Art Works: Rendering the Absence Present by Bearing Witness at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

Abstract

This article concerns material art, the atmospheres they create, and the affects they engender in their audiences. It is about how the works of art at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (NMPJ) in Montgomery, Alabama, work to create an atmosphere that enrolls its visitors as empathetic witnesses to the lynchings documented throughout the memorial. The NMPJ is an affecting landscape where visitors learn of the ugly extralegal history of lethal violence against African Americans in the United States. Through a textual analysis of Web-posted Google reviews of the NMPJ, the affecting work that art performs on its viewers is revealed. The NMPJ compels its visitors to both feel and think about a brutal U.S. past and in so doing, it presences the absented victims of lynchings. The NMPJ is not only a place of remembering, but it is a place of re-membering—a reattaching of the lost dead into the narrative body of the U.S. story.

本文关注材料艺术、其氛围及其对观众的影响。研究了美国阿拉巴马州蒙哥马利市“和平与正义国家纪念馆”(NMPJ)的艺术品如何营造一种氛围, 使得游客成为馆藏私刑档案的同情见证人。NMPJ是一个感人的景观, 游客能了解美国对非裔美国人的丑陋法外致命暴力史。本文分析了谷歌NMPJ网络评论文本, 揭示了艺术对观众的影响。NMPJ促使游客感受和思考美国的残酷历史, 展现了缺席的私刑受害者。NMPJ不仅是一个回忆的地方, 也是一个重新回忆的场所, 将逝者重新植入美国叙事中。

Este artículo versa sobre el arte material, las atmósferas que se crean y los afectos que se generan en su público. Trata sobre cómo los trabajos de arte en el Museo Nacional por la Paz y la Justicia (NMPJ) de Montgomery, Alabama, bregan para crear una atmósfera que torne a sus visitantes en testigos empáticos de los linchamientos documentados en el museo. El NMPJ es un paisaje conmovedor donde los visitantes se enteran de la horrenda historia extralegal de la violencia letal desatada contra los afroamericanos en Estados Unidos. Por medio de un análisis textual de las reseñas del NMP, desplegadas por Google en la Web, se revela el efecto que el arte puede ejercer sobre los visitantes. El NMP lleva a sus visitantes tanto a sentir como a pensar sobre un pasado brutal de los EE.UU. y, al hacerlo, concita la presencia de las ausentes víctimas de los linchamientos. El NMPJ no solo es un lugar para recordar, sino un lugar de re-memorar–un lugar de reasignación de los muertos perdidos en el cuerpo de una narrativa historial de los EE.UU.

Key Words:

• affect
• art
• memorial
• memory
• race

关键词:

• 情感
• 艺术
• 纪念
• 记忆
• 种族

Palabras clave:

• afecto
• arte
• memoria
• monumento
• raza

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Perry L. Carter

PERRY L. CARTER is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geosciences Geography Program at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-1053. E-mail: [email protected]. His research currently focuses on issues at the nexus of the African American experience, memory, and affect. He also has worked in the fields of gendered journey to work, environmental racism, and literary geography.