OVERVIEW
Can memorials heal
the wounds?
Ana Milošević
University of Leuven (KU Leuven),
Leuven International and European
Studies (LINES)
I
n 2014, the Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg won a competition for a memorial to the
victims of the Utøya massacre. The project, called Memory wound, aimed to cut an island
into half to symbolise the death of 77 persons killed during the 2011 Norway attacks.
But controversy beset Dahlberg’s proposal. Environmentally-friendly Norwegians opposed
changes in the natural landscape. Local residents — already traumatised by the mass
killings, stood against the project. “How we are supposed to heal the profound wounds”,
they wondered, “with such a constant reminder of the tragedy?”
Perhaps even without knowing it, the Norwegians raised a very important and somehow
forgotten question: What is the purpose of memorials? Can memorials help healing of the
wounds or do they simply keep them open?
Memorial purpose
For better or for worse, ours is the age of memory.
Over the last three decades, the term “memory” has seen an inflationary dissemination.
Some authors even warn of a memorial mania (Doss, 2010) – a sort of pathology of
our modern societies. The current upsurge in the (de)construction of memorial sites
revolves also around mass production and consumption of memory. On the one hand, we
overproduce memory using obsessively memorial language and tools. On the other, we
are terrorised by the forgetting (see Rieff, 2016), or better said the absence of memory.
Not remembering or wanting to forget is associated with amnesiatic or denial state. Our
infatuation with memory and memorials might be the real reason why we do not discuss
anymore whether and why to memorialise but rather ponder on how.
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Observing Memories
ISSUE 2