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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611860078 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2011 |
| Series: | Rhetoric & Public Affairs |
| Pages: | 470 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Remembering the AIDS Quilt
By Charles E. Morris III
Michigan State University Press
Copyright © 2011 Michigan State UniversityAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61186-007-8
Chapter One
The AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Contemporary Culture of Public CommemorationCarole Blair and Neil Michel
* * *
The AIDS Memorial Quilt marks the lives and deaths of tens of thousands of individuals. It represents the deaths of hundreds of thousands of others it does not name explicitly. It creates spaces for moving rituals to remember the dead. AIDS Quilt displays often have been attended by events and demonstrations that advocate for those who continue to live with HIV/AIDS. It sometimes moves the otherwise uninvolved visitor to tears. The AIDS Quilt executes, in other words, multiple rhetorical feats and gives rise to a great many others—all of which are important in evaluating the legacy of this unusual commemorative monument. But so too is the place of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in the history of U.S. public commemoration.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt marks an important, tensive moment in the cultural milieu of late twentieth-century public commemorative building practices, a conjuncture of a sort, in which public commemoration harbored both the potential for a progressive political practice and the conditions for subversion of that practice. The Quilt neither created nor resolved the conjuncture, but the particularities of its rhetoric display a range of anxieties and tensions that continue to both enable and disable contemporary public commemoration.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt is addressed here as part of an emerging, late twentieth-century culture of public commemoration that began with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM). The AIDS Quilt appropriated and radicalized the VVM's potent rhetorical patois, and a number of later commemorative sites took up an apparently similar set of issues and rhetorical features but depoliticized them or, perhaps more accurately, repoliticized them, to serve more conservative interests.
The situation of public memory practices is no small matter for politics, for culture, or for rhetoric. The importance of public memory has been recognized by scholars in multiple disciplines, as well as by many in the popular press. Although memory's significance is manifold, most commentators agree about its gravity for the present moment. Public memory is often the very battleground upon which are fought issues of contemporary concern. Because of the pronounced tendency of contemporary public commemoration to take up subject matter that yields to ongoing fractiousness, or at least cultural anxiety, it is more likely that issues of the present will be deliberated by debating memory.
Moreover, with the ever decreasing interval between event and public commemoration, it becomes increasingly difficult to perceive a distance between past and present; if we attend to how rapidly, for example, moves have been made to commemorate the Oklahoma City bombing or the attacks of September 11, 2001, the past seems hardly "the foreign country" David Lowenthal has called it. The formal—and at the time highly unusual—features of the VVM and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, as well as the reception of both memorials, prefigure the issues and divides that characterize more recent attempts to commemorate significant events. The Quilt has been many things, but it certainly may be seen as a barometer of contemporary commemorative culture.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the AIDS Memorial Quilt
The AIDS Quilt has been linked to the VVM by others, most notably by Marita Sturken and by Peter S. Hawkins, and we rely to varying degrees on their observations as well as our own. We are less concerned here with the influence of the VVM than with how the AIDS Quilt appropriated and changed its rhetoric. The AIDS Memorial Quilt was an early participant in a groundswell, called by some a "mania," of public memorializing, rivaled in the United States perhaps only by the aftermath of the Civil War. It is arguable that most, if not all, of the public memorial projects undertaken since the VVM have been enabled by it. Certainly the large number of local and state Vietnam veterans memorials were. And there is little question that the VVM provoked the Korean War Veterans Memorial project, which in turn gave rise to the more recent World War II Memorial. But commemorative building projects completely unrelated in substance also were given impetus by the publicity and success that the VVM generated.
Equally important, though, was that many of the memorials following in the wake of the VVM during the final two decades of the twentieth century, and extending into the first decade of the twenty-first, took up elements of its rhetoric, appropriating and adapting it to their own ends. For example, its signature black granite became for the first time a popular primary material for memorial designers. Naming the dead in the 1980s and 1990s also was au courant, to such a degree that Abramson labels that practice as well as the use of black granite as "clichés." The naming gesture, of course, did not originate with the VVM, nor is it obvious that the VVM supplied the inspiration for the names on the AIDS Quilt. Indeed, Cleve Jones has identified his principal source as a family quilt. Whatever its source, though, the naming feature of the two memorials—and the ways that it works rhetorically with each—sparks the reading together of the two artworks. There are, however, multiple continuities besides that admittedly important one.
The VVM design probably does not seem very radical to most Americans now, but in the early 1980s it generated a bitter conflict, resolved only by the addition of Frederick Hart's synecdochic, "realistic" sculpture and a flagpole on the site. That controversy was precisely about its genre-busting character; the objections raised at the time were all about the expectations of scale, color, and representational realism that were produced by experience with other major U.S. memorials. One need only think of some memorials within the VVM's proximity, like the Lincoln, Grant, Jefferson, or U.S. Marine Corps memorials, to understand why it was seen as a departure from the norm. The VVM did not render the beaux arts–inspired or representational monument irrelevant, but it did declare both inadequate to the representation of the Vietnam conflict.
The AIDS Quilt extended that challenge to genre even further in a number of its semiotic features. If the VVM seemed horizontal beside its earlier predecessors, the Quilt intensified the horizontality, at least in its full displays in Washington, D.C., where it was laid out on the ground of the Mall and the Ellipse. If the VVM had darkened the color palette of memorials in Washington, the AIDS Quilt carnivalized it, with its individual panels screaming out every shade and hue one could imagine and in combinations perhaps never imagined. The VVM's narrative certainly was fragmented; its chronology of death begins at the apex, breaks at the end of the east wall, begins again on the west wall, and ends at the apex. The panels of the AIDS Quilt are linked together in different combinations for different displays, so if it can claim a narrative at all, it is a protean one. All of these features essentially changed the subject of classic commemorative form, rendering a major departure from genre and opening them to charges of inappropriateness or worse.
Although all of these gestures are important to the rhetorics of the two memorials, we focus our attention principally upon three other issues: the two memorials' modes of democratic representation, their blurring of the contexts of invention and reception, and their coding of the balance between public and private spheres. Those are central to how the two memorials "work" rhetorically, but they also shed light on some troubling issues that have arisen with commemorative sites that have followed them or that are currently under development.
Democratic Representation
U.S. memory studies have been fairly consistent in the claim that memory practices and representations in this country have become increasingly democratized over time. Michael Kammen is as explicit as anyone in claiming that, at least since the turn of the century, there has been a rather steady move toward democratization. He concludes that "successful monuments, historic places, and museums increasingly had to be compatible with democratic values and assumptions." John R. Gillis appears to take the trend toward democratization of memory as a given. And while John Bodnar does not accept the assumption so readily, his conclusions about the successes of vernacular resistance to official cultural memory makes his conclusions at least consistent with those of Kammen and Gillis. That memory practices, and in particular commemorative art practices in the United States, became more democratic over the course of the twentieth century is difficult to contest.
There can be little question that the VVM was a major contributor to the democratization of national public commemoration. The most prominent memorials within its immediate orbit represented singular governmental and military figures—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant. Even national memorials that honored groups, especially soldiers from various U.S. military conflicts, had settled on the synecdoche or the abstract representation, with a sculptural figure or group standing in for the larger group or an allegorical figure marking the group's ethos. The U.S. Marine Corps Memorial was an example of the former, with the soldiers raising the flag over Mt. Suribachi standing in for the Marine Corps at large. The Second Division Memorial, a few blocks east of the VVM on Constitution Avenue, rendered allegorical tribute to the soldiers of that unit with a sculptural flaming sword.
The VVM names the name of every U.S. soldier killed or missing in action from the Vietnam conflict. The names are recorded in absolutely uniform fashion; the only differences among them are the markers for KIA or MIA. There are no military ranks or units listed, not even military branches. This represents a departure from the representations of the dead in U.S. military cemeteries and on most the walls of the missing from the two World Wars. Military gravestones almost always mark rank, unit, and branch of the service, as well as major commendations. Most walls of the missing do the same. At the VVM, though, every individual is represented, and each is marked as absolutely equal in death.
The AIDS Quilt arguably democratizes its representation even further, but its mode of democratization is very different. There is no attempt to name everyone who has died of AIDS. Indeed, the NAMES Project is careful to note in its materials the relatively small percentage of AIDS deaths it marks. For example, the approximately 91,000 names on the Quilt in 2007 "represent approximately 17.5% of all U.S. AIDS deaths" and, of course, a minute percentage of worldwide AIDS-related deaths. Nor is there any uniformity of representation in the Quilt. The democratic trope of the AIDS Quilt is not personal equality but individual difference. Granted, most of the individual Quilt panels name one individual, as well as his or her birth and death dates. And almost all measure three feet by six feet, essentially the size of a coffin. But even those features vary. For example, a number of the earliest panels carry only a first name, protecting the individual's legacy or his surviving partner or family from the stigma of the disease or from being outed (fig. 1). That sentiment is made even more explicit in a panel that says: "I have decorated this banner to honor my brother. Our parents did not want his name used publicly. The omission of his name represents the fear of oppression that AIDS victims and their families feel."
Others name someone in terms of relationship—for example, Daddy or My Brother. In addition, a number of panels name more than one individual. One is dedicated to the San Francisco Gay Men's Choir, another to Federal Express employees who died AIDS-related deaths, and another to members of the wonderfully outrageous Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Apparently due to a misunderstanding, a few quilt panels were submitted that measured three by six inches rather than feet; these were attached to a standard sized panel so that they could be displayed. Some panels are double size or even larger, usually those that represent more than one death.
The individual quilts are made of very different materials, from simple cotton sheeting to leather. Some panels are relatively unadorned, spray painted with a name, for example, while others are carefully sewn or decorated with symbols or significant objects from a person's life. The NAMES Project lists some of the materials used in the Quilt:
100 year-old quilt, afghans, Barbie dolls, bubble-wrap, burlap, buttons, car keys, carpet, champagne glasses, condoms, cookies, corduroy, corsets, cowboy boots, cremation ashes, credit cards, curtains, dresses, feather boas, first-place ribbons, fishnet hose, flags, flip-flops, fur, gloves, hats, human hair, jeans, jewelry, jockstraps, lace, lamé, leather, Legos, love letters, Mardi Gras masks, merit badges, mink, motorcycle jackets, needlepoint, paintings, pearls, photographs, pins, plastic, police uniforms, quartz crystals, racing silks, records, rhinestones, sequins, shirts, silk flowers, studs, stuffed animals, suede, t-shirts, taffeta, tennis shoes, vinyl, wedding rings.
Objects from individuals' lives adorn most of the panels—a professional uniform, a favorite photograph, a beloved stuffed animal, old blue jeans, even a bowling ball. Many tell stories about the individual's professional, social, or home life.
Some individuals are remembered by multiple quilt panels. At last count, Ryan White had fifteen panels. Michel Foucault is named on at least four. Many are marked as "Anonymous," while others name very famous names, like Rock Hudson, Liberace, Robert Mapplethorpe, or Arthur Ashe. Some are poignant, others tacky, some funny, and still others caustic. The crucial point is that the many and tremendous differences of representation serve a democratizing function, as does the tight focus on the individual as an individual. As Richard D. Mohr suggests, "The moral point of the NAMES Project is the valorizing of the individual life, not necessarily because such a life issues in the honorable, but just because it is unique—the working out, even if stumblingly, of a self-conceived plan of life."
It was not just these memorials' formal features, of course, that democratized. Their subject matter played perhaps an even more important role in the commemorative explosion that would follow. Certainly no one could have predicted that there would be a memorial on the National Mall to the veterans of the most unpopular military conflict the United States had ever engaged in, much less one that the nation lost. The organizers of the effort to build the VVM were careful to designate it as a veterans memorial, decidedly not a war memorial, to distinguish the warrior from the conflict. Although that distinction has been lost on numerous commentators and even on some scholars, it was a significant one.
Even more improbable was a giant memorial to those stricken down by an epidemic, especially one that manifested first in the gay male community. Neither Vietnam veterans nor gay men, especially gay men with a communicable disease that kills, were the most likely subjects for commemoration in the 1980s. And yet, perhaps because of the ingenious formal characteristics of the VVM and the AIDS Memorial Quilt, these two memorials enjoyed nearly unprecedented cultural success. The positive reception of the VVM has been well documented. But the AIDS Quilt's popular success has been less discussed, perhaps because fewer people have made a deliberate commemorative pilgrimage to a Quilt display than to the VVM. However, it seems quite remarkable that an estimated 18 million people have seen the AIDS Quilt, especially given that most of its displays are small and fragmentary, and that all of its displays are temporary and brief. It has also been a great fund-raising success, generating millions of dollars not only to continue its display journey, but also to provide direct services to people living with AIDS.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Remembering the AIDS Quilt by Charles E. Morris III Copyright © 2011 by Michigan State University. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Prologue Cleve Jones xi
The Mourning After Charles E. Morris III xxxvii
Part 1 Emergence
The AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Contemporary Culture of Public Commemoration Carole Blair Neil Michel 3
The Politics of Loss and Its Remains in Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt Gust A. Yep 43
Part 2 Movement
Q.U.I.L.T.: A Patchwork of Reflections Kevin Michael DeLuca Christine Harold Kenneth Rufo 69
Collage/Montage as Critical Practice, Or How to "Quilt"/Read Postmodern Text(ile)s Brian L. Ott Eric Aoki Greg Dickinson 101
A Stitch in Time: Public Emotionality and the Repertoire of Citizenship Jeffrey A. Bennett 133
From San Francisco to Atlanta and Back Again: Ideologies of Mobility in the AIDS Quilt's Search for a Homeland Daniel C. Brouwer 161
Part 3 Transformation
Rhetorics of Loss and Living: Adding New Panels to the AIDS Quilt as an Act of Eulogy Bryant Keith Alexander 189
Repeated Remembrance: Commemorating the AIDS Quilt and Resuscitating the Mourned Subject Erin J. Rand 229
How to Have History in an Epidemic Kyra Pearson 261
Experiencing the Quilt Charles E. Morris III 299
Contributors 309