1. Brian Osborne’s Main Argument: Part I
Brain Osborne’s main argument consists of how national identity is born and the role of monuments, memorials, and ceremonies in this formative process. Osborne observes that national identity is an ever-changing process, whereby the governmental powers constantly reshape and reconfigure national memories in order to invite the members of the nation to become emotionally anchored to their nation. Memorials, ceremonies, and other fanfare serve to anchor people to their land, their national identity, and make it part of everyone’s personal story. It is this myth-making that socially binds a nation together. The author explains this process through the creation of the Sir George Etienne Cartier monument (Osborne 431-441).
2. One Summative Quote, Two Interesting Quotes
Indeed, the survival of this monument complex into the 1990s allows insights into several processes: the role of memorialization as an attempted agency of legitimization of authority and social cohesion; the shift from a static monumental landscape-element to the official choreography of public pageants, commemorations, and ceremonials; and the degree of public participation in, or contestation of, the appropriation of public space. (Osborne 432)
This quote was interesting because it introduces a national collective memory as permeable rather than permanent: “In the production of these collective memories, national history is rendered as a mythic narrative acted out on, bounded by, and bonded with, particular places” (Osborne 432). This second quote was interesting because it connects national myth-making with memorials and the space allocated for them: “The abstraction of time becomes punctuated by symbolic dates; the abstraction of space is focused on specific sites associated with particular events” (Osborne 433).
discuss how monuments and the ceremonies around them “encode particular histories and geographies into “landscapes of power and resistance.” a. How does this “encoding” happen? b. In your understanding, what are “landscapes of power and resistance’?
