As I've written about before, I just finished reading Elkins' Britain's Gulag. It is such a hard book to read as it documents torture and death at the British camps implemented in the 1950s "Emergency" period when the British were exterminating Mau Mau sympathizers. Also, as I've mentioned, it doesn't seen as though there are any memorials that commemorate this period in Kenyan history. Both the construction and the smoothing over of history are active choices, worthy of investigation.
In my masters work, I looked closely at the building of a memorial in Oregon, the Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial. (If you are wondering who Afghan-Iraqis are, then you'll have to read my masters thesis, which will probably leave you with more questions than answers.) That memorial commemorates those fallen American soldiers with ties to Oregon who died in the Afghanistan and Iraq war theaters. But importantly, the memorial was built in 2005, long before those conflicts were over. (Are they over yet?) In academic-ease, we might say that there is important "memory-work" that can occur after the end of an event and before its commemoration/memorialization. This "work" usually takes the form of public discourse in the public sphere where a community works out a kind of consensus opinion on the meaning of the war/person/historical event. Because sometimes this consensus is hard to achieve, you find that there are all sorts of conflicts over memorials. Think, for example, about the recent hubub about the Eisenhower memorial that is currently being built (has been built?) on the Washington, DC mall. Or more famously about the intense emotions stirred up when the Vietnam Memorial was being built. Since the Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial was built so early, it cut short this required period of memory work. There was no consensus on the meaning of those wars sought.
In my Oregon case, the advocates for the memorial, who were mostly a small coterie of fallen soldiers' parents, played on the veteran sympathies of the Governor and managed to bypass the usual rules for building memorials. The final product was... um.... let's say.... strange. Built in the memorial garden behind the veterans association building on the Oregon State Mall, the Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial consists of a large (out of scale with the rest of the memorials in the garden) fountain. It sprays water 20 feet up so that it cascades down over a large convex map of the world. From North America, a 4 foot tall platform emerges, atop sits a larger-than-life bronze lifelike American soldier, reaching out towards the rest of the world. Back when I last saw it in 2010 or so, it was showing considerable wear.
Anyway, where were we? It does seem that there is some important memory-work that must occur here in Kenya about the meaning of "the Emergency" and the implicit meaning of independence that came from it. This is, after all, the Jubilee Year of Kenyan independence and a perfect time to get cracking on it. I am in no position to comment as to whether this kind of memory-work has taken place. But I do know that the official government policy since the days of Jomo Kenyatta, has been to obliterate the past and focus on the future. That was an expedient policy in the 1960s and allowed Kenyatta to move forward without dealing with the nasty parts of historical reckoning. It also allowed him to take advantage of the power structures that the British put in place, rather than reapportion political power. And therefore, there are hardly any memorials on the landscape. But there is something majorly lost and maybe even majorly perverse about repurposing a retired work camp into … something else. It negates the horrendous situations that many Kenyans endured.
There is definitely much more work to be done on this topic. Perhaps a side project while I'm here in Nairobi.
In my masters work, I looked closely at the building of a memorial in Oregon, the Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial. (If you are wondering who Afghan-Iraqis are, then you'll have to read my masters thesis, which will probably leave you with more questions than answers.) That memorial commemorates those fallen American soldiers with ties to Oregon who died in the Afghanistan and Iraq war theaters. But importantly, the memorial was built in 2005, long before those conflicts were over. (Are they over yet?) In academic-ease, we might say that there is important "memory-work" that can occur after the end of an event and before its commemoration/memorialization. This "work" usually takes the form of public discourse in the public sphere where a community works out a kind of consensus opinion on the meaning of the war/person/historical event. Because sometimes this consensus is hard to achieve, you find that there are all sorts of conflicts over memorials. Think, for example, about the recent hubub about the Eisenhower memorial that is currently being built (has been built?) on the Washington, DC mall. Or more famously about the intense emotions stirred up when the Vietnam Memorial was being built. Since the Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial was built so early, it cut short this required period of memory work. There was no consensus on the meaning of those wars sought.
In my Oregon case, the advocates for the memorial, who were mostly a small coterie of fallen soldiers' parents, played on the veteran sympathies of the Governor and managed to bypass the usual rules for building memorials. The final product was... um.... let's say.... strange. Built in the memorial garden behind the veterans association building on the Oregon State Mall, the Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial consists of a large (out of scale with the rest of the memorials in the garden) fountain. It sprays water 20 feet up so that it cascades down over a large convex map of the world. From North America, a 4 foot tall platform emerges, atop sits a larger-than-life bronze lifelike American soldier, reaching out towards the rest of the world. Back when I last saw it in 2010 or so, it was showing considerable wear.
Anyway, where were we? It does seem that there is some important memory-work that must occur here in Kenya about the meaning of "the Emergency" and the implicit meaning of independence that came from it. This is, after all, the Jubilee Year of Kenyan independence and a perfect time to get cracking on it. I am in no position to comment as to whether this kind of memory-work has taken place. But I do know that the official government policy since the days of Jomo Kenyatta, has been to obliterate the past and focus on the future. That was an expedient policy in the 1960s and allowed Kenyatta to move forward without dealing with the nasty parts of historical reckoning. It also allowed him to take advantage of the power structures that the British put in place, rather than reapportion political power. And therefore, there are hardly any memorials on the landscape. But there is something majorly lost and maybe even majorly perverse about repurposing a retired work camp into … something else. It negates the horrendous situations that many Kenyans endured.
There is definitely much more work to be done on this topic. Perhaps a side project while I'm here in Nairobi.
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