Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America

by Erika Doss

In the past few decades, thousands of new memorials to executed witches, victims of terrorism, and dead astronauts, along with those that pay tribute to civil rights, organ donors, and the end of Communism have dotted the American landscape. Equally ubiquitous, though until now less the subject of serious inquiry, are temporary memorials: spontaneous offerings of flowers and candles that materialize at sites of tragic and traumatic death. In Memorial Mania, Erika Doss argues that these memorials underscore our obsession with issues of memory and history, and the urgent desire to express—and claim—those issues in visibly public contexts.

 

Doss shows how this desire to memorialize the past disposes itself to individual anniversaries and personal grievances, to stories of tragedy and trauma, and to the social and political agendas of diverse numbers of Americans. By offering a framework for understanding these sites, Doss engages the larger issues behind our culture of commemoration. Driven by heated struggles over identity and the politics of representation, Memorial Mania is a testament to the fevered pitch of public feelings in America today.

 

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Grad School, Art History, Research

458 pages, Hardcover

First published July 30, 2010

About the author

Erika Doss is chair of the Department of American Studies program at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy in American Communities.

Reviews

[Francesca Calarco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyday, there seems to be a new memorial that pops up somewhere in the United States. Some commemorate notable figures, some mourn lost victims, some give homage to mass-movements, but all occupy physical and social space within a given community.

Erika Doss accomplishes something truly intriguing with this volume, assessing memorials thematically as they pertain to grief (e.g., mass loss), fear (e.g., terrorism), gratitude (e.g., World War II troops), shame (e.g., hate crimes, genocide, etc.), and anger (e.g., retribution). While individual memorials do need to be assessed in context, this thematic approach does get to the heart of the intentionality behind a memorial’s creation. At the end of the day, a memorial says a lot more about the people who build it, than the people they are build for.

Overall, this was a good book and I recommend it to anyone wanting to learning more about the subject matter. Perhaps a topic for future reading, but something I am eager to learn more about are memorials on the web and social media. This book was published in 2010 and does a good job of detailing different physical memorials, but if anyone has a good reference for online ones, please let me know!

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The following are some highlights from Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America:

“Apologies do not, however, entitle forgiveness. An apology is not a pardon, a reprieve, or a form of amnesty. Rather, apologies follow from acknowledgements of complicity and decisions to take responsibility, while forgiveness is the discretionary option of those who have been harmed.” (p. 290-291)

“However much the nation may now want to apologize for its shameful history of chattel slavery, slavery’s representation itself remains limited and highly contested. White supremacy, by contrast, is highly visible in America’s memorial cultures.” (p. 292)

“Redemption is not, then, a limiting form of progressive history focused on ‘healing’ history’s wounds and coming to some sort of closure, but a critically and affectively engaged narrative that acknowledges failure, defeat, and damage as it simultaneously aims to bear witness, right wrongs, and imagine a better future. Such empathic response is ongoing and never complete, and centers on critically reckoning with the past on particularly unsettling affective terms, like shame.” (p. 308-309)

“Today, however, tropes of Native American victimization, and notions of an Indian subjectivity defined in terms of pain, suffering, loss, and defeat, are perceived as insults, especially among Indians and especially when pitted against tropes of national authority and masculine influence.” (p. 342)

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was not a fan of this book on the first pass. Luckily, for me, there was something there that kept pulling me back to the text. Arguments made by the author would crowd my thoughts throughout the day, and I found myself going back to this book for several months to support other research I was conducting.

The book is well researched and solidly argued. Plus, I rather enjoy the author's semi-snarky tone. Speaking to and from the points of view of artists, philosophers, sociologists, architects, politicians, economists, writers, historians, and of course- the Public (in the 1st sense) gave the book a richness that was unexpected.

For me, anyone that can put Claes Oldenburg and Bill Clinton in the same book is pretty talented. I'd recommend this book to anyone trying to make sense of how humanity celebrates its successes and losses.

If you are interested, here's a Pinterest board I created inspired by this book and the concept of memorial making; http://pinterest.com/lynndelsol/resea...

[Marta · Rating 5 out of 5]

I needed to read two chapters from this for work, but it was so absorbing that I just read the whole thing. So good.

[Jessica Layman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is exactly up my alley, and although I initially got a library copy, I had to buy my own because I was itching for a highlighter from almost the first page.

I found so much of what the author said fascinating in considering how feelings make a difference in how we interpret memorials and monuments. It was really interesting to see this 2011 perspective and think about how she might feel differently or the same in 2024. I thought the organization was pretty well done, and the examples made me think a lot. You could tell she had a particular point of view, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as you identify it and come to your own conclusions. I enjoyed the level of snark she snuck in.

Where this book was weakest was suggesting alternatives. There are some examples of things the author obviously thought were better, but she could have just taken the plunge and used the platform of the book for a bigger call to action. I also thought the last chapter on Anger was a little weaker than the others, although I still thought the examples were really interesting.

Overall, this book will sit on my shelf chock-full of sticky notes and highlights and I know I will be thinking about it for a while!

[Jay Jolles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doss offers a unique perspective on the relationship between the United States and its monument and memorial culture (per her parlance: mania) through her focus on the affective. While many memory studies scholars have theorized about the social, cultural, political, economic, and artistic dimensions of work that advances some sort of public memory agenda in the United States, Doss hones in on the role of the affective--which, at the time of publication (2010)--was thoroughly under researched. Her insights are astute and well-taken, though I'm not sure that I'd agree with her analyses regarding temporary memorials, particularly ones that exist online. In any case, this book is eminently readable, especially for a monograph that is so theoretically inflected.

[William Shep · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well grounded examination, thoughtful, provocative, but also suffused with the liberal, academic world view.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the exploration of affect in memory, but I think Dass dove into the examples way more than she theorized.

[Warren Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Doss has an agenda in her writing-- I guess most of us do-- and she has a severe problem with tradition. Her analysis of the American monument explosion is thorough, but her writing is choppy at times. Also, she does not acknowledge simple motives like patriotism; at times, she over-analyzes the obvious. Her assessment of new motives-- guilt, anger-- behind our recent monuments bears reading, but I don't think she has done her best writing yet.

[Kim Lacey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very thorough account of American memorials. I can see myself using chapters of this book for future courses, especially the Intro and chapter 1. The way Doss lays out the book makes it accessible to begin with any of the later chapters after reading the intro/ch. 1. (These later chapters are themed by emotions: "grief" "fear" "gratitude" "shame" and "anger".) Tons of illustrations and well written.

[Nancy Midgette · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting premise about how people regard memorials. Parts of the book are very interesting, but some parts become rather ponderous. Fortunately, it is easy to skim those parts.

[Jennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

affect. so much of it.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant insight into the growing contest for memory, feeling, and power in America as displayed in our movement from monuments to memorials, which have moved the US from celebration to grievance, shame and recognition. The fragmentation of our politics and sense of shared identity is displayed in the growing number of memorials that dot the American landscape.