Memory and the Impact of Political Transformation in Public Space

Abstract

History and memory have become highly contentious public issues in recent years, and political events place these struggles over historical interpretations in high relief.As we assembled the manuscript for this book, the World Trade Center was attacked.As a monument, the World Trade Center lent itself to markedly di√erent readings in its life and death.Some saw the towers as arrogant and vulgar representations of capitalist greed and insolence.Architectural critics derided their massiveness, blandness, and sheer ugliness.Others saw them as more benign symbols of the global city.The towers' status as part of U.S. and global public history, and of millions of people's private and collective memories, was evidenced in the moments following the attacks and reinforced in the succeeding months.From the very first, History and Memory were referenced continuously by President Bush and then-mayor Guiliani and by scores of others.Politicians and media pundits incorporated a particular rendering of U.S. (and global) history into a new national narrative rolled out to legitimate the ''war on terrorism.''These narratives invoked the Twin Towers as symbols of national unity.∞ But simultaneously we saw alternative, often oppositional, histories and memories articulated and enacted-some of them literally before our eyes.Even as the towers collapsed, thousands of ordinary New Yorkers of all colors, classes, and religions went out into the public spaces of the city-streets, subway stations, parks-to bear witness and seek solidarity but also to search for their own meanings.These spaces also became intensely social, animated by an uninterrupted flow of people coming to mourn, debate, and protest.≤ How public space was used became a matter of urgent concern as city and federal authorities, invoking national security, tried to limit access to certain public spaces in the city and restrict their uses.These tensions between what is now labeled ''homeland security'' and the ''right to the

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