The World Trade Center: A Memorial

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The World Trade CenterA Memorial
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Defining Terms
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Momument fr. Latin monumentum literally,
memorial. Memorial fr. French for to
remind.  The etymology of monument is not only
older, but, accordingly, more complex and varied
in contemporary application. Monument defined
anywhere from a burial vault to a written
document or record. Memorial is more limited
to nature as adjective form of memory. While
monument naturally deals with memory as well,
it does so with a greater emphasis on preserving
the memory of a specific person or event or
value. The definitions of monument make
repeated reference to the human artistic efforts
that go its creation. A carved statue, or a
memorial stone or building erected in
remembrance. While the two terms have their
definite difference, it is important to recognize
that, in dictionary definitions, both words refer
to each other with a direct reference.
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Defining Collective Memory
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Joseph Rhea. 1995. "Memory of a Nation The Race
Pride Movement and American Collective Memory."
Harvard University Thesis. The collective memory
of a nation is that set of beliefs about the past
which the nation's citizens hold in common or
publicly recognize as legitimate representations
of their past. Collective memory is important
because shared beliefs about the past provide
citizens with common landmarks or examples which
can be referred to when addressing the problems
of the present. As in other nations, collective
memory in America is structured through the
political interaction of groups seeking to
position themselves in relation to one another.
Thus, one way to demean or devalue another group
is to deny the value of its history.
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Collective Memory
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• Daniel Bell tradition becomes essential to the
  vitality of a culture, for it provides the
  continuity of memory that teaches how one's
  forebears met the same existential predicaments.
• We need to understand the past in order to make
  informed moral choices about the present, to
  connect our personal histories to a larger
  collective history.(21)
• According to Russell Jacoby, Totalitarianisms
  thrive on "social amnesia" ... because people who
  have lost the ability to "think back" have lost
  the ability to think at all. (22)
• Lipsitz, George. 1990. Time Passages Collective
  Memory and American Popular Culture. Minneapolis
  U. of Minnesota Press.

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Collective Memory
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It is not a nation's past that shapes its
mythology but a nation's mythology that
determines its past. He suggests that we think
of ourselves as a people who honor the past but
are not imprisoned by it. Diversity was one
reason why Americans were indifferent to their
history. A young, pluralistic nation is united
by its future rather than its past. Beginning in
the late 1800s, however, people seemed to hanker
for history and tradition. Statues of Lincoln
and Grant rose in every town and hamlet. Memory
has been commercialized. Stengel, Richard. 1991.
"American Myth 101." Time (Dec. 23)78-79.
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Collective Memory
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Barry Schwartz (1991) "collective memory is
essentially a reconstruction of the past that
adapts the image of ancient facts to the beliefs
and spiritual needs of the present" (p.7). To
this work, Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) added an
important dimension by bringing together accounts
of the deliberate fabrications of rituals,
emblems and monuments, and by showing how these
new symbolic and physical markings support new
mental constructions of the past. becomes an
"invention" consciously designed to deal with
present problems." establish "the importance of
the present relative to the past" (Fitzberald
1979172). Every society, whatever its
ideological climate, requires a sense of
continuity with the past, and its enduring
memories maintain this continuity.
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"images of the past commonly legitimate a present
social order. It is an implicit rule that
participants in any social order must presuppose
a shared memory. The effect is seen perhaps most
obviously when communication across generations
is impeded by different sets of memories"their
vocabularies (e.g. references of persons) have
nothing in common. Connerton, Paul. 1989. How
Societies Remember. New York and Cambridge
Cambridge University Press.
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Collective Memory According to Durkheim
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Conceptions of the past, Durkheim believed, are
cultivated by periodic commemoration rites whose
function is not to transform the past by bending
it to serve the present, but to reproduce the
past, to make it live as it once did (pp.
415,420). Shils's (1981) concept of tradition
expresses this same idea. The image of an epoch
or a historical figure, he observed, is not
conceived and elaborated anew by each generation
but is transmitted according to a "guiding
pattern" (pp. 31-32) that endows subsequent
generations with a common heritage. Stable
memories strengthen "temporal integration" by
creating links between the living and the dead
and promoting consensus over time (p. 327 see
also Schwartz 1990). This consensus is
resilient because memories create the grounds for
their own perpetuation. Memories are not
credible unless they conform to an existing
structure of assumptions about the past--an
"available past" that people accept as given and
that possesses a self-sustaining inertia
(Schudson 1989). Thus, a true community is a
"community of memory," one whose past is retained
by retelling the people who have always embodied
and exemplified its moral values (Bellah,
Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton 1985, pp.
152-55).
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In Durkheim's analysis, this regulatory mechanism
is cultural, and he labels it the "collective
conscience" or "collective consciousness."   Durkh
eim formally defines the collective conscience as
"the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to
the average citizens of the same society that
forms a determinate system which has its own
life" (196b479). Though the existence of such a
"group mind" has often been challenged, we here
consider at least the memory component of
collective conscience to include the group's
central stories, which are repeated (in modern
cultures) in song and history textbooks, and
which we are routinely reminded of in anniversary
ceremonies, holidays ... Thus Collective
memory as central component of Durkheim's
"collective consciousness"
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