The Political Afterlife of Sites of Monumental Destruction: Reconstructing Affect in Mostar and New York

217 Pages·2017·4.22 MB·English

by  Andrea Connor

The Political Afterlife of Sites of
Monumental Destruction
What happens when a monumental thing is physically destroyed? Is its “life”
as a socially significant, presencing thing at an end? Or might the process of
destruction work to enhance its symbolic force, mediating work and presen-
cing power? In this book Andrea Connor traces the “afterlife” of two
exemplary examples of monumental destruction and their re-investment with
cultural value and symbolic significance.
In 1993, during the Bosnian war, the Mostar Bridge was completely
destroyed. Reconstructed in 2004, as an exact copy of the original, this “new
Old Bridge” has assumed an afterlife as an intentional monument to recon-
ciliation. The World Trade Center, in New York, has also been transformed
since its destruction in 2001, as a place of national mourning and remem-
brance, a symbolic void marking a singular act of terrorism. Using work on
affect and object agency Connor considers their contested reconfigurationas
sites of collective remembering and forgetting in new highly charged poli-
tical contexts. She argues for a more expansive notion of reconstruction –
encompassing not only the material and symbolic afterlife of both things but
also their affecting afterlives as they are re-assembled in the present.
Provoking a reconsideration of theway monuments and heritage sites, even
in their absence, become powerful agents of historical narrativization, this
work will be ofinterest to students and scholars in a range of fields including
international relations, cultural studies, critical heritage studies, and material
culture studies.
Andrea Connor teaches at the Universityof Technology, Sydney andworks at
the City of Sydney, Australia.
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The Political Afterlife of Sites and Monumental Destruction
Reconstructing Affect in Mostar and New York
Andrea Connor
The Political Afterlife of Sites of
Monumental Destruction
ff
Reconstructing A ect in Mostar and
New York
Andrea Connor
K ~~o~;J~n~~~up
ORKYOR LLONODONNLODNDOONN
Y
LONDONANDNEWYORK
Firstpublished2017
byRoutledge
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Names:Connor,Andrea,author.
Title:Thepoliticalafterlifeofsitesofmonumentaldestruction:
reconstructingaffectinMostarandNewYork/AndreaConnor.
Description:Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork,NY:Routledge,2017.|Series:
Interventions|Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2016056044|ISBN9781138955967(hardback)|ISBN
9781315665962(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:Collectivememory–Politicalaspects–Casestudies.|
Architectureandsociety–Casestudies.|Collectivememory–Bosniaand
Herzegovina–Mostar.|Mostar(BosniaandHerzegovina)–Buildings,
structures,etc.|Collectivememory–NewYork(State)–NewYork.|New
York(N.Y.)–Buildings,structures,etc.
Classification:LCCHM1033.C652017|DDC909–dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2016056044
ISBN:978-1-138-95596-7(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-31566-596-2(ebk)
TypesetinTimesNewRoman
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
Contents
List of figures vi
Acknowledgements vii
Preface ix
1 Affecting presence: Memory, agency and the powerof
monumental things 1
2 Urbicide and the destruction of “bridge-ness” in Mostar 23
3 Afterlife: Anchoring affect/reconstructing “bridge-ness”
in Mostar 52
4 Skyscraper dreaming: Monumentality, modernity and the
destruction of the Twin Towers 86
5 Filling the void: Embodying the uncanny space of Ground Zero 109
6 Faith in steel: The fragmented afterlife of the Twin Towers 144
Conclusion: Affecting afterlives 176
Index 187
Figures
2.1 The Mostar Bridge 23
3.1 Don’t forget 52
4.1 View from above: Manhattan skyline 86
5.1 “Remember” Ground Zero 109
6.1 World Trade Center steel: the price of freedom 144
Acknowledgements
A numberof people assisted in the completion of this book. I would like to
acknowledge first my PhD supervisor, Associate Professor Katrina
Schlunke, for her support and advice in writing this book. For her initial
interest in the topic of this book and encouragement in pursuing its
research, I also thank Professor Norie Nuemark. I would also like to
acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Patricia Hill and Associate Professor Paul
Allatson for their assistance with various chapters, advice and encourage-
ment. Discussions with Professor Paula Hamilton on the topic of memorials
and monuments also proved a valuable source of assistance. Dr. Ann Pen-
hallurik provided invaluable insights on various chapters and was also a
source of support and awonderful colleague to work alongside. I would also
like to thank Associate Professor Suzanne Gannon for close readings and
editing of chapters in this book.
ForthechaptersdealingwiththeMostarBridgeIthankSashaandSlavitsa
Vlastelika, for the many introductions made on my behalf. I would also like
toacknowledgetheassistanceofMiraBelanov,who allowedmetomeet with
and speak to many of her old colleagues in Mostar. Amir Pasic, at the
Research Centre for Islamic History and Art in Istanbul, gave generously of
histimeandhisintimateknowledgeofthereconstructionprocessinMostar.I
would also like to acknowledge Dr Darko Radovic, whose passionate interest
inthefateofculturalheritageinBosniawasaninitialinspirationfor much of
this research. I cannot name all those I spoke with in Mostar, who gave so
generously of their time, sharing their stories and insights, enriching my own
understanding of the relationship between a bridge and those who live
alongside it. I thank them.
At the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of American History, I
gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the curatorial staff who assisted this
research. I thank Marylin Zoitas, William Yeingst and David Shayt for
agreeing to be interviewed for this book. I would also like to thank the
Smithsonian’s James Gardner for his assistance in the research on Chapter 6.
I am grateful also to Martin Coward for reviews of and suggestions for
Chapters 2 and 3, and to two anonymous reviewers whose generous reading
and suggestions strengthened this manuscript. At Routledge the editorial
viii Acknowledgements
assistance of Nicola Parkin and especially Lydia de Cruz proved invaluable. I
would also like to thank Professors Jenny Edkins and Nick Vaugh Williams
for their patience and interest in this book. Finally, I would like to thank my
little family Enno, Samira and Julian for their forbearance, tolerance and
grace under pressure.
Preface
Material orientations
What happenswhen a monumental object is physically destroyed? Is its “life”
as a socially significant, presencing thing at an end? Or might the process of
physical destruction paradoxically work to enhance its symbolic force, med-
iating work and presencing power? This book examines the shifting symbolic
status, meaning and work of two monumental social objects – the Mostar
BridgeinBosniaHerzegovinaandtheWorldTradeCenterinNewYorkCity.
It considers their transformation, through the “agency of destruction”
(Saunders 2003), and their contested reconfiguration as sites of public
memory, cultural heritage and memorialization. Although their cultural and
social contexts differ, both monumental objects have assumed a privileged
place in a memory-making process, designed to mediate the recent traumatic
past – an historical rupture, felt most intensely, and symbolized most sig-
nificantly, through monumental destruction. The cultural materiality and
material culture associated with both “things” have been central to this pro-
cess, mobilized as strategic resources, with which to shape and redirect forms
of collective remembering and forgetting in relation to new highly political
contexts. Far from being forgotten or erased, through acts of cultural
destruction, I consider the ways in which both things have continued to be
imbued with meaning, memory, and a form of mediating agency, that is
affective as much as conceptual and symbolic, assuming a potent “afterlife”
in the present.
This book began its own small life some years ago when as a journalist I
was assigned to cover the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
bombing of Serbia in 1999. Then Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic,
had refused NATO demands to pull Serbian troops out of the disputed pro-
vince of Kosovo, and NATO made good its threat to bomb various parts of
Serbia in retaliation. The ensuing air campaign was carried out, with what
wasdescribed as“strategic precision”,visualizedthrough computer-generated
imagery and articulated in a detached, militarized language, drenched with
technical terminology. As thebombing intensified international news agencies
reported that people, in towns and cities across the country, had chained