Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T04:51:04.713Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Upper Canal to Lower Manhattan: Memorialization and the Politics of Loss

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2012

Simon Stow
Simon Stow
Affiliation:
Department of Government, The College of William and Mary, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The New Orleans Katrina Memorial is located at the upper end of Canal Street, an inexpensive and relatively short trolley car ride from the city's tourist hub in the French Quarter. Despite its ease of access, and close proximity to the more famous cemeteries to which tourists regularly make pilgrimage, the memorial is little visited and largely unknown, even to many of the city's own residents. In this it stands in stark contrast to the National September 11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan, which drew its millionth visitor less than four months after its opening on September 12, 2011. Recent work in political theory on memory, mourning, and memorialization—as well as Ancient Greek concerns about the same—point to the ways in which the manner of remembrance, grieving, and commemoration employed by a democratic polity help to shape political outcomes. In what follows, I trace the history and design of the New York City and New Orleans memorials to suggest the ways in which they embody and perpetuate national strategies of remembrance and forgetting, in which injustices perpetrated against the polity are prioritized over injustices perpetrated within it. Drawing on John Bodnar's distinction between national and vernacular commemoration, I nevertheless conclude with a counter-intuitive suggestion: that while on a national level the public's relative ignorance of the Katrina Memorial is indeed indicative of a polity more concerned with injustices perpetrated against it than within it; on a local level the erection and subsequent forgetting of the Katrina Memorial is a manifestation of a mode of vernacular memory, mourning and commemoration with far more democratically-productive potential than its counterpart in New York City. In particular, I argue that it cultivates, and historically has cultivated, a more forward-looking, progressive, and polyphonic response to loss than the type of dominant national narratives embodied by the 9/11 Memorial. Whereas the latter continually replays the loss in ways that rob the polity of its capacity to move beyond its initial response, the former acknowledges and incorporates the loss while steeling the community for the challenges ahead.

Type
Reflections
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 687 - 700
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

9/11 Memorial. (http://www.911memorial.org), accessed February 16, 2012.Google Scholar
AP Archive. 2005. “White House Bush Interview with Diane Sawyer/GMA Bush ISO,” (September 1). (http://www.aparchive.com/Oneup.aspx?rids=54423e67d43144f9bf332b591883ed2d), accessed February 29, 2012.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arts Council of New Orleans. (http://www.artscouncilofneworleans.org/index.php), accessed April 3, 2012.Google Scholar
Baker, Al. 2012. “At 9/11 Memorial, Police Raise Fear of Suicides.” The New York Times (February 15). (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/nyregion/at-9-11-memorial-police-raise-suicide-fears.html?_r=2), accessed February 15, 2012.Google Scholar
Baker, Danny. 1992. Interview with Michael White. Smithsonian National Museum of American History, July 21–23. (http://www.smithsonianjazz.org/oral_histories/pdf/joh_DannyBarker.pdf), accessed February 12, 2012.Google Scholar
Barry, John. 1997. Rising Tide. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Bell, Derrick. 2006. “Foreword.” In After the Storm. Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina, ed. Troutt, David Dante. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Blight, David. 2001. Race and Reunion. The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bodnar, John E. 1992. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bohrer, Becky. 2007. “New Orleans Recovery Plans Calls for a Katrina Memorial on a Homeric Scale” USA Today (May 28). (http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2007-05-25-katrina-memorial_N.htm), accessed January 28, 2012.Google Scholar
Booth, William James. 2006. Communities of Memory. On Witness, Identity, and Justice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brinkley, Douglas. 2006. The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. New York: William Morrow.Google Scholar
Brothers, Thomas. 2006. Louis Armstrong's New Orleans. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Burlingame, Debra. 2005. “The Great Ground Zero Heist.” The Wall Street Journal (June 7): A14.Google Scholar
Casimire, Rodney Omar. 2012. E-mail exchange with author, February 10–15.Google Scholar
Curtis, Jack. 2011. “David Lee; Building Community.” Color Magazine. (http://www.colormagazineusa.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=53:feature&id=233:david-lee), accessed April 3, 2012.Google Scholar
Doss, Erika. 2010. Memorial Mania. Public Feeling in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. 2008. The Souls of Black Folk. Rockville, MD: Arc Manor.Google Scholar
Dyson, Michael Eric. 2006. Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Edkins, Jenny. 2003. Trauma and the Memory of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edsall, Thomas B. 2005. “Bush Suspends Pay Act in Areas Hit by Storm.” The Washington Post (September 9). (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090802037.html), accessed April 5, 2012.Google Scholar
Funeral Service Foundation. “New Orleans Katrina Memorial.” (http://www.funeralservicefoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=89&Itemid=108), accessed February 25, 2012.Google Scholar
Gilroy, Paul. 2010. Darker Than Blue: On the Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Culture. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Glaude, Eddie Jr. 2000. Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Goodstein, Laurie. 2010. “Across Nation, Mosque Projects Meet Opposition.” The New York Times (August 7). (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/us/08mosque.html?pagewanted=all), accessed February 18, 2012.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honig, Bonnie. 2009. Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
International Freedom Center. 2004. “International Freedom Center Fact Sheet”. (http://www.renewnyc.com/content/pdfs/IFC_Fact_Sheet.pdf), accessed February 16, 2012.Google Scholar
Isaac, Jeffrey C. 2003. The poverty of progressivism: The future of American democracy in a time of liberal decline. Lantham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
Ishiwata, Eric. 2011. “‘We Are Seeing People We Didn't Know Exist’ Katrina and the Neoliberal Erasure of Race.” In The Neoliberal Deluge. Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans, ed. Johnson, Cedric. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Cedric, ed. 2011a. The Neoliberal Deluge. Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Cedric 2011b. “Introduction.” In The Neoliberal Deluge. Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans, ed. Johnson, Cedric. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Cedric 2011c. “Charming Accommodations: Progressive Urbanism Meets Privatization in Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation.” In The Neoliberal Deluge. Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans, ed. Johnson, Cedric. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Steven. 2007. The Truth About Patriotism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Johnston, Steven. 2012. “Animals in War: Commemoration, Patriotism, Death.” Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katrina National Memorial Park. (http://www.katrinanationalmemorialpark.com/), accessed January 30, 2012.Google Scholar
Katrinamem.org. “National Katrina Museum.” (http://katrinamem.org/reports/view/18), accessed February 9, 2012.Google Scholar
Klein, Naomi. 2007. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Kleinfeld, N.R. 2010. “Rider Asks if Cabby is Muslim, Then Stabs Him.” The New York Times (August 25). (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/nyregion/26cabby.html), accessed February 18, 2012.Google Scholar
Klinenberg, Eric. 2003. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Krüger-Kahloula, Angelika. 1994. “On the Wrong Side of the Fence: Racial Segregation in American Cemeteries.” In History and Memory in African American Culture, eds. Fabre, Geneviève and O'Meally, Robert. New York: Oxford University Press, 130–49.Google Scholar
Linnenthal, Edward T. 2001. The Unfinished Bombing. Oklahoma City in American Memory. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loraux, Nicole. 1998. Mothers in Mourning translated by Pache, Corinne. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Loraux, Nicole. 2002. The Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens translated by Fort, Corrine Pache with Jeff. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. 2002. “Memorial Mission Statement and Memorial Program.” (http://www.renewnyc.com/Memorial/memmission.asp), accessed February 19, 2012.Google Scholar
Lowery, Joseph. 2006. “Remarks at a Peace March, Atlanta, GA, April 1, 2006.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYo1BnWfr4c), accessed February 15, 2012.Google Scholar
MacCash, Doug. 2007. “New Orleans Katrina Memorial is Almost Perfect.” Nola.com (February 14, 2007). (http://blog.nola.com/dougmaccash/2007/09/new_orleans_katrina_memorial.html), accessed April 3, 2012.Google Scholar
Maggi, Laura. 2008. “Katrina dead interred at new memorial.” The Times-Picayune (August 29). (http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/08/katrina_dead_interred_at_new_m.html), accessed February 15, 2012.Google Scholar
Magnificent Seventh's Brass Band. 1992. Authentic New Orleans Jazz Funeral. Mardi Gras Records, Inc.Google Scholar
McGinity, Jo Craven. 2011. “As 9/11 Remains are Identified, Grief is Renewed.” The New York Times (November 12). (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/nyregion/as-remains-from-9-11-are-identified-no-end-to-grieving.html?pagewanted=all), accessed February 19, 2012.Google Scholar
Morris, Benjamin. 2009. “Hurricane Katrina and the arts of remembrance.” In Moment to Monument. The Making and Unmaking of Cultural Significance, eds. Lambert, Ladina Bezzola and Ochsner, Andrea. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag.Google Scholar
Morris, Benjamin. 2011. “The forgotten storm: The Hurricane Katrina Memorial.” Presented at 12thCambridge Heritage Seminar. The Heritage of Memorials and Commemorations, McDonald Institute for Archeological Research University of Cambridge, UK, April 15–16. (http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/heritage-seminar/chs12/CHS12Booklet.pdf), accessed February 18, 2012.Google Scholar
Murphy, William. 2005. “Keeping focus on memorial; NY Representatives say Congress will act if Ground Zero project will include exhibits not related to 9/11.” Newsday (July 2). (http://www.newsday.com/news/keeping-focus-on-memorial-1.623948), accessed February 15, 2012.Google Scholar
Muskal, Michael. 2011. “Tragedy and tourism: 9/11 memorial draws its millionth visitor.” Los Angeles Times (December 30). (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/12/911-site-in-nyc-draws-one-millionth-visitor.html), accessed February 14, 2012.Google Scholar
MySpace. (http://www.myspace.com/539663212), accessed January 29, 2012.Google Scholar
New Orleans Forensic Center. (http://www.neworleanscoroner.org/katrina_memorial.html), accessed February 12, 2012.Google Scholar
New York Times. 2007. “Editorial: A Public Memorial.” (January 29). (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/opinion/29mon3.html), accessed February 15, 2012.Google Scholar
Ouroussoff, Nicolai. 2006. “The Ground Zero Memorial, Revised but Not Improved.” The New York Times (June 22). (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/arts/design/22zero.html), accessed February 15, 2012.Google Scholar
Pitkin, Hanna. 1998. The Attack of the Blob. Hannah Arendt's Concept of the Social. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pool, Heather. 2012. “The Politics of Mourning: The Triangle Fire and Political Belonging.” Polity 44(2): 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regis, Helen. 2001. “Blackness and the Politics of Memory in New Orleans.” American Ethnologist 28(4): 752–777.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shulman, George. 2008. American Prophecy: Race and Redemption in American Political Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Neil. 2006. “There's No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster.” Understanding Katrina. Perspectives from the Social Sciences. (http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/Smith/), accessed March 1, 2012.Google Scholar
Stow, Simon. 2007. “Pericles at Gettysburg and Ground Zero: Tragedy, Patriotism, and Public Mourning.” American Political Science Review 101(2): 195–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stow, Simon. 2008a. “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans? George Bush, the Jazz Funeral, and the Politics of Memory.” Theory & Event 11(1).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stow, Simon. 2008b. “Portraits 9/11/01: The New York Times and the Pornography of Grief.” In Literature After 9/11, eds. Quinn, Jeanne Follansbee and Keniston, Ann. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stow, Simon. 2010. “Agonistic Homegoing: Frederick Douglass, Joseph Lowery, and the Democratic Value of African American Public Mourning.” American Political Science Review 104(4): 681–697.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strolovitch, Dara, Warren, Dorian, and Frymer, Paul. 2006. “Katrina's Political Roots and Divisions: Race, Class, and Federalism in American Politics.” Understanding Katrina. Perspectives from the Social Sciences. (http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/FrymerStrolovitchWarren/), accessed April 5, 2012.Google Scholar
Sturken, Marita. 2002. “Memorializing Absence.” In Understanding September 11, eds. Calhoun, Craig, Price, Paul, and Timmer, Ashley. New York: W.W. Norton, 374–384.Google Scholar
Sturken, Marita. 2007. Tourists of History. Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Thucydides. 1972. The History of the Peloponnesian War translated by Warner, Rex. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Tuggle, Lindsay. 2011. “Encrypting Katrina: Traumatic Inscription and the Architecture of Amnesia.” In Visible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture 16: 65–87. (http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/Issue_16/articles/tuggle/tuggle.html), accessed February 14, 2012.Google Scholar
U.S. News & World Report. 2005. “Minority-Owned Firms Lag on Hurricane Contracts.” U.S. News & World Report (October 9). (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051017/17spotlight.htm), accessed April 4,5, 2012.Google Scholar
Van Dernoot Lipsky, Lindsay. 2010. Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring For Others. Sydney, Australia: Readhowyouwant.com.Google Scholar
WDSU. 2009. “National Katrina Museum to Open on 5th Anniversary,” (August 30). (http://www.wdsu.com/r/20637912/detail.html), accessed February 14, 2012.Google Scholar
West, Cornel. 1999. The Cornel West Reader. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Wills, Garry. 1990. Under God: Religion and American Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Woods, Clyde. 2009. “Les Misérables of New Orleans: Trap Economics and the Asset Stripping Blues, Part I.” American Quarterly 61(3): 769–796.CrossRefGoogle Scholar