PreprintArticleVersion 1This version is not peer-reviewed
Artifacts of Glory and Pain:Evolving Cultural Narratives on Confederate Symbolism and Commemoration in a New Era of Social Justice, a Personal Perspective
Version 1
: Received: 26 July 2024 / Approved: 28 July 2024 / Online: 30 July 2024 (09:23:33 CEST)
How to cite:
Jameson, J. H. Artifacts of Glory and Pain:Evolving Cultural Narratives on Confederate Symbolism and Commemoration in a New Era of Social Justice, a Personal Perspective. Preprints2024, 2024072271. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.2271.v1
Jameson, J. H. Artifacts of Glory and Pain:Evolving Cultural Narratives on Confederate Symbolism and Commemoration in a New Era of Social Justice, a Personal Perspective. Preprints 2024, 2024072271. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.2271.v1
Jameson, J. H. Artifacts of Glory and Pain:Evolving Cultural Narratives on Confederate Symbolism and Commemoration in a New Era of Social Justice, a Personal Perspective. Preprints2024, 2024072271. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.2271.v1
APA Style
Jameson, J. H. (2024). Artifacts of Glory and Pain:Evolving Cultural Narratives on Confederate Symbolism and Commemoration in a New Era of Social Justice, a Personal Perspective. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.2271.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Jameson, J. H. 2024 "Artifacts of Glory and Pain:Evolving Cultural Narratives on Confederate Symbolism and Commemoration in a New Era of Social Justice, a Personal Perspective" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.2271.v1
Abstract
The American Civil War has been commemorated with a great variety of monuments, memorials, and markers. These monuments were erected for a variety of reasons, beginning with memorialization of the fallen and later to honor aging veterans, commemoration of significant anniversaries associated with the conflict, memorialization sites of conflict, and celebration of the actions of military leaders. Sources reveal that during both the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras, many were erected as part of an organized propaganda campaign to terrorize African American communities and distort the past by promoting a ‘Lost Cause’ narrative. Through subsequent decades, to this day, complex and emotional narratives have surrounded interpretive legacies of the Civil War. Instruments of commemoration, through both physical and digital intervention approaches, can be provocative and instructive, as the country deals with a slavery legacy and the commemorated objects and spaces surrounding Confederate inheritances. Today, all of these potential factors and outcomes, with internationally relevance, are surrounded by swirls of social and political contention and controversy, including the remembering/forgetting dichotomies of cultural heritage. The modern dilemma turns on the question: In today’s new era of social justice, are these monuments primarily symbols of oppression, or can we see them, in select cases, alternatively as sites of conscience and reflection encompassing more inclusive conversations about commemoration? What we save or destroy and assign as the ultimate public value of these monuments rests with how we answer this question. In this essay, drawing from the testimony of scholars and artists, I address the conceptual landscape of approaches to the presentation and evolving participatory narratives of Confederate monuments that range from absolute expungement and removal to more restrained ideas such as in situ re-contextualization, removal to museums, and preservation-in-place.
Keywords
commemorative narratives; removal vs. preservation-place; recontextualization; new era of social justice; monuments; memory; remembering and forgetting; American Civil War, Confederate; cultural narratives
Subject
Arts and Humanities, Humanities
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
