National Identity and Commemorative Space: Connections to the Nation through Time and Site

Abstract

Historical monuments and memorials often mobilise national history to serve contemporary political ends through the people and events they memorialise. They can also be powerful agents of erasure or forgetting, as some histories are privileged over others. This article addresses how national identity works through and on public commemorative structures and how aspects of such structures and their landscapes might reflect back on to national identity. This includes the role that aesthetic forms and designed spaces play in the representation and performance of such identities through the use of space. This paper makes three overlapping arguments about the relationship between national identity, commemoration and public space. The first is that spatial context shapes discursive meaning. Second, ways of understanding time in national commemorative places are used to connect individuals to the nation and to co-nationals in the past, present and future; even so, site histories can complicate these narratives. Third, official and vernacular uses of commemorative sites activatelandscapes in ways that both reinforce and undermine each other. These arguments are underpinned by examples from Australian and British commemorative sites, with a focus on how they are employed by their users to define or promulgate national identity.