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¶ … Memory: The Statue of Liberty
The 7-volume French Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past and its condensed 3-volume English translation examine French History through "collective memories" of powerful French symbols. Editor Pierre Nora sums up France's History as "neither a resurrection nor a reconstitution nor a reconstruction nor even a representation but, in the strongest possible sense, a 'rememoration" (Nora and Kritzman xxiv). In Nora's theory, History involves memory as "the overall structure of the past within the present" (Nora and Kritzman xxiv) and co-editor Kritzman asserts, "Our knowledge of the past is less a question of our empirical grip on the past than on our apprehension of the past as we represent it through the lens of the present" (Nora and Kritzman xii).
Examining famous French symbols such as the Eiffel Tower and Joan of Arc (Nora and Kritzman xii), Nora's and Kritzman's work illustrates that the "realm of memory" for a national symbol can incorporate so many cultural myths that it can encompass even the Far Left and Far Right of the political spectrum (Nora and Kritzman x). Joan of Arc, for example, provides inspiration for both the Far Left and Far Right of France because their "collective memories" of her, whatever her factual biography may...
In that respect, Nora's version of History is quite important for "nation building" because a nation's History is more a symbolic view of facts than a literal view of facts. Benedict Anderson seems to build on Nora's view, stating that a nation "is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship" (The Nationalism Project: Nationalism Studies Information Clearinghouse).
The famous documentarian, Ken Burns, apparently agrees with these theories, as his PBS documentary on The Statue of Liberty shows the statue's rough factual beginning, the gradual layering of "remembered" meanings and its current place as a potent symbol of freedom for Americans, whether politically Far Left, Moderate or Far Right (PBS Documentary). Modern Americans may become teary-eyed thinking of the Statue of Liberty but the verified Fact -- with -- a -- capital-"F" is that the sculptor could barely give it away. In his unique style, Burns showed that a sculptor named Frederic Bartholdi was inspired in 1865 by the comment of a French law professor to create a gift from the citizens of France to the citizens of…
Works Cited
Ken Burns America Collection: The Statue of Liberty. Dir. Ken Burns. PBS Documentary. 2004. DVD.
Nora, Pierre and Lawrence D. Kritzman. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Book.
The Nationalism Project: Nationalism Studies Information Clearinghouse. Benedict Anderson: The Nation as Imagined Community. 2007. Web. 4 December 2011.
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The theme of the accuracy of memory in the wake of traumatic events is one shared between virtually all of the articles in this packet of reading. It certainly was evinced within the reading for week 6-3, in which an author explores a dispute between survivors of a massacre within Palestine and the claims of Jewish soldiers present who stated that there was no such massacre. In this case --
History Of Photography: From Ancient Times Into the Present Day Photography can be traced back to ancient times. Camera obscuras were "used to form images on walls in darkened rooms...via a pinhole" and the use of shadows (Greenspun 1999). This primitive technology remained unchanged until the 18th century. Then, one day, Professor J. Schulze mixed "chalk, nitric acid, and silver in a flask," which caused him to notice the "darkening on
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). Waverley Park was designed for and reflected a demographic shift in Melbourne's population away from the inner suburbs to the south and east. Waverley Park was a symbol of, and a contributor to, the shift of the locus of power within the Victorian, later Australian, Football League from the clubs to the league, a change whose consequences are still being felt in 2000. The stadium reflected an Australian tradition of