Memory, Reconstruction, and Ethics in Memorialization

The article examines the ethical choices that are implicit in acts of memorialization. By engaging literature on the rhetoric of memorials and pragmatist aesthetics, we argue that memorialization involves a range of important ethical choices in who is remembered, how they are remembered, and the experience the act of memorialization evokes in viewers. By using John Dewey's nascent account of memorial aesthetics, we construct an exploratory typology of the ways that memorials can use and evoke the experience of viewers. The means of experiential reconstruction are also found to involve important ethical decisions. We explore the usefulness of this typology in reference to two different memorials: Ambedkar Memorial Park in Lucknow, India, and the Memorial for the Unknown War Deserters and for the Victims of the National Socialist Military Justice System in Erfurt, Germany.