Phillips, Kendall R. and G Mitchell Reyes (Eds.). Global Memoryscapes: Contesting Remembrance in a Transnational Age. Tuscalossa,.

Crandall, Heather

Phillips, Kendall R. and G Mitchell Reyes (Eds.). Global Memoryscapes: Contesting Remembrance in a Transnational Age. Tuscalossa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2011. Pp. 203. ISBN 978-0- 81735676-7 (paper) $26.00; 978-0-8173-8569-9 (e-book) $26.00.

Global Memoryscapes: Contesting Remembrance in a Transnational Age is an edited volume of case studies about public memory in India, Russia, Serbia, The Czech Republic, The United States, South Africa, Chile, and what once was the ottoman Empire. Editors Kendall R. Phillips and G. Mitchell Reyes offer this collection of cases as a complement to the 2004 book edited by Kendall R. Phillips, Framing Public Memory, wherein United States memory played the central role. Phillips and Reyes's aim is not to arrive at a rhetorical theory of global memoryscapes, "as if such a theory were even possible" (p. 3). Their goal is to interrogate the intersection of public memory and globalization. They use the following construct of globalization:

   the movement of people, ideas, technologies, and
   messages across national boundaries and the
   emergence of new, transnational social structures
   ranging from international non-governmental
   organizations to transnational religious communities
   to broad cultural movements that are not
   bound by national borders or identities. (p. 2)

Recognizing that public memory is part of movement, the editors offer memoryscape as a conceptualization that builds on Arjun Appadurai's globalization scholarship. As many who study public memory are aware, memory studies carries with it topics of forgetting, silence, nostalgia, reconciliation, as well as insight into major historical events. In the introduction Phillips and Reyes write,

   [a]ny given instance of public memory--the
   restoration of a church, the construction of a
   monument, the remembrance of a fallen
   leader--occurs within specific local/national
   parameters, but it is our contention that many of
   these instances will be more intelligible when
   rendered within a framework of global memory
   than if understood solely in relation to local and
   national forces. (p. 18)

Global Memoryscapes is part of the Rhetoric, Culture and Social Critique series edited by John Louis Lucaites. The introductory chapter contextualizes national and global public memory studies and points to the tendency in memory studies to cast memory and identity as stable categories. Together, the well-written cases provide a sense of the literature and its potentialities. Four cases (detailed below) align with the global memoryscape goals as described by the editors, and lay the groundwork for the scholar or teacher who is interested in exploring the local to global struggles inherent in global public memory practices: Haskins' case of a Russian Cathedral, Lavrence's case of the ritual of a Youth Day Parade for Serbians, Mack's case about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, and Sorensen's case about Chilean memory and new media technologies.

Ekaterina V. Haskins traces decisions and controversies about the Cathedral of Christ the Savior as a commemorative project related to national identity in postcommunist Russia. Haskins writes, "the postcommunist debate over the appropriateness of the rebuilding project offers us a glimpse of a much broader, albeit oblique, controversy about reckoning with a country's totalitarian past" (p. 48). By following the construction and demolition of the Cathedral over time and through different senses of nationalism, we see in a material sense the effects of different regimes of power on a nation's official narratives. Haskins' case also analyzes the rhetorical choices and frameworks at play and the competing narratives among the different publics.

Christine Lavrence's case, "Making up for Lost Time," accomplishes the editors' goals through a discussion of nostalgia and the ritual of a Youth Day Parade for Serbians who are struggling with memory and public collective identity in former Yugoslavia's postcommunist and postwar era. Lavrence writes, "[n]ostalgia for Titoism has in some cases supplemented and intersected with nationalist discourse. However, its growing appearance in cultural acts of memory in public spaces and commercial venues signals a shift in Serbia's relationship to its socialist past" (p. 82). Interviews with people about their memories and experience of the parade enable Lavrence to discuss the functions of nostalgia for those with direct experiences and the youth who have none. This gives rise to some generative questions about nostalgia, memory, history, and the way a people might actualize a future together.

Katherine Mack explores the influence of public memory on South Africa's attempt to craft official memory. Her focus is on Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's role in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings about apartheid. Winnie was allegedly responsible for violent actions against four boys during apartheid. In public hearings (at Winnie's insistence), she explained her actions in collective and historical terms. Mack extends her forensic rhetorical analysis with a novel about the hearings called The Cry of Winnie Mandela (2003) by Njabulo Ndebele, that opened a way for the public to play with the political possibilities through its popular culture. In Cry, Winnie could "speak differently within the imagined sphere" (p. 148). According to Mack, this functioned to support a different understanding of Winnie's actions during apartheid. "Accurate or not, Cry certainly troubles the boundaries separating the real from the imagined" (p. 149). Further, Mack incorporates Wayne Booth's ideas and states, "we are all rhetorical subjects--the product of intersubjective and sociocultural relations for which the ideology of liberal individualism fails to account" (p. 150). Her discussion clarifies the dynamics of "the web of relations connecting the political, legal, and economic components of transitional justice reforms" (p. 153), and what is at stake generally in neoliberal economic projects during times of transition. In this way, Mack's case helps render a global memoryscape. Mack's case is clear about rhetoric, culture, and social critique, and would be useful in courses about peace and conflict studies because of its emphasis on healing, restorative justice, and what is involved in truth and memory.

Chilean people suffered together under Pinochet's oppressive regime. outcomes of such a milieu include a national media system that does not "counter hegemonic historical narratives" (p. 161) and a people without the resources to produce their own, until now. New media technologies, as Kristin Sorensen's case about Chilean memory, media coverage, and human rights discourses reveals, are helping Chileans to heal, to reclaim their public memories, and to move forward. Sorensen writes:

   In our modern world, we can no longer distinguish
   between our "authentic" memories and
   those offered through our media. Whether we
   are conscious of it or not, our sense of ourselves,
   our nation, and our history are intertwined with
   the images and words offered to us through our
   media. (p. 163)

Using Steve Stern's (2004) concept of "memory knots" and Elizabeth Jelin's (2003) work on historical memory, Sorensen explores the Chilean mediated memoryscape and asks questions that would structure a globally significant discussion such as "[w]hat do these conflicting emblems of national memory suggest regarding the appropriate actions for the nation's leaders activists, and governing bodies to take in the process of addressing its traumatic recent past?" (p. 163). The case ends by showing what is possible when people have access to alternative media and the resources to widely share their own stories. Sorensen's work is contemporary, global, rhetorical in its analysis of media coverage, and solution-oriented.

The cases that do little in the final analysis to cross borders and make explicit the global connections meant to widen perspective are Turan's case about material objects, Butalia's case about visiting places of memory, Lindauer's case on the Mayrau Mining Museum in Czechoslovakia, and Cervantez's case about a Japanese internment camp. This is not to say these cases are not worthwhile; each is a useful exploration of memory and trauma.

Zeynep Turan interviewed people who experienced the trauma of being displaced during the ottoman Empire's decline, Greeks through population exchanges and Armenians through deportation. Turan's case describes the struggle each group endured as they adjusted to new communities in "host" countries and narratives about their objects. Turan shows how objects become part of personal identity, provide a link with the past, and serve as tangible generational connections. The case illuminates how each group has a different relationship with, and sense of urgency about, their cultural artifacts. oddly, none of the interviewees' material objects were connected with trauma. For example, nobody showed Turan objects directing the removal of people, or a satchel that held all worldly belongings. Materially speaking, this absence seems strange considering the scope of personal and collective ordeal.

Butalia's case is a "journey of friendship and reconciliation" (p. 28). Bir Bahadur recounts his traumatic experience of the violent tactics families resorted to during the partition of India and Pakistan. Butalia accompanies Bir 40 years later as they journey back through his memories to actual places he knew as a child prior to Partition. Readers accompany him as he stops to talk with people or to climb a remembered tree. Through these bits of memory and place, Butalia integrates her experience as a spectator. For example, "[h]ow must people have felt to see, thousands of attackers coming over these gentle, almost sleepy, slopes?" (p. 33). Butalia's case begins like a lion, recounting violent individual memories of the horrors of splitting a nation. It ends lamb-like with Bir sharing food and company with people who share his past. Therefore, it could also be useful in a peace and conflict studies course. or it could be useful in an intercultural class in the service of building empathy for others' experiences through exposure to historical events.

Margaret A. Lindauer's case in museum studies and heritage tourism offers an autobiographical and textual analysis of her visit to and experience with the Mayrau Mining Museum in Czechoslovakia. She uses the lens of the museum as a liminal space--that which simultaneously offers stable and unstable collective identity. The end of the case details the contemporary art exhibit that now accompanies the mining museum.

The global aspects of Butalia's, Turan's, and Lindauer's cases are in the historical accounts of the trauma of political and national reorganizing. They are globally implicit since the bulk of each case is local and personal. For example, Lindauer writes, "[i]magining the gradual suffocation brought on by black lung disease, I bereaved the lives lost to the mine, and I surreptitiously celebrated what I thought I was meant to mourn" (p. 103). With imagination one could connect these local instances into the global memory frameworks envisioned by the editors. In this way, these cases could be an appealing intellectual challenge or a rigorous, perhaps fruitful graduate class assignment.

Cynthia D. Cervantez's case is about the memorial of a special Japanese internment camp located in the United States of America called Tule Lake. Unlike the nine other interment camps, Tule Lake prisoners protested and resisted their internment. Cervantez details the history of Japanese internment camps, as well as Japanese American involvement with World War II. She finds the two are severed in American memory, which does nothing to advance shared, productive understandings of history. According to Cervantez, "[a]s memory tourists experience the significant sites of their society, they have rhetorical encounters with that society" (p. 120). As a memorial, Tule Lake is hard to find and selectively misleading in its account. Cervantez locates and analyzes this ineffective memorial. oddly, she does not include a photograph, further supporting the invisibility of the Tule Lake Memorial. Images are available on the Internet, however.

Beyond the various ways the cases function in light of the editors' goals for this collection, there are other, wonderful ways to use this text. In terms of rhetoric, the book does not include a culminating chapter showing how rhetoric functions in the global memoryscape framework developed in the introduction. Therefore, it would be hard to use as a main text in a course on rhetoric. The introduction, however, has a section on rhetoric and public memory and a review of rhetoric-based scholarship, and Cervantez's, Mack's, and Haskins' cases are rhetorical analyses and could be useful supplements in an undergraduate or graduate rhetoric course. Sorensen's case about Chilean memory could help frame a global discussion in an undergraduate or graduate course on media literacy or new media. Mack's case and Turan's case would be useful in intercultural communication courses because of the necessity to build empathy and better understand the experiences of other cultures. Finally, beyond the male editors who write the introduction, all of the cases are female-authored, which could be useful for scholars and teachers interested in thinking and talking about gender and research.

References

Appadurai, A. (1993). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. In B. Robbins (Ed.), The Phantom Public Sphere (p. 276). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Booth, W. (1974). Modern dogma and the rhetoric of assent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jelin, E. (2003). State repression and the labors of memory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ndebele, N. S. (2003). The cry of Winnie Mandela. Banbury: Ayebia.

Phillips, K. R. (Ed.). (2004). Framing Public Memory. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Stern, S. J. (2004). Remembering Pinochet's Chile. Durham: Duke University Press.

--Heather Crandall

Gonzaga University