Remembering Places by Donohoe Janet;

Author:Donohoe, Janet;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-05-03T04:00:00+00:00

Constructed Places or Lack of Place

We have seen that, in spite of their failure, it is not unreasonable to construct a place specifically to remember those who have died and we do so often as a matter of course. In the case of collective mourning through memorials, we realize that they are quite often not constructed at the site of death, but are constructed in public places where they serve to reinforce not only public, communal values, but to emphasize our collective loss. We are inclined to wonder whether there are other differences, however, between the monuments and memorials that are erected in the town square and its equivalent, or the places that are deliberately (or not) left unmarked. Such places as District 6 come to mind, but so do places in the deserts of Arizona where Mexican labor seekers die hungry and alone in the desert.

Why is it that Toni Morrison thinks a bench is so necessary as a reminder of those unnamed millions who died on the Middle Passage? Unlike other memorials, a bench does not identify particular persons by name. It does not even seem to invoke our discomfort since benches are meant to provide comfort as a place to sit. But Morrison’s impulse is not strange; it is the impulse to provide a place for those who are otherwise placeless. It is meant to provide a place of memory for those who would otherwise be unremembered. Like the War Memorials of the public squares, the bench memorials (for there are roughly ten of them in the United States and France) must function as interruptions of the everyday fabric of our environment. They cannot mark the actual places of death; they cannot even mark the places from whence all those Africans came. The fact that there is no place for the victims of the Middle Passage is both the cause and the effect of the lack of collective memory of the event. Having been separated from their originary place, the slaves had no foundation upon which to create their communal recollection. At the same time, the lack of support for their community on U.S. soil restricted their ability to create a place here to allow for the preservation of memory. In being separated from place they are also separated from their narrative support. Narratives that do exist are impoverished due to their lack of place, thus identity and tradition are weakened.

How much different it would be if there were a kind of Ellis Island equivalent for those who came across the Middle Passage. What kind of heritage might have been preserved there that could be transferred across generations. What Toni Morrison’s benches attempt to do is to provide a beginning place for those narratives, to give support to the community identity that can be buffered by those places. That community is dispersed, so the places too must be dispersed.

On the other hand, what does the lack of constructed place mean for District 6 which was deliberately allowed

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