The Invention of the Historic Monument by Françoise Choay (review)

REVIEWS 172 is certainly worth a lengthy glance. EDNA RUTH YAHIL, History, UCLA Françoise Choay, The Invention of the Historic Monument, trans. Lauren M. O’Connell (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2001) 247 pp. Living in Los Angeles, according to the inner rationale of this cultural history, is living in the “post-city age.” To follow Françoise Chaoy’s analysis and turn it on its head, America, which is not mentioned in this book, is the lack of Civilisation and Kultur, the absence of the enlightened visual antiquarianism, as well as the rather disquieting absence of an urban civic center and the complementary “orgy of destruction.” All are different kinds of void that testify to the epistemological absence of recollection, duration, and, finally, what Choay calls “the competency to build.” The Invention of the Historic Monument (originally published in French under the title Allégorie du Patrimoine, 1992) traces the historical process of defining and redefining the notion of the historical monument in the wider cultural sense. The monument, Choay reminds us, originates in the Latin monere, namely to recall, to warn. The monument is thus the symbol of the past. However, it is “not just any past, [but the one] that is capable of directly contributing to the maintenance and preservation of the identity of ethnic, religious, national, tribal or familial community” (6). Choay structures this communal and cultural past according to a series of significant buildings and monuments as dynamic entities in a changing environment, often “victimized” by it. For her, the historical monument is a western invention that reflects the importance given to history and art as a set of self-identifying signs. Choay is not afraid of confronting the other face of the “positive” value of construction : the need to destroy, or the irresponsible restructuring, which hides or fragments the historical significance of the old in favor of the new. The determination to reconstruct, demolish, or ignore is one that belongs to a historical consciousness of a period, to the Zeitgeist. The narrative progresses chronologically from the Renaissance discovery of the Greek and Roman ruins, through the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, Romanticism and the neoGothic style, the modern urbanity, and the post-urban fragmented reality of our days. It moves simultaneously from one concept of construction to the other: “Classicizing” (27), (national) antiquarianism, Naturalism and art value during the Enlightenment, new notions of the need to “preserve” in contrast to “vandalism ” (both products of the French Revolution), Romantic “Picturesque topographies ” (88), the more advanced distinction between Erinnerungswerte and Gegenwartswerte, recollection values and present time values (112), and, finally, urbanism and post-urbanism as part of Giovannoni’s appropriation of tradition to urbanism. “The city planner must,” she quotes from him, “invent a scale appropriate for the modern city of millions” (131). This scale would be created by the development of “networks,” on the basis of what Giovannoni calls “kinetic organisms” (131–132). The book ends with a description of the fragmented post-urban city, which neglects the value of historical monuments as symbols of a communal sense of belonging. Alas, the result is the collapse of the “natural language” and its substitution by the “technologues’ language, determined by what is most specific to technics” (173). In spite of the somewhat REVIEWS 173 didactic tone, sincerely exposed at the end of the book, the analysis is not reduced to a simple set of equations. Chaoy chooses to proceed chronologically, thus correlating the methodology with what seems like an affirmative argument —but she is careful to avoid simplifications. She assists herself by different “round-abouts” that avoid the banal: either by viewing this history from unexpected perspectives, such as personal diaries brought together with legislative acts, or by explaining the relevance of “marginal” occurrences to the formulation of the authoritative discourse. Choay also avoids clear linear descriptions of “good” preservation versus “evil” destruction and shows the duality of both. Almost every historical period, seen from this point of view, reflects either preservation, according to the temporary needs of the regime, or destruction, according to the aforementioned indifference to anything other than one’s immediate interest. However, Choay rarely refers to individual amateur efforts to...