Caruth, “Recapturing the Past: Introduction,” in Trauma: Explorations in
the effects of global media and their focus on themes such as genocide and ethnic Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
cleansing, migration and minority rights, victimization and accountability. However 15. Ibid., p. 10.
different and site-specific these causes may be, this does suggest that globalization 16. As an enigma of a face that resists possession and cannot be fully known. See
and the strong reassessment of the respective national, regional, or local past will Colin Davis, Levinas: An Introduction (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
have to be thought together. Huyssen, “Introduction,” in Present Pasts, p. 4. Press, 1996), p. 83.
4. See Theodor Adorno’s 1963 speech, “What Does Coming to Terms with the Past 17. Significant examples include Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial and George
Mean?” Translated and reprinted in Geoffrey Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Henri Pingusson’s Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation in Paris. We can
Political Perspective (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). also mention our attempts to contribute to this discussion via our proposal for the
5. Adolf Loos, “Architecture,” in Speaking into the Void: Collected Essays (Cambridge, Hoboken September 11 Memorial, in which the ground responds to events in the
MA: MIT Press, 1993). world that bear the stamp of terror; for the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in
6. Massimo Cacciari, Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern Nantes, France, in which the site becomes radically transformed and includes spaces
Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), chapter 19, pp. 195–98. which serve to discuss and debate present-day slavery; and in my design work on
7. Alois Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Origin,” Kurt Holocaust memorials, which attempt to investigate these questions by constructing
Foster and Diane Ghirardo, trans., in Oppositions, 25; quoted in Tony Vidler, The responsive sites of memory.
Architectural Uncanny (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 177. 18. From conversations with Krzysztof Wodiczko during our work for the Hoboken
8. Namely, their material presence is meant to turn invisible, transparent, bridging September 11 Memorial, the Memorial for the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes,
the individual memory-work and the events or people they recall. James Young, France, and Babi Yar Park in Denver, Colorado.
The Texture of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 12.
9. Maya Lin called her Vietnam Memorial an “antimonument”; James Young, when
describing the practices of Horst Hohiesel and Jochen Gerz, presents their work
as “countermonuments”; Krzysztof Wodiczko talks about “fearless memorials,”
operations that contribute to healing through “fearless speech-acts” in the public Above: Present condition of the Quai de la Fosse showing the space between the
sphere. I would like to think of these memorial projects as site-specific dialogues on nineteenth-century embankment and the twentieth-century concrete structure.
memory: “ethical-monuments.” This found space will be transformed to contain the below-round portions of the
10. See the essay by Alberto Pérez-Gómez in Richard Henriquez, Memory Theatre, memorial. Photo by Arcadis.
edited by Howard Shubert (Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1993; Opposite: Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery, Nantes, France: Wodiczko +
distributed by MIT Press). Bonder. Top: below-ground plan. Middle left: rendered night view from Pont Anne
11. See Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Booking Passage: Exile and Homecoming in the Jewish de Bretagne. Middle right: rendered view at main entry. Bottom: rendered view
Modern Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) p. 144. along the below-ground gallery.

Places 21.1 69