Death and Security: Memory and Mortality at the Bombsite

What does war-on-terror memorialisation do? What is its function? In the Humanities and Social Sciences research draws from Pierre Nora & Maurice Halbwachs to argue that memory, and memorialisation, is part of the political creation of identity. Memorial parks and architectures play their role in constituting the national identity from selective rememberings of war heroism and sacrifice. While much of this still holds true for contemporary post-terrorist memorialisation, this paper argues that the memorialisation has shifted in the twenty-first century. Rather than building heroic granite obelisks to reaffirm the national character, memorial architecture is (since Maya Lin's Vietnam Veteran's memorial) now defiantly abstract, non-figurative, and centralising of tragedy. The 'Reflecting Absence' design at Manhattan's World Trade Center, and Norway's troubled 'Memory Wound' memorial, are two prominent examples of post-terrorist design which render unhealable wounds upon the landscape. Why has memorialisation turned from heroism to wounds? This paper argues, following Heidegger, Edkins, and Bauman's political theories, that memorialisation also functions to sate the traumatic incursion of public death. Memorials are only built after problematic deaths, so there must be a relationship between mortality and memorialisation. The paper shows that death - especially terrorism inflicted death - is problematic for biopolitical states because it exposes their inability to control life. In the aftermath of a terrorist attack, contemporary memorialisation is used to politically remaster death by capturing it within a design - then offering that memorial to an audience, as a commodity form. Trauma and mortality are made less disruptive of biopolitical power through their insertion into memorial tourism. States 'remember' political violence, paradoxically, to forget its traumatic impact and to remake bombsites as spaces of national heritage and tourism.