Kirk Savage's excellent work on post Civil War memorials begins to fill this gap. Scholars of post-colonial memorials or of any non-western tradition might learn how American sculptors confronted the bodies of former slaves in their art.
Bogart brings to life the people and institutions that waged battles over public space in order to claim some portion of it for their political agenda, embodied in the form of a memorial. The approach is important for architectural historians who wish to pursue the methods of social history, an approach I elaborated in an article on so called "living memorials", those "useful" memorials like parks, highways, and community centers that began to displace the purely devotional memorials of the pre-World War II era in the United States.
Karal Ann Marling and John Wetenhall's work on the Iwo Jima Memorial has shown how public relations can hold memorial conventions above artistic conventions. But this sculpture had a great deal of help. Not only did it emerge out of a well-publicized photograph, but also a full-sized plaster cast was paraded through American cities as part of the drive to sell War Bonds. By the time the memorial was actually built, the image was already an icon. Albert Boime has approached memorials through the more general study of modern "icons" in the United States.
The Unveiling of the National Icons, which includes some of the more popular memorials to grace American consciousness, is important for treating a range of icons with Boime's characteristic sensitivity to images, and for including memorials in the synthetic context of political icons. The interest in memory has yielded a number of interesting and penetrating studies by leading scholars, many of whom shifted away from the sub-fields in which they established themselves.
The book is essential reading. It theorizes the idea of the public monument, placing it in the historical context of the Enlightenment, nationalism, artistic practices, the "heritage industry", and preservation.
What Boime did for the memorial as icon, Choay does for it as monument. Historian Daniel J. Not surprisingly, war has been the focus of much of this work, and this has occasioned "big" history, taking on sweeping themes of politics, race, cataclysm and the cultural imagination, and the nature of history itself.
Yet memorials come in different sizes. Increasingly memorials to local issues, events, and people have become common in public places, and they often arise from the work of otherwise anonymous people.
The study of local memorials and of underrepresented groups who take part in the process of memorialization is subject of the recent reconsideration of southern memorials and the role of women and women's societies in creating them. Nora's legacy for historiography, in part, is to see beyond the restrictions inherent in thinking of memorials in terms of discrete objects that arise from official attempts to consecrate or commemorate.
Ironically, he creates some of the meaning surrounding these places by including them in his register, a list of memorable "sites. Winter's Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, a study of representations of the first World War, although Nora collects only French sites of memory, while Winter attempts a comparative approach in an effort to put memorialization into cultural perspective.
In Nora's wake, many intellectual issues that are really about history are mislabeled as memory. Just replace the word memory with history in any history or art history text written in the last ten years and see if the correct word is not, in the end, history. To a seldom do scholars attend carefully to what Halbwachs called "social memory", the ways in which groups of people craft, nurture, and share common recollections.
Collective consciousness might also substitute for many of these misuses of the word memory, so much so that history now needs rescuing from memory. Strictly speaking, memory is an incompletely understood physiological and psychological phenomenon, an operation in the brain that cannot be "shared" in any literal sense - the way computers allow flawless replication.
While society sets aside places for memorials, the mind has not place as such for its memories. Time will tell whether insights from neuroscience will bear meaningfully on our understanding of cultural memory. In the cultural sense, memory is a social construct or contract, a constant negotiation between people, in part over what they decide not to forget and how to shape it for posterity.
When James Young writes of Germany's memory problem, for instance, he refers to the contests over history fought out through memorials in a nation with few sites that are not already choked with negative associations. In one example, Jochen Gerz and Esther Shaley-Gerz designed a disappearing column near Hamburg , eschewing what they consider the fascist imposition and permanence of the traditional monument.
The artists coated a twelve-meter-high pillar with lead that allowed people to write on it with a metal stylus, thus actively engaging them in the process of memory. Month by month, the column was lowered into the ground in stages, burying the writing and freeing more space, powerfully suggesting the inevitable and perhaps essential loss of memory and the willful neglect of the past, but also, the end of memory, or at least, the ineffable qualities of loss.
Directions for Future Research. One fruitful line of inquiry may be to see memorials as a form of vernacular, or, at least to see them as part of what Paul Groth and Todd W.
Bressi call "Ordinary Landscapes. The analogy to memorials is obvious. Many memorials elude attention, an issue first raised in late 19 th century France according to Michalski. They recede into oblivion, increasingly so as the object of the devotion slips out of the lived past.
This is especially the case as the subjects and genres of memorials proliferate. The ossification of artistic conventions may lead to a language of memorialization that is so common that we fail to notice their presence. Another culprit may be the predictable spaces memorials tend to inhabit. We quarantine them en masse in swathes of neglected public space, strand them in traffic circles, or send them into isolation in public parks, where 19 th century strollers attuned to the picturesque and the cult of death once roamed.
Many memorials become as common as curbs, fences, traffic lights, and commercial storefronts. In this way, memorials, which were meant to be exceptional, to stand outside of ordinary time and space, have too often become seamless parts of that space. One wonders if this neglect is not tantamount to a form of passive iconoclasm, or if it is the natural order of things: forgetting, as David Lowenthal and others assert, is an essential part of the process of mourning, and therefore, of memorialization.
Insights from cultural geography and sociology seem destined to enter this subfield, as well, particularly the work of Henri Lefebvre and Pierre Bourdieu, which challenges conventional understandings of place, shedding new light on the nature of memorial practices. His idea that "economic space" subordinates time to its own purposes opens up questions about memorialization as a concession of the state and as a form of veiled capitalism.
Readers should think of the actual concessions that currently frame spatially, economically, and politically the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. These considerations change radically outside of capitalism, but the application of Lefebvre may be no less appropriate. We might also consider cases of memorial destruction in the former Soviet Union and more recently in Iraq after the American invasion in terms of the social destruction of space.
Ginty reminds us:. A programme of national unity Masakhane or building the nation together , was created and made heavy use of symbols and symbolism in the promotion of a new brand of civic nationalism. The then ethnocentric politics had to be de-centred through the implementation of the new symbols.
These symbols had to be authentic and deeply symbolic to foster togetherness that can reconcile relationships and heal the brokenness De Gruchy ff. These new symbols had to promote justice, peace, wholeness and national authenticity. They were not designed to promote greed, corruption, violence, war, sexual exploitation, denigration of the body or history that is shameful and dehumanising.
Symbols have the potency of transporting the memory to the lofty realm of enlivening the metaphysical to corporeal senses. Symbols express an 'abstract or transcendent concept, connecting two different realms' Ito Even in African Christianity, spectacularly with African Indigenous Churches, symbols and symbolism play a significant spiritual identification.
These are the signs or a system of signs used to show information about something in history such as a building or a road.
In South Africa many buildings, institutions, roads or streets acquired the new names consonant with liberation struggle and heroes. Signs had to be mounted to these landmarks to demonstrate the new era of democracy. Signages are not just for identification but also for warning and giving direction.
Signs are critical in religious expression. Cilliers cites Peter Berger ff. These signs or signals of transcendence should, however, never be seen as evidence of the transcendence - an interpretation of this nature always remains a discernment through faith. In a collective form, statues, symbols and signages all serve as the monuments that convey the message of either national history or collectivism.
A monument is a statue, building or other structure erected to commemorate a notable person or event. It may be a structure placed over a grave in memory of the dead, or a historical site of importance or interest: A monument is an enduring and memorable example of something. It is for this reason that these icons command some indelible power to resuscitate memories. Beholding them revives the history.
Berenson , claims that it is within the human nature that when a great artwork is seen, there is a feeling of poignant thrill of transfiguring sensation. In another place, Berenson reinforces this fact that 'When the viewer looks at a tactile work, his or her life gets and extra surge of force'.
The South African society is still significantly divided along the racial lines, the rich and the poor, the economically marginalised and the benefactors, the beneficiaries and the victims of apartheid etc. The statues, symbols and signs bring history closer to the present.
For the elite members of the society, however, these symbols are deniably important:. Marks of wealth and social power, they were also signifiers of piety and honour, placed in sanctuaries and public settings like the agora, the theatre, or the gymnasium where one's honour was most displayed, acknowledged, and admired.
Bobou However, as De Gruchy alludes: 'Not all images are worthy of adoration or emulation, and some represent values that are dehumanising, degrading and destructive'. The current generation looks at them as aigre doux [sourness or bitterness] that opens the wounds of the painful historical events.
So, when the historically disadvantaged masses behold these monuments, the memory kicks out of the shell because these symbols in various forms express the painful past, and in recent cases, the imbalanced present.
These icons are indeed the instruments of torture to the memory. They open up the wounds instead of healing them, though historically, the icons, especially in the Orthodox traditions, 'are a living memorial to the Divine energy and a means of receiving healing and grace' Nicolaides If the symbols or monuments were properly interpreted from the religious perspective, they would make God real and fathomable.
Joubert is correct that:. These visual manifestations of deities served as the basic system of reference in terms of how people came to know and interpret the divine. The memory of such encounters was expressed in poems, epic stories, votive reliefs, and so on, but also by means of various symbolic expressions and actualisations of the divine in sanctuaries and rituals. It'll be ideal to understand definition of icons. It has been stated that icons are monuments or symbols that assist the memory to contemplate on one's historical or cultural origins.
Vlachos helps in understanding the icon from a religious perspective:. In common language, the word 'icon' means 'image'. However, from the time of the early Christian Church, the word 'icon' is generally used to denote images with a strong religious content, significance and use … All icons represent a religious topic and for them to be acceptable should not simply be a representation of a religious subject, but rather, an expression and representation with a religious significance.
If all the icons were of exclusively religious significance, the religious populace would agree that they are a theology in colour, representing the gospel artistically and reflecting images of holy and heroic Christians. Secular history took over iconography to falsify the true expression of divine contemplation.
Hence, the statues had become a stench in the nostrils of the socially excluded masses. This is exacerbated by ambiguity that opens the possibility whereby 'the interpreter is forced to be subjective' Mickelsen Monuments in any format command some iconic power in the mind and the conscience of those who see them. Biblical reflections on monuments. The Old Testament text starts to refer to monuments from the era of Noah, who 'built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it' Gn From there on, altars became a practice for the patriarchs when in some instances, 'serving merely as a memorial to a theophany or a miracle, and in other instances libations were poured on pillars' Heger Throughout the Bible, an altar indicates approach to God, or communion with him.
It was often the place of sacrifice, teaching that humanity can and is expected to always be in communion with him. The patriarchs in their nomadic lifestyles settled in one particular geographical setting by pitching up a tent, building an altar and digging the wells.
The important image was the altar; as it demonstrates that from the ancient times, people were always the worshippers of a deity through some form of sacrifice. Hersey affirms that 'Making the image was part of the individual worshiper's act of sacrifice'. Apart from the altar, the Old Testament presents some narratives on the ark, which was closely associated with the sanctuary, a cultic centre where YAHWEH was to be invoked.
The sanctuary, from the early days of wilderness wanderings, 'accompanies the history of the people as a special sign of the divine revelation' Hertzberg This was the turbulent times of erratic but constant wars of the Philistines against the Israelites. The two nations possessed differing perceptions about the ark. For Israel, the ark was a symbol of God's accompaniment and presence, while for the Philistines it was an idol on the same position as their god, Dagon.
In their view, the ark 'belongs as a cult emblem' Hertzberg For Israel, the ark was never perceived as 'a supernatural means of guaranteeing victory.
Yahweh is not bound to the ark; he shapes history independently of the symbol of his constant presence' Hertzberg The religio-historical outlook of these two nations was blended and intertwined with symbols or emblems. This does not differ much from the modern ideology regarding monuments. They retell national history and heritage, and they express the ingrained selfhood or national identity.
It is for this reason that these monuments are an emotive issues and bones of contention in a national discourse. The Old Testament monuments' locus is captured by Cilliers that the God they worshipped was dynamic in some way:. Indeed, God is a God that moves. God is not a monument, but movement. God, not needing time and space, moves through time and space. God moves within the realms of culture, cosmos and the dynamics of human relationships.
God is the God of the tabernacle, the tent of transit, not the gravity of granite. The two symbols of Christianity are used as reference to express the value and the place of symbols in the Christian faith. These are central to the Christian. The first was derived from the Old Testament with symbolic metaphorical reference to the New Testament. Holy Communion: The symbolic representation of Christ's unity with his people. One of the memorable symbols central to Christian faith is the Passover Lamb, articulated to the New Testament Holy Communion; designated with different names.
The biblical juncture clarifies its purpose: 'In days to come, when your son asks you, "What does this mean? Its climatic efficacy is the Lord's Supper in the New Testament. In this case, the history of the redemptive work of Christ.
The Lord's Supper is wrapped up in mysterious symbolism. In summarising Berkhof , this sacrament is a symbolical representation of the Lord's death.
It symbolises the believer's participation in the crucified Christ. It represents not only the death of Christ as the object of faith and the act of faith which unites the believer to Christ as well as the effect of this act as giving life, strength and joy to the soul. It also symbolises the union of believers with one another - the act of the Holy Spirit, 'who makes Christ present through the faith of the believer in the act of communing' Peters By virtue of participation, believers enter 'into communion with the living Lord' Ridderbos It does the same task as national monuments: constituting patriotism, linking common historical heritage and forging cohesive identity.
In a religious sphere, it is 'an attempt to present the divine communication in an understandable way' Du Rand Through participation, one acknowledges connectedness to the wider community, the church. It is declaration that one is part of the body and his or her life is interwoven to this body and is connected to the head, Jesus Christ.
The cross: The symbol of Christian identity. However, the most common symbol of Christianity is the cross. It is the universal symbol that is like a graffiti on the wall noticed by passers-by, though not taken cognisance of.
One evangelical scholar, John Stott elaborates on the cross as a central symbol of Christianity. He laboriously expands the different traditions' emblems that ended up as of sacrosanct identities of these nations The cross was viewed as a symbol of a shameful execution of a common criminal. Ward rightly affirms:. The symbol of the cross suggests that the creation of finite persons involves a definite risk for God, the risk of rejection and suffering. Through ages, it became a symbol of life accompanied with contradictory binaries.
Moltmann alludes to the fact that the Israelite understanding was that someone executed on the cross was rejected by his people, cursed by God's people and of course, excluded from God's covenant.
However, for Christians:. The cross of Christ is the symbol of the divine love, participating in the destruction into which it throws him who acts against love: This is the meaning of atonement. Tillich The cross is a revolving point whereby Christianity interprets itself. It is the seedbed of Christianity and it serves as a premise for theological discourse. The cross is an emblem with symbolic meaning in African Christianity. Amazingly, even the African Traditional Religion practitioners, when making any mark, as a sign of protection, power or promotion, they will use the mark or the sign of the cross.
The cross preaches in silence, but potently to the beholder. It occupies the central place in places of worship, therefore singling out that sanctuary or shrine as a Christian holy space of worship. The cross distinguishes Christian faith from the world religions, secular ideologies and utopias.
It is for this reason that theologia crucis [theology of the cross] is 'the key signature for all Christian theology' Moltmann Theological statements that seek to be genuinely Christian are viewed from the perspective of the cross. The significance of the symbols. People in history, past and present, always built monuments to memorialise the achievements of either themselves or others such as their heroes.
In this context, a symbol was to serve as a reminder of a significant historical event that is not just a narrative but a lesson on the goodness of God. The symbols here were to perpetually make a national history alive. Ginty impresses this fact:. Symbols also perform a bridging function, linking the past with the present. While not always historically accurate, these symbolic linkages often make some reference to a real past or 'symbolic capital'.
They serve as a reminder to successive generations of historical events and great human accomplishments. For instance, Moses commanded the Israelites to take the two quarts of manna to be kept as a museum specimen forever, so that later generations could see the bread that the Lord provided for the nation in the wilderness.
This was to be kept in a sacred place from generation to generation Ex When the Israelites crossed the River Jordan, some designated tribal leaders were commanded to 'return to the riverbed to secure stones for the memorial which would be a vivid reminder of God's work of deliverance, and an effective medium to teach the young' Campbell The stones stood 'as a tribute to God's great power' Getz This was to entrench the national history and identity.
It is for this reason that 'the busts across South Africa were not erected, merely, to fill-in empty city spaces, but to spell out identities' Dube The monuments in the Bible served as a reminder for the generations to come, the significant and historical event, and a pact of covenant between the two parties. They served as a testimony to the mighty acts of God in the life and movement of the nation. This is impressed by passages such as Joshua 4 and Exodus 13 where they served as object lessons that opened opportunities for parents to teach children of the historical mighty acts of God.
Of great interest is that the historical knowledge was not limited to the nation of Israel, but so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful … God is missional.
He is not a national deity, limited to one particular nation. In the words of De Gruchy , 'God is not the tribal deity of the warring Israelites, but the creator and redeemer of all peoples and nations'. His character is that of grace and mercy, calling on his people to appropriate rituals and rites as a means of pursuing peace, justice and compassion:.
Whether one uses the terms 'emblems', 'sacraments', or 'ordinances' is not the important thing. What is important is how one responds to the meaning that God has given to these sacred rites. These are not mechanical rituals. They are God-given expressions of grace, of what God has done, is doing, and will do in Christ. Mickelsen The statues, symbols and signages were the monuments for reviving both national and international historical events.
National and international missions as purposed by these symbols, showcases God's heart for universal human redemption. They reveal God's justice 'in an ultimate and therefore symbolic sense' Tillich It is clear that arts and culture play a significant role in forming religious conviction and formation. Monuments are connected to religious motifs. They seldom escape the lure of power.
This is expressed vividly by Cilliers that:. The monumentalisation of religion in fact often represents an act of power in itself. Monuments cannot be understood in isolation from their cultural settings; monumental thinking always correlates with culture and the endeavour to create bases for power in which political aspirations and religious symbols often overlap and even become identical.
The bottom line is that all symbols in any format are the expression of culture, including religion and history. In disintegrated or separated society, they can become a stench to be abhorred at all cost, hence subjected to defacing, removal or destruction whenever there is a political wave that calls for the change in or of status quo.
In South Africa, symbols had become bones of contention as a result of historico-cultural scaffolding of the past four centuries. They promoted separateness, enhanced colonialism and entrenched apartheid ideology.
The new symbols and signages aimed at unification of the nation to promote love, tolerance, harmony and distributive justice for reconciliation and equality. They are open to interpretations because of changing contexts.
This calls for round-table discussions of those in political seats of power to foster agreement, if they agree that monuments are to enhance or expedite the process of national reconciliation. Cilliers highlights the fact:. The current government in fact seems to have adopted a fairly low-key approach to certain former symbols of Apartheid, with new agreements recently being made between the custodians of the Voortrekker Monument and those of Freedom Park, in an effort to foster reconciliation in South Africa.
These monuments should contribute towards didactical values, that is, serving as teaching aids. This should be their primary function, which may be either a formal function whereby its purpose and use is formally prescribed or an auxiliary function when it is used for illustrative purposes Sinding-Larsen They serve as a memory for the national history and the anticipated future of the nation.
It all revolves around the legacy to be passed on to the next generation. Cilliers is spot on that:. Remembrance as such is part and parcel of being human. Monuments that call upon us to remember are, and will be, with us as long as there is history to remember.
Remembrance forms a characteristic part of all religions; religion has always had a memorial aspect. Christianity could also be called a religion of remembrance. The moment the symbols promote social exclusion, the division becomes inevitable and national unity and cohesion far-fetched. There is either a denial or some utopian ideal that after , all things are smooth and harmonious.
The fact is that the new symbols are still suffering in the hands of some supremacists and traditionalists who claim life was better in Egypt apartheid South Africa than in the wilderness democracy without water, electricity, jobs etc. Some see beds of roses without thorns or bees with capacity to sting. It is ironic, as Senokoane says, that 'The cementing of white symbols has also been hidden in the concepts of equality for all and humanity'.
At the end of the day, monuments are supposed to unify the nation rather than dividing it. In a religious sense, to align with De Gruchy , icons are supposed to be the means of grace. Like in the patriarchal era, monuments are the points of divine encounters, holy spaces that revive connection with the divine where theophany is realised. This is confirmed by Rhodes that 'Crosscultural encounters can liberate Christians from their own ethnocentrism'.
The dictum remains: 'Do this in remembrance of me'. These memorials conscientise humanity of its origins, histories and culture.
The American church specialist, Mancini correctly captures this that:. By connecting dots with the past, we bring new meaning to the present and walk into the future with a stronger sense of identity. This article advocates the value of monuments as a reminder and as teaching aid. History has always been a good teacher. It explains our present and helps us to chart the way forward. History may be full of negatives to make our present sour, memorially , but:. The past remains an obstinate aspect of the present.
We do not live within a vacuum, but within a context, the intellectual, cultural, and social contours of which have been shaped by the past. McGrath Symbols are a living history, which is the arena within which the Christologically centred dialogue between God and humanity takes place. They are theatrum gloriae Dei - a theatre of the glory of God, an arena within which the glory of God may be discerned and recognised.
The call for the removal or destruction of the monuments that do not heal but open up the wounds can to a certain degree be justified. It is a bold appeal to correct the imbalance of the past, to call to correction what was deliberately an injustice. What I am trying to drive here is better explained by Parsely that:. The culture isn't demanding that we sacrifice a pig on a holy altar.
The culture demands something even more profane - that we sacrifice the truth of the gospel on the altar of political and cultural correctness. The problem is not the monuments, but people who construct them. Their reasons are always the promotion of egoistic ideals that undermine others. Jeremy Gordin , in his biography of the current President of South Africa says: 'Don't throw your spear at the flag. Throw it at the man holding the flag, but not at the flag'.
The symbols must promote nationhood and patriotism, not division or proliferations into ethnic enclaves. The author declares that he or she has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him or her in writing this article. Allighan, G.
Berenson, B. Berger, P. Berkhof, L. Bobou, O. Campbell, D. Cilliers, J.
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