Making Memory Space: Recollection and Reconciliation in Post ...

Lynn Meskell highlights the latent difficulty in this selective approach to constructing the past. She
presents the possibility that the ‘larger edifice of forgetting will elide the specificities of a history that
can still to a large degree be documented and told and in the process the ingrained effects of
colonialism will be naturalised and their didactic fictions will retain their residual power’. 54 She
comments that in the desire to forge a rainbow nation, founded on tolerance and openness, it is
possible to expunge an uglier and sometimes more truthful recollection of the past. In so doing South
Africa runs the risk of constructing an empty narrative, one that dismisses the specifics of its past in
favour of a generalised future. The cost of this version of the past (according to Meskell) is the
creation of a history based in fabrication, where Jan Van Riebeck becomes the original father of South
Africa, so that – ironically - indigenous constituencies celebrate their own oppression. The demonising
of one specific aspect of the past allows for the rest of the past to be reconsidered in a new light.
In addition to dominant memory, which is often expressed as collective memory, marginalised or
peripheral memories must also still exist. Often these personal accounts differ from the official
narrative or include aspects of the past that have been allowed to recede. These ‘counter-memories’
or anti-memorials subsist in private spaces and individual minds challenging the status quo. 55 Some
contemporary memory space in South Africa is attempting to include some of the qualities of the anti-
memorial, such as their fluidity and spontaneity and most significantly, their integration into daily life, to
generate a less overtly official type of civic space. The Red Location Museum in Chapter Five is a
particular example of this. However, the potency of memory lies in its shared commonality, which, by
virtue of that commonality becomes the dominant narrative. As architecture reflects a common
narrative, it becomes an embodiment of the collective recollection and in so doing assumes the status
of a sanctioned memorial.
Memory space - museums and memorials
Memorials and museums are traditionally considered distinct from one another: museums operate as
receptacles for memory whereas memorials serve as symbols of historic events. 56 Memorials are often
generated from sites of significance, which are considered to have an inherent authenticity in
themselves and form a natural marker of past events, serving as a bastion of recollection. Museums
often become sites of significance, where their role as container of memory allows for the building to
become an icon within a city, as exemplified by The Jewish Museum in Berlin or the Tjibaou Cultural
Centre in New Caledonia. Traditionally museums, particularly those seeking to reflect history, have
long attempted to relay the past in terms of a contained narrative. In many respects however,
contemporary museums are becoming a form of memorial. Architectural form, in combination with the
54 Lynn Meskell, Op cit, p.159.
55 Sueanne Ware, Anti-Memorials: Re-thinking the Landscape of Memory (PhD: RMIT University, 2005), p.2.
56 While memorial can also include many other forms of memory practice as discussed by for the purposes of this discussion it is
confined to examination of built form.
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