(highlight:: Navigating the Memory Wars and Commemoration
Summary:
Memory studies and cultural trauma research aim to help communities determine how to remember events for the future.
The presence of 48,000 monuments and memorials in the country has sparked numerous debates on what to commemorate. The current era is characterized by memory wars, where monuments have become contested spaces and some are being dismantled.
Questions about how to remember, what to remember, how to grieve, and how to grieve accurately have emerged.
The absence of a centralized effort in creating a COVID memorial led Kristen Urquiza to take on the responsibility, revealing the lack of a significant government or individual initiative in this area.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
This is Marianne Hirsch, a Columbia professor who does a lot of work in memory studies and how we remember cultural trauma.
Speaker 6
Because that is where we try to figure out as a community or as a set of communities what happens and how we want to remember it, but also how we want to remember it for the future.
Speaker 2
There are more than 48,000 monuments and memorials in this country. And as we've all learned in recent years, that can very well mean 48,000 arguments about what they should and shouldn't be commemorating.
Speaker 6
Well, it's an interesting time to discuss this question because we're in the midst of memory wars in this country, right? Our monuments and memorials have become sites of contestation, and some of them are being dismantled even as we speak. How to remember.
Speaker 1
What to remember. How to grieve. How to grieve accurately. If at this point you're still struck that Kristen Urquiza, a regular person working out of her apartment in San Francisco, must wade through all these massive historic considerations. Yeah, take a number. Because as Kristen began asking around, she realized that she was it. There was no one else at the government or individual level working on a COVID memorial of the magnitude she imagined.
Speaker 3
There is no concentrated public)
- Time 0:12:13
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(highlight:: How the COVID Crisis Exposed An Utter Inability for Americans to Collectively Agree
Transcript:
Speaker 1
For every J Block, there are 80 million other J blocks. As recently as August, a third of all Americans believe the screamingly untrue claim that the COVID vaccines caused thousands of sudden deaths and otherwise healthy people.
Speaker 2
And this is where things get even more complex because if marked by COVID hopes to memorialize what the pandemic meant for us, one very central aspect of it can't be overlooked. How COVID plunged us into a total inability to agree on basic facts.
Speaker 1
Which also happens to be a problem for a memorial because a national memorial ultimately boils down to a national agreement about the meaning of an event. On the day in March that marked by COVID, hopes will become a national COVID Memorial Day. I take myself to the mall, the Westfield mall, in downtown San Francisco. I spend the day asking regular people what they think about this holiday. Which turns into just generally asking about COVID since nobody has even heard of this holiday.
Speaker 9
We have down our best to move on.
Speaker 8
So I don't believe it warrants a memorial day.
Speaker 9
I'm kind of over it, you know. I hope we can find a solution to no longer have to wear a mask because I know it's definitely affecting people's self-esteem and everything.
Speaker 10
It was prophesied in the Bible that this is going to happen because it mentions pestilences and that's what COVID was.
Speaker 1
What civilizational memory of the COVID-19 pandemic is supposed to cohere from all that?)
- Time 0:26:27
-

(highlight:: Navigating the Memory Wars and Commemoration
Summary:
Memory studies and cultural trauma research aim to help communities determine how to remember events for the future.
The presence of 48,000 monuments and memorials in the country has sparked numerous debates on what to commemorate. The current era is characterized by memory wars, where monuments have become contested spaces and some are being dismantled.
Questions about how to remember, what to remember, how to grieve, and how to grieve accurately have emerged.
The absence of a centralized effort in creating a COVID memorial led Kristen Urquiza to take on the responsibility, revealing the lack of a significant government or individual initiative in this area.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
This is Marianne Hirsch, a Columbia professor who does a lot of work in memory studies and how we remember cultural trauma.
Speaker 6
Because that is where we try to figure out as a community or as a set of communities what happens and how we want to remember it, but also how we want to remember it for the future.
Speaker 2
There are more than 48,000 monuments and memorials in this country. And as we've all learned in recent years, that can very well mean 48,000 arguments about what they should and shouldn't be commemorating.
Speaker 6
Well, it's an interesting time to discuss this question because we're in the midst of memory wars in this country, right? Our monuments and memorials have become sites of contestation, and some of them are being dismantled even as we speak. How to remember.
Speaker 1
What to remember. How to grieve. How to grieve accurately. If at this point you're still struck that Kristen Urquiza, a regular person working out of her apartment in San Francisco, must wade through all these massive historic considerations. Yeah, take a number. Because as Kristen began asking around, she realized that she was it. There was no one else at the government or individual level working on a COVID memorial of the magnitude she imagined.
Speaker 3
There is no concentrated public)
- Time 0:12:13
-

(highlight:: How the COVID Crisis Exposed An Utter Inability for Americans to Collectively Agree
Transcript:
Speaker 1
For every J Block, there are 80 million other J blocks. As recently as August, a third of all Americans believe the screamingly untrue claim that the COVID vaccines caused thousands of sudden deaths and otherwise healthy people.
Speaker 2
And this is where things get even more complex because if marked by COVID hopes to memorialize what the pandemic meant for us, one very central aspect of it can't be overlooked. How COVID plunged us into a total inability to agree on basic facts.
Speaker 1
Which also happens to be a problem for a memorial because a national memorial ultimately boils down to a national agreement about the meaning of an event. On the day in March that marked by COVID, hopes will become a national COVID Memorial Day. I take myself to the mall, the Westfield mall, in downtown San Francisco. I spend the day asking regular people what they think about this holiday. Which turns into just generally asking about COVID since nobody has even heard of this holiday.
Speaker 9
We have down our best to move on.
Speaker 8
So I don't believe it warrants a memorial day.
Speaker 9
I'm kind of over it, you know. I hope we can find a solution to no longer have to wear a mask because I know it's definitely affecting people's self-esteem and everything.
Speaker 10
It was prophesied in the Bible that this is going to happen because it mentions pestilences and that's what COVID was.
Speaker 1
What civilizational memory of the COVID-19 pandemic is supposed to cohere from all that?)
- Time 0:26:27
-