Doctor of Philosophy The magic of the city: representing places of the dead in the contemporary Western metropolis

Rachel Trigg February 2009

Joseph Cornell (1936) Untitled (Soap Bubble Set) Source: The Voyager Foundation 2004

Faculty of the Built Environment University of New South Wales THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Trigg

First name: Rachel Other name/s: Helen

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: N/A Faculty: Faculty of the Built Environment

Title: The magic of the city: representing places of the dead in the contemporary Western metropolis

Abstract 350 words maximum:

This thesis posits that throughout history, the Western city has been made and understood according to a shared image of the cosmos. It argues that though the contours of this cosmos have changed over time and place, collectively held understandings of the city endure to the present day. Drawing on literary and cultural theory, this way of understanding the city may be conceptualised as ‘magical’, that is incorporating knowledge which is hermeneutic and mythical, as well as empirical.

The specific example of places of the dead, understood as cemeteries, memorials and other locations at which the dead are actually or symbolically interred, is used in this thesis to test the notion that that the city may continue to be understood as a reflection of world view. Places of the dead provide an appropriate test case for this task, as their forms and locations have clear associations with temporally and culturally specific understandings of the city. This thesis applies textual analysis and discourse analysis to seven case studies of contemporary places of the dead in order to examine the way in which the magic of the city may operate in one typology of place. It considers the representation of these case studies in a large array of texts, with particular emphasis on fictional, and thus potentially ‘magical’, texts such as novels, television series and architectural drawings, as well as postcards, movies, cartoons, photographs, songs and paintings.

The results of the case studies are used to argue not only that the city continues to be understood using a wide variety of ways of knowing, but also that these alternative epistemologies offer insights into contemporary cities which are not gained through the use of conventional methodologies.

Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation

I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all property rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstracts International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only).

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THIS SHEET IS TO BE GLUED TO THE INSIDE FRONT COVER OF THE THESIS Abstract

This thesis posits that throughout history, the Western city has been made and understood according to a shared image of the cosmos. It argues that though the contours of this cosmos have changed over time and place, collectively held understandings of the city endure to the present day. Drawing on literary and cultural theory, this way of understanding the city may be conceptualised as ‘magical’, that is incorporating knowledge which is hermeneutic and mythical, as well as empirical.

The specific example of places of the dead, understood as cemeteries, memorials and other locations at which the dead are actually or symbolically interred, is used in this thesis to test the notion that that the city may continue to be understood as a reflection of world view. Places of the dead provide an appropriate test case for this task, as their forms and locations have clear associations with temporally and culturally specific understandings of the city. This thesis applies textual analysis and discourse analysis to seven case studies of contemporary places of the dead in order to examine the way in which the magic of the city may operate in one typology of place. It considers the representation of these case studies in a large array of texts, with particular emphasis on fictional, and thus potentially ‘magical’, texts such as novels, television series and architectural drawings, as well as postcards, movies, cartoons, photographs, songs and paintings.

The results of the case studies are used to argue not only that the city continues to be understood using a wide variety of ways of knowing, but also that these alternative epistemologies offer insights into contemporary cities which are not gained through the use of conventional methodologies.

magic of the city i rachel trigg Originality Statement

I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial portions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of the thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.

Rachel Trigg 18 February 2009

magic of the city ii rachel trigg Copyright Statement

I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only).

I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.

Rachel Trigg 18 February 2009

magic of the city iii rachel trigg Authenticity Statement

I certify that the Library deposit digital copy is a direct equivalent of the final officially approved version of my thesis. No emendation of content has occurred and if there are any minor variations in formatting, they are the result of the conversion to digital format.

Rachel Trigg 18 February 2009

magic of the city iv rachel trigg Contents

Abstract...... i Originality Statement...... ii Copyright Statement ...... iii Authenticity Statement ...... iv Figures...... viiiiii Acronyms...... xii Acknowledgements...... xiiiiii

Chapter 1 Introduction: a premonition of magic ...... 1 1.1 Introducing the magic of the city ...... 2 1.2 Introducing places of the dead ...... 6 1.3 Explaining the structure ...... 9 1.4 Introducing the author ...... 15

Chapter 2 Cosmologies I: the history of the city and its places of the dead ..18 2.1 Introduction ...... 19 2.2 Cosmos...... 21 2.3 The tomb and the monument in the ancient city ...... 23 2.4 The cathedral and the graveyard in the medieval city...... 26 2.5 The cemetery and the memorial in the modern city ...... 29 2.6 The monumental fragment in the postmodern city...... 34 2.7 Conclusions ...... 40

Chapter 3 Cosmologies II: The magic of the city ...... 43 3.1 Introduction ...... 44 3.2 Defining magic ...... 45 3.3 Magic in literature...... 51 3.4 Magic in anthropology...... 55 3.5 Conclusions ...... 59

Chapter 4 Methods...... 61 4.1 Introduction ...... 61 4.2 Method I: textual analysis ...... 62 4.3 Method II: discourse analysis...... 67 4.4 Application of methods to the understanding of the city...... 72 4.5 Application of methods to cities and their places of the dead...... 78 4.6 Conclusions ...... 83

Chapter 5 Beautiful lullaby or ugly dump: the European cemetery in Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being ...... 85 5.1 Introduction ...... 86 5.2 The text...... 87 5.3 The cemetery and the city for Franz and Sabina ...... 90 magic of the city v rachel trigg 5.4 The cemetery and the city for Tomas and Tereza...... 97 5.5 Conclusions ...... 99

Chapter 6 Serious, supernatural, scholarly and silly: the American cemetery in Joss Whedon’s television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer ...... 102 6.1 Introduction ...... 103 6.2 Text I: the article ...... 105 6.3 Text II: the television series...... 106 6.4 Conclusions ...... 112

Chapter 7 The architect as god: cemetery, city and cosmos in Aldo Rossi’s collage The Analogous City...... 115 7.1 Introduction ...... 116 7.2 The collage as writing ...... 117 7.3 The collage as city ...... 119 7.4 The collage as cosmos ...... 122 7.5 The collage as memory...... 125 7.6 Conclusions ...... 129

Chapter 8 The ghosts in the Mall: The city, the body and the citizen in Washington DC ...... 132 8.1 Introduction ...... 133 8.2 The planning and development of the city ...... 135 8.3 The body of the president: Washington ...... 141 8.4 The body of the president: Lincoln ...... 144 8.5 The body of the soldier ...... 150 8.6 The female body ...... 157 8.7 The body of the visitor...... 165 8.8 The body of the consumer ...... 172 8.9 Conclusions ...... 178

Chapter 9 Remaking the map: the city and the world in Anzac Parade in Canberra ...... 182 9.1 Introduction ...... 183 9.2 The planning and development of Anzac Parade ...... 184 9.4 Cartographers and conquerors: mapping the great southern land...... 190 9.5 Storytellers and singers: mapping the great southern land II ...... 195 9.6 Soldiers as colonisers I: mapping the nation through war in Europe...... 200 9.7 Soldiers as colonisers II: mapping the nation through war in Asia ...... 210 9.8 Tracing tangled destinies: mapping the nation in the Pacific ...... 218 9.9 Remembering the maternal and the modest: mapping the nation as home...222 9.10 Conclusions ...... 228

Chapter 10 Representing absence at edge and centre: East Perth, Lower Manhattan and the unearthing of the dead...... 233 10.1 Introduction ...... 234 magic of the city vi rachel trigg 10.2 Unearthing Lower Manhattan...... 238 10.3 Unearthing East Perth...... 253 10.4 Conclusions ...... 270

Chapter 11 Conclusions...... 275 11.1 On method ...... 275 11.2 On places of the dead...... 278 11.3 On history...... 280 11.4 On the magic of the city ...... 281 11.5 On future research ...... 284

References...... 288

magic of the city vii rachel trigg Figures

Figure 1.1 Illustration for June in Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry...... 1 Figure 1.2 Illustration for August in Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry ...... 2 Figure 1.3 Ebenezer Howard (1898) ‘Group of Slumless Smokeless Cities’...... 3 Figure 1.4 Detail of upper right quadrant of Howard’s (1898) ‘Group of Slumless Smokeless Cities’...... 9

Figure 2.1 Etienne-Louis Boullée (1784) Cenotaph to Newton ...... 18 Figure 2.2 The Appian Way outside Rome ...... 24 Figure 2.3 Will Longstaff (1928) Immortal Shrine ...... 26 Figure 2.4 Saints Innocents Cemetery in medieval Paris...... 28 Figure 2.5 Père Lachaise Cemetery in 1829...... 32

Figure 3.1 Francisco Goya (1797-98) El sueño de la razón produce monstrous ..43

Figure 6.1-6.4 Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the modern cemetery...... 102 Figure 6.5 Mount Auburn Cemetery...... 105 Figure 6.6 Buffy and friends in the cemetery by day ...... 108 Figure 6.7 Buffy and friends in the cemetery by night ...... 108 Figure 6.8 Buffy’s tombstone in a Sunnydale garden cemetery ...... 110

Figure 7.1 Aldo Rossi (1976-77) The Analogous City ...... 115 Figure 7.2 Antonio Canaletto (1753-1759) Capriccio ...... 117 Figure 7.3 Aldo Rossi (1965) Plan of City Hall Square in Segrate ...... 119 Figure 7.4 Aldo Rossi (1971) Plan of San Cataldo Cemetery in Modena...... 120 Figure 7.5 Aldo Rossi (1971) Elevation of San Cataldo Cemetery...... 121 Figure 7.6 Detail of The Analogous City...... 123 Figure 7.7 Detail of The Analogous City...... 124 Figure 7.8 Giovanni Piranesi (1745) Detail of a Invenzioni Capric di Carceri...... 125 Figure 7.9 Aldo Rossi (1973) The Cabins of Elba ...... 126

Figure 8.1 Postcard depicting Vietnam Veterans Memorial ...... 132 Figure 8.2 Pierre L’Enfant (1791) Plan for Washington DC...... 136 Figure 8.3 Francis L V Houpin (1902) Plan from the Senate Park Commission Report, also known as the Mcmillan Plan ...... 137 Figure 8.4 Memorials and other locations in the symbolic centre of Washington DC...... 139 Figure 8.5 Edward Savage (1793) George Washington Esq...... 142 Figure 8.6 Washington Monument (1885)...... 143 Figure 8.7 Lincoln Memorial (1922)...... 144 Figures 8.8 and 8.9 Stills from Mr Smith Goes to Washington ...... 145 Figure 8.10 and 8.11 The exterior and interior of the Lincoln Memorial, as depicted in Mr Smith Goes to Washington ...... 146 Figures 8.12 and 8.13 Stills from The Simpsons ...... 148 Figure 8.14 Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982)...... 150 magic of the city viii rachel trigg Figures 8.15 and 8.16 Coloured drawings which accompanied Maya Lin’s entry to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial design competition...... 152 Figure 8.17 Maya Lin drawing of Vietnam Veterans Memorial design details .....153 Figure 8.18 Stephen Oles study of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in spring ....154 Figure 8.19 Stephen Oles study of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in winter with Lincoln Memorial in the background ...... 155 Figure 8.20 Lisa Simpson visits the Winifred Beecher Howe Memorial ...... 158 Figure 8.21 Maya Lin, as depicted in Architectural Record ...... 159 Figure 8.22 Vietnam Women’s Memorial (1993) ...... 161 Figure 8.23 Sculptural component of Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1984) ...... 162 Figure 8.24 Korean War Veterans Memorial (1995)...... 164 Figure 8.25 Aelbert van der Schoor (c 1660) Vanitas Still Life...... 168 Figures 8.26 and 8.27 Objects left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial...... 169 Figures 8.28 and 8.29 Objects left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Vietnam Women’s Memorial ...... 171 Figures 8.30 and 8.31 World War II Memorial (2004)...... 175 Figure 8.32 West Potomac Park as envisaged in the Memorials and Museums Master Plan...... 177

Figure 9.1 Detail of Anzac Parade, as envisaged in The Griffin Legacy ...... 182 Figure 9.2 Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin’s winning plan for Canberra (1912) ...... 185 Figure 9.3 Detail of Marion Mahony Griffin’s (1912) View from Summit of Mount Ainslie ...... 187 Figure 9.4 Anzac Parade looking north from Lake Burley Griffin...... 187 Figure 9.5 The memorials on Anzac Parade, in the context of central Canberra 189 Figure 9.6 Detail of Gerardus Mercator (1538) Terra Australis Incognita...... 191 Figure 9.7 The Captain Cook Memorial Jet and Globe, as depicted in Tomorrow’s Canberra...... 192 Figure 9.8 RAN Memorial (1986) ...... 193 Figure 9.9 RAAF Memorial (1973 and 2002) ...... 194 Figure 9.10 Detail of RAAF Memorial...... 195 Figure 9.11 Michael Tjakamarra Nelson design on which mosaic in Parliament House forecourt is based ...... 196 Figures 9.12 and 9.13 A platypus and a koala, as depicted in the courtyard of the Australian War Memorial...... 197 Figures 9.14 and 9.15 Two Aboriginal men depicted in the courtyard of the Australian War Memorial...... 198 Figure 9.16 The Aboriginal Memorial (1988)...... 199 Figure 9.17 Will Dyson (1929) Calling Them Home ...... 200 Figure 9.18 Will Longstaff (1924) Menin Gate at Midnight ...... 202 Figure 9.19 World War I diorama in Australian War Memorial ...... 203 Figure 9.20 Kemal Ataturk Memorial (1985) ...... 204 Figure 9.21 Australian Hellenic Memorial (1988) ...... 205 Figure 9.22 Display of war relics in Australian War Memorial ...... 206 Figure 9.23 Desert Mounted Corps Memorial (1968) ...... 208 magic of the city ix rachel trigg Figure 9.24 Rats of Tobruk Memorial (1983)...... 209 Figure 9.25 Guan Wei (2002) Dow: Island ...... 210 Figure 9.26 Detail of Guan Wei (2002) Dow: Island...... 211 Figure 9.27 Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial (1992) ...... 212 Figure 9.28 Detail of Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial ...... 213 Figure 9.29 Australian National Korean War Memorial (2000)...... 215 Figure 9.30 Interior of Australian National Korean War Memorial ...... 217 Figure 9.31 New Zealand Memorial (2001)...... 218 Figure 9.32 The Australian-American Memorial viewed from the south bank of Lake Burley Griffin, as depicted in The Future Canberra...... 220 Figure 9.33 Artist’s impression of the Australian-American Memorial from Tomorrow’s Canberra ...... 221 Figure 9.34 Australian Service Nurses National Memorial (1999) viewed from Anzac Parade ...... 223 Figure 9.35 Australian Service Nurses National Memorial viewed from north.....223 Figure 9.36 Detail of Australian Service Nurses National Memorial ...... 224 Figure 9.37 Peter Corlett (1988) Simpson and his donkey, 1915...... 225 Figure 9.38 Peter Corlett (1995) Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop...... 226 Figure 9.39 Replica of Braidwood Memorial in National Museum of Australia ....227

Figure 10.1 The exposed slurry wall in Daniel Libeskind’s competition winning master plan for the World Trade Centre site in New York...... 233 Figure 10.2 Ground Zero in the context of Lower Manhattan...... 234 Figure 10.3 The East Perth Cemeteries in its local context...... 236 Figure 10.4 Georgia O’Keefe (1927) The Radiator Building – Night, New York ..238 Figure 10.5 Joseph Stella (1920-22) The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted: The Bridge ...... 238 Figure 10.6 Hugh Ferriss (1922) Study for Maximum Mass Permitted by the 1916 New York Zoning Law, Stage 4...... 239 Figure 10.7 Cosmopolis of the Future (c1908)...... 240 Figure 10.8 The Chrysler Building as depicted in the opening credits of Sex and the City...... 241 Figure 10.9 The Twin Towers as depicted in the opening credits of Sex and the City...... 241 Figure 10.10 The base of the World Trade Centre and surrounding plazas...... 242 Figure 10.11 John Bachman (1859) New York Environs ...... 243 Figure 10.12 Gotham City, as represented in Batman (1989)...... 243 Figure 10.13 Daniel Libeskind’s winning master plan for Ground Zero ...... 248 Figure 10.14 One of the underground caverns in Michael Arad and Peter Walker’s ‘Reflecting Absence’ design for a memorial at Ground Zero...... 251 Figure 10.15 George Pitt Morrison (1929) The Foundation of Perth ...... 254 Figures 10.16 and 10.17 Banner images from the State Government’s tourism website for Perth and the City of Perth’s homepage...... 255 Figure 10.18 Sally Morgan (1988) Greetings from Rottnest...... 256 Figure 10.19 East Perth Cemeteries in 1897 ...... 259 Figure 10.20 Photographs of the East Perth Cemeteries accompanying an article magic of the city x rachel trigg entitled ‘The Forgotten Dead: East Perth’s Reproach’ ...... 260 Figure 10.21 View of Pioneer Gardens and the central area of Perth from the remaining East Perth Cemeteries ...... 267 Figure 10.22 A Memorial to Chinese burials in the East Perth Cemeteries...... 268 Figure 10.23 Perth Jewish Memorial Cemetery and neighbouring townhouses..269

Tables

Table 2.1 Summary of Western places of the dead in the context of the city ...... 41

magic of the city xi rachel trigg Acronyms

ACT = Australian Capital Territory

AGWA = Art Gallery of Western Australia

ANKWM = Australian National Korean War Memorial

ANZAC = Australian New Zealand Army Corps

AVFNM = Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial

AWM = Australian War Memorial

EPRA = East Perth Redevelopment Authority

NCA = National Capital Authority (Australia)

NCDC = National Capital Development Commission (Australia)

NCPA = National Capital Planning Authority (Australia)

NCPC = National Capital Planing Commission (United States)

NTA = National Trust of Australia

RAAF = Royal Australian Air Force

RAN = Royal Australian Navy

SOM = Skidmore, Ownings and Merrill

UN = United Nations

US = United States

VVMF = Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund

WA = Western Australia

magic of the city xii rachel trigg Acknowledgements

The completion of this thesis has taken seven years and three universities. In that time I have moved house four times, including once from Perth to Sydney, and held four different professional positions.

Consistency then, has been a rare and highly valued commodity. I would like to thank Dr Xing Ruan for his continually gentle and insightful supervision over the course of those seven years. Also thank you to Dr Catherine de Lorenzo, a slightly more recent, but very welcome, addition to the team. My supervisors have provided me with two different but equally honourable models of the engaged academic. I hope I may live up to their examples.

I would like to thank friends in Perth and Sydney for sporadically rescuing me from the depths of thesis-land and dragging me, blinking, into the real world. Also for their gentle probings about when I would be done – and for ignoring the quiet rages these questions would occasionally provoke. I owe Dr Nancy Marshall special gratitude for reading and providing insightful comment on many of these chapters, and would particularly like to thank April McCabe for being the most supportive friend and fellow planning nerd a woman could have.

As I have worked full time throughout the completion of this thesis, I have been incredibly lucky to have encountered highly supportive, and ever so slightly eccentric, workplaces. I would like to thank Sarah Stark at the City of Perth, Andrew Woodley at Parramatta City Council and Kim Anson at Waverley Council for their ongoing support of, and occasional forbearance with, a sometimes tired and distracted employee. Anyone who believes that local government in Australia is antithetical to academia has not had the pleasure and privilege of working with people such as these.

magic of the city xiii rachel trigg I would particularly like to thank Illana Halliday for her generosity with time and experience – and for knowing exactly what a pedicure can do to lift the spirits of even the most bookish of women.

This thesis is dedicated to Irvin Sax, my maternal grandfather and Opa, and to Geoff Trigg, my own dear Dad. Although these men could hardly have been more different in cultural background, they share an abiding faith in the intrinsic value of higher learning.

My Opa trusted that his eldest granddaughter would have opportunities in his adopted homeland with which he, amidst the chaos of central Europe in the early twentieth century, had not been provided. He gave me the first and only dictionary I have ever needed. And while a Macquarie of over two thousand pages may be of dubious assistance to a ten year old girl, it has proved invaluable to a woman writing her doctoral thesis.

My Dad never questioned why his curious offspring should want to take the better part of a decade to work on such an insular and thankless task. His faith, far more steadfast than my own, that I would one day complete this thesis sustained me through the dark nights which inevitably accompany any work such as this.

These men have shown me what it is to be a gentleman in the modern age.

magic of the city xiv rachel trigg 1 Introduction: a premonition of magic

Figure 1.1: Illustration for June in Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1410-1416). While out of sight in this image, the cemetery would have been located within the city bounds, adjacent to the cathedral. Source: Walther 2005: 34

magic of the city 1 rachel trigg 1.1 Introducing the magic of the city Once upon a time, the city was magical. Every action performed within a city’s bounds accorded with both the world view of its citizens and their material wellbeing. In ancient times, for example, the cities of Greece and Rome were located and planned in consideration of factors including trade, defence and sanitation, as well as the cosmology of the city founders (Mumford 1961; Rykwert 1988). The forms and rituals associated with ancient cities were understood to represent relationships between heaven and earth and between the ruler and his, or occasionally her, subjects. The Middle Ages, often conceptualised as a period of barren irrationality, also combined a lucid cosmology with a respect for the practical realities of life. The medieval understanding of the world is illustrated in manuscripts such as Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1410-1416), which were ‘illuminated’ in the sense of being adorned with gold leaf, as well as in shedding intellectual light upon the world. Images such as those for June and August (Figures 1.1 and 1.2) in the Duke’s ‘book of hours’ depict the way in which agricultural practices, such as the reaping of hay, and social rituals, such as the hunt, were guided by both the passage of the stars in the heavens and a Christian faith in an ordered and stable universe. The walled medieval city, with the cathedral at its centre, was also governed by this alliance of practical considerations and magical forces. Figure 1.2: Illustration for August in Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1410-1416) Source: Walther 2005: 280 magic of the city 2 rachel trigg The magical understanding of the city existed for thousands of years in that part of the globe now arbitrarily known as the ‘West’. For all but the most recent 250 or so years of history, the Western city has been made and understood using both rational and non rational ways of knowing. In this thesis the term ‘rational’ is understood as a way of knowing the world which “denies the acceptability of beliefs founded on anything but experience and reasoning” (Bullock and Trombley 2000: 728). The rational has, in the binary logic prominent since the Enlightenment, generally been considered oppositional to superstition (Bowers 2004) and to myth and religion (Harvey 1990). Steve Pile (2005) has noted the close association between rationalism and urbanism, while David Harvey connects the term intrinsically with modernity (which is itself defined in Chapter 2). In contrast, the non rational is here understood, using the words of Michael Saler, as a refutation of the notion that “wonders and marvels have been [totally] demystified by science, spirituality has been [entirely] supplanted by secularism, spontaneity has been [completely] replaced by bureaucratization, and the imagination has been [utterly] subordinated to instrumental reason” (2006: 692). The use of the term ‘irrational’ is purposely avoided in this thesis, as it can imply support for the subtly, but crucially, different notion that the actions of individuals should not be guided by reason (Bullock and Trombley 2000).

The indivisibility of rational and non rational ways of knowing the world came to a halt during the Enlightenment. At that time, the rational application of scientific reason became the only accepted way of Figure 1.3: Ebenezer Howard (1898) ‘Group of Slumless Smokeless Cities’ from Tomorrow: knowing the city and non rational A Peaceful Path to Real Reform Source: NCA 2004: 41 methods of understanding lost all magic of the city 3 rachel trigg legitimacy. Whereas the cities of ancient Greece and Rome and medieval Europe reflected a sacred picture of the cosmos, in modern cities world view became largely secular. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Western culture largely replaced god and king with the democratic nation state and the scientist- scholar.

This change in world view is evident in a comparison between the illustrations in Très Riches Heures and Ebenezer Howard’s diagram of ideal city form (Figure 1.3). While the medieval text represents the city using a combination of Christian faith, astrological speculation and social realism, Howard’s ‘Group of Slumless and Smokeless Cities’ are depicted using geometric order and scientific reason. Howard’s (1898) Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, was one of the first texts to promote a new form of town planning based upon Enlightenment logic. His diagram depicts small, neat cities surrounded by farmlands and large tracts of forest. Industrial activities, such as brickfields and stone quarries, are well removed from residential areas. Howard’s urban model provides for essential infrastructure, such as railroads and canals, and also incorporates some social functions, such as institutions for the blind and the insane.

Howard’s understanding of and vision for the city is predicated on a belief in humanity’s ability to rid itself of fear and hunger through the rational application of science and industry. Faith in this Enlightenment world view and in a purely rational epistemology was shaken in the twentieth century with the terrifyingly successful application of the supposedly libratory forces of science and industry to war, oppression and genocide. Many authors, including David Harvey (1990) and Fredric Jameson (1991), have in recent decades argued that this ‘dark’ side to the Enlightenment, in conjunction with a change in the cultural conditions associated with the global economy, has created a newly ‘postmodern’ condition. According to this argument, which is largely accepted in this thesis, postmodernity is characterised by: a multiplicity of experiences; a proliferation of forms of cultural production; and a fragmentation of perspectives. magic of the city 4 rachel trigg The transformation of world view from, in simple terms, cohesive and sacred during antiquity and the Middle Ages, to cohesive and secular during the Enlightenment and to fragmented and secular during the contemporary era should have significant implications for the understanding of the city. Yet while the transition from a premodern to a modern cosmology resulted in a corresponding change in the understanding of the city, the way in which city makers and theorists view the world has remained largely unchanged since the eighteenth century. Although some writers, such as Edward Soja (1989, 2000), Harvey (1990) and Christine Boyer (1994) have identified a fragmented and ephemeral urban form corresponding to a postmodern cosmology, the majority of city makers continue to understand the metropolis as an expression of a purely rational epistemology. Moreover, those theorists who have recognised the existence of a postmodern urban condition have largely argued that the multiple perspectives inherent in the contemporary city are antithetical to a collective cosmology.

In contrast to those who still believe that the city is the sole bastion of an Enlightened rationality, as well as those who deny any possibility of a contemporary, collective understanding of the city, this thesis posits that the non rational remains a powerful and integral, if largely unacknowledged, part of the making and inhabiting of urban places. It argues that, as well as acknowledging the multiple perspectives inherent in the Western city, contemporary scholarship should also reconsider the importance of overarching mythologies to the ongoing understanding and development of the metropolis. Rather that reviving premodern superstitions or repressing the multiple constituencies which have only recently gained a voice in the making of urban places, exploration of the non rational elements of the city has the possibility of recognising and creating ways in which the metropolis can be understood by all. This thesis thus presents the notion that the world and its cities continue to be understood in ways which are non rational or, as it is conceptualised here, ‘magical’. The notion of the magic of the city is described in detail in Chapter 3. In general terms, the magical is here defined as magic of the city 5 rachel trigg any non rational way of understanding the world, including through myth, intuition, allegory, dream, analogy, imagination and metaphor.

The magic of the city is one of the reasons why people continue to travel to and live in big cities, despite the many and well publicised shortcomings of the contemporary metropolis. The magical is that which drove Italo Calvino (1997) to write Invisible Cities as a tribute to Venice, makes London a magnet for antipodean backpackers and sees the films of Woody Allen using New York not only as a setting, but also as a symbolic landscape for the development of characters. It is that which drove Edward Hopper to paint urban settings which are simultaneously familiar and foreboding and sees landmarks such as skyscrapers and subways becoming highly symbolic targets for twenty first century terrorists.

The understanding of the city as containing both rational and non rational aspects is neither new nor confined to Western cultures. The scope of this thesis is, however, limited to Western nations, primarily in North America, Western Europe and Australia. This is partly due to the need to maintain a manageable focus to the research, but also to the differing histories and epistemologies of city development in non Western nations. Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) and Joseph Rykwert (1988) have both noted that pre modern models of the cosmos in many different cultures share structural similarities. It is thus highly likely, also, that cities in places such as China and South America continue to be consciously understood using a combination of rational and non rational ways of knowing. These possibilities will not be examined here, but may be an area for future research.

1.2 Introducing places of the dead The notion that the Western city continues to be understood using non rational ways of knowing is difficult to test, as the magic of a place can not be measured or discovered using traditional methodologies. An incomplete set of work undertaken by Michel Foucault provides some direction as to how this task may be undertaken. magic of the city 6 rachel trigg In a lecture given in 1967 and published in 1986 as ‘Des Espaces Autres’ or ‘Of Other Spaces’, Foucault identifies a category of spaces which are different in some way from the spaces around them. Foucault names such spaces ‘heterotopias’, and defines them as

something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted (1986: 24).

Foucault considers heterotopias to be real places which are culturally and historically specific. Among the numerous examples of the heterotopia offered by Foucault are the boarding school, prison, theatre, garden, museum and boat, as well as the cemetery.

Though Foucault gives principles by which such places can be recognised, the notion of heterotopias provided in ‘Of Other Spaces’ is so broad that it includes a large proportion of the contemporary city. It is also flexible enough to relate to almost any space, and has been applied by others to entire cities, particularly Los Angeles (Soja 1995), but also Las Vegas (Chaplin 2000).1 Foucault’s 1967 lecture notes are brief and are not expanded upon in his latter work. He does, as Benjamin Genocchio (1995) identifies, refer to heterotopias in the preface to The Order of Things,2 where the ‘other’ spaces become disturbing sites which undermine attempts at classification. Foucault also mentions heterotopias in an interview given in 1982, in which he partly distances himself from the notion (Foucault and Rainbow 1998). Thus, despite attempts by some urban theorists to use it as such, the notion of heterotopias does not provide a rigorous theoretical construct.

There are, however, many aspects of the notion of heterotopias which are useful in considering the magic of the city. As described by Foucault, heterotopias work non rationally within a logic that permits simultaneity, contradiction and inconsistency. magic of the city 7 rachel trigg They are places apart from the everyday and, while not strictly utopic, have a close relationship with the sacred, the strange and the exotic. Heterotopias are, in short, ‘other’ spaces, which are difficult to categorise and which can not be fully understood using the binary logic frequently associated with modernity. Of all the heterotopias mentioned by Foucault, the cemetery has the most direct and enduring correlation with the history of the city. Writers such as Stephen Curl (1980), Phillipe Ariés (1981) and Richard Etlin (1984) have documented the changing relationship between the understanding of the city and the form and location of cemeteries from antiquity to modernity. Furthermore, cemeteries are locations which clearly retain at least a vestige of non rational understanding. While heterotopias such as schools, prisons and theatres can been seen as having persuasively rational reasons for their existence (that is, education, incarceration and entertainment), the continuation of burials in the modern and postmodern eras is not as easily explained. Applying a scientific logic to the disposal of corpses should result in the consistent favouring of cremation over burial. However, religious and cultural considerations continue to be important, if not determining, factors in selecting methods for the disposal of the dead. The disjuncture between the continuation of burials and the supposedly rational, modern city is even greater if cemeteries are understood more broadly as ‘places of the dead’; that is, any site at which the deceased human body is actually or symbolically interred, including graveyards, tombs, cenotaphs, roadside memorials, mausoleums, crypts, burial mounds, cairns and catacombs. While modern cemetery crematoriums could, for example, be seen as rational places for the sanitary disposal of human remains, it is impossible to ascribe a rational motivation to the creation of war memorials in the contemporary city.

This thesis thus uses the specific example of places of the dead to test the wider notion that the contemporary city continues to be understood using non rational ways of knowing. Places of the dead have always been an important part of the city. Such places are not only a distinguishing feature of a culture (Ariés 1981), but also a representation of the world view dominant in a particular time and place. magic of the city 8 rachel trigg This is evident in the two, historically specific, city models previously discussed. Although they are not visible in the scenes reproduced here, the medieval cities depicted in Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry located the cemetery centrally, within and alongside the church. As is discussed later in this thesis, medieval places of the dead were Figure 1.4: Detail of upper right quadrant of Howard’s (1898) ‘Group of Slumless Smokeless not only the location for burials, Cities’ but also places for the living to Source: NCA 2004: 41 congregate (Ariés 1981). In contrast, the ‘garden cities’ in Howard’s diagram (Figure 1.4) remove the cemetery to the outer limits of urbanity along with other industries and institutions deemed incompatible with the ordered, modern metropolis. Howard’s model for cemetery location was predicated on existing cemeteries of the time, such as Pére Lachaise in France and Mount Auburn in the United States, and has been replicated in innumerable modern and postmodern cities.

1.3 Explaining the structure This thesis is structured like a spindle, with a weighty introduction at its base, a series of case studies in its middle and a concise, but pointed, set of conclusions at its top. As the thesis revolves through its eleven chapters, the notion of the magic of the city and the example of places of the dead become ever more tightly woven together. The theoretical and methodological base of this thesis is contained in Chapters 2 to 4. While this chapter began with a brief introduction to the understanding of the Western city over time, Chapter 2 provides a far more detailed overview of the history of places of the dead in the context of the cities of magic of the city 9 rachel trigg which they are a part. It examines the ways in which places of the dead are manifest in the ancient, medieval, modern and postmodern cities of the West, as well as the ways in which the location and design of such places have related to a city’s cosmology. Chapter 2 also acts as a review of existing literature on the history of the city and its cemeteries and memorials, particularly James Curl’s (1980) A Celebration of Death, Philippe Ariés’s (1981) The Hour of Our Death and Richard Etlin’s (1984) The Architecture of Death.

As has been noted, Chapter 3 contains a detailed explanation of the notion of the magic of the city. This notion derives from literary theory and practice, particularly the narrative genre of magical realism, and from anthropological enquiry, particularly Alfred Gell’s (1999) work on the conceptualisation of art as a form of enchanted technical activity. The notion of the magic of the city attempts to reconcile oppositions which have been inherent in the understanding of the Western metropolis for some 250 years. The magical is here defined not as a simple opposition to the rational, but as a particular kind of logic which is still inherent in the ways contemporary, Western cultures make and inhabit cities.

Chapter 4 describes two related methods with which to understand the magical aspects of cities in general and places of the dead in particular. These methods, known as textual analysis and discourse analysis, are broadly hermeneutic and are based on the assumption that there is a dialectic relationship between reality and its representation. The methods are based on the work of post structuralist theorists, particularly Jacques Derrida (1987), Roland Barthes (1973) and Michel Foucault (2002a, 2002b), and are interdisciplinary and intertextual in application. Although textual analysis and discourse analysis have been applied for several decades in the humanities, and to some extent in the social sciences, they have been used in widely varying ways. Chapter 4 sets out the ways in which concepts and terms, some of which are highly contested, will be applied in this thesis. It considers how textual analysis and discourse analysis have, to a limited extent, been used in the understanding of the built environment and explains how the magic of the city 10 rachel trigg methods will be applied to the examination of the contemporary city and its places of the dead.

While Chapters 2 to 4 form the theoretical and methodological basis of the thesis, Chapters 5 to 10 contain individual, but also interconnected, case studies. The case studies predominantly examine cemeteries and memorials, as they are the most prominently represented places of the dead in the fabric and mythology of the contemporary, Western city. The case studies begin with relatively short analyses of the representation of a place of the dead in a single text and progress, by Chapter 10, to complex and lengthy examinations of places of the dead in multiple sites and through multiple ways of knowing the world.

Chapter 5 uses a straightforward textual analysis to examine the depiction of the cemetery in Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984) and its broader representation of the city and the world. The novel presents the reader with two interconnected worlds: one in which the characters exist in a real time and place and have logical reactions to the situations in which they find themselves; and the other in which the characters are conscious creators of the narrator/author and act according to the vagaries of myth and their own idiosyncratic readings of the city and its inhabitants. The novel’s representation of the cemetery provides a concise example of the way in which this second, non rational world operates. Textual analysis of The Unbearable Lightness of Being establishes that it remains possible, in contemporary Western culture, to understand the city and its places of the dead in non rational ways. Analysis of the novel also confirms that cemeteries remain places in which culturally and historically specific understandings of the cosmos may be manifest.

The following chapter extends the application of textual analysis. Chapter 6 compares the understanding of the modern American cemetery as presented through two very different ways of knowing: Stanley French’s (1975) scholarly article ‘The Cemetery as Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mount Auburn magic of the city 11 rachel trigg and the ‘Rural Cemetery’ Movement’ and the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was created by Joss Whedon and aired between 1996 and 2002. The chapter compares the results produced by the archival research methods used in the former with the understandings gained from textual analysis of the latter. The aim of this comparison is to consider what the scholarly consideration of a pop culture text can add to the understanding of the modern American cemetery and, in particular, its non rational aspects.

Chapter 7 further expands the application of textual analysis, this time to consider the ways in which the biography and oeuvre of one architect intersect in his representation of the city and its places of the dead. Aldo Rossi’s collage The Analogous City (1976-77) is in many ways the drawn equivalent of his theoretical and autobiographical writings. Rossi’s drawings are: aids to communicate an idea and win a commission; explanations for the construction of a building; visual descriptions of theory; and appropriations of built works into new, imaginary contexts. In The Analogous City, identifiable architectural fragments, including the plan of the Memorial to Fallen Partisans (1965) in Segrate and the plan and elevation of the San Cataldo Cemetery (1971) in Modena, both of which are in Italy, become generic building typologies in a magical city which unites the precedents of a specific culture with the memories and experiences of Rossi himself.

Though the method used in Chapter 7 is more intertextual and biographical than that applied to the previous two case studies, it does not extend to a comprehensive discourse analysis. Chapters 8 to 10, however, expand the methodology to incorporate examinations of a far greater number and variety of texts. The case studies presented in these chapters are also more attuned to the political and social contexts within which the subject texts were written and are being read. Chapters 8 to 10 are significantly longer than the case studies presented in Chapters 5 to 7 and incorporate direct observation of the place itself, rather than relying solely on the analysis of texts. magic of the city 12 rachel trigg Chapter 8 analyses a wide variety of texts to reveal a discourse which places the body at the symbolic centre of Washington DC in the United States of America. The body is present in the American capital through the memorials honouring the founders and defenders of the nation and through the citizens who visit them. However, the body mythologised in the centre of Washington DC is not that of everybody. Despite rhetoric pronouncing the United States as a place of freedom for all, Washington DC provides the basis for a limited range of representations of the democratic nation state. The capital represents two types of citizens: the minority, whose bodies are magically made visible in the city and its mythologies, and the majority, whose are not. Chapter 8 examines who is symbolically buried at the centre of Washington DC and how visitors to the city participate in the reproduction of its mythologies. More specifically, it considers how Washington DC’s monuments, particularly the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Veterans Memorial, create and disrupt the symbolic connection between the American capital and America’s understanding of itself.

Like Chapter 8, Chapter 9 focuses on a commemorative space in the symbolic centre of a national capital. The chapter examines the way in which Australia’s understanding of and relationship with the rest of the world is represented in memorials on Anzac Parade in Canberra. Like those in Washington DC, the commemorative works in Canberra interpret international wars and domestic events in the context of national mythologies. However, the Australian memorials do not focus on the representation of the body, but rather attempt to create a mythology in which Australia is historically, geographically and politically central to the Western world. Methodologically, Chapter 9 extends the application of discourse analysis. It discusses a variety of texts, some of which do not directly represent the memorials on Anzac Parade, but nonetheless contribute to their understanding. The modes of representation considered in Chapter 9 are, however, less diverse than those examined in Chapter 8. This reveals limitations with the method of discourse analysis, as well as with the ability of memorials on magic of the city 13 rachel trigg Anzac Parade to create a magical understanding of the city and the world.

The last case study chapter compares the way in which the magic of the city is manifest in two modern metropolises: New York in the United States of America and Perth in Australia. While the former is mythologised as the centre of the Western world, the latter is a spatial outpost of the global capitalist economy. However, the two cities share a modern understanding of the cosmos, which is materialised in the ordered rationality of the grid and the skyscraper. The rational understanding of Perth and New York is, however, disrupted by the presence of the magical. Modern Manhattan is alternatively conceived as the dark and dangerous Gotham City, while in Perth the colonial city is unsettled by the unpredictable and uncanny presence of Aboriginal sacredness. Chapter 10 examines the ways in which the magical understandings of these cities have been represented at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan and at the East Perth Cemeteries in Perth. While New York struggles to find memorial forms which are sufficiently able to commemorate the World Trade Centre and the people who died within it, the East Perth Cemeteries have made inadequate recognition of Aboriginal and other non white inhabitants of colonial Perth.

The final chapter in the thesis takes the intellectual threads spun together in the six case study chapters and reseparates them into an orderly summary. Chapter 11 delineates the contributions which the thesis has made to the understanding of contemporary cities and particularly their places of the dead. It considers the application of textual analysis and discourse analysis in the study of the built environment and comments upon the relative success of the various cemetery and memorial designs examined in the case studies. The chapter, finally, explains how cemeteries and memorials may be considered ‘magical’ places within the contemporary city and speculates on other urban places which may also be understood through a combination of rational and non rational ways of knowing.

magic of the city 14 rachel trigg 1.4 Introducing the author Textual analysis and discourse analysis are no more and no less subjective than other methods of examining the city and its places of the dead. However, before beginning the main section of this thesis, it is useful to reflect briefly upon my own experiences of the contemporary metropolis and its cemeteries and memorials. Like other makers of and writers on the city, I am a creation of the urban cultures in which I have existed. For the majority of my childhood I lived in rural Western Australia and was an infrequent visitor to the city. Family holidays to Perth were a highly anticipated event and were supplemented by occasional overseas trips to places including Singapore, Toronto, Los Angeles and London. On beginning my tertiary education I moved permanently to Perth and began to travel independently to a variety of cities in Western Europe, North America and occasionally beyond. I have now worked for almost ten years as an urban planner, place manager and project manager, primarily for local governments in Perth and Sydney in Australia. As part of this work, I have studied and attended conferences in virtually all of the capital cities of Australia, the exceptions being the spatial outposts of Darwin and Hobart.

I have, like other urban dwellers and travellers, my own idiosyncratic experiences of places of the dead. I share with many Australians the experience of attending dawn services commemorating Anzac Day, both as a school child and as an adult. I have watched roadside memorials to car crash victims flash past me during family holidays as a child and, during my early years of university, attended funerals for friends killed in accidents on country roads. During my travels I have walked among the tombs of kings in Marrakesh, watched as residents of Tokyo scrubbed imperceptible lichen spots from ancestral graves, queued with Mexican tourists to see the mummies of Guanajuato displayed in glass tombs and sat quietly in a churchyard cemetery located amidst the skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan. Despite the cultures of these cities being very different to those in which I have lived, I found many resonances between Australian places of the dead and those I visited elsewhere. magic of the city 15 rachel trigg Like most inhabitants of Western cities, I was simultaneously horrified and transfixed by the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001 and, to a lesser extent, the subsequent bombings of subways in Madrid and London. As an Australian citizen, I was also frightened by the terrorist bombings in Bali in 2002 and 2005. Though I knew no one who was killed or injured in these attacks, I was moved by the televised memorial ceremonies, which combined aspects of Balinese and Australian traditions. In my own country, I have been particularly saddened by the way in which the Aboriginal dead have been ignored in the telling of colonial history and the making of contemporary places. As a white Australian and more generally as a professional urban planner, I know that I am part of the wider ignorance of Aboriginal culture, but struggle to know how to recognise the tremendous, and often sacred, importance of Aboriginal understandings of place.

Most personally, I have frequently visited the site in Fremantle Cemetery, Perth at which the ashes of my mother and my maternal grandmother and grandfather are interred. On visiting the Czech Republic, in which my mother and her parents were born, I made a special visit to the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague. I looked on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue, which lists all Czech Jews killed in the holocaust, for the names of now distant relatives. As custom dictates, I placed a stone and a written prayer on the grave of Rabbi Lowe. Like so many other visitors to the Cemetery, I enacted these rituals in the non rational hope that I may be connected to my ancestors, who are separated from me in both time and space. Although I come to this thesis as a scholar in the empirical tradition, I too have been enchanted by the magic of the city and its places of the dead.

1 Jean-Louis Cohen has intriguingly invited theorists to “consider the body of heterotopias imagined and produced as more significant than the body of utopias on which historical narrative has focused” (2007: 29). Cohen (2007) has identified heterotopias including those mentioned by Foucault, as well as other places such as university campuses, housing for factory workers, military institutions like the Pentagon, department stores, theme parks and holiday resorts. magic of the city 16 rachel trigg

2 First published in French in 1967 and in English in 1970.

magic of the city 17 rachel trigg Cosmologies I: the history of the city and its places of the 2 dead

Figure 2.1: Etienne-Louis Boullée (1784) Cenotaph to Newton Source: Heathcote 1999: 11

magic of the city 18 rachel trigg 2.1 Introduction This chapter provides an overview of the history of places of the dead in the context of the cities of which they are a part. It considers the ways in which the location and design of cemeteries and memorials relates to a city’s ‘cosmology’, that is its historically and culturally specific understanding. The understanding of the city has, throughout Western history, dictated the location and form of cemeteries and memorials. Burial grounds were an antecedent to the city of the living and one of several causal factors in selecting the location for a metropolis (Mumford 1961). When the city was understood as a sacred reflection of the cosmos, the body was considered impure and was not permitted burial within the city walls. When the city became an expression of God’s will, and the body no more than a temporary vessel for the soul, burial was impermanent and occurred within and around the central church. When the city was conceived as a machine for healthy and moral living, the cemetery was again removed to the margins of the metropolis.

This chapter considers four broad periods in the understanding of the Western city, each of which are associated with particular ways of commemorating the dead. These periods are dated largely from significant changes in the form and location of places of the dead, which generally, but not always precisely, correspond with changes in the conceptualisation of the city as a whole. The periods defined here may thus differ from those associated with the history of the Western city as set out in other sources.

The first period considered in this chapter is the ancient city, which for the purposes of this thesis is dated from about 600 BC to 500 AD. The ancient city, and the forms of commemoration which occurred within it, is here understood as being geographically, as well as historically, specific. The term is used to refer only to the cities of the Mediterranean Basin, although there were at the same time urban formations elsewhere in the world. The second period of urban history considered in this chapter is the medieval city, which is here dated from AD 500 to magic of the city 19 rachel trigg the 1750s. This period includes the time in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which is often separately referred to as the Renaissance, as well as that which is frequently associated with early modernity. However, the urban form of the Renaissance is here considered with the medieval city because, although innovative architectural works were built during that time, particularly in Italy, they did not result in widespread changes to the overall understanding of the city or, most significantly for this thesis, its places of the dead. It was not, as will be shown later in this chapter, until the mid to late eighteenth century that the medieval form of places of the dead began to be reconsidered, and not until the early nineteenth century that modern cemetery models emerged.

The third period in the history of the Western city considered in this chapter is the modern city, understood as dating from the 1750s to the early 1970s. As Saler (2006) has noted, the term ‘modernity’ is highly contested and has been considered to commence anywhere between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.1 This chapter, and indeed the entire thesis, uses a specific understanding of the terms ‘modernity’, ‘modern’ and ‘modernist’. ‘Modernity’ is used to refer to the roughly 200 year period between the mid eighteenth and mid twentieth centuries. The early part of this period is, as is discussed later in this chapter, sometimes referred to as ‘the Enlightenment’. The ‘modern’ city is used here to refer to the understanding and spatial manifestation of the metropolis as it existed during modernity. In contrast, the term ‘modernist’ is understood as a stylistic approach to art and architecture, typical in the latter part of modernity, which privileged machine production and a minimalist aesthetic over craft production and ornamentation.2 The metropolis as it exists today, that is in the first decade of the twenty first century, is throughout this thesis referred to as the ‘contemporary’ or ‘present day’ city, rather than the ‘modern’ city, due to the specific historic, social and economic conditions associated with the latter term. The final period in the history of the Western city considered in this chapter is the postmodern city, which is here dated from the 1970s to present. This period is, again, considered as existing independently to the ‘postmodernist’ architectural magic of the city 20 rachel trigg style which was prevalent in the 1980 and 90s.

This chapter devotes greater length to the consideration of the postmodern metropolis than to the discussion of the ancient, medieval and modern cities. This is partly because the case studies examined in Chapters 5 to 10, which require thorough historical contextualisation, concentrate on contemporary places of the dead. In addition, while the forms and historical conditions associated with the ancient, medieval and modern cities would be uncontroversial for most urban theorists, the notion of the postmodern city is still contested. There are innumerable writers on the history of the Western city, although far fewer on its places of the dead. The writers on urban form and history used in this chapter were chosen because they consider the city as a whole, rather than concentrating on individual buildings or spaces. The writers considered here, including Yi-Fu Tuan, Joseph Rykwert, David Harvey, Christine Boyer and Leonie Sandercock, also look at the broader social, cultural, economic and political context to the creation of the city, rather than simply its built form. Most importantly, the writers referred to in this chapter all in some way critique the notion of the city understood only as a materialisation of a scientific, or Enlightenment, rationality.

2.2 Cosmos The notion of ‘cosmology’, or an understanding of the city not entirely based on scientific reason, derives most directly from the work of Yi-Fu Tuan. Tuan believes that the mythical space of all cultures may be understood as part of a broader cosmology or world view (1977). In his early work, Tuan defines ‘world view’ as “a people’s more or less systematic attempt to make sense of an environment” and notes that, “to be liveable, nature and society must show order and display a harmonious relationship” (1977: 88). According to Tuan, the difference between mythologised and pragmatic, or rationalistic, attempts to reconcile nature and society is that the former works on a logic which allows for internal contradictions and exclusions. For instance, the mythical understanding of space permits multiple magic of the city 21 rachel trigg centres, overlapping boundaries and features which do not correspond with lived experience.

Examples of the spatialised cosmos cited by Tuan in Space and Place (1977) are taken from ancient and traditional societies. Tuan, like Rykwert (1988), identifies structural similarities in the cosmic models of a wide range of pre modern cultures. Many of these societies represent the earth using the metaphor of the human body. With this understanding, geographic features, such as mountains, streams and trees, become analogous with human body parts, such as bones, blood and hair (1977). Tuan also notes that many ancient and traditional societies picture the earth as a reflection of the night sky. It is from this understanding that astrology derives, as patterns in the stars become linked to human behaviours and also to yearly cycles of agrarian life. Layered onto world views which understand the earth as analogy of the human body or the heavens are those which relate to the cardinal points. With this understanding of the world a society posits itself as the centre of the universe with mythological features, such as the home of the winds or the place of the dead, aligned north, south, east and west. Tuan provides several examples of societies, including the Pueblo Indians, imperial Chinese and ancient Greeks, which combine several different ways of relating space to myth, in order to form complex and schematicised world views (1977).

In his later work, Tuan considers whether contemporary cities in the West and in China retain traces of a mythical understanding of city founding and development. He explains, in Hearth and Cosmos, that his aim is to consider the notion of ‘cosmos’, “which has suffered in recent decades from unprecedented assault by influential critics…[who] could see no good at all in the larger-scale human achievements” (1996: 14). Tuan differentiates between two understandings of ‘cosmos’: that of a simplifying and unifying vision; and that of a plenitude of experiences and beliefs. He believes that, to be a viable ideal, the cosmos needs to gain inspiration from each of these understandings (1996). The crux of Tuan’s argument, and an idea central to this thesis, is that the cosmos continues to be a magic of the city 22 rachel trigg real force in the lives of individuals and the development of cultures, and that the city is the most powerful image of the cosmos. Tuan writes, “civilisation is practically synonymous with city; in particular, the great city of monumental buildings and diversified populace that stands for the world, or cosmos” (1996: 150). The remainder of this chapter provides a history of the cosmos as it is materialised in the Western city and its places of the dead.

2.3 The tomb and the monument in the ancient city Like Tuan, much of Joseph Rykwert’s work considers how a culture’s view of the world is materialised in the physical fabric of its cities. In The Idea of a Town (1976 and 1988), Rykwert describes how the building of the ancient city began with the marking of its bounds. A founding ritual was held during which the location of the new city walls was drawn or ploughed into the earth. The mythical founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus (Rykwert 1988) is just one example of this type of ritual, which occurred throughout ancient Greece and Rome. As well as being created through ritual, Rykwert shows that ancient cities were also planned and built in patterns which related city form to world view. The shape of a city’s walls, location of its gates, layout of its streets and expression of its centre all related to the culture’s understanding of the relationship between earth and cosmos. As well as being found in the Mediterranean Basin, Rykwert (1988) cites convincing parallels of this linking of urban form to world view in the ancient cities of India, China, Africa and South America and in the camp sites of some Indigenous Australians.

Although factors such as military advantage and trading opportunities were taken into account, for the Romans and other ancient societies, the words and actions used in the ceremonial laying out of the city constituted the conceptual model, or cosmos, for the city (Rykwert 1988). Architectural historian Spiro Kostof concurs with this perspective, stating that societies across the globe “insisted that making cities was an intentional act, approved and implemented at the highest level. The magic of the city 23 rachel trigg gods made cities and took charge of them. The kings made cities as a microcosm of their rule. The city was a marvellous, inspired creation” (1991: 34). Thus, for many cultures, the creation of a city was not only a rational response to the problem of sustaining human life, but also an expression of their understanding of the universe. The earliest Western cities combined rational and non rational elements in such an intrinsic way that one could not be separated from the other.

There were many components of the ancient city which connected urban fabric to cosmic understanding. Cemeteries, memorials and other monuments to the dead were one such component and were integral parts of cities Figure 2.2: The Appian Way, outside Rome, irregularly lined with tombstones from the time of the first Source: Ariès 1985: 12 permanent settlements. Lewis Mumford believes that burial grounds preceded the city of the living and were one of the causal factors in selecting the location for a metropolis. In The City in History, Mumford states, “early man’s respect for the dead, itself an expression of fascination with his powerful images of daylight fantasy and nightly dream, perhaps had an even greater role than more practical needs in causing him to seek a fixed meeting place and eventually a continuous settlement” (1961: 14). Mumford’s belief accords with the perspectives of Tuan, Rykwert and Kostof that a sacred world view was as important in selecting the location and form of an ancient city as were more practical concerns.

According to James Curl (1980, 1993 and 2002) and Phillipe Ariés (1981), who have both written extensively on the history of places of the dead, ancient societies magic of the city 24 rachel trigg simultaneously feared and honoured burial places. For civilisations such as the ancient Greeks and Romans, the dead were impure and were not permitted within the city, “although emperors and important personages could receive special treatment” (Curl 1993: 41). Burial grounds were thus located immediately outside city walls, often along the major roads leading from city gates to the open countryside (Mumford 1961). Rows of tombstones marked the entry to ancient cities, providing a place to rest and to pay respect to the ancestral dead before entering the metropolis (Figure 2.2). At varying times the Greeks and Romans also practiced cremation, with ashes being stored in containers which were also placed along ceremonial roads leading from the city (Curl 1993).

Ancient Greek and Roman world views were also materialised in monuments within their cities. Rykwert explains that the foundation of the city “was commemorated in regularly recurring festivals, and permanently enshrined in monuments whose physical presence anchored the ritual to the soil and the physical shape of the roads and buildings” (1988: 27). Although he emphasises their formal, rather than ritual role, Kostof (1991) identifies several different typologies3 of ancient monument, including the triumphal arch, commemorative column and statue. These monuments often functioned as memorials and occasionally as graves. Triumphal arches were located within cities and, like graves, along major imperial roads (Kostof 1991). They celebrated the victories and thus the power of the empire and helped to maintain and reproduce the relationship between world view and city form. As Kostof states, “to enter a city through a triumphal arch was to celebrate the myth of a transcendent regime” (1991: 268). Commemorative columns and statues of leaders, warriors and other ancient heroes served similar functions to the triumphal arch.

The distinction between monuments, memorials and individual graves was far less clear in ancient times than it is now. The ashes of the dead were sometimes buried beneath or within their memorials, as in the Trajan Column in Rome (Curl 1993). Greek and Roman temples often served as war memorials which “expressed magic of the city 25 rachel trigg thanks to the gods for the deliverance of victory” (Curl 1993: 338). There was, in ancient times, also a lack of distinction between the functions of the battlefield grave and the war memorial. After battles in foreign lands, slain Greek and Roman soldiers were either buried in mass graves surmounted by commemorative stelae or cremated and brought home. The closest equivalent in the ancient world to the modern war memorial was the cenotaph (Figure 2.3). Where the bodies of dead soldiers could not be identified, or belonged to senior representatives of the empire, they were memorialised by a cenotaph (Curl 1993). As their interment was symbolic, rather than literal, cenotaphs could be built within the bounds of the city. As is explained later in this chapter, and in the case study of Washington DC examined in Chapter 8, the practice of building Figure 2.3: Will Longstaff’s (1928) Immortal Shrine cenotaphs and other war showing the Cenotaph in London, which was modelled on ancient precedent memorials was revived Source: Postcard sold at Australian War Memorial 2006 early in the twentieth century, after a 1 500 year period during which virtually no such memorials were constructed.

2.4 The cathedral and the graveyard in the medieval city After the fall of the Roman Empire, the city and its communally constituted places of burial and memorial virtually disappeared from Western culture. Richard Sennett states that, “for roughly five hundred years, from AD 500 to 1 000, the great Roman cities withered. Most of Europe reverted to a primitive agricultural economy” (1994: 151). Umberto Eco explains that “the ‘dark ages’ of the early medieval period were years of depression in the city and country alike: years of wars, of famine and pestilence, of early death” (1986: 53). Kostof adds that “the old gridded Greco- Roman cities lost their physical integrity or disappeared altogether” (1991: 108). magic of the city 26 rachel trigg When new towns and cities began to appear, they were founded according to a Christian understanding of the cosmos. Unlike the ancient cities, the medieval towns generally did not have a diagrammatic plan which directly translated cosmos to urban form (Sennett 1994). The medieval world view instead resulted in towns which developed in an ad hoc manner around the veneration of god and king. Richard Sennett writes that “the medieval King, as a Christus Domini, echoed the Roman emperor’s image as a living god” (1994: 170). The bishops and priests, as God’s representatives on earth, were also significant figures in the medieval understanding of the world. Kostof (1991) cites the work of Thomas Aquinas as the source of the medieval belief that city formation was one of the holy duties of kings. Aquinas did not proscribe a specific form to the medieval city, but instead encouraged kings to build cities as “the royal equivalent of the creation of the world” (Kostof 1991: 111).

Despite its chaotic form, the medieval city did have one common, unifying and centrally located feature: the cathedral. The Gothic cathedral was a materialisation of the medieval understanding of the cosmos. Erected over hundreds of years to a collective vision, cathedrals represented commonly understood relationships between god, king and people. For the largely illiterate populace, the cathedral was the basis of an understanding of the scriptures and of the moral code for living. Sennett states that, “as medieval towns and cities revived under the Christian aegis, the stones of the churches and cathedrals were the materials with which Christians expressed their life-long and passionate attachment to the places in which they lived” (1994: 157). If, in the mythical space of the cosmos the medieval cathedral was inherently connected to god and king, in the real space of the city the cathedral was intrinsically linked with the graveyard.

In the last days of the Roman empire, persecuted Christians had begun to live in caves in the hills around Rome (Mumford 1961). These Christians buried their dead in catacombs. Over time, the corpses of early Christians were symbolically transformed into the relics of martyrs. The relics in turn became the preferred sites magic of the city 27 rachel trigg for churches and cathedrals, which the city bounds were amended to incorporate. At the same time, the replacement of Greco Roman attitudes to death with Christian belief in resurrection resulted in the dead ceasing to frighten the living. Burial grounds began to be located within city walls from the sixth century and quickly became an accepted part of urban life (Ariés 1981). Graves, particularly of the wealthy and noble, were incorporated into churches as people sought to be buried near the relics of martyrs and saints. A relatively rapid transformation in the location and design of places of the dead was thus achieved due to “faith in the resurrection of the body, combined with worship for the ancient martyrs and their tombs” (Ariés 1981: 31). The enormous cultural shift in the understanding of the cosmos and the city resulted in a corresponding change in the location and design of burial sites.

The medieval church and its cemetery were not only an accepted part of the city, but also its cultural and civic centre. Ariés notes that “The cemetery, together with the church, was the centre of social life. It took the place of the forum” (1981: 62). A large variety of activities occurred within the cemetery, which was used as a resting place for pilgrims, a prison, a marketplace, a fairground, a court of law and a site for prostitution (Ariés 1981). These activities occurred despite the close proximity of the church and the presence of bone filled charnel houses and open mass graves. Figure 2.4: Saints Innocents Cemetery in Though the social role of the medieval Paris Source: Ariés 1981: 204 -205. cemetery declined during the magic of the city 28 rachel trigg Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, the form and rituals associated with cemeteries altered relatively little until the eighteenth century. During the intervening thousand years the cemetery was characterised “by the accumulation of bodies in small spaces…by the constant relocation of the bones and their transfer from the ground to the charnels; and finally, by the daily presence of the living among the dead” (Ariés 1981: 92). The frequent excavation of burial grounds to make way for new corpses, together with the lesser importance attached to the identification of individual bodies, resulted in cemeteries which were primarily fields of mud devoid of gravestones and other permanent markers (Figure 2.4).

The lack of importance of the individual body, coupled with the lack of existence of empires or even city states, rendered monuments and memorials virtually non existent in the medieval city. Although powerful individuals were buried in elaborate tombs within the church, as close as possible to the relics of martyrs, memorials were not used as a means of relating urban form to cosmic understanding. As Curl writes, “to the medieval mind monuments to events were unthinkable. Funerary architecture…was confined to the enrichment of churches” (1993: 339).

2.5 The cemetery and the memorial in the modern city The understanding of the city as combining rational and non rational aspects began in ancient times and continued through the Middle Ages. Foucault describes the new episteme that appeared towards the end of the Middles Ages as ‘rationalism’. Further, “one might say, if one’s mind is filled with ready-made concepts, that the seventeenth century marks the disappearance of old superstitious or magical beliefs and the entry of nature, at long last, into the scientific order” (2002a: 60). Foucault’s tone here warns of over simplification. Magical, or non rational, beliefs did not disappear entirely at the seventeenth century, nor had nature been ignored as an object of study before that time. Rather, with the change in episteme, magic and superstition were for the first time defined as ‘other’ to the ordering of the natural world. magic of the city 29 rachel trigg The effects of rationalism and the advent of modernity on the understanding of the city have been considered by many writers. David Harvey (1990) describes modernity as an intellectual project to develop branches of thought, such as science and law, objectively and according to their own inner logic. Furthermore, the “development of rational forms of social organisation and rational modes of thought promised liberation from the irrationalities of myth, religion, superstition” (1990: 12). Although it is argued throughout this thesis that a non rational understanding of the city continued well beyond the Middle Ages, with modernity the Western city became conceptualised and represented by scholars and decision makers as being purely a projection of scientific reason. Leonie Sandercock writes that “the Enlightenment faith in progress through scientific and technical reason…gave modernist planning the Utopian dream of the rational city” (1998: 22). Though the purely rational city was never realised, its understanding and attainment were pursued throughout modernity.

In addition to giving rise to a new understanding of the city, the Enlightenment also saw the creation of a new urban profession. In Dreaming the Rational City (1983), Christine Boyer chronicles the development of town planning in the United States between 1890 and 1945. She links the creation of this new profession, which aimed to control both the form and function of the city, to the conceptual dominance of the rational city. Boyer states, “in the twentieth century modern man and urban life were inseparably and nihilistically joined, for urban life distilled both the alienating man-machine domination as well as the utopian promise of material advancement” (1983: 282). This understanding of the modern city is carried through to Boyer’s later work on the postmodern city, which is discussed in the following section of this chapter. Boyer writes that the Enlightenment was founded on the belief that “scientific and technical instruments of rationality would control chaotic urban form and provide an emancipatory public sphere and an improved quality of life for all citizens in newly formed democratic states” (1994: 11). magic of the city 30 rachel trigg Rykwert believes that the rationalistic understanding of the city which existed in the first half of the twentieth century and resulted in the rise of urban planning as a profession also informed the work of post World War II architects and planners. He writes that architects and planners “believed they could guarantee that rationally planned and freshly designed cities of a new civilisation would rise from the smoking and cruel ruins and would ensure the happiness of the survivors and veterans” (Rykwert 2000: 3). According to Rykwert, the methods used by these urban professionals were limited to statistical inquiry and technical efficiency. Any relationship between the cosmos and city formation thus continued to be rejected by the post World War II creators and developers of the modern city.

In the eighteenth century, burial practices which had been initiated after the fall of the Roman empire and continued throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance came to a relatively abrupt halt. This was initially due to the rise of Enlightenment science and a preoccupation with the connections between burial, hygiene and disease (Foucault 1986), but soon gained social and theological significance. In Britain, Curl notes that “as Protestantism triumphed, and the cult of the individual grew from Renaissance times, the idea of a communal charnel-house was not favoured” (1993: 136). Greater importance became attached to the identification of individual bodies and the marking of social status, as is shown in the case study in Chapter 5, leading to a preference for burial in single, permanent graves and often the clearing and removal of centuries old ossuaries.

The new, enlightened conception of the city and its places of the dead resulted in two new forms of cemetery, the development of which has been well documented by Richard Etlin, particularly in the Parisian context. In The Architecture of Death (1984), Etlin takes his subject, specified in the subtitle of his book, as the transformation of the cemetery in eighteenth century Paris. Etlin looks in great detail at the changes to Parisian places of the dead between 1711 and 1874. He also considers “how a society fashions its physical world to support and sustain its most cherished convictions and deepest feelings” (1984: ix) or, in other words, the magic of the city 31 rachel trigg ways in which the cosmos of eighteenth century Parisians contributed to the form of the city and its places of the dead.

The primary link identified by Etlin between changing attitudes towards death and the city is the notion that many urban problems were the result of ‘corrupted’ air. This notion brought into question many inner city land uses, as it was thought that “not only the cemeteries but also the hospitals and the slaughterhouses infected the air and hence belonged ‘out in the open’ at the periphery of the city” (Etlin 1984: 26). The first of the resultant new cemetery types evolved in Paris and is typified by Père Lachaise, which opened in 1804 and at that time was located well outside the city. The second model developed in the United States and is represented by Mount Auburn, outside Boston, which was dedicated in 1831. As is discussed in more detail in the Chapter 6 case study, Stanley French (1975) has detailed the development of the American cemetery model as a rural idyll where individual and often fenced graves were set amidst grassy hills. As well as being a place for burial, Mount Auburn hosted recreational activities such as picnics and carriage rides. The cemetery was also intended to have a strong moral and cultural function in promoting the contemplation of death and the development of sculptural works (French 1975).

The Parisians had a similar idea at Père Lachaise. Though French (1975) stresses that the earlier cemetery was not a model for Mount Auburn, both began as grassy fields set with monuments. Over time, nature became the dominant feature at Mount Auburn (see Figure 6.5),

Figure 2.5: Père Lachaise Cemetery in 1829, with while Père Lachaise progressed industrial Paris in the background Source: Etlin 1984 : 349 in the direction of monumentality magic of the city 32 rachel trigg (Figure 2.5). Ariés writes that in the newer sections of Père Lachaise, “the tombs were crowded together, and nothing could bear less resemblance to a park” (1981: 533). Two opposing models for the modern cemetery thus developed (Reid 1996): one with inconspicuous name plates set in grassy fields, the other with crowded rows of marble vaults. Despite this great difference in form, both models of the modern cemetery were perceived as places apart from the general life of the city and were located on the edges of urban areas.

In addition to the development of new cemetery models, the modern city also saw the revival of a form of remembrance of which had been virtually abandoned since the fall of the Roman empire. In the late eighteenth century, French architect Etienne-Louis Boullée and his contemporaries began to design memorials and vast mausoleums which “derived from a comprehensive vision of the human condition understood as a reflection of the larger cosmic order” (Etlin 1984: 115). These places of the dead referenced the geometric forms used in ancient monuments and often incorporated pyramids, domed roofs, long colonnades and square plans. Although Boullée’s designs were never built, works such as his Cenotaph for Newton represented an early Enlightenment understanding which united divine order and scientific rationality (Figure 2.1). Boullée’s monuments also pre empted the modernist design ethos. For example, in the late eighteenth century he wrote, ”I cannot conceive of anything more melancholy that a monument consisting of a flat surface, bare and unadorned, made of a light-absorbent material, absolutely stripped of detail” (1976: 106).

Where Boullée and other French architects such as Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and Jean-Charles Moreau revived the forms associated with ancient memorial architecture, it was not until the mid to late nineteenth century that the modern understanding of the memorial, and particularly the war memorial, emerged. Kristin Ann Hass dates the creation of the modern war memorial, which honours individual soldiers rather than the empire for which they fought, to the burial of American Civil War dead in Gettysburg in 1863. She states, “new traditions created at Gettysburg magic of the city 33 rachel trigg radically transformed ideas about what to do with the bodies and the memory of the war dead and, in turn, transformed the making of national memory in the United States and Europe” (1998: 35). Other scholars have connected the creation of the modern war memorial more broadly to the erection of memorials after the American Civil War as well as the Risorgimento, Crimean War and Franco- Prussian War (Inglis 1998). The practice of creating monuments which honoured and often named individual soldiers became firmly embedded after World War I, when virtually every town in France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand erected its own war memorial.

In terms of the form of twentieth century memorials, Edwin Heathcote sees those created in response to World War I as “the last great outpouring of a fundamentally Renaissance humanist architecture” and contrasts them with the memorials created after World War II, which “were far less secure in their convictions” (1999: 62). In contrast to World War I memorials, which often featured a sculpture of a soldier, post World War II memorials were generally more abstract in form and minimalist in ornamentation. The loss of conviction to which Heathcote refers relates to the way in which Enlightenment nation building and belief in the application of scientific rationality were taken to their furthest extremes in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, set well apart from the cities of Europe like large industrial estates, and in the use of the first atomic weaponry against Japan. In the mid to late twentieth century it was not only the soldier killed in war, but any citizen killed in any armed conflict, who could be memorialised. Monuments and museums to victims of genocide, mass murder and terrorism are now located in many Western cities, in stark contrast in both form and function to the monuments of the ancient world.

2.6 The monumental fragment in the postmodern city In The Condition of Postmodernity (1990), Harvey argues that the latter part of the twentieth century has seen a significant shift in the way that the economically magic of the city 34 rachel trigg advanced nations of the West view the world. This change in world view is, he believes, evident in all aspects of society, including systems of economic production and consumption, practices of cultural expression and the way in which cities are made and inhabited. While this thesis does not entirely share Harvey’s neo Marxist perspective, it does accept the premise that the understanding and materialisation of the city did begin to alter towards the end of the twentieth century due to changes in economic and cultural conditions. While many contemporary writers have expressed this idea, it is Harvey who most clearly and influentially argues this point of view. Much of Harvey’s book consists of a comparison of the ‘postmodern’ political, economic and cultural systems of the late twentieth century with the modern or Enlightenment systems which persisted from the seventeenth to mid twentieth centuries. When defining postmodernism, Harvey emphasises contemporary culture’s acceptance of the ephemeral and the discontinuous, stating “Postmodernism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and the chaotic currents of change as if that is all there is” (1990: 44). This is in marked contrast to the modern notion that societies can progress in a relatively orderly manner through the application of scientific knowledge and technical reason.

Despite his neo Marxist preoccupation with the economic causes of cultural phenomena, Harvey devotes a chapter and numerous references throughout The Condition of Postmodernity to the notion of the postmodern city. He focuses on the city, as one of many products of contemporary society, because he believes it to be “a vital crucible for the forging of new cultural sensibilities” (1990: 66). The city is also used by Harvey as a real indicator for the onset of the nebulous concept of postmodernity. Following architectural critic Charles Jencks, he dates the symbolic end of modernism to the 1972 razing of the Pruitt-Igoe housing development in St Louis, United States of America, which had won architectural awards for its modernist design. Although he identifies positive aspects of the cultural systems of the late twentieth century, particularly the emphasis on marginalised ‘others’ such as colonised peoples, ethnic minorities, women and the poor, Harvey ultimately views postmodernism as a negative historical-geographical condition which he magic of the city 35 rachel trigg hopes will be overcome by a renewal of the unified and ethically oriented project of modernity (1990). This perspective is shared by Tuan, who argues against postmodernism and for a version of high modernism which “while it still owes allegiance to its Enlightenment heritage, including dreams of progress, it would like to see the thrust of progress – and of modernism – modulate into something more temperate, slowed down by ironic sceptical thought and sheer weight of multitudinous facts” (1996: 179).

Though Harvey expresses hope in a return to a revised version of a modern cosmology, he sees little likelihood of a revival of the non rational understanding of the city. Harvey believes that as world view has became increasingly fragmented towards the end of the twentieth century, so too has the conception of urban form. For Harvey, the city is now understood as “a ‘palimpsest’ of past forms superimposed upon each other, and a ‘collage’ of current uses, many of which may be ephemeral” (1990: 66). Even that which Harvey identifies as being the most appealing and liberating aspect of postmodernism, its concern for ‘otherness’, is in the city expressed as a “geography of differentiated tastes and cultures turned into a pot-pourri of internationalism” (1990: 87).

More recent texts maintain Harvey’s concern for the conception of urban form in the contemporary city. For example, Boyer believes that the design of urban form in the 1970s and 1980s focused on “arranging and detailing ornamental places of the city until a matrix of well-designed fragments appeared” (1994: 2). Boyer believes that the postmodern world view has resulted in designers substituting a matrix of fragments for a unified understanding of the city. She writes that “we can not speculate or reflect on a more rational and equitable form for the city, for fear of erecting perspective wholes and illusionary totalities that might exclude or homogenize what we believe must remain plural and multiperspectival” (1994: 3).

More recently still, in The Seduction of Place, Rykwert has warned of conceiving of the city as an organic entity, rather than as a material product which is manipulated magic of the city 36 rachel trigg by city builders (2000). Despite the efforts of modernist planners and architects, Rykwert believes that

the realities of the late twentieth century in fact oppose a ‘designed’ city, where first consideration is urban form and some dialogue with the citizens, to the much more pervasive and insidious city of networks ‘arranged’ by the traffic and sanitary engineers whose interests are to be filled by the developer and the speculator: the city of efficiency guiding profit (2000: 232).

Here Rykwert largely restates an argument, based on the understanding of the city as materialised myth, with which he has been occupied for over 30 years. He believes that the city is still largely developed according to the rationalist requirements of engineers and property developers, rather than being understood as a representation of a collectively constituted world view.

However, the postmodern perspective that the contemporary city is a collage of fragments has itself been challenged. Leonie Sandercock suggests that Harvey and other neo Marxist theorists such as Manuel Castells place excessive emphasis on economic forces, while largely ignoring demographic and cultural shifts occurring on a global scale. She believes that “when these socio-cultural forces are ignored, it is easy to fall into an analysis in which the economic forces of globalization are seen to be shaping everything…It turns us into theoretical couch potatoes in a nihilistic postmodern scenario – death by paralysis (1998: 2-3).

Sandercock’s critique leads her to a perspective which combines insights from postcolonial and feminist theory with an emphasis on the making of urban space and the practice of planning. In contrast to Harvey and even Boyer, Sandercock offers a new form of world view, based on a postmodern acknowledgement that cities are “multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multiple” (1998: 3). Sandercock calls her alternative world view ‘cosmopolis’ and defines it as an idealised, cosmopolitan magic of the city 37 rachel trigg metropolis. She provides a form of manifesto for her idealised city of the future, claiming

we need to start understanding our cities as bearers of our intertwined fates. We need to formulate within our city a shared notion of a common destiny. We need to see our city as the locus of citizenship…We need to see our city and its multiple communities as spaces where we connect with the cultural other who is now our neighbour (1998: 182-183).

Although she clearly hopes to influence the work of urban planners, architects and other professionals, as well as to encourage the activities of community groups and non government organisations, in Towards Cosmopolis (1998) Sandercock conceptualises cosmopolis as a utopian vision which can never be fully realised.

In a latter volume, called Cosmopolis II (2003), Sandercock focuses on more operational questions about how the cosmopolitan metropolis may be realised in the twenty first century. She provides a toolkit of processes and case studies aimed at urban planners. Despite the shift from theoretical to operational concerns, Sandercock continues to base her conceptualisation of cosmopolis on a critique of purely rational ways of knowing the city. She states that, in understanding the city, “there are two equally significant dangers: one is to shut reason out, the other is to let nothing else in” (2003: 71). Sandercock lists the characteristics of her epistemology as including “a refusal of the logic of the binary constructions that divide (as in ‘either reason or emotion’) in favour of an inclusive logic (as in ‘both reason and emotion’)” (2003: 72). This rejection of the binary logic of modernity in favour of a more inclusive, multi faceted epistemology is also one of the theoretical bases of this thesis.

Despite writers such as Sandercock providing ways in which the city may continue to be understood in relation to a collectively held world view, research on places of the dead in the late twentieth century largely reflects the postmodern notion of the magic of the city 38 rachel trigg city as a fragmented series of spaces and places which cannot be conceived as a totality. Analyses generally focus on new forms of burial and memorialisation, rather than on the more general relationship between places of the dead and the understanding of the city or the world. For example, Rico Franses (1996) uses the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s concept of ‘framing’ to provide a comparative reading of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC, which is examined in Chapter 8, and the AIDS Memorial Quilt. While the former uses a list as an “instrument of comprehensibility” (1996: 263) to identify individual dead soldiers, the latter consists of a potentially limitless series of coffin sized patchwork panels. Each panel in the Quilt represents a victim of AIDS and was constructed by the deceased’s friends and relatives. The Quilt began in 1987 and has now reached such a large size that it is rarely displayed in its entirety. For Franses, the AIDS Memorial Quilt is “a new kind of postmodern monument” (1996: 267), due to its framelessness, infinite expandability, lack of permanency and ability to be read and displayed either in whole or in part.

In another contemporary examination of places of the dead which focuses on a new commemorative form, Kate Hartig and Kevin Dunn (1998) consider the numerous and contradictory meanings within memorials to car crash victims. Using a postmodern conception of space and place, they aim to illustrate “the multiplicity of meanings which emanate from these simple structures within the landscape” (1998: 19). Hartig and Dunn focus on the ways in which one type of space can be interpreted in a social and cultural context, within a well defined geographic area, and conclude that the roadside memorial “provides a very personalised space of commemoration beyond what is allowable in a formal deathscape [but which is] still considered sacred and inviolable” (1998: 18). Similarly, Elizabeth Teather takes the clearly delineated area of Hong Kong and examines the evolution of social and cultural meanings in its places of the dead. She shows that “where Hong Kong’s urban cemeteries are concerned, the cosmological world of fengshui underlies the layout, practices and associated mental constructs” (1998: 33). Teather ends her study at the point at which it begins to approach the non rational and concludes by magic of the city 39 rachel trigg suggesting that cemeteries in Hong Kong can not be understood without looking at the Chinese world view.

Ariés and Curl, who both look fleetingly at contemporary cemeteries at the end of much longer historical treatises, have very different attitudes to places of the dead in contemporary cities. Ariés concludes The Hour of Our Death by stating, “death must simply become the discreet but dignified exit of a peaceful person from a helpful society that is not torn, not even overly upset, by the idea of a biological transition without significance, without pain or suffering, and ultimately without fear” (1981: 614). Ariés’ highly rational and almost nihilistic perspective is not further explained. In contrast, Curl concludes A Celebration of Death by writing that the memorials created by great cultures “express something of the infinite…We could learn much from the funerary architecture of the past if we are to give new significance to a celebration of life in our own time” (1980: 367). For Curl, the non rational aspects of places of the dead are related to religious conviction. In a more recent edition of his book, retitled Death and Architecture (2002), Curl expands upon his belief that cemeteries and memorials are undervalued in contemporary Western societies. He is indignant at vandalism to old cemeteries and strongly criticises churches which have cleared tombstones from their churchyards, stating “they want death to be invisible, forgotten, and ignored in their ghastly, sanitised, unreal world of blancmange blandness” (2002: x). The contrasting perspectives of Aries and Curl provide an indication of the uncertainty surrounding places of the dead in contemporary culture, their relationships to the cities of which they are a part, and the world views of which they are a representation.

2.7 Conclusions Since the advent of the Western city, the forms and locations of places of the dead have always been representative of the understanding of the cities of which they are a part. The relationship between the ancient, medieval, modern and postmodern cities and their places of the dead, as detailed in this chapter, is magic of the city 40 rachel trigg summarised in Table 2.1. This table also outlines linkages between the historically specific understandings of the Western city discussed in this chapter and the case studies examined in Chapters 5 to 10.

Places of the Examples Links to case studies dead Ancient tombs and • tombs on the Appian Way Chapters 7, 8 and 9 600BC-500AD monuments • cenotaphs Medieval graveyards and • Les Innocents Graveyard Chapters 5, 8 and 10 500-1750 cathedrals • Gothic cathedral • Pére Lachaise Cemetery Modern cemeteries and Chapters 5-10 • Mount Auburn Cemetery 1750-1970 memorials • Cenotaph for Newton Postmodern monumental • AIDS Memorial Quilt Chapters 5-10 1970+ fragments • roadside memorials Table 2.1: Summary of Western places of the dead in the context of the city

This chapter has shown that not only scholars who consider the ancient and traditional city, such as Tuan, Rykwert, Mumford and Kostof, but also theorists of postmodernity, including Sandercock, Boyer and even Harvey, conceive of the city not only as an manifestation of the dominant mode of production, nor primarily as a solution to questions of circulation, hygiene and defence, but as an expression of the culture in which it was created. The arguments presented in this thesis are based on the possibility, offered particularly by Tuan’s conceptualisation of the cosmos and Sandercock’s theorisation of cosmopolis, that the Western city can still be understood as the materialisation of a collectively held world view. Furthermore, it is argued that within that world view, and the city made in its image, places of the dead continue to play a significant role. As is outlined in this chapter, and detailed in the case studies in Chapters 5 to 10, cemeteries and memorials remain places which commemorate important events in the founding and development of the city and which, to again cite Rykwert (1988: 27), anchor the understanding of the magic of the city 41 rachel trigg metropolis “to the soil and the physical shape of the roads and buildings”.

The following chapter presents a new understanding of the city which responds to calls by Tuan, Harvey and others for a return to the ethically oriented project of high modernity alongside the renewal of a collectively held world view. It attempts to show that the libratory aspects of postmodernism’s concern for difference and ‘otherness’ can, in the Western city, exist alongside a shared understanding of the cosmos. This understanding is based upon the insights of contemporary literature, anthropology and the arts, which allow rational ways of knowing the world to exist in conjunction with ‘other’ ways to knowledge. It is called the magic of the city.

1 Saler (2006) provides a formidable list of references regarding the definition and understanding of modernity. In regards to periodicity, Harvey, who is frequently cited in this thesis, states that “although the term ‘modern’ has a rather more ancient history…the project of modernity came into focus during the eighteenth century” (1990: 12). In contrast Foucault (2002a), as is discussed later in this chapter, sees a distinctive break in the episteme of Western culture between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In art history, Bernard Smith (2007) has identified a very large range of uses of the term ‘modern’, dating from at least the twelfth century, and defines ‘modern art’ as being that which dominated the period between c1890 and c1970. Eric Fernie (1995) largely concurs with this view, dating ‘modern art’ between the mid nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries and ‘modernism’, more generally, as relating to the last 150 to 200 years.

2 Smith (2007) has alternatively described this form of artistic production as the ‘formalesque’.

3 Although the work of Aldo Rossi is discussed in Chapter 7, this thesis does not use the theoretically specific meaning of ‘typology’ often associated with his work in architectural discourse. Rather, it uses an older understanding of the term, defined in Bullock and Trombley as “a system for classifying things, social groups, languages, etc, by type” (2000: 890). Eric Fernie (1995) has defined ‘typology’ as “the classification of shapes” and noted that it first came into use in art history, via archaeology, in the nineteenth century.

magic of the city 42 rachel trigg 3 Cosmologies II: The magic of the city

Figure 3.1: Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1797-98) El sueño de la razón produce monstruos Source: Eco 2004 : 268

magic of the city 43 rachel trigg 3.1 Introduction Between 1797-98 the artist Francisco Goya y Lucientes produced, as part of his Caprichos series of etchings, an image entitled El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (Figure 3.1). Robert Hughes has described this as being an “ineffably moving image of the intellectual beset with doubts and night terrors, slumped on his desk with owls gyrating around his poor perplexed head” (2003: 3). The title of Goya’s image, which is inscribed on the desk on which the man sleeps, is generally translated as ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’ (Hughes 2003; Eco 2004). With this translation, the image reads as a warning of the horrors which appear when humanity abandons rationality and descends into dream and darkness. Paul Ilie (1995), however, provides an alternative translation to the etching’s title: ‘The dream of reason produces monsters’. When read in this context, the image represents not the consequences of the abandonment of rationality, but humanity’s folly in believing that the world can be understood in an entirely rational manner. The alternate title to Goya’s image is in keeping with the remainder of the Caprichos series, which satirise the foibles of late eighteenth century Spain through the depiction of satyrs, witches, donkeys, priests, penitents, hags and harridans. Ilie’s translation of the words inked onto the intellectual’s desk is also in keeping with the title of the Goya’s series, as ‘caprichos’ are, in English, ‘whims’.1

The one word difference between the two translations of Goya’s infamous title is not merely semantic. The difference in translation encapsulates the disparity between two alternate ways of understanding modernity. The first, which was detailed in the previous chapter, conceives of modernity as a noble attempt to improve the condition of humanity through the application of a purely scientific reason. The second, which is detailed in this chapter, understands modernity as an era which remained enchanted. This thesis takes the position that these two understandings need not be antithetical: that it is possible to both strive to improve the material conditions of humanity and also to acknowledge the legitimacy of a variety of ways of knowing the world. While Tuan and Harvey may refer to this as a magic of the city 44 rachel trigg culturally aware high modernism, this thesis conceptualises it as a ‘magical’ understanding of the world.

The role of this chapter is thus to propose a way in which the contemporary city may be understood as magical. This understanding is based on the alternative, but increasingly accepted, perspective that the non rational remained an inherent part of the Western world view during modernity. It counters Harvey’s (1990) argument that the economic and cultural conditions of postmodernity have eroded any possibility of a shared understanding of the world. It also responds to Sandercock’s (1998, 2003) compelling claim that it is this very sense of a shared understanding which is crucial for the contemporary city’s multiple communities to have a collective sense of responsibility for its future. As discussed in the previous chapter, Sandercock has offered the notion of ‘cosmopolis’ as a new form of world view which is neither repressive of difference nor politically disengaged. While the notion of cosmopolis provides a positive way to understand the city and to engage in its improvement, it does not provide the mythical or metaphoric understanding so crucial to the world views of ancient, medieval and even modern societies.

3.2 Defining magic The notion of the ‘magic’ of the city merges two distinct theoretical precedents, both of which relate to the understanding of artistic creation. The first of these precedents is ‘magical realism’, a form of figurative art and narrative fiction in which rational and non rational events are represented simultaneously and without distinction. The second precedent to the notion of magic as a way of understanding the contemporary city is Alfred Gell’s article ‘The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology’ (1999). In this text Gell proposes that the methodological difficulty of examining artworks in the discipline of anthropology may be overcome by conceptualising art as a type of technology.

The notions of ‘magical realism’ and ‘the enchantment of technology’ have been magic of the city 45 rachel trigg thoroughly positioned within the disciplines of literary theory and anthropology. Despite evolving from different disciplines, magical realism and the enchantment of technology share several important characteristics. Most obviously, each notion is expressed in the tension between two terms which are inherently oppositional. As Maggie Bowers explains, ‘magical realism’ is an oxymoron “describing the forced relationship of irreconcilable terms” (2004: 1). Likewise, the ‘technology of enchantment’ brings together two words which in the binary logic of modernity would generally be positioned as opposites. The contradictions inherent in ‘magical realism’ and ‘the enchantment of technology’ are, however, part of the appeal of these terms. The amalgamation of opposites brings into question the meanings generally associated with each of the words and forces a reconsideration of pre existing understandings.

Before looking in more detail at the notion of the magic as it is conceived in literary theory and in anthropology, it is important to define the term more generally. As is evident in Goya’s Caprichos series, the notion of magic conjures, in both a late eighteenth century and a contemporary context, an impression of witches, cauldrons and spells. This image is perhaps most typically represented in the ‘cauldron scene’ in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in which three witches chant “double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble”, while throwing items such as “eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, lizard's leg and howlet's wing” into a pot (Shakespeare in Rouse 1978: 447).2 Shakespeare’s play, like Goya’s etchings, represents magic as a practice which is both mysterious and crudely effective. Although this thesis rejects the notion that spells of the kind undertaken by Macbeth’s “weird sisters” can be efficacious, it shares Shakespeare’s more general belief in the existence of magic.

The Macquarie Dictionary defines magic as “the art of producing effects claimed to be beyond the natural human power and arrived at by means of supernatural agencies or through command of occult forces in nature” (1987: 1038-1039). This definition accords with the understanding of magic represented in Macbeth’s magic of the city 46 rachel trigg cauldron scene. It implies that magic is a dubious form of technical activity with unverified, rare or deceptive results. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary definition is yet more restrictive. It states that magic is “the pretended art of influencing the course of events by compelling the agency of spiritual beings, or by bringing into operation some occult controlling principle of nature” (Little 1973: 1257). The narrow conceptualisation of magic represented in these definitions is challenged in this chapter.

The notion of magic as being distinct from reason is unique to modernity. Saurabh Dube explains that this is because

the idea of modernity rests on a rupture. It brings into view a monumental narrative – the breaching of magical covenants, the surpassing of medieval superstitions, and the undoing of hierarchical traditions. The advent of modernity, then, insinuates a disenchantment of the world (2002: 729).

In Cosmos and Hearth, Tuan writes that “‘science’ and ‘democracy’ are to be the twin pillars of the modern universal cosmos” (1996: 135). As discussed in Chapter 2, this contrasts with the ancient and medieval world view, in which god and king were understood as being central to the cosmos. Tuan agrees with Harvey (1990) that modernity provided “almost total exemption from the dread of dark magic, ghosts, witches, and demons” (1996: 185). However, while modernity is epistemologically predicated on the elimination of myth, superstition and other non rational ways of understanding the world, in reality a belief in the magical continued throughout the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. As Ilie explains, throughout this time the “fundamental project of rational knowledge suffered from fragmentations and irrationalities” (1995: 1).

In his thorough historiographic review of the notion of enchantment, historian Michael Saler (2006) has identified three approaches to the relationship between magic of the city 47 rachel trigg modernity and magic. The first of these approaches, which he describes as ‘binary’, Saler sees as being exemplified by the work of Max Weber. With the binary approach, enchantment is understood as “the residual, subordinate ‘other’ to modernity’s rational, secular and progressive tenets” and associated with groups “traditionally cast as inferior within the discourse of Western elites: ‘primitives’, children, women, and the lower classes” (Saler 2006: 695 and 696). To this list could be added the inhabitants of rural areas, who in the binary logic of modernity were generally on the negative side of the rational/non rational opposition. In contrast, Saler identifies a second, ‘dialectic’ approach to modernity, based on the work of Karl Marx, Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno. This approach posits that modernity is itself inherently, and negatively, enchanted (Saler 2006). With this understanding, modernity’s claims to deliver freedom from tyranny are seen as “self-interested ideologies, false consciousness, and bad faith” (Saler 2006: 698).

More recently, however, the understanding of the world as magical has been reconsidered. Saler believes that “specters are once again haunting Europe and America – as are magicians, mermaids, mesmerists, and a mélange of other marvels once thought to have been exorcised by the rational and secular processes of modernity” (2006: 692). This reconsideration has let to a third approach to post Enlightenment enchantment, which Saler calls ‘antinomial’ and describes as “the recognition that modernity is characterized by fruitful tensions between seemingly irreconcilable forces and ideas” (2006: 700). In accordance with the antinomial approach, geographer Cheryl McEwan (2007) identifies both positive and negative aspects to the operations of magic. She states that “to be enchanted, then, is not always to be delighted or charmed, but to be faced with something both real and simultaneously weird, mysterious, awesome and perhaps even dreadful” (2007: 2). The contemporary, antinomial approach conceptualised by Saler and McEwan goes well beyond the simple association of magic with either unworldly witchcraft or outdated superstition.

In her book The Enchantment of Modern Life, political and ethical theorist Jane magic of the city 48 rachel trigg Bennett (2001) also considers both the positive and negative iterations of enchantment in the post Enlightenment world. Bennett tells of “a contemporary world sprinkled with natural and cultural sites that have the power to ‘enchant’” (2001: 3). This world is neither, as theorised by Marx, Horkheimer and Adorno and Harvey, “a place of dearth and alienation (when compared to a golden age of community and cosmological coherency)” nor, as understood by Tuan, “a place of reason, freedom, and control (as compared to a dark and confused premodernity” (Bennett 2001: 3). For Bennett, however, enchantment is primarily a sensory, rather than psychological or intellectual, experience. She describes it as “a condition of exhilaration or acute sensory activity” and “a mood of fullness, plenitude, or liveliness, a sense of having one’s nerves or circulation or concentration powers turned up” (2001: 5). More importantly, the notion of enchantment is significant to Bennett not because it enables new ways of thinking about contemporary life in general, but because it allows for a specific way of engaging in ethical life. While this may well be a worthy project, it does not provide a model for the application of magic to the understanding of the city.

Although contemporary scholarship has recently revived an interest in enchantment, the notion of magic is rarely applied to the contemporary city in a theorised way. While McEwan states that “contemporary cities – archetypal sites of modernity – are simultaneously modern and magical” (2007: 4), her article on the political implications of the belief in ghosts in contemporary South Africa equates enchantment with the appearance of apparitions. McEwan is also more interested in the relationships between her own understanding of the world and that of her subjects than she is about the cities in which they exist.

Anthony Vidler has also written on the relationship between modernism and magic, particularly as it is represented in architecture. He has, like Saler, Ilie, McEwan and Bennett, disputed the identification of modernism with a total eradication of superstition. Vidler writes that, although it was believed that the modern city “would eradicate the domain of myth, suspicion, tyranny and above all the irrational” magic of the city 49 rachel trigg (1992: 168), the Enlightenment actually had its origin in a non rational fear of the dark. Vidler cites Foucault in explaining that the modern fear of darkness and decay caused a fascination with the “fantasy-world of stone walls, darkness, hideouts and dungeons…[the] negative of the transparency and visibility which it aimed to establish” (1992: 169). Vidler’s book The Architectural Uncanny begins to reclaim the non rational elements of architectural modernism and, as is discussed in the following chapter, uses some of the methods applied in this thesis. Although it dwells on the ‘dark’ side of magic as it existed during modernity, Vidler’s work provides a significant inspiration to the argument presented here.

Another approach to the magical which is close to that developed in this thesis is provided by Steve Pile (2005) in Real Cities: Modernity, Space and the Phantasmagorias of City Life. Pile looks at the operations of four types of phantasmagoria in the contemporary city: dreams, vampires, ghosts and magic. He unsettles, as does this thesis, the linked notions that magic “implies a superstitious or primitive world-view” (2005: 59) and that the modern city has extinguished any element of the magical. Pile begins his discussion of the magical city with a critique of Robert Park’s (1925) article ‘Magic, Mentality, and City Life’. He notes that Park attempts to create a distinction between science and magic and that, from Park’s perspective,

cities create a scientific mentality because they demand of their citizens a capacity for detachment, for critical reflection, for rationalism, for logical thought, for calculation and for an ability to understand the relationship between means and ends…In Park’s scheme, magic can only survive outside the modern city (Pile 2005: 63).

However, in countering Park’s argument, Pile equates the magical only with the occult and the supernatural. Most of the chapter of Real Cities which looks at magic consists of an examination of the practice of voodoo in the contemporary Western metropolis. This approach is perhaps appropriate to the general aim of magic of the city 50 rachel trigg Pile’s work, which is to consider the emotional as a real and serious component of the city (2005). However, it does not provide a way in which to reconcile the rational and non rational understandings of the city and actually creates a greater division between the two ways of knowing by categorising and isolating the latter.

The magical will instead be here understood as a way in which people creatively make sense of complex and often confusing city environments on both a daily and a more enduring basis. It is this form of magic which Jonathan Raban (1998) discusses in Soft City. In a chapter of his book entitled ‘The Magical City’, Raban counters the rationalistic understanding of the city as a machine with examples of ways in which urban dwellers live by reading and interpreting their environment as a set of magical signs. For Raban, magic is a survival tool. He provides the example of the malicious intent ascribed to a busy road, saying

I feel about the road much as a primitive tribesman might feel about a dangerous ravine with a killer river given to unpredictable floods. I personify and apostrophise it, I attribute mysterious and malign volitions to its traffic, and it frequently disturbs my dreams (1998: 158).

As the book was originally published in 1974, many of the other examples used by Raban now seem dated. However, his argument that people devise non rational interpretations to daily events and urban forms is central to the notion of the magic of the city.

3.3 Magic in literature The Cambridge Guide to Fiction in English defines magical realism as “a term for one manifestation of postmodernism, first applied to the large body of spectacular, fantastic fiction produced in South American countries since World War II” (Ousby 1998: 180). However, ‘magical realism’ and related terms such as ‘magic realism’ and ‘marvellous realism’ have a more complex history and application than this magic of the city 51 rachel trigg definition acknowledges. The account of magical realism presented here draws extensively from Bowers’ (2004) Magic(al) Realism, which examines various provenances of the term, its application in a range of fields and its relationship to varying discourses. Other useful accounts of magical realism can be found in Jean- Pierre Durix’s (1998) Mimesis, Genres and Post-Colonial Discourse: Deconstructing Magic Realism, which critiques the term and its potential for unsettling hierarchies between the first and third worlds, and Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy Farris’ (1995) anthology Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community.

The concept of magical realism is generally agreed to have originated in Weimar Germany in reference to a form of post expressionist painting (Bowers 2004). The term has been applied to art forms created by a diverse range of practitioners from many nations. These include: paintings by German artists Otto Dix and George Grosz; stories by Czech writer Franz Kafka; films by German Wim Wenders and American Spike Jonze; paintings by the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo; and novels by British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie (Bowers 2004). However, the term is, as implied by The Cambridge Guide, now most frequently associated with literature from Latin America, particularly novels by Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The ‘magic’ in magical realism does not simply relate to the representation of the occult. Rather, as Bowers explains,

‘magic’ refers to any extraordinary occurrence and particularly to anything spiritual or unaccountable by rational science. The variety of magical occurrences in magic(al) realist writing includes ghosts, disappearances, miracles, extraordinary talents and strange atmospheres but does not include the magic as it is found in a magic show. Conjuring ‘magic’ is brought about by tricks that give the illusion that something extraordinary has happened, whereas in magic(al) magic of the city 52 rachel trigg realism it is assumed that something extraordinary really has happened (2004: 21).

Faris adds that “magical realism combines realism and the fantastic in such as way that magical elements grow organically out of the realism portrayed” (1995: 163).

The works of Marquez are now frequently seen as the archetype of magical realism (Durix 1998; Ousby 1998). Bowers identifies three features of magical realism in Marquez’s work: a confusion of time scales; a mixing of superstition, gossip and exaggeration; and the shock of new technologies or events. His novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1972), for example, describes a variety of natural and technological wonders including: a travelling show displaying inventions such as a magnet, a telescope and ice; a man who is constantly surrounded by a swarm of yellow butterflies; a torrential rain which lasts for nearly five years; the ascension of a character called Remedios the Beauty; and the arrival of the train. The novel also depicts events, such as a prolonged civil war and the massacre of three thousand people in a banana plantation, which could be read as mythical interpretations of South American history.

The notion of magic as presented in magical realism is relevant to the study of the city firstly because it provides a way of understanding the world quite different to that created by a realist perspective. As Bowers notes in the introduction to Magic(al) Realism, “what the narrative mode offers is a way to discuss alternative approaches to reality to that of Western philosophy” (2004: 1). Part of the appeal of this genre to writers in developing and post colonial nations, such as Canada, India, Australia and those in South America and Africa, is that it fuses multiple ways of knowing the world. Authors can combine myths which existed long before colonisation with European traditions of writing and with the post colonial experiences of indigenous and migrant cultures. The genre thus provides a means for the cultural ‘other’ to represent itself or, to again quote Sandercock, a way of representing that which is “multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multiple” (1998: 3). magic of the city 53 rachel trigg Although magical realist texts are often set outside the political centres manifest in large cities (Bowers 2004), such texts frequently contain representations of the city. In novels such as Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh (1996) and Fury (2002) and films such as Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987), the cities of Bombay, New York and Berlin are presented not only as physical entities, but also as mythologised, idiosyncratic and even anthropomorphised presences. One of the primary characteristics of magical realism is that it not only tells the stories of individual characters, but also uses them to represent the fate of an entire culture or nation (Durix 1998). Magical realist texts often create myths of the founding and development of a fictional, or fictionalised, nation. This technique can be used to create distance from and allow critique of socio political realities, as in the works of Marquez, Rushdie and, as discussed in Chapter 5, Milan Kundera. Magical realism’s use of foundation myths can also be applied to the understanding of cities. In many ways, situating a magical perspective within an urban setting heightens the tension between ‘magical’ and ‘realist’ ways of knowing. It also challenges perceptions, such as Park’s, that a magical or non rational understanding of the world is associated solely with traditional, rural and ‘primitive’ societies, while cities are the preserve of detached and rational thought.

The notion of the magical as understood in magical realism thus offers a way of combining collective mythologies with the pluralistic and multiperspectival understanding of the contemporary city. As magical realist texts generally emphasise enchantment as being culturally constructed (Bowers 2004), the genre offers a way of thinking about all cities while acknowledging that which is specific to an individual city or culture. Magical realism has been characterised as a genre of hybrids, in which varied cultural experiences are integrated (Durix 1998). As has been noted, the genre is often used by post colonial novelists, who combine myths and events from pre and post colonial cultures. In many cases, this involves the representation of a complex mix of cultural perspectives, such as the Indigenous, European, African and other perspectives combined in South American magical magic of the city 54 rachel trigg realism (Bowers 2004). Such diverse cultural mixes are now found in most contemporary Western cities, making them obvious places in which to locate the magical.

3.4 Magic in anthropology The discipline of anthropology has been considering the magical since 1890, when James Frazer published The Golden Bough: A Study In Magic and Religion. Prominent anthropologists since that time, including Bronislaw Malinowski (1935, 1948) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (1966), have looked at the magical rituals used in particular cultures and at the ways those rituals connect to broader systems of social life and belief. An early, and still highly relevant, example of the anthropological approach to magic is Malinowski’s (1935) detailed descriptions of the magical practices of the Trobriand Islanders, which Alfred Gell has more recently used in the formation of his notion of the enchantment of technology. In the two volume Coral Gardens and their Magic (1935), Malinowski describes the ritual practices of the Trobriand Islanders, particularly in relation to agricultural production. In the introduction to the first volume of Coral Gardens and their Magic, Malinowski describes the role of the anthropologist as a kind of storyteller of the exotic. He states,

in the following chapters we shall have to repair to the yam gardens of the Trobrianders and to their taro and banana plantations. We shall take part in their work and follow their harvest joys and amusements. We shall scour the coconut groves and enter the magician’s home to watch him at his spells and ritual (1935: 4).

Malinowski’s detailed descriptions of the Trobriand way of life, while calculated to evoke the exoticised ‘other’, particularly for an audience in the 1930s, considers the instrumental effects of the Islanders’ agricultural practices. He explains how Trobriand farmers follow an elaborate, but highly coherent, set of rites in order to magic of the city 55 rachel trigg make their gardens grow. Malinowski believes there to be a close relationship between these rites, the form of the Trobriand garden plots and the world view of the gardeners. He relates that

magic and practical work are, in native ideas, inseparable from each other, though they are not confused. Garden magic and garden work run in one intertwined series of consecutive effort, form one continuous story and must be the subject of one narrative (1935: 62).

Over 60 years after Malinowski undertook his work in the Trobriand Islands, Gell applied the notion that magic and practical work, or in his words ‘the enchanted’ and ‘the technical’, are inseparable to a new context. In his essay ‘The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology’ (1999), Gell uses the concept of magic to address the methodological difficulties contemporary anthropology has in dealing with art. These difficulties relate to anthropologists escaping the worship of art in contemporary Western culture, while also being able to study art objects directly, rather than as markers of cultural or symbolic systems. Gell suggests that a solution to this problem is to consider art as a technical product. He conceptualises art as the ‘technology of enchantment’, as it provides a mechanism through which societies are reproduced and individuals are socialised. Gell defines ‘enchantment’ as

the general premise that human societies depend on the acquiescence of duly socialized individuals in a network of intentionalities whereby, although each individual pursues (what each individual takes to be) his or her own self-interest, they all contrive in the final analysis to serve necessities which cannot be comprehended at the level of the individual human being, but only at the level of collectivities and their dynamics (1999: 163).

In simple language, Gell understands enchantment to be the process through magic of the city 56 rachel trigg which individuals act for the simultaneous good of themselves and society.

In considering how artworks enchant, Gell determines that it is “the way that an art object is construed as having come into the world which is the source of the power such objects have upon us” (1999: 166). In other words, it is the perceived level of difficulty of the creation of an artwork which leads to its ability to enchant, rather than the mere fact of its existence. Gell calls this ‘the enchantment of technology’, which he explains as “the power that technical processes have of casting a spell over us so that we see the real world in enchanted form” (1999: 163). He illustrates this insight with examples such as intricately carved Trobriand Islander canoes, which dazzle trading partners into parting with valuable goods, and a Pablo Picasso sculpture, which uses the cast of a toy car as the face of a baboon. In these examples, taken from disparate cultures, artworks enchant through the artist’s ability to magically transforming ideas and materials into something else.

Gell (1999) most clearly explains how the technology of enchantment and enchantment of technology come together using the example of an elaborate matchstick model of Salisbury Cathedral. The model was used by church trustees to solicit donations to the upkeep of the building. On observing the model Gell, as a young boy familiar with the difficulties of creating objects from glue and matchsticks, gave a donation to the upkeep fund. The model, using the technology of enchantment, had the intended socialising effect of gaining money for a cultural institution. However, the technology of enchantment was achieved via the enchantment of technology, as the young Gell provided money only due to his inability to comprehend how such a marvelous model could be created from such humble materials as glue and matchsticks.

Although he died in 1997, and was thus unable to further his work on art and magic beyond a lengthy essay, Gell’s notion of the enchantment of technology has been “widely celebrated” (Harrison 2006: 65) and has inspired a collection of work exploring and critiquing the notion (Pinney and Thomas 2001). In Australia, magic of the city 57 rachel trigg Rodney Harrison (2006) has recently used Gell’s work to consider the particular fascination of collectors with Aboriginal stone tools known as ‘Kimberley points’. Harrison writes that the tools “displayed a peculiar set of technologies that served to distract and enthral colonial collectors” (2006: 63). Geographer Chris McEwan (2007) also cites Gell in her study of the political significance of ghosts in contemporary South Africa.

The notions of the technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology can also be applied to the city. In his influential essay, Gell comments that “art, as a separate kind of technical activity, only carries further, through a kind of involution, the enchantment which is immanent in all kinds of technical activity” (1999: 163-164). In relation to the city, the technology of enchantment can be understood as the way in which urban form assists in socialising individuals into behaving for the common good. This enchantment is produced due to the inability of one person to understand all of the technologies involved in the making of a city. Individuals may understand how small components of the city, such as a house or a road, are created. However, the innumerable mechanisms involved in creating and maintaining a city defy individual understanding and thus become enchanted. An individual obeys the rules for living within a city not only because there will be legal repercussions if those rules are violated, but also because he or she has been enchanted by the metropolis.

Gell’s essay concludes by using Malinowski’s work on the gardens of Trobriand Islanders. Gell explains that “only if the garden looks right will it grow well, and the garden is, in fact, an enormous collective work of art” (1999: 182). He notes that the process of gardening has three obvious features: that it takes knowledge and skill; that it takes work; and that it involves an uncertain outcome. The last of these features is particularly pertinent in the consideration of gardening magic, as the Trobriand Islanders’ lack of scientific knowledge of agricultural processes creates a greater level of uncertainty in the outcome of technical processes and thus a greater role for the effects of magic. The features of gardening are also true of the magic of the city 58 rachel trigg technical processes of city creation. Regardless of the knowledge, skill or effort applied by architects, planners, engineers and other urban professionals, the outcome of city building will always be uncertain. As Gell explains,

if we consider that the magical attitude is a by-product of uncertainty, we are thereby committed also to the proposition that the magical attitude is a by-product of the rational pursuit of technical objectives using technical means (1999: 179).

Gell argues, in other words, that magic is not just an unfortunate relic of pre modern thought, but an inherent, if unexpected, result of the scientific processes endorsed by modernism. Though contemporary cities are created using highly technical means, a magical understanding of the metropolis is, according to Gell’s logic, inevitable. To paraphrase Gell’s description of Trobriand gardens, a city is an enormous collective work of art which will prosper only if it looks right and is tended well.

3.5 Conclusions The magic of the city is a notion which incorporates non rational ways of knowing the world into the understanding of urban forms and processes. It attempts to reconcile oppositions which have been inherent in the understanding of the city for several hundred years and is based on a critique of the dominant logic of modernity, which posits that only that which can be validated through first hand observation can be considered knowledge. The notion of the magic of the city also uses the insights of the literary genre of magical realism to reject the belief, which Harvey (1990) associates with postmoderniity, that Western cultures are now so fragmented that any collective understanding of the cosmos is impossible to achieve. The notion moves beyond the narrow association of magic with witchcraft to incorporate that which is contradictory, miraculous, uncanny, exaggerated, supernatural, sacred, dreadful and unworldly. It takes from magical realism the magic of the city 59 rachel trigg straightforward representation of the magical in the everyday, as well as the belief that Western and non Western ways of knowing can be combined into an enchanted understanding of reality. From Gell’s (1999) conceptualisation of the enchantment of technology, it takes the realisation that magic does not stand apart from, but rather is an inescapable product of, technical processes and systems.

The understanding of the city as enchanted is not something about which contemporary scholarship has much to say. As discussed in the previous chapter, post Enlightenment theorists, planners, geographers and architects have focused on understanding the city using rational epistemologies. This thesis does not dispute the validity of rational ways of knowing, but it does challenge the belief that reason provides the only legitimate way through which the city can be understood. It considers the magical not as a simple opposition to the rational, but as a particular kind of logic which is, as will be shown in the case studies in Chapters 5 to 10, an inherent part of an ordered and stable world view and an active force with complex and powerful interactions with the use, development and understanding of the contemporary city and its places of the dead.

1 This reading is also made by Eco who, despite translating the key word in Goya’s title as ‘sleep’, nevertheless uses the image as evidence that “the world is illuminated by a violent light of an unfettered reason that populates the same world with its nightmares” (2004: 269).

2 Like many of Shakespeare’s plays, Macbeth presents numerous non rational ways of understanding the world, including prophesy, dream, madness and the appearance of ghosts.

magic of the city 60 rachel trigg 4 Methods

4.1 Introduction There are many ways in which to approach the rational aspects of cities and their places of the dead, grounded in disciplines such as architecture, history, geography, planning, sociology and anthropology. This thesis does not challenge the validity of the methods used in these disciplines nor the insights they offer. Rather, the aim of this chapter is to explain two interrelated methods which provide ways of examining the non rational aspects of urban places. These methods, known as textual analysis and discourse analysis, are hermeneutic and are based on the assumption that there is no direct relationship between reality and its representation. Both methods relate to the work of post structuralist theorists, particularly Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, and are interdisciplinary and intertextual in application.

Although textual analysis and discourse analysis have been applied in many disciplines for several decades, they have been described in widely varying ways. This chapter sets out the ways in which concepts and terms, some of which are highly contested, will be used in this study. It describes the detailed structure of the thesis, the processes by which the case studies were chosen and the ways in which the methods will be applied to the understanding of the contemporary city and its places of the dead. The descriptions of method presented here draw heavily on existing theoretical and interpretive work, while also adding original contributions, particularly in the area of the application of textual analysis and discourse analysis to the study of the built environment.

As it is understood here, textual analysis examines the way in which a single ‘text’, understood broadly as any cultural product and defined in greater detail later in this chapter, represents the world. The contemporary application of textual analysis magic of the city 61 rachel trigg incorporates an understanding of the conditions of the making and reading of a text. Textual analysis and discourse analysis share the assumption that there is no single meaning communicated by a text. However, the latter also provides a way of understanding relationships between seemingly disparate texts and between those texts and the social, economic and political sites in which they are produced. Discourse analysis, unlike textual analysis, pays close attention to the way in which a text claims to know the truth and shape the world. Textual analysis, and particularly discourse analysis, allow an exploration of sites of knowledge which in contemporary Western society may be dismissed as too vernacular or whimsical for serious consideration, as well as a reconsideration of the way in which accepted ways of understanding the world have been created. These features make the methods particularly suitable for examining the non rational aspects of the contemporary city and its places of the dead.

4.2 Method I: textual analysis Textual analysis evolved largely from semiological work in the 1960s and 1970s. It has been widely applied in the humanities and in more recent disciplines such as cultural studies. Textual analysis is known by a large variety of names and has become so ubiquitous in some disciplines that it is neither named nor described. While textual analysis is in some ways an evolution of traditional methods of literary and art criticism, it also represents a significant shift in the way that texts are considered. Throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the primary task of literary analysis was to determine the true or correct meaning of a work and the world that it represents. Textual analysis, in contrast, incorporates two key assumptions which originated in the work of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. The assumptions are, firstly, that any cultural product is a legitimate site for analysis; and secondly, that there is no single, ahistorical truth communicated by a text. As is shown in the remainder of this chapter, while this thesis largely accepts these assumptions, it does not take the relativist position that all texts are equal in terms of the skill with which they were created, their aesthetic attraction or, magic of the city 62 rachel trigg most importantly, their interpretative potential.

Between the late 1960s and late 1980s, semiologist and theorist Jacques Derrida undertook a series of critical analyses of canonical philosophical works, published in anthologies such as Writing and Difference (1978). Unlike those whose work he analysed, Derrida was not attempting to uncover structures which underlie language, thought and, ultimately, all observable reality. Instead, Derrida argues that language involves an infinite play between words, or ‘signifiers’, and meanings, or that which is ‘signified’. One example of Derrida’s critical analyses is his essay ‘The Parergon’ (1987), in which he discusses Immanuel Kant’s ‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgement’ (1790), ostensibly to determine the role of ornamentation in art. This essay will be examined here to consider how Derrida understands the relationship between reality and its representation.

For Kant, ornamentation is either intrinsic to the structure of an artwork and thus to its beauty, or is unnecessarily introduced, “like a gold frame merely to win approval for the picture by means of its charm” (Derrida 1987: 53). For Derrida, an ornament is a ‘parergon’, an item that “comes against, beside, and in addition to the ergon, the work done” (1987: 54). Using Kant’s examples of frames on paintings, draperies on sculptures and columns on buildings, Derrida demonstrates that ornamentation is ‘other’ to both the artwork and to the milieu surrounding it. In other words, frames, draperies and columns belong neither to the painting, sculpture or building nor to the world surrounding them. Derrida undermines Kant, and notions of an aesthetic structuralism, by concluding that “the whole analytic of aesthetic judgement forever assumes that one can distinguish rigorously between the intrinsic and the extrinsic” (1987: 63). Derrida’s purpose in ‘The Parergon’ is not simply to critique Kant’s ‘Critique’. His primary challenge is to the notion that there can be a stable relationship between the signifier and the signified, between an artwork and its meaning, or, in the case of this thesis, between the city and its understanding. magic of the city 63 rachel trigg The technique Derrida uses in ‘The Parergon’ has become known as ‘deconstruction’. Derrida uses Kant’s own words to challenge or ‘deconstruct’ his meaning. In this essay and in his earlier works, Derrida shows that any text contains within itself the ability to deconstruct its own meanings. When taken to extremes, this method can result in analyses which endlessly challenge their own intent and present a potentially limitless number of meanings, removing any way for authors, theorists and readers to engage with social and political realities and with questions of ethics and morality, as Derrida did in his latter work. Deconstructivism has thus been criticised for leading to an aestheticised nihilism which removes the possibility of people acting in a politically and socially engaged way (Sandercock 1998).

An alternative way of incorporating Derrida’s insights into the relationship between reality and its representation without retreating from social and political realities is discussed later in this chapter. When not taken to relativist extremes, Derrida’s work results in the productive understanding that a text has numerous meanings or ‘readings’, which may be contradictory and which are themselves open to challenge. Deconstructivism is thus one of the theoretical foundations upon which textual analysis is based. The other is provided by the work of Roland Barthes.

In contrast to Derrida’s deconstructivism, Barthes’ early work does make stable meanings from a range of texts. However, the texts which Barthes reads are not taken from the realm of art or literature, but from popular French culture. In Mythologies, originally published in French in 1957 and in English in 1972, Barthes examines an eclectic range of phenomena including soap powder, margarine, the face of Greta Garbo and the Citroen car. Barthes not only makes meanings from these products of popular culture, but does so by analysing them as myths and by understanding them through reference to other artefacts. In the preface to the 1957 edition of Mythologies, Barthes states “the starting point of these reflections was usually a feeling of impatience at the sight of the ‘naturalness’ with which newspapers, art and common sense constantly dress up a reality which, even magic of the city 64 rachel trigg though it is the one we live in, is undoubtedly determined by history” (1973: 11). One of the central tasks of textual analysis is thus to strip away the naturalness with which a work of art or a cultural phenomenon is presented and to consider its more complex relationship with its cultural and historical contexts.

In a later edition of Mythologies, Barthes distances himself from his early work on myth as a form of language. He believes that, since the 1950s, semiological analysis “has developed, become more precise, complicated and differentiated” (1973: 9). In his article ‘The Death of the Author’, which was first published in French in 1968, Barthes is more interested with the relationship between an author and his or her text than with the culturally and historically inscribed meanings inherent in an artefact. In ‘The Death of the Author’, Barthes concludes that the author of a text does not have dominion over the meaning of his or her work. Instead, a text is understood as “a multi dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture” (1977: 146). Instead of searching for the meaning intended by the author, Barthes privileges the understandings created by the reader. He presents the separation of the text from authorial intent as a libratory act, concluding that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” (1977: 148).

The challenging of authorial intent as the primary means by which to understand a text is central to the practice of textual analysis. The notion of the death of the author undermines the understanding of a text as an expression of the biography of the author or the historical period in which it was created. The contemporary application of textual analysis thus incorporates an understanding of the conditions of the making and reading of the text. This could be thought of as a resurrection of interest not only in the author, but also in the reader and in the relative cultural and historical positions of each.

In practice, textual analysis seeks to understand the way in which a specific text magic of the city 65 rachel trigg represents the physical world. The definition of the term ‘text’ is thus central to the application of textual analysis. The term is often used, even in contemporary disciplines such as cultural studies, to refer only to written modes of representation. However, in this thesis a text will be understood broadly as “any instance of oral and written discourse but also any other cultural practice or artefact” (MacLachlan and Reid 1994: 10). This is an extremely inclusive definition and incorporates drawings, songs, photographs, poems, films, models, plans, novels, paintings, maps, plays, sculptures and etchings.

The term ‘text’ is consciously used here in preference to the term ‘artwork’ in order to refer to a wide range of cultural products. Barthes refers to the distinctions between literature and other forms of writing as “becoming invalid” (1977: 145). In other words, a magazine article can be analysed with the same level of seriousness, and reveal as much about society, as a scholarly essay. Textual analysis thus undermines the traditional distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. It assumes that, although individual texts themselves vary considerably in their level of craft and complexity, all modes of production are worthy of examination. One of the features of textual analysis is that it provides a way of examining works that may elsewhere be dismissed as products of popular or mass culture, such as advertisements, television programs and websites. This allows an exploration of sites of knowledge which are central to contemporary Western culture but are unable to be analysed using the methods of traditional literary criticism. It is also one of the features of textual analysis which makes it a suitable method for examining the non rational aspects of contemporary urban places.

Though the work of Barthes and Derrida conceptually opens a text to innumerable understandings, in reality a novel, film, map or other text does not support any and every reading. When using textual analysis, readings must be substantiated by close reference to the text itself. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who uses a semiotic approach which has many similarities with textual analysis, describes this practice as ‘thick description’ (1973). While recent applications of textual analysis magic of the city 66 rachel trigg consider the conditions surrounding the making and reading of a text, this must go beyond the conventional assumption that a text is a simple and direct reflection of the historical period in which it was written. Although the biography of the author is not entirely dismissed, neither does the author retain sole authority over the meaning of his or her work. In application, textual analysis must consider the ways a text actively engages with the conditions of its making and reading to alter, challenge and ultimately create realities.

Textual analysis may be confronting to scholars and readers who maintain a positivist epistemology or who are simply unused to approaches which consider an advertisement with the same level of seriousness as a Shakespearian play or a regression coefficient. There is also a danger in textual analysis that the consideration of texts, particularly those which are prominent in popular culture, becoming uncritically celebratory. Geertz (1973) provides a diagnosis of this problem. He writes that the problem with interpretative approaches is that they can present extensive data or description without making critical assessment. By providing extensive detail about a particular text or, in the case of Geertz’s work, culture, analysis can be “presented as self-validating or, worse, as validated by the supposedly developed sensitivities of the person who presents it” (1973: 24). Reflexivity and, most importantly, the presentation of analysis within a clear argument minimise the risks which can be associated in this method. These practices are also important in the use of discourse analysis, a method which has many similarities with textual analysis.

4.3 Method II: discourse analysis Discourse analysis shares many of the assumptions of textual analysis. It incorporates the notion that there is no single truth communicated by a text, challenges the notion of authorial intent and posits that there is no direct relationship between reality and its representation. It also, in its more recent application, allows the examination of a wide variety of texts. However, unlike magic of the city 67 rachel trigg textual analysis, discourse analysis provides a way of understanding relationships between seemingly disparate texts and between those texts and the social sites in which they are produced. It looks for relationships within and between texts, particularly texts from different modes of representation, such as novels and maps or architectural drawings and advertisements. Discourse analysis also pays close attention to the way in which a text claims to know the truth and shape the world.

Discourse analysis is based primarily on the work of Michel Foucault. While the previous chapter considered Foucault’s work in relation to the understanding of space, this chapter will consider the method which evolved from his work as a whole. Foucault set out his approach most directly in The Archaeology of Knowledge, which was first published in French in 1969 and in English in 1972. This book describes and defends the method which Foucault had previously used in his examinations of mental illness, grammar, biology and political economy, and which he went on to use in his consideration of sexuality and of modern institutions such as the hospital and the prison. The Archaeology of Knowledge also establishes the framework for Foucault’s increasingly refined and influential understanding of the relationship between knowledge and power.

Foucault begins The Archaeology of Knowledge by questioning the ‘unities’ which had been used to structure historical thinking. These unities include notions of tradition, influence, development, evolution and discipline, as well as the notion of the text. Foucault’s understanding of the term ‘text’ is not as wide as Barthes’. Foucault implies that he is somewhat radical in arguing that knowledge can be created through literary and philosophical texts, as well as scientific ones. He goes on to write that knowledge can also be found “in fiction, reflexion, narrative accounts, institutional regulations, and political decisions” (2002b: 202). Although this does not provide as wide a range of materials for analysis as does Barthes’ decoding of pop culture phenomena, Foucault’s methods have since been applied to a far wider range of texts and institutions. magic of the city 68 rachel trigg In The Archaeology of Knowledge Foucault, perhaps in reaction to the publication of Barthes’ ‘The Death of the Author’ the year before, states that literary analysis “now takes as its unity, not the spirit or sensibility of a period, nor ‘groups’, ‘schools’, ‘generations’, or ‘movements’, nor even the personality of the author, in the interplay of his life and his ‘creation’, but the particular structure of a given oeuvre, book or text” (2002b: 5). Foucault thus questions the long held notion that the relationship between a text and its historical period, or between a text and its author, is a determining factor in understanding. Foucault also challenges the structural and thematic unity which is assumed to exist within a text. He states, “the frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first line, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network” (2002b: 25-26).

The network within which a text is situated is described by Foucault as a ‘discourse’. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault provides several explanations for this term, which is central to his method and to his theorisation of the operation of power. Foucault writes that a discourse is “a group of verbal [meaning both written and spoken] performances”, “a group of acts of formation, a series of sentences or propositions” and, finally, “a group of sequences of signs, in so far as they are statements” (2002b: 120-121). More usefully, in terms of understanding and applying his method, Foucault later refers to discourses as “practices obeying certain rules” (2002b: 155), which are not interpretive in that they do not seek other, obscured discourses. Discourse analysis does not, therefore, entail a search for hidden meanings. Instead, it considers the relationships between multiple and potentially conflicting readings of texts and the intellectual networks within which they are situated.

Foucault also disrupts the way in which a text relates to the understanding of history. For him, texts cannot be considered simple reflections of the historical period in which they were constructed. He states that the text “is no longer for magic of the city 69 rachel trigg history an inert material through which it tries to reconstitute what men have said and done, the events of which only a trace remains” (2002b: 7). This understanding of the relationship between text and history transforms the ways in which histories can be constructed. From a Foucauldian perspective, the primary task of historical analysis can no longer be to reconstitute the world as it once existed. History must find new ways to know the past.

In place of the unities which previously structured the understanding of history, Foucault (2002b) offers the notion of the ‘discursive formation’. In the simplest terms, a discursive formation is the basic unit from which discourses are formed. Foucault provides a far more complex definition of the discursive formation, writing that

whenever one can describe, between a number of statements, such a system of dispersion, whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts of thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and functionings, transformations), we will say, for the sake of convenience, that we are dealing with a discursive formation (2002b: 41).

A discourse is not only, however, the sum of all discursive statements to which it relates. As not every statement which could be made in relation to a particular discourse is made, there are always gaps, limits, discontinuities and contradictions within and between discursive statements (Foucault 2002b). Discourse analysis ultimately seeks to determine the discursive statements made by a text, the gaps it leaves, the discourses it is a part of and the social formations, epistemological positions and, ultimately, knowledges to which it contributes.

In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault’s interest is not in setting out how discourse analysis may be applied by other researchers and theorists. Foucault writes that, in analysing discourse, “one shows how the different texts with which magic of the city 70 rachel trigg one is dealing refer to one another, organize themselves into a single figure, converge with institutions and practices, and carry meanings that may be common to a whole period” (2002: 133). This sentence provides a useful summary of the way in which discourse analysis will be applied in this thesis.

Gillian Rose (2001) provides more comprehensive instruction in the application of discourse analysis. Although her work ostensibly focuses on the use of discourse analysis in the interpretation of visual materials, her clear explanation of how Foucault’s work is used in practice applies to the understanding of all texts. Rose provides her own definition of the term ‘discourse’. She describes it as “a particular knowledge about the world which shapes how the world is understood and how things are done in it” (2001: 136). The notion of intertextuality, or the way in which one text refers and relates to innumerable other texts, is important to Rose’s understanding and application of discourse analysis. Rose believes that “some of the most interesting discourse analyses are interesting precisely because they bring together, in convincing ways, material that has previously been seen as quite unrelated” (2001: 143). In this Rose goes further than Foucault, who tends to limit his understanding of texts to written documents. As with textual analysis, the richness or, as Rose puts it, ‘quality’ of the texts used in discourse analysis is important to the persuasiveness of the analyses provided. This emphasis on the quality of a text is an important limiting factor on the potential for discourse analysis to dissolve into an uncritical relativism.

According to Rose, the crucial first step in applying discourse analysis is to remove all preconceptions about a text. This corresponds to Foucault’s insistence that discourse analysis must disrupt preexisting unities which structure thinking. Discourse analysis uses a variety of techniques to identify common themes within and between texts. These techniques, as set out by Rose, include a limited version of textual analysis, called ‘compositional analysis’, which looks primarily at the structure of images. In general, discourse analysis looks for commonalities between texts and then demonstrates those commonalities by citing thematic magic of the city 71 rachel trigg words and images. It also pays attention to the gaps within a text or, as Rose puts it, encourages “reading for the invisible” (2001: 158). Other techniques used in discourse analysis include examining the internal structure of discursive statements and the social contexts within which those statements are made (Rose 2001).

Of great significance in discourse analysis, in marked difference to textual analysis, is the consideration of the ways in which a text produces its ‘truth effects’. Whereas deconstructivism, and the method which derives from its insights, theoretically enables any and all meanings to be considered, discourse analysis looks at the way in which a discursive formation is positioned as a legitimate source of knowledge. Rose emphasises “the need to locate the social site from which particular statements are made, and to position the speaker of a statement in terms of their social authority” (2001: 158). This concern for the social site from which a discursive formation is made relates to the understanding that all texts can act as articulations of institutional power (Rose 2001). In using discourse analysis, Rose cautions that the researcher must be modest in his or her analytic claims. Discourse analysis aims to be persuasive, rather than correct, as the researcher cannot argue that his or her analysis is the only true understanding of a text. This is due to the theoretical understandings upon which discourse analysis is based, rather than any inherent fallibility in the method.

4.4 Application of methods to the understanding of the city Textual analysis and discourse analysis have been used for several decades in the humanities and to some extent in the social sciences. In many disciplines, these methods are frequently used as a primary means of analysis. Texts, including fictional texts, have long been used as the source of quotes with which to introduce themes in the examination of the city. For example, many writers have used Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities as a starting point for meditations on urban forms and places (see, for example Rykwert 1988, Sandercock 1998, Ings 2000, Soja 2000). magic of the city 72 rachel trigg However, despite a tradition of using quotations as a rhetorical device, textual analysis and discourse analysis are not widely and rigorously applied in the examination of the city. In many cases this is because methods are poorly explained or not well situated within their theoretical contexts. These methods can also be used simply as a way of enlivening quantative analyses of the city, or more traditional forms of qualitative analysis, rather than as scholarly and significant methodologies in their own right.

One of the best theorised applications of interpretive approaches to the understanding of place is Stephen Daniels and Denis Cosgrove’s (1988) use of iconography. Iconography is a method of examining works of art which was developed by Erwin Panofsky (1939). Although it predates the work of Derrida, Barthes and Foucault, iconography uses many of the techniques of textual analysis and can be seen as a precursor to discourse analysis. Iconography seeks to establish the “underlying principles [of a work of art] which reveal the basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious or philosophical persuasion” (Panofsky quoted in Daniels and Cosgrove 1988: 2). According to Rose, iconography is similar in application to discourse analysis because it concerns itself with the meaning, rather than the form, of artworks and interprets those artworks with “a grasp of the historically specific intertextuality on which meaning depends” (2001: 144). In The Iconography of Landscape (1988), Daniels and Cosgrove set out a way in which Panofsky’s method can be applied to the study of landscape. They note the similarities of their approach not only with Panofsky and his studies of Renaissance art and Gothic architecture, but also with Geertz’s ‘thick description’ of cultures and with the work of Barthes. Though they do not cite a particular text, Daniels and Cosgrove refer to Barthes’ decoding of advertising, presumedly in Mythologies.

Daniels and Cosgrove understand landscape not simply as a specific topography, but as “a cultural image, a pictorial way of representing, structuring of symbolising surroundings” (1988: 1). They consider representations of landscape, including magic of the city 73 rachel trigg both natural and built form, to be a system of symbolic imagery. In order to understand the landscape as a symbolic system, Daniels and Cosgrove write that “it is usually necessary to understand written and verbal representations of it, not as ‘illustrations’, images standing outside it, but as constituent images of its meaning or meanings” (1988: 1). Though they allude very briefly to a deconstructivist understanding of representation, Cosgrove and Daniels do not view the work of Barthes and other poststructural theorists as disintegrating the text into multiple, unstable signifiers. Rather, they believe that there is now a more rapid transformation of the symbolic codes through which cultures view, and hence represent, the world. Using Geertz as a model, they argue for a dialogue between text and context (1988), in which a historically situated representation of the world is analysed within the cultural and political circumstances of its making and reading.

In recent years, textual analysis and discourse analysis have received some application in the understanding of architecture. Several writers have, for example, considered the way in which Virginia Woolf represented the city (Penner 2000) and its architecture (Sinclair 2002) in novels such as Mrs Dalloway and Orlando. Others have looked at the representation of: New York in the photographic novel The Sweet Flypaper of Life (Ings 2000); the disabled body in the London of Charles Dicken’s novels (Deacon 2000); and the skyscraper in the film Desk Set (Schleier 2002). More comprehensive examples of the use of discourse analysis in the built environment are provided by Anthony Vidler (1992) and Kim Dovey (1999).

Unlike the examples of textual analysis cited above, Vidler and Dovey both use Foucauldian insights as part of their theoretical foundation, as well as incorporating discourse analysis into their methods. In The Architectural Uncanny (1992), Vidler considers the Freudian notion of the ‘uncanny’ and its spatialisation in the city, particularly in the home. Vidler explains that he does not take the, perhaps expected, phenomenological or psychoanalytical approach to his subject. Rather, he choses approaches which “serve to situate contemporary discourse in its own magic of the city 74 rachel trigg intellectual tradition” and investigate “the difficult relationship between politics, social thought, and architectural design” (1992: x). In his concern for the discourses within which contemporary architecture may be situated, as well as its political and social effects, Vidler’s is a highly productive application of theories of power/knowledge in the built environment.

Vidler also uses discourse analysis as a method with which to approach the uncanny. In The Architectural Uncanny, he examines the way in which the uncanny is represented and created in haunted house narratives by authors such as ETA Hoffmann, Victor Hugo and Thomas De Quincey. The bulk of Vidler’s book contains a wide ranging examination of the intertextual relationships between architectural works, such as those by Coop Himmelblau, James Stirling, Bernard Tschumi and Peter Eisenman, and works of literature and art. To emphasise his play between texts, Vidler begins his chapters with images and quotes from diverse sources, the contents of which are often not elaborated upon within the text of the chapter.

Dovey is even more explicit than Vidler in his concern for the relationship between power and knowledge in architecture. In Framing Places (1999: 1), he explains that through “literal and discursive framings, the built environment mediates, constructs and reproduces power relations”. Dovey’s book examines the ways in which power is mediated in specific places, such as Beijing, Berlin and Canberra, and in architectural typologies, such as skyscrapers, shopping malls and houses. Although his objectives and subject matter are more overtly Foucauldian than Vidler’s, discourse analysis is only one of the methods used by Dovey; he also uses spatial syntax analysis and phenomenology. Dovey limits the use of discourse analysis to an examination of the representation of advertising in multistorey office buildings in Melbourne. He states that “the aim of the discourse analysis is a decoding of the myths of advertising as ideology, to articulate the experience into which the corporate executive is induced” (1999: 108). Dovey thus identifies a relationship between a text and its economic, as well as cultural, magic of the city 75 rachel trigg context. However, he also states that “the advertising portrays an ideal rather than a reality; it distorts as it mythologizes” (1999: 108). For Dovey, unlike for Foucault, the task of discourse analysis is to reveal the reality behind the representation. This is not the way that discourse analysis will be applied in this thesis. Rather, the method will be used to consider the ways in which texts help shape reality itself.

The most sustained and widespread use of textual analysis and discourse analysis in the examination of the built environment has occurred in geography and particularly in the understanding of the city. Gordon Waitt has speculated that this is because “no longer is geographical inquiry framed within the positivist or Marxist search for truth, generalisations, or essentialism of ‘the real’ “(2005: 164). Instead, discourse analysis offers “opportunities for investigating how discursive formations articulate regimes of truth that naturalise particular ‘ways of seeing’ social difference (gender, ethnicity, class, or sexuality), places, or bio-physical environments” (Waitt 2005: 175). However, when textual analysis and discourse analysis are used by geographers and other critical urban theorists, the application can be either cursory or heavily laboured. As will shortly be demonstrated, some of the work of Edward Soja provides an example of the cursory application of textual and discourse analysis, while an early work of Christine Boyer provides an example of the laboured approach.

In his examinations of the postmodern city, Edward Soja uses the cursory version of textual analysis. In Postmetropolis, Soja claims he interweaves “the general and the particular, or what philosophers call nomothetic and idiographic approaches, into six distinct discourses, each representing a different way of analysing and interpreting the restructuring of the modern metropolis” (2000: 154). However, in the chapters which follow Soja neither merges the general and the particular nor analyses discourses in the Foucauldian sense. At the beginning of each of the six chapters he provides a list of texts. However, these texts do not allow a tracing of discursive statements through a range of modes of representation. Rather, the texts are a list of scholarly works on a particular aspect of the postmodern city, magic of the city 76 rachel trigg often viewed from a Marxist perspective. Though Soja does quote extensively from a large number of texts, these statements are presented as signifiers of a single and unproblematic meaning, which is not critically examined.

In contrast to Soja’s approach, Boyer’s early work applies Foucauldian methodologies in a dogmatic manner. The opening sentences of Dreaming the Rational City (1983) illustrate how thoroughly she absorbs the techniques and often opaque terminologies used by Foucault. She states that the book is “a discussion of the discourse on planning, from the point of view of the planners, their attitudes about the physical city, the public, and the rational process of decision making” (1983: ix). Boyer quotes four works by Foucault, some of them multiple times, within the four page opening chapter. Although the book is largely a chronological account of the early decades of city planning in the United States, Boyer’s discourse analysis uncovers the techniques and practices of city planning in its formative years.

Boyer’s later work, The City of Collective Memory (1994), remains generally Foucauldian in its approach. Like Dreaming the Rational City, this work is based on a critique of the Enlightenment notion that “individuals could know with certainty what was true and what was false, what was normal and what was pathological, what was rational and what was irrational” (1994: 27). In The City of Collective Memory, Boyer uses a more nimble form of discourse analysis. She bases her understanding of the city not only on Foucault, but also on Walter Benjamin and Maurice Halbwachs, and considers the metropolis as a site of pleasure as well as discipline. This wider theoretical foundation results in a method which couples analysis of discursive formations and practices with a detailed examination of a wider range of texts, including tromp l’oeil wall paintings, tableaux vivant, scenographic stage sets and civic spectacles.

Appropriately, given its subject matter, David Harvey also incorporates textual analysis into the many methods he uses in The Condition of Postmodernity. In magic of the city 77 rachel trigg early chapters, Harvey uses readings of a wide range of texts to illustrate his understanding of modernity and postmodernity. For example, Johann Goethe’s Faust is read as demonstrating modernism’s preparedness to destroy traditional myths in order to create a new world view and Cindy Sherman’s self portraits are read as an example of the self referential nature of postmodernism (1990). Harvey also undertakes more extensive analyses of texts he considers to be representative of modernity and postmodernity. He examines the representation of space and time in Renaissance maps and in the postmodern films Blade Runner and Wings of Desire. Harvey primarily uses the analysis of texts to illustrate his understanding of the relative socioeconomic conditions of modernity and postmodernity, rather than as a method to uncover the ways in which knowledge is shaped and used. He thus remains within a geographic tradition which searches for the essential and the real, rather than, as Waitt (2005) describes it, for the ways in which discursive formations articulate regimes of truth.

4.5 Application of methods to cities and their places of the dead The following six chapters of this thesis apply textual analysis and discourse analysis to the understanding of case studies of the city and its places of the dead. The case studies begin with direct and relatively brief analyses of a single text and build toward far longer and more complex examinations of a city and its places of the dead. As detailed below, the chapters each progress the application of the methods, as well as developing an understanding of contemporary cemeteries and memorials and the cities in which they exist.

Chapters 5 to 7 contain shorter case studies which act as an introduction to contemporary places of the dead and provide an initial examination of notion of the non rational city. The first case study, in Chapter 5, looks at the representation of the cemetery, in Prague and Paris, in Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984). Chapter 6 considers the representation of the southern Californian cemetery in Joss Whedon’s television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer magic of the city 78 rachel trigg (1996-2002), while Chapter 7 takes as its subject an Aldo Rossi collage called The Analogous City (1976-77). The collage incorporates fragments of Rossi’s designs for the Monument to Fallen Partisans (1965) in Segrate and the San Cataldo Cemetery (1971) in Modena.

The texts examined in Chapters 5 to 7 share a number of features. Each is inherently intertextual. Kundera’s novel discusses numerous philosophical concepts and incorporates references to texts including the bible, Ludwig van Beethoven’s last quartet and Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. Whedon’s television series combines comedy, romance and coming-of-age genres with references to, and subversions of, Gothic novels and horror films, while Rossi’s collage includes buildings taken from his own oeuvre and those of other, largely Italian, architects. The primary texts used in the case studies also engage with a range of social, economic and political realities and are thus sufficiently rich to reward sustained analysis.

The three initial case studies were also selected for their variety. Each of the texts is taken from a different mode of representation. This is not only a methodologically appropriate strategy, but also makes for more interesting and productive comparisons within and between texts. Novels, television series and drawings are some of the more prevalent modes of representation in contemporary Western culture. The ubiquity of these modes increases the relevance of the analyses to the contemporary metropolis in a way that, for example, analyses of classical symphonies or watercolour paintings may not. Furthermore, the short case studies collectively cover the spectrum of what may conventionally be considered popular culture to high art. While Kundera’s novel cites Beethoven and Nietzsche and depicts lovers caught in a moment of historical, political and existential crisis, Whedon’s series refers to comic books, movies and other television shows and portrays the coming-of-age of a blonde teenager with super powers.

The first three case studies are also representative of a range of times and places. magic of the city 79 rachel trigg The texts were all created within the last 30 years and could thus loosely be considered examples of the culture of postmodernity. However, within that period the texts range from Rossi’s drawing, which was created in 1976-77 on the cusp of the modern and postmodern eras, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which ceased airing new episodes in 2002. The texts depict cities including Prague, Paris, Boston and Modena in localities incorporating central, western and southern Europe and the east and west coasts of North America. They focus on urban places which are widely represented in Western culture, such as Paris and the cities of southern California, and those which are relatively unknown, such as Modena.

The texts and places considered in the first three case studies have been the subject of varying levels of scholarly attention. As detailed in Chapter 7, Rossi’s San Cataldo Cemetery has been frequently discussed in architecture journals and, to a lesser extent, books. However, the most influential considerations of Rossi’s work, such as Moneo (1976) and Johnson (1984), were undertaken in the 1970s and early 1980s when Italian neo rationalism was the subject of considerable attention. Given the attention that Rossi’s work was initially paid, there has been remarkably little reconsideration of San Cataldo in recent years. In contrast, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been subjected to innumerable recent examinations. There have been at least three books of essays (Wilcox and Lavery 2002; South 2003; Kaveney 2004), in addition to the Online International Journal of Buffy Studies and articles published in other forums, considering the series from a vast array of theoretical perspectives. However, this attention is largely laudatory and seems to serve as a scholarly respite from more serious subject matter. Although it is an example of the most traditional form of representation considered in the short case studies and engages with complex philosophical concepts, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is the subject of relatively few English language analyses. It is likely, however, that this is not the case in the author’s native Czech Republic or in France, where Kundera has lived and worked since 1975.

While the initial case studies focus on a single text, those in Chapters 8 to 10 magic of the city 80 rachel trigg feature a comprehensive discourse analysis. These chapters also, by incorporating observations made during site visits, consider the relationship between the representation of places of the dead and the physical reality of the places themselves. Site visits were not, it must be stressed, used to test the veracity of the representations examined in these chapters. Rather, site visits allowed a more nuanced consideration of the ways in which different texts create different understandings of the same places.

The specific case studies examined in Chapters 8 to 10 are the subject of a large number and variety of texts. Chapter 8 considers the National Mall in Washington DC, United States of America through paintings, maps, films, design competition guidelines, newspapers, planning documents, journals, museum displays, memos and episodes of television series. It looks particularly at records of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which are held by the United States Library of Congress. The following chapter examines Anzac Parade in Canberra, Australia using maps, planning documents, paintings, newspapers, cartoons, journals, poems and photographs. Although the places examined in Chapters 8 and 9 are similar, the commemorative spaces at the centre of Washington DC and Canberra materialise very different ways of understanding the world.

The final chapter in which discourse analysis is applied to the understanding of places of the dead incorporates two case studies: the first in East Perth in Australia and the second in Lower Manhattan in the United States of America. These case studies are not only geographically disparate, but also focus on differing typologies of place. The chapter examines the East Perth Cemeteries, in which thousands of people were buried during the nineteenth century, and Ground Zero, at which thousands of people died at the beginning of the twenty first century. The comparison of these two, very different places allows for a consideration of the similarities between contemporary places of the dead and a demonstration of the possibilities of discourse analysis in the understanding the magic of the city. The texts examined in Chapter 10 include newspaper articles, architectural plans, magic of the city 81 rachel trigg maps, paintings, competition guidelines, songs and cartoons, as well as more technical materials such as heritage reports and landscape studies.

The longer case studies in Chapters 8 to 10 take as their focus two cemeteries, two memorial grounds and one place in which the deaths of thousands of people actually occurred. It was originally intended that the long case studies incorporate a third examination of a cemetery. The site which had been considered for analysis was Rookwood Necropolis in Sydney. This cemetery is the largest in Australia and a materialisation of the changing understanding of Sydney. However, after a significant amount of archival research and field work, it was determined not to progress with the Rookwood case study. This was primarily because an appropriate variety and richness of texts could not be discovered with which to undertake a comprehensive discourse analysis.

As with the shorter case studies, there have been varying levels of scholarly attention to the places considered in the long case studies. The Mall in Washington DC has frequently been a source of interest to researchers and theorists of the built environment, as has Ground Zero in New York. The design of Canberra has also been the subject of considerable academic work, in the context of both the development of Australia and the oeuvre of its architects, Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin. However, Anzac Parade has been far less frequently examined. The East Perth Cemeteries have also been examined relatively rarely. Professional accounts of the Cemeteries, which are examined in Chapter 10, were undertaken in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, these were aimed at documenting the colonial history of the Cemeteries for the purposes of heritage conservation, rather than at understanding the relationship between the Cemeteries and the social and political realities of which it is a part.

Collectively, the case studies consider a wide variety of places of the dead in the contemporary city. They examine five cemeteries, two memorial grounds, one memorial and one place in which death recently occurred and which is in the magic of the city 82 rachel trigg process of becoming a memorial site. This distribution of case studies is considered to be roughly proportionate to the spatial and cultural impact of these place typologies. The case studies allow the analysis of North American, Australian and, to a lesser extent, European examples of places of the dead and thus to compare the understanding of places of the dead across Western cultures. The selected case studies also allow comparisons to be made between places and place typologies. This is most obvious in the juxtaposition, in Chapters 8 and 9, of memorial grounds in the capital cities of Australia and the United States and in the comparison, in Chapter 10, of Perth and Lower Manhattan. There are also productive comparisons to be made between the cemetery case studies, which incorporate examples of the two different models of the modern cemetery, and more particularly between three European cemeteries. The case studies allow linkages and disjunctures in the understandings of the major American cities of Boston, Washington DC, New York and, as mythologised in Buffy’s Sunnydale, Los Angeles to be identified. They also permit a consideration of the relationship between the understanding of Canberra, Australia’s capital city, and the historical and spatial outpost that is Perth.

4.6 Conclusions This thesis uses a post structuralist and particularly Foucauldian conceptualisation of the relationship between reality and representation in which, to paraphrase Daniels and Cosgrove, texts are understood not as illustrations standing outside the physical world, but as constituents of its making and understanding. The application of textual analysis and discourse analysis in the remainder of this thesis considers discursive formations and practices though a detailed examination of a wide range of texts. It also, like virtually all of the authors considered in Section 4.3 of this chapter, analyses representations within the historical, cultural and political circumstances of their making and reading.

The significance of this thesis lies partly, as explained in the previous chapter, in its magic of the city 83 rachel trigg exploration of the notion of the non rational city. It also relates to the application of two related methodologies which are not generally applied with great frequency or depth in the understanding of the built environment. The use of textual analysis and discourse analysis in this thesis allows for a detailed examination of specific places of the dead through seven case studies and the concurrent consideration of the ways in which the location and design of cemeteries and memorials relates to the cosmologies of contemporary Western cities. Most importantly, the methods provide a way of examining the non rational aspects of the cities which is both scholarly and theoretically grounded.

magic of the city 84 rachel trigg Beautiful lullaby or ugly dump: the European cemetery in 5 Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being

CEMETERY

Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colorful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles. It looks as though the dead are dancing at a children’s ball. Yes, a children’s ball, because the dead are as innocent as children. No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, in Hitler’s time, in Stalin’s time, through all occupations. When she felt low, she would get into the car, leave Prague far behind, and walk through one or another of the country cemeteries she loved so well. Against a backdrop of blue hills, they were as beautiful as a lullaby. For Franz a cemetery was an ugly dump of stones and bones (Kundera 1984: 104).

magic of the city 85 rachel trigg 5.1 Introduction This chapter considers the multiple ways in which a place of the dead can be represented in a single text. It examines the understanding of the European cemetery from the perspective of the four central characters in Milan Kundera’s ‘magical realist’ novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984). The chapter also considers how the characters, Tomas, his wife Tereza, Tomas’s lover Sabina, and Sabina’s lover Franz, relate their understandings of the cemetery to their broader conceptions of the city and the world. The novel uses the contrasting and sometimes contradictory perspectives of these characters to explore the relationship between notions which, since the advent of modernity, have been considered oppositional, such as lightness/weight, urban/rural and, most importantly for this thesis, reality/imagination. For Kundera, the difference between these oppositions is neither valid nor important. His characters inhabit a magical world where non rational ways of understanding, such as memory, dream, symbol and metaphor, are as meaningful as rational ways of knowing the world. The multiple ways in which the characters understand the world is exemplified in their understanding of the cemetery.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being was first published in Czech in 1984 while Kundera was living in France.1 Although relatively popular, as evidenced by its transformation in 1988 into a film, there is little critical discussion of the novel available in English. John O’Brien (1995) has discussed the representation of women in Kundera’s novels, including The Unbearable Lightness of Being, André Brink (1998) has dissected its use of language and Hana Pichová (2002) has examined it as an example of a text created by an author living in exile from his country of origin. Fred Misurella (1993) and Jane Bennett (2001) have both considered the novel as an example of an author using his own experiences in the genesis of fiction.2 Unlike the work of Pichová, Bennett and Misurella, this chapter does not incorporate an examination of the author. It considers The Unbearable Lightness of Being in its cultural and historic context, rather than as an extension of the biography of its author. This strategy is methodologically appropriate for the magic of the city 86 rachel trigg first case study in this thesis as it allows an application of the simplest form of textual analysis. It also provides a basis for a more complex textual analysis in Chapters 7 and 8.

Despite the centrality of urban experience to his novels,3 none of Kundera’s works have been explored from the perspective of their representation of the city. The novel is occasionally cited as an example of magical realism (Faris 1995; Ousby 1998), but has not been considered in detail within that context. The narrative form of magical realism does, however, provide insight into the way in which The Unbearable Lightness of Being combines historical realities with metaphysical speculation and a fictional narrative to provide a convincing, and magical, representation of the Western city.

5.2 The text The Unbearable Lightness of Being is ostensibly a narrative of the interconnecting lives of Tomas, Tereza, Sabina and Franz set during and after the 1968 occupation of Prague by Soviet troops. Tomas, a doctor, and Tereza, a waitress and photographer, are Czech and for much of the novel live in Prague. Sabina, an artist, is also Czech, while Franz is a Swiss professor who lives in Geneva. The appearance of these characters is not described in the novel, as it is concerned with their ontological, rather than physical, presence in the world. During the course of the novel first Sabina, and then Tomas and Tereza, flee Czechoslovakia to Switzerland. However, while Tomas and Tereza ultimately return to communist Czechoslovakia, Sabina separates from both Tomas and Franz and drifts first to France and then to the United States of America.

Most of the narrative component of The Unbearable Lightness of Being takes place in Czechoslovakia and particularly in Prague, its capital city. The form of Prague is first described about halfway through the novel when Tereza dreams she is climbing Petrin Hill, which is located near the centre of the city. The novel explains magic of the city 87 rachel trigg that “below her [Tereza] saw the towers and bridges; the saints were shaking their fists and lifting their stone eyes to the clouds. It was the most beautiful city in the world” (1984: 147). Here, as elsewhere in the novel, Prague is described according to the idiosyncratic perspective of one of its characters. Tereza’s vision of the city is not connected to the history or form of the city, but to her own experiences and inner life. She sees the statues of saints, which are common in the centre of Prague,4 as magically coming to life. This is one of only two instances in the novel when the landmarks of Prague are referred to, the other being when Tereza finds herself in the Old Town Square, with “the stern spires of Tyn Church, [and] the irregular rectangle of Gothic and Baroque houses” (1984: 136). Other monuments which are historically and formally significant to the city, such as Wenceslas Square, Prague Castle and St Vitus Cathedral, are not referred to in the text.

Though Prague is not represented in a way that connects its historical development to its physical form, the portrayal of history is central to the novel. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Prague is inexorably connected to the 1968 occupation. This occurred when the then-ruling Czechoslovak Communist Party attempted to reform its government and create ‘socialism with a human face’ (Bullock and Trombley 2000). The reform process, known as the ‘Prague Spring’ was forcibly suppressed in August 1968 when Soviet troops invaded, took control of the capital and replaced Alexander Dubcek, the Czechoslovak President, with a more conservative leader loyal to the Party in Moscow (Bullock and Trombley 2000). The invasion of Czechoslovakia provides not only a backdrop to the novel, but also a stimulus to narrative crises and character development, and a metaphorical link between the experiences of individual characters and those of the nation. For example, Tereza returns to Prague from exile in Zurich after she metaphorically connects her fate to that of Dubcek. The President’s address to the nation following his removal from office is represented in the novel as being full of long, humiliated silences. Tereza believes “she was like Dubcek, who made a thirty-second pause in the middle of a sentence; she was like her country, which stuttered, gasped for breath, could not speak” (1984: 75). magic of the city 88 rachel trigg The Unbearable Lightness of Being is written from the point of view of an omniscient narrator. Though the perspective of each of the central characters is described, the narrator often directly addresses the reader to comment on the plot or provide philosophical or semantic discussion. The literary device of the intrusive narrator makes The Unbearable Lightness of Being a particularly rich text to analyse. As the narrator’s comments are used to elaborate on the relatively simple story, the use of an omniscient narrator also gives the novel some of the characteristics of a myth or legend. It is these characteristics, as well as its uninhibited depictions of sexuality and its concern for social issues, that the novel shares with the literary genre of magical realism. As discussed in Chapter 3, magic realism is a genre of hybrids in which varied cultural experiences, as well as various styles of writing, are integrated. Kundera’s style of writing is, however, different from that generally used in typical magical realist texts set in post colonial nations. Whereas novels by writers such as Rushdie and Márquez seamlessly combine magical and rational ways of knowing the world, Kundera contrasts a realistically presented sequence of events with textual commentary, metaphysical speculation and historical reference.

Jean Weisgerber has differentiated between two variants of magical realism: the folkloric type of South America and the scholarly type of Europe. She describes the latter as “losing itself in art and conjecture to illuminate or construct a speculative universe” (quoted in Faris 1995: 165). The Unbearable Lightness of Being accords with this ‘scholarly’ type of magical realism. The narrative components of the novel appear fantastical only when contrasted against its philosophical and discursive elements. Throughout The Unbearable Lightness of Being it is extremely difficult for the reader to distinguish between fictional narratives, historical events, serious philosophical speculation and amusing word play. The text repeatedly acknowledges itself as an act of artifice, making statements such as “it would be senseless for the author to try to convince the reader that his characters once actually lived” (1984: 39) and “the characters in my novels are my own unrealized magic of the city 89 rachel trigg possibilities” (1984: 221). As a writer in the industrialised West, Kundera is less able to access the fables and legends referenced by authors such as Rushdie and Márquez. Instead, The Unbearable Lightness of Being creates its magical elements by questioning Western assumptions about the relationship between reality/representation and the rational/non rational.

Cemeteries do not play a central role in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The cemetery is referred to only seven times throughout the novel, with each reference being relatively brief and largely peripheral to the narrative. The most significant depiction of a place of the dead occurs when Franz and Sabina’s alternative perspectives of the cemetery are described in a short passage, which is quoted on the opening page of this chapter. In this passage, Franz and Sabina’s differing understandings of the cemetery are juxtaposed against each other. However, though they are very different, Franz and Sabina’s definitions both represent the cemetery as a place in which non rational ways of knowing, such as memory and metaphor, are crucial in shaping understanding. The remainder of this chapter examines this passage, as well as other references to cemeteries in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in detail.

5.3 The cemetery and the city for Franz and Sabina Franz and Sabina’s definitions are not the first reference to cemeteries in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Earlier in the novel, it is noted that Franz loved his mother “from the time he was a child until the time he accompanied her to the cemetery” (1984: 90), meaning until she died and was buried. Franz’s relationship with his mother is used to introduce a passage outlining Franz and Sabina’s differing understandings of the terms ‘fidelity’ and ‘betrayal’. The fidelity Franz shows in attending his mother’s funeral becomes more evident when it is revealed that he believes cemeteries to be ugly dumps of stones and bones. Franz’s attendance at his mother’s funeral thus shifts from being a commonplace act of filial duty to an unpleasant visit to a place he dislikes. This is one small example of magic of the city 90 rachel trigg the way in which the novel progressively adds to and challenges its representation of characters, places and events.

In accordance with Franz’s belief that “fidelity deserved pride of place among the virtues” (1984: 91), his definition of the cemetery is presented in a direct manner. In contrast, Sabina’s non rational definition makes it impossible for the reader to separate the metaphoric from the real. As is revealed in the quote on the opening page of this chapter, from Sabina’s perspective the cemeteries are like gardens, are as beautiful as a lullaby and make it look as though the dead are dancing. The passage begins with metaphors which are often associated with cemeteries and builds to more fantastical allusions. The description is structured in such a way that it appears as if each metaphor leads inevitably to another, yet more fanciful, understanding of the cemetery. Ironically, an early chapter of The Unbearable Lightness of Being warns of the generative powers of such language, stating “metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love” (1984: 11).

Although it is metaphoric, Sabina’s understanding of the cemetery is presented as resulting directly from her lived experience. The novel implies that Sabina has survived the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia between 1939 and 1945, the Communist coup of 1948 and the Soviet invasion of 1968, and has developed the practice of visiting cemeteries in response to these traumatic events. Sabina is depicted as using her idiosyncratic readings of the environment to survive not only physically, but also psychologically and spiritually. She sees rural Bohemia, and particularly its cemeteries, as a place where she can escape the chaotic events of Prague and find a form of peace. In Sabina’s understanding, places of the dead are thus oppositional to the city and to the historical events which occur within it. The wars and occupations, which for Sabina are synonymous with the politicised rationality of the city, appear to leave the cemetery untouched.

For Franz, places of the dead have no emotional connotations. Their magic of the city 91 rachel trigg understanding does not require metaphor or a paragraph of poetic prose, they simply are an ugly dump. However, even from Franz’s seemingly rational perspective, described in one short sentence, it is difficult to distinguish the magical from the real. It is unclear whether Franz actually sees bones in the cemeteries he visits, or whether, knowing the cadavers to exist below the ground, he imagines their presence. Unlike Sabina, Franz does not appear to visit cemeteries by choice, but rather from a sense of obligation. Neither does he gain comfort or a sense of peace from places of the dead. For him, they are a functional and unpleasant place for the storage of human remains.

Franz and Sabina’s understandings of the cemetery are contained in a chapter entitled ‘A Short Dictionary of Misunderstood Words’. The chapter defines words and phrases such as ‘fidelity and betrayal’, ‘music’, ‘the beauty of New York’ and ‘living in truth’. In presenting these definitions, Kundera juxtaposes Franz and Sabina’s perspectives against each other. Definitions are a form of representation usually associated with non fiction texts such as dictionaries and encyclopedias. With their highly organised structure, precise and often technical language and lack of clearly identified author, such texts are often positioned as objective representations of reality. In placing imaginative, contrasting and highly personal definitions for words such as ‘cemetery’ within a narrative structure, Kundera undermines the Western distinction between fiction and non fiction texts. As with magical realist texts in general, within Franz and Sabina’s cemetery definitions it is impossible to determine fact from fiction and observation from imagination. Kundera’s creation of a narrative set within a real place and time leaves the reader unable to know whether the candlelit cemeteries actually exist or are imagined and described only to show the difference between Franz and Sabina’s views of the world.

Although the ‘Dictionary of Misunderstood Words’ presents Franz and Sabina’s understandings as oppositional, the novel’s next reference to the cemetery begins to undermine that divide. Several years after ending her relationship with Franz magic of the city 92 rachel trigg and moving to Paris, Sabina receives a letter informing her of Tomas’s death. He has, with Tereza, been “crushed to a pulp” (1984: 122) in a truck accident near the Czech village in which they were living. This news upsets Sabina. In a return to the habit she had cultivated in her homeland, Sabina attempts to calm herself by walking in a cemetery, the nearest of which is Montparnasse.5 However, instead of being covered in grass and flowers, Sabina finds that graves in the Parisian cemetery are topped with miniature stone chapels. Moreover, “in Paris the graves were deeper, just as the buildings were taller” (1984: 123). The heavy gravestones horrify Sabina and she hurries from the cemetery.

Sabina’s perception of the places of the dead is altered by her experience in a new city. She finds that not all cemeteries are like gardens, some are in fact “vanity transmogrified into stone” (1984: 123). While the rural Bohemian cemetery is represented as an overgrown medieval graveyard, with no permanent tombstones marking the graves, the Parisian cemetery is portrayed as according with the model, discussed in Chapter 2, established at Père Lachaise. In Montparnasse, Sabina finds that “even the postal clerk celebrated his social significance” (1984: 123). In contrast to the overgrown Bohemian cemetery, the Parisian cemetery thus has a rational social function. The only flowers seen by Sabina in the Parisian cemetery are, in a funeral she witnesses, dropped into an open grave. The greenery which Sabina associated so strongly with her understanding of the cemetery is in Montparnasse consigned to the grave. Sabina’s experience in the Parisian cemetery reveals her understandings to be both culturally and personally specific. It gives her an insight into Franz’s understanding and makes her sorry that she was impatient when he referred to cemeteries as dumps of bone and stone. She realises that “perhaps if they had stayed together longer, Sabina and Franz would have begun to understand the words they used” (1984: 124). In its depiction of Sabina’s changing perspectives of the cemetery, the novel represents the understanding of place as being predicated as much on personal relationships and life experiences as on objective knowledge. magic of the city 93 rachel trigg Sabina’s dismay at the Parisian cemetery relates to more than just cultural and historical differences in burial practice. Seeing the stone-topped graves of Montparnasse reminds Sabina of her father’s grave. She recalls that “there was soil above his grave with flowers growing out of it and a maple tree reaching down to it, and the roots and flowers offered his corpse a path out of the grave” (1984: 124). Sabina’s general understanding of the cemetery seems to be based upon the archetype of her father’s grave. She finds solace in the garden-like cemeteries of Bohemia not only because they offer peace and the opportunity for imaginative reverie away from the city, but also because they provide a sentimental way for Sabina to remember her father, with whom she had a difficult relationship. The cemeteries allow Sabina “to communicate with [her father] after he died, and hear his voice in the trees pardoning her” (1984: 124). This magical understanding is why the word ‘cemetery’ was, for Sabina, “the only word that evoked in her a sweet, nostalgic memory of her homeland” (1984: 104).

Earlier in The Unbearable Lightness of Being it is implied that Sabina’s father and grandfather are buried in the small Bohemian town in which her grandfather had been mayor. Her father’s interment, in the town in which her family had long been based, contrasts with Sabina’s nomadic lifestyle. The chapter describing Montparnasse Cemetery ends with Sabina’s realisation that she can not stay in Paris as, if she were to die there, “they would cover her up with a stone, and in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable” (1984: 125). The thought of being prevented from movement, whether by the restrictions imposed by a totalitarian government or by death, is for Sabina unbearable. She responds to the repression practised by the Communist state by leaving her parents, her husband, her lover and ultimately her country. Sabina escapes Czechoslovakia’s, and her own, difficult history and searches for “not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being” (1984: 122).

Despite the trauma caused by the invasions of Czechoslovakia, which impel Sabina to seek the sanctuary of the cemetery, it is not historical events in magic of the city 94 rachel trigg themselves against which Sabina strives for lightness. Instead, she believes that “behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, persuasive evil and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison” (1984: 100). It is the aesthetic conformity that accompanies and legitimates totalitarianism against which Sabina rebels. Her world view becomes synonymous with her approach to artistic creation. Several times in the novel, Sabina explains that her paintings depict a crack in the façade of the realistically depicted world, “behind which lurked something different, something mysterious or abstract” (1984: 63). She repeatedly summarises her artistic approach as “on the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth” (1984: 63 and 254). It is the lie of totalitarianism, and of a fixed social and cultural identity, which Sabina rejects and the unintelligible and unbearably light truth for which she searches in life and eventually finds in the manner of her death.

For Franz, raised in liberal, wealthy and democratic Switzerland, history is not an intelligible lie, but a ‘Grand March’. Unlike Sabina, Franz “saw the marching, shouting crowd as the image of Europe and its history” (1984: 99). Franz sees nothing repressive or evil about people singing and raising fists together. Instead, he equates protest marches with the modern dream of equality and freedom for all peoples. It is by participating in the drama of the ‘Grand March’ that Franz seeks to bring weight to the otherwise privileged lightness of his life.

The absurdity of Franz’s attempt to find meaning through protest marches is revealed in the blackly comic manner of his death. After Sabina has left him, Franz joins a march to the border between Thailand and Cambodia. During this march a news photographer is killed by a land mine. Although Franz survives the protest, he is seriously injured in Bangkok when, to show his physical strength, he takes on three men who are attempting to rob him. Franz wakes in a hospital in Geneva paralysed and unable to talk. He dies with his estranged wife by his bed. It is thus a random and meaningless crime, rather than an act of defiance against a repressive magic of the city 95 rachel trigg regime, which leads to Franz’s death. Even more ironically, it is his wife, a symbol of the lightness he was attempting to escape, who determines Franz’s place in history, both by choosing the inscription on his tombstone and by recounting the last days of his life to family and friends. His wife symbolically reclaims Franz from his mistresses and his attempts at political activism by inscribing his gravestone with “A RETURN AFTER LONG WANDERINGS”6 (1984: 276).

Unlike Franz, Sabina seeks to embrace, rather than escape, the lightness of her life. Her search for lightness, and its ultimate connection with her understanding of death, is given another layer of metaphorical rendering much later in the novel. After leaving Paris, Sabina moves to the United States. She comes to like America and is able to make a home there, “but only on the surface…Down below, there was no grandpa or uncle. She was afraid of shutting herself into a grave and sinking into America earth” (1984: 273). Sabina’s rootlessness and lack of affinity with her adopted homeland leads her to will that, on her death, she be cremated and her ashes thrown to the wind. Here the metaphor of Sabina’s fate is magically made real: she seeks to literally become lighter than air.

Sabina’s cremation relates partly to her itinerant lifestyle and fear of being confined. It also relates to her understanding of history and her cultural heritage. Sabina believes that the only thing that all Czechs are able to understand is the glory and redemptive powers of flames, so that “the essence of being Czech came down to ashes and nothing more” (1984: 97). Here Sabina refers to Jan Hus, a church reformer of the early fifteenth century who was burned at the stake. Though Hus remains a Czech martyr-hero, Sabina sees him as a symbol of the more recent defeats of her nation by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. However, espite Sabina’s attempts to escape her cultural identity, she eventually shares Hus’s fate and, through her cremation, is reduced to ashes.

magic of the city 96 rachel trigg 5.4 The cemetery and the city for Tomas and Tereza In contrast to the lightness which is associated with the fates of Franz and Sabina, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being Tomas and Tereza’s lives are symbolised by weight. Tomas’s world view, and the way in which he conceives of history, is closest to that of the philosophising narrator. Toward the end of the novel, Tomas realises that “history is similar to individual lives…There is only one history of the Czechs. One day it will come to an end as surely as Tomas’s life, never to be repeated” (1984: 222). At the start of the novel Tomas, like Sabina, lives lightly. He has divorced his wife, given up custody of his son, is estranged from his parents, and has many lovers. Tomas’s life begins to become heavy when he meets and marries Tereza. It is for her that he emigrates to Switzerland and, when she leaves him and returns to Czechoslovakia, he feels relieved, “he was enjoying the sweet lightness of being” (1984: 30). However, Tomas’s love for Tereza sees him follow her back to his occupied homeland, where he eventually engages directly with history by criticising the Communist government in a dissident newspaper. This action results in Tomas being removed from his position as a surgeon, a job on which much of his world view had been predicated.

With his new job as a window washer Tomas’s life regains some of its former lightness, as he has the time and opportunity to pursue numerous affairs. It is Teresa who again draws him to a more weighty fate. Tomas rejects an invitation to sign an anti Communist petition because, if he signs, “he could be fairly certain that [Tereza] would have more frequent visits from undercover agents, and that her hands would tremble more and more” (1984: 219). Tomas ultimately chooses not between lightness and weight, but between two forms of weight: an active engagement with politics and his love for Tereza. After refusing to sign the petition, Tomas agrees to move to rural Bohemia, away from the sexual opportunities of the city and any likelihood of resuming work as a surgeon. He dies with Tereza and is buried by his estranged son who, despite knowing his father was an atheist, erects a gravestone with the inscription “HE WANTED THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN ON EARTH” (1984: 276). magic of the city 97 rachel trigg Tomas’s wife provides another, distinctive understanding of the cemetery. Tereza is the only central character in The Unbearable Lightness of Being whose grave is not depicted. Her burial is, however, portrayed in one of her dreams. Tereza explains her dream to Tomas, saying “I’d been buried for a long time. You came to see me every week. Each time you knocked at the grave, and I came out. My eyes were full of dirt” (1984: 227). In Tereza’s dream, Tomas stops visiting her grave. The likelihood that her dream-husband has another lover results in the real Tereza shivering and sobbing in Tomas’s arms. For Tereza, burial does not represent the termination of life, but the end of her relationship with Tomas. Tereza’s dream, and her lack of realistically depicted grave, can be read as an indication that Tereza has united her fate with that of her husband. Her role is to be the weight in Tomas’s life. She first arrived on his doorstep carrying two heavy suitcases and “he had lived his life bound to her, his every step subject to her scrutiny. She might as well have chained iron balls to his ankles” (1984: 30). While Tomas recognises the implications of the historical circumstances in which he lives, Tereza privileges her relationship with Tomas above all else.

The weight under which Tereza lives thus has little to do with her historical times. Tereza’s only engagement with history is, unlike for other characters in the novel, an engagement with lightness. During the first week of the Soviet occupation, Tereza walks through Prague taking photographs of Russian soldiers. They are

pictures of tanks, of threatening fists, of houses destroyed, of corpses covered with bloodstained red-white-and-blue Czech flags, of young men on motorcycles racing full speed around the tanks and waving Czech flags on long staffs, of young girls in unbelievably short skirts provoking the miserable sexually famished Russian soldiers by kissing random passersby before their eyes (1984: 67).

Tereza enjoys the “carnival of hate” (1984: 26) which accompanies the occupation, magic of the city 98 rachel trigg as it frees her from anxiety about Tomas and his affairs. However, it is revealed later in the novel that the photographs Tereza gives to foreign journalists to draw international attention to the occupation of Prague are used by the Czech secret police to identify and arrest dissidents. Thus even Tereza’s emancipatory involvement with history has heavy consequences.

In Prague, Tomas and Tereza are unable to find freedom from the control of the state, from Tomas’s infidelities or from their memories of the city prior to its occupation. The narrator notes that “during the five years that had passed since the Russian army had invaded Tomas’s country, Prague had undergone considerable changes. The people Tomas met in the streets were different” (1984: 228). Soon after, Tereza suggests that she and Tomas move to the country, as “Prague has grown so ugly lately” (1984: 233). Though the fabric of the city has not been significantly altered since the occupation, Tomas and Tereza’s understandings of Prague have changed. They read the city metaphorically and measure its attractiveness not by its objective reality, but by the events which occur within it and the actions of its inhabitants.

5.5 Conclusions In the opening pages of The Unbearable Lightness of Being the narrator notes that Greek philosopher Parmenides divides the world into pairs of opposites, such as fineness/coarseness, warmth/cold and being/non being. In discussing these oppositions, the narrator states “the lightness/weight opposition is the most mysterious, most ambiguous of all” (1984: 6). After establishing this mysterious opposition, Kundera uses the remainder of the novel to challenge, dissolve and re- establish it. Characters vacillate between living with the weight of history and intimacy or seeking the lightness of a life without public or private responsibilities. Events in the novel which are initially associated with heaviness, such as the invasion of Czechoslovakia, are later connected with lightness, and vice versa. Places such as the cemetery are described using metaphors associated with both magic of the city 99 rachel trigg weight and heaviness, depending upon the perspective from which they are understood.

In representing the cemetery, The Unbearable Lightness of Being disrupts several binary oppositions. For Sabina, cemeteries are places away from cities such as Prague and the heavy historical events which occur within them. This is partly why she is horrified by the Parisian cemeteries: they challenge her distinction between the hard, rational, stone cities and the soft, magical places of the dead. In Sabina’s understanding, the Czech cemetery is a particularly bucolic variant of the modern garden cemetery and is located far from the metropolis, while the French cemetery, in accordance with medieval precedent, is a comfortable part of it. The cemeteries represented in the novel are thus neither entirely of the city nor entirely of the country, but partially ‘other’ to both.

In its representation of the cemetery and particularly its use of a dictionary definition to frame Franz and Sabina’s perspectives, the novel also challenges the distinction between fact and fiction. It would be possible to undertake geographic and anthropological research to determine the veracity of the various cemeteries described in the novel, particularly the Bohemian and Parisian graveyards visited by Sabina. However, to do so would be to begin the enormous task of determining fact from fiction in Kundera’s novel. This task is ultimately impossible, not only because of the novel’s large number of intertextual and historical references, but also because one of its motifs is that reality is dependent upon the perspective from which it is presented. Kundera’s earlier novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1980) contains a fictional account of a real, and in Czechoslovakia well known, photograph of President Gottenwald addressing the nation after the 1948 Communist coup (Pichová 2002). In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera also disregards differences between reality, or history, and its representation. It is thus likely that Kundera also fabricates details of real places and events depicted in the novel, such the description of young Czech women sexually provoking Russian soldiers and Sabina’s image of the cemetery. Kundera also merges aspects of magic of the city 100 rachel trigg medieval and modern design in both the Bohemian and Parisian cemeteries.

The way in which the novel represents the non rational aspects of place is exemplified in Sabina’s approach to artistic creation: “on the surface, an intelligible lie: underneath, the unintelligible truth” (1984: 63 and 254). The novel, like Sabina, presents the reader with two worlds: a straightforward narrative in which characters have logical reactions to historically grounded events and real cities; and a work of magical realism in which the characters are conscious creations of the narrator/author and the non linear text represents the contradictory and chaotic aspects of life and of cities. The novel’s representation of the cemetery provides a concise example of the way in which this second, non rational world operates. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being the reader is asked not only to reconcile contradictory perspectives in a fictional narrative, but also to recognise the real world as similarly non rational. As the narrator states, “It is wrong, then to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences…but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty” (1984: 52).

1 An English translation, to which this chapter refers, was released in the same year.

2 Bennett quotes Kundera (1984: 39) as writing “Tereza was born from the rumbling of a stomach” and takes this to mean that “the quivering sac in his abdomen helped to conceive the nervous, needy persona of Tereza” (2001: 30). She does not acknowledge the complex and indirect relationship between author and narrator nor consider the possibility that the rumbling stomach may belong to the imaginary narrator, rather than the real author.

3 Kundera’s other works published in English include The Joke (1969), The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1980) and Immortality (1991). Most of his novels have also been published in Czech and French.

4 The statues of saints are also a well known feature of Charles Bridge, which is a main pedestrian route, as well as having become a tourist attraction.

5 Montparnasse is a real cemetery in Paris which still exists.

6 Epithets are cited throughout this thesis with the capitalisation they are given in the subject text or tombstone. magic of the city 101 rachel trigg Serious, supernatural, scholarly and silly: the American 6 cemetery in Joss Whedon’s television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Figures 6.1-6.4: In a one-off musical episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: walks through the cemetery; stakes a vampire; sings while the vampire disappears into dust; and stands atop a sarcophagus. Source: Whedon 2001: 7 magic of the city 102 rachel trigg 6.1 Introduction This chapter compares the understanding of the modern American cemetery as presented through two very different ways of knowing. Stanley French published ‘The Cemetery as Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mount Auburn and the ‘Rural Cemetery’ Movement’ in 1975. As discussed briefly in Chapter 2, the article uses archival research to consider the impact of Mount Auburn Cemetery, located outside Boston in the United States (US) of America, on American society and culture. This chapter begins by examining the article and particularly its conclusions relating to the modern American cemetery. It then presents a textual analysis of the postmodern television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was created by Joss Whedon and aired in the US between 1996 and 2002.1 As in French’s article, the cemetery and its relationship with other cultural institutions is central to the world represented in Buffy. The aim of this comparison between two very different ways of understanding is not to discredit French’s insightful article, nor the method it uses. Instead the chapter considers what, if anything, the scholarly consideration of a pop culture text can add to the understanding of the non rational aspects of the modern American cemetery.

The televisual case study and the article with which it is compared were chosen for several reasons. Buffy is one of very few examples of a contemporary television which represents the cemetery frequently and as a setting for varied aspects of the narrative. Like The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), which was discussed in the previous chapter, and drawings of the San Cataldo Cemetery, which are examined in the following chapter, the series is strongly intertextual. It merges several narrative genres and makes frequent references to other texts, making it fertile ground for textual analysis. Buffy also makes a strong contrast with French’s article. While the latter is a serious and scholarly text which is still considered a preeminent account of the evolution of the American rural cemetery (Reid 1996), the former is a pop culture icon about a teenage girl with superpowers which developed a cult following amongst its audience. magic of the city 103 rachel trigg The summary of ‘The Cemetery as Cultural Institution’ in this chapter is undertaken in a conventional manner. No attempt is made to validate or challenge French’s findings, but rather thematic analysis is done to identify overarching concerns in the article. Analysis of Buffy began by watching all 122 episodes of the show. Key episodes of the series were watched several times, with pertinent pieces of dialogue recorded and relevant scenes photographed. Commentaries on the series, including anthologies edited by Wilcox and Lavery (2002), South (2003) and Kaveney (2004), as well as articles in the Online International Journal of Buffy Studies were read and considered. Short documentaries about aspects of its writing and production, which are included on DVDs of the series, were also watched, as was the movie version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), which was written but not directed by Whedon and featured a different cast.

Although it was published some 30 years ago, French’s article remains an influential analysis of Mount Auburn Cemetery. It is frequently cited by other scholars of places of the dead, including Ariés (1981) and Etlin (1984). Despite its unusual premise, Buffy has also been the focus of much critical discussion. The series has been the subject of feminist (Hibbs 2003; Playdon 2004), Lacanian (Sharpe 2003) and even Kantian (Stroud 2003; Lawler 2003) analysis. It has been studied for its representation of sexuality (Larbalestier 2004), the family (Nevitt and Smith 2003; Stoy 2004) and religion (Erickson 2002; Anderson 2003; King 2003). The series has also been examined for its representation of place. Sayer (2004) focuses upon the staging of places in the series using the techniques of television and also the representation of ‘home’, while Tonkin (2004) looks at Buffy as an example of southern Californian suburban film noir. Neither Sayer nor Tonkin discuss the representation of the cemetery. This is significant not merely because it is a gap in Buffy studies, but because the series is one of few on contemporary television which depicts the cemetery and, more generally, urban form as being instrumental to the understanding of the world.

magic of the city 104 rachel trigg 6.2 Text I: the article French begins ‘The Cemetery as Cultural Institution’ by setting out the semantic and historical context of the rural cemetery. He describes the way in which graveyards were represented in eighteenth and nineteenth century poetry and the perceptions of early Figure 6.5: Mount Auburn Cemetery in the nineteenth century visitors to the cemetery. Source: Etlin 1984: 362 French also describes the design of Mount Auburn (Figure 6.5) and its burial plots, emphasising that the natural landscape was to be clearly dominant over the built environment. He explains that although highly decorative headstones were initially discouraged at Mount Auburn, an eclectic range of architectural and sculptural styles eventually emerged. The dominant memorial was a sculpted block with an urn, associated with a Greek revival style, and graves included Gothic and Egyptian decoration. French notes that the cemetery was open from sunrise to sunset, that carriages could be driven no faster than a walk and that, above all, “decorous behaviour” (1975: 84) was expected from visitors. While many of the plots were initially fenced, the example of lawn cemeteries resulted in the removal of internal fencing in Mount Auburn and other rural cemeteries by the 1880s.

French also describes the cemetery within its wider cultural context. He notes that the design of burial markers was “to be commensurate with the ideals of [an American] republic” (1975: 81) and that the fencing of plots was symbolic of a “national trait of possessive individualism” (1975: 83). French explains that other cities in America and Great Britain soon followed Boston in opening rural cemeteries. Although he acknowledges that European cities were more likely to follow the model of Père Lachaise in establishing cemeteries beyond the city, magic of the city 105 rachel trigg French stresses that the Parisian cemetery was not a model for Mount Auburn. Throughout the article, French emphasises that “in the new type of cemetery the plenitude and beauties of nature combined with art would convert the graveyard from a shunned place of horror into an enchanting place of succor and instruction” (1975: 79). He concludes the article by noting that Mount Auburn combines “Enlightenment rationalistic attitudes” (1975: 90) with inspiration and ideas derived from Romanticism. However, French is more concerned with “understanding the institution from the standpoint of the social significance attributed to it by its contemporaries” (1975: 91) than with considering how Mount Auburn might relate to the world view of nineteenth century Americans.

French incorporates a form of textual analysis into his methodology. He uses lengthy quotes from a large number and variety of sources to construct a picture of the nineteenth century conception of rural cemeteries. French’s methodology is, however, itself reflective of the epistemological framework of the 1970s within which it was developed. It relies on the belief that the role of the historian is to develop a single and objective understanding of a place. French dismisses the idea of investigating the complex and sometimes conflicting conceptions of space and place, such as the interplay between rationalistic and romantic ideals. His methodology is unreflexive and does not acknowledge that a late twentieth century historian brings his or her own epistemological framework to the understanding of the cultural institutions of the nineteenth century.

6.3 Text II: the television series The television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which a girl with a silly name repeatedly saves the world, is difficult to approach seriously. The fact that Buffy is presented via the medium of television does not assist with an earnest reception, nor does its merging of genres including horror, drama, romance, comedy and science fiction. However, in the stories it tells and the places it depicts, Buffy challenges the purely rational understanding of the modern American cemetery. magic of the city 106 rachel trigg The series is set in the fictional city of Sunnydale, which is structured by a mystical logic which is internally consistent, but certainly not rational. As in magical realist texts, much of the premise of the series is that the strange things which occur in Sunnydale are part of everyday life. Most strangely, the city is inhabited by vampires and other demons, which it is Buffy’s duty to kill.

Before looking at the ways in which Sunnydale and its places of the dead are represented in Buffy, an overview of central characters is necessary. The heroine and namesake of the series is Buffy Summers, a blonde teenager who is also a ‘Vampire Slayer’. As is announced in the first episode, a Slayer is a once-in-a- generation superhero, “one girl in all the world, a Chosen One, one born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires” (1996: 1). Buffy is trained and guided by her ‘Watcher’ Giles, who is also a father figure. She attends Sunnydale High School with her friends Willow and Xander, who assist Buffy in fighting demons but more importantly are her connection to the lived world of homework, demanding parents and teen romances.

In its form, Sunnydale is a normal, if rather small, modern southern Californian city. Its size is well established in the first episode, in which Buffy is directed to the bad part of town. This, it turns out, is “about a half a block from the good part of town. We don’t have a whole lot of town around here” (1996: 1). The city consists primarily of comfortable middle class homes, such as the one in which Buffy and her mother live. Much of the narrative in early seasons is set in the high school. After season three, the primary setting alternates to a university campus. A main street and a large shopping mall are occasionally depicted, as is an extensive warehousing area, a hospital, several churches, a museum, a zoo, a beach, an airport and municipal offices. Sunnydale also contains a large number of cemeteries of the ‘rural cemetery’ model described by French.

Despite its normal appearance, the non rational aspects of Sunnydale are evident in its mythology. The city is, as Giles explains to the newly arrived Buffy, located on magic of the city 107 rachel trigg a ‘Hellmouth’. This is “a centre of mystical energy” and “a portal between this reality and the next” (1996:1). The unusual nature of life on the Hellmouth is frequently noted by the characters. For example, when Xander exclaims that they have no idea what caused the spontaneous combustion of a fellow student, Giles enthusiastically, and perhaps inappropriately, responds “but that’s the thrill of living on the Hellmouth!” (1996: 3). One of the primary characteristics of the Hellmouth is that it attracts vampires and other demons. As vampires, according to Sunnydale mythology, burn if touched by sunlight, the ‘undead’ are generally represented as inhabiting sewers, tunnels and caverns beneath the ground. This demon world is an inversion of the living Sunnydale. While it is rarely overcast or raining in the above ground city, in the sewers it is always dark and often damp or dripping. The series does not, therefore, provide a realist depiction of a contemporary metropolis. It does, however, convincingly represent a city which, though ungoverned by an scientific rationality, is structured according to a clear and inviolable logic.

Figures 6.6 and 6.7: Buffy and friends in the cemetery by day and by night Sunnydale’s cemeteries have a Source: Whedon 2000: 17 significant role in the city’s mythologies. The importance of the cemeteries is emphasised by their appearance in the credits which commence each episode. Places of the dead are so central to the series that, in a commentary on the final episode, Whedon states, “it is the iconic place for Buffy, the graveyard, more that anything else” (2002: 22). There are, as Giles explains, 12 cemeteries “within the city limits” (1998: 7), an unusually magic of the city 108 rachel trigg large number for a small city like Sunnydale. The form of the cemeteries conforms to the model established at Mount Auburn. They consist of single gravestones, with some larger crypts and mausoleums (Figures 6.6 and 6.7), set within landscaped parks. Despite French’s assurance that, with the monuments in Mount Auburn, “the grim symbolism of earlier times had long since disappeared” (1975: 81), Buffy, in one of her frequent pop culture references, describes the mausoleums as “big freaky cereal boxes of death” (1999: 11). Within the television series, the mausoleums add visual interest to the otherwise open cemeteries and provide a setting for fights and other narrative elements. The crypts also serve as entries to the system of sewers and tunnels beneath Sunnydale, thus providing a physical gateway between the worlds of the living and the dead.

The recognisable form of the cemeteries in Buffy provides a marked contrast to the unusual way in which they are depicted as being used. While Mount Auburn Cemetery was open only between sunrise and sunset (French 1975), the cemeteries in Buffy are generally depicted at night, almost invariably so when occupied by a vampire or other demon. The cemeteries are inhabited by vampires because they are the place where the transformation from human to vampire is generally represented as occurring. In the Sunnydale mythology, a period of time must elapse between a person’s death by vampire bite and his or her transformation into a vampire. During that time, the person’s corpse is generally buried. The series repeatedly depicts newly wakened vampires digging themselves out of graves, often to be immediately killed by Buffy. The Slayer and her friends spend many nights in the cemeteries, as it is one of Buffy’s duties to patrol them looking for vampiric activity. Adults are rarely depicted in the cemeteries. Despite, or perhaps because of, their greater ability to reason logically, adults in Sunnydale are generally represented as being unaware of the ongoing threats facing their city. Adult mentors have access to the cemeteries but are rarely depicted within their bounds. Even Giles is associated with a scientific rationality as he is, in addition to helping Buffy, the school librarian. He is repeatedly shown consulting his books about occult events taking place in Sunnydale, in contrast to Buffy’s greater magic of the city 109 rachel trigg reliance on intuition and knowledge of contemporary culture.

Despite the supernatural activities which occur within them, cemeteries in Sunnydale remain, as in real cities, places for the burial of the human dead. The series occasionally shows funerals occurring, particularly if a cemetery scene is set during the day. Buffy’s Figure 6.8: Buffy’s tombstone in a Sunnydale ‘garden’ cemetery mother is buried in a Sunnydale Source: Whedon 2000: 22 cemetery during season five, following her death from natural causes. Her death and funeral are presented in a realistic way, with Buffy having to attend to the customs of mourning, such as choosing a casket and deciding whether to have a wake. Buffy herself dies and is buried at the end of season five. The season concludes with a shot of her headstone (Figure 6.8), which is located in a landscaped cemetery and reads “She saved the world. A lot” (2000: 22). Despite the naturalistic depiction of her grave, Buffy’s burial draws upon the conventions of horror more than dramatic realism. At the start of season six Buffy is represented rising from the dead due to a spell cast by Willow. Buffy’s resurrection occurs literally: flesh and life are shown returning to her body while still buried in its coffin. The resurrected Buffy must dig herself out of her grave, as if she were a newly wakened vampire. Here the cemetery remains, as in the churchside graveyards which existed prior to Mount Auburn, “a shunned place of horror” (French 1975: 79).

The cemeteries in Buffy are also, on occasion, places of fun. Most of the humorous moments set in a cemetery rely on the subversion of the conventions associated with such places in horror movies and indeed in the series itself. For example, one episode begins with Buffy sitting in a cemetery while Giles stands and reads from a magic of the city 110 rachel trigg large book. Giles asks Buffy “and on that tragic day, an era came to its inevitable end. That’s all there is. Are you ready?”, to which she responds “hit me” (1998: 6). However, rather than attacking her, Giles asks Buffy to choose between three possible themes of the text he has just read, and it becomes clear than he is helping Buffy study for exams. The humorous juxtaposition between her roles as Slayer and student is increased when a vampire attacks and Buffy, after a short fight, stakes him with her pencil. Another example of a lighter moment set within a cemetery occurs in a musical episode when Buffy’s song-and-dance number culminates in her mounting a sarcophagus to use as a stage (Figure 6.1-6.4). As she sings about her inability to emotionally connect with the world, Buffy stakes a vampire in the chest and puns, “nothing seems to penetrate my heart” (2001: 7).

Girls with superpowers fighting vampires, the spontaneous combustion of students and resurrections of the dead are just some of the many non rational occurrences depicted in Buffy. The most codified form of non rational logic represented in the series is witchcraft. Several major characters, including Willow and Giles, have an ability to cast spells. This non rational way of gaining knowledge and power is represented as being akin to a laboratory experiment. It is repeatedly shown to require: the gathering of obscure and sometimes repugnant ingredients; the learning of specific words, often in an ancient language such as Sumerian or Aramaean; the undertaking of ritual actions, such as lighting a candle or forming a circle; and unwavering concentration by the person casting the spell. Due to the consistency of its depiction, magic is represented in Buffy as a legitimate form of knowledge, rather than a threat to the rational order. The “characters rely more on magic than on mathematics, not because of some deep distrust of logical reasoning…magic is not chaotic: probabilistic causal laws govern the Buffyverse” (Muntersbjorn 2003: 93). Indeed, the series often represents rational and non rational systems of logic as complementing one another. For example, characters are shown undertaking research into supernatural threats using a combination of books, witchcraft and the internet. Willow gains her first introduction to the practice of magic from her computer teacher, who is also a “techno pagan” (1997: 2), and magic of the city 111 rachel trigg Buffy fights with weapons ranging from a mystical gourd to an ancient scythe to a rocket launcher.

6.4 Conclusions The physical form of the cemeteries represented in Buffy the Vampire Slayer accords closely with French’s description of Mount Auburn, despite a 160 year gap between the creation of the first American rural cemetery and the production of the television series. Both Mount Auburn and the Sunnydale cemeteries consist of permanent graves marked with crypts and headstones and located within a park- like setting. Sunnydale’s cemeteries are, like Mount Auburn, ultimately intended to “assuage the suffering of the mourner…make the young and careless pensive, the wise wiser” and ensure that “the lessons of history would be remembered and patriotism enhanced, theological truths would be more easily perceived and mortality would be strengthened” (French 1975: 84). The analysis of Buffy indicates that the model of the American cemetery established at Mount Auburn remains valid in contemporary culture.

However, textual analysis of Whedon’s series reveals aspects of the contemporary American cemetery that French’s historical analysis of Mount Auburn does not. The television series creates an association between the role of the cemeteries and the mythologies of the city. The Mount Auburn Cemetery was, as French makes clear, initially a rural cemetery model. Although urban cemeteries soon followed the Mount Auburn model, French does not examine whether, or how, the new cultural institutions were absorbed into the existing metropolises.2 In contrast, the cemeteries of Sunnydale are incorporated into both the form and the mythologies of the city. They are the liminal sites between the rational, aboveground world of adults and the supernatural, underground world of vampires and other demons. The cemeteries are crucial sites in the city’s mythology, but only for those who are able to access magical ways of understanding the world. magic of the city 112 rachel trigg Unlike French’s article, Buffy represents a strong association between cemeteries and horror. The Mount Auburn Cemetery described by French is created using a modern presupposition that cleanliness, order and light will banish the irrational fears created by superstition. In contrast to the modernist ideal, Sunnydale’s cemeteries are, quite literally, places of demons and of darkness. In the first episode of the series, Giles tells Buffy that the city is inhabited by “zombies, werewolves, incubi, succubi. Everything you’ve ever dreaded was under you bed but told yourself couldn’t be by the light of day” (1997: 1). The cemeteries in Sunnydale are places where that night time dread manifests and where the promise of the modernist cultural institution fails.

Textual analysis of Buffy also reveals that the contemporary American cemetery can be understood using humour. The cemeteries described by French, whether the church graveyards which pre dated Mount Auburn or the modern models of hygiene and propriety, are considered to be entirely serious places. This is consistent with other accounts of the historical and social context of cemeteries, including those by Curl (1993), Ariés (1981) and Etlin (1984). However, the cemeteries in Buffy are the location for occasional comic interludes. In this, the series draws on a far older tradition, exemplified in William Shakespeare’s depiction of Hamlet jesting with a grave digger in a burial ground and in the medieval memento mori discussed in Chapter 8.

Finally, Buffy consistently represents the non rational as a part of the everyday world. Though characters express surprise and shock in finding that vampires are real, and though Sunnydale is presented as a particularly active site for supernatural activity, the non rational is not portrayed as outside the natural order, but a part of it. In this, as in its intertextual approach, Buffy presents a magical realist view of the world, rather than one associated with Gell’s notion of the ‘enchantment of technology’. The world presented in Buffy operates according to its own, highly structured, logic. The magic of cemeteries in Buffy is not merely that strange things occur there, but that these things are part of the everyday magic of the city 113 rachel trigg experiences of city life. Or, as Buffy says, “[there’s] some demon looking for some all-powerful thingamabob and I gotta stop him before he unleashes unholy havoc and it’s another Tuesday night in Sunnydale” (1999: 7).

1 Episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are referred to throughout this chapter by the year in which the episode was first aired in the US and the episode number in that year.

2 Mount Auburn is now part of Cambridge, which itself is part of the greater metropolitan area of Boston.

magic of the city 114 rachel trigg The architect as god: cemetery, city and cosmos in Aldo 7 Rossi’s collage The Analogous City

Figure 7.1: Aldo Rossi (1976-77) The Analogous City Source: Geisert 1994: 99

magic of the city 115 rachel trigg 7.1 Introduction This chapter considers the way in which the biography and oeuvre of one architect intersect in his representation of the city and its places of the dead. Aldo Rossi’s collage The Analogous City (Figure 7.1) is in many ways the drawn equivalent of his theoretical and autobiographical writings.1 In his autobiography, Rossi reminisces that a professor, “whom [he] particularly admired, discouraged [him] from making architecture, saying that [his] drawings looked like those of a bricklayer or a rural contractor who threw a stone to indicate approximately where a window was to be placed” (1981: 39). Rossi’s teacher understood the role of architectural drawing to be to communicate the way in which a building should be constructed. His student had a far more complex understanding of the relationship between drawing, building, memory and imagination. In addition to explaining the construction of a building, Rossi’s drawings are aids to communicate an idea and win a commission, visual explanations of theory and appropriations of built works into new, imaginary contexts. In The Analogous City, identifiable architectural fragments become generic building typologies in a city plan which unites ancient precedent with the idiosyncratic memories and experiences of Rossi himself.

The Analogous City is a black and white collage of plans, elevations, perspectives and sketches. The image has been dated to 1976 (Moschini 1979; Arnell and Bickford 1985) and 1977 (Bandini, 1982; Geisert 1994). Early, incomplete versions of the image appear in several publications. A collage dated 1970 and called Composition for the Analogous City accompanies an article published in 1988 (see Olmo 1988). Another Rossi collage, dated 1972 and called City with Excavation of a Roman Circus, was published in the 1976 edition of Architecture and Urbanism and similar collage, dated 1977, appears in an exhibition catalogue (Moschini 1979). All three of these images contain plans and perspectives which appear in The Analogous City. When considered with his written work of the same time, the collages reveal Rossi’s preoccupation with the notion of design by analogue. In preparing this chapter, a large selection of Rossi’s writings, and particularly his books A Scientific Autobiography (1981) and The Architecture of the City (1982), magic of the city 116 rachel trigg were read. Drawings, photographs and descriptions of his built works were also examined, particularly those dated up to 1977, the latest year in which The Analogous City could have been composed.

7.2 The collage as writing Rossi first published The Architecture of the City in 1966 in his native Italian. This text is a critique of the modernist conception of the city (see Chapter 2). In it, Rossi opposes the polemic that design must be based primarily on the intended function of an object. He states, “one thesis of this study, in its effort to affirm the value of architecture in the analysis of the city, is the denial of the explanation of urban artefacts in terms of functionalism” (1982: 46). In The Architecture of the City, Rossi also sets out, using an elliptical style of writing, a general design method. This method is best explained in the preface to the second Italian edition of the book, which was translated and incorporated into the English edition of 1982. In

Figure 7.2: Antonio Canaletto (1753-1759) Capriccio Source: Rossi 1982: 165 magic of the city 117 rachel trigg this preface, Rossi outlines his design method by comparing it to Giovanni Antonio Canaletto’s Capriccio of the mid eighteenth century (Figure 7.2).

Canaletto’s painted ‘caprice’ or ‘whim’ depicts three buildings in Venice, all designed by Palladio, in the manner of a real scene observed first hand. However, though the designs of the buildings would have been well known to educated inhabitants of eighteenth century Venice, two are actually located in the nearby city of Vicenza and one was never built (Rossi 1982). Canaletto thus provides an analogous, or magical, Venice that remains recognisable, as it is constructed from monumental forms associated with the architecture and history of the region. Rossi translates this example into a method for architectural design, “in which the elements were pre established and formally defined, but where the significance that sprung forth at the end of the operation was the authentic, unforseen, and original meaning of the work” (Rossi 1982: 166).

Many critics have commented upon the equivalence of drawing, writing and building in Rossi’s work. Peter Eisenman states that “just as it is necessary to read Rossi’s book to understand Rossi’s drawings, it is also necessary to read his drawings to understand the ideas first formulated in his book” (1979: 9). Paolo Portoghesi writes, “for a long time, drawing was the only way for Rossi to create architecture; he used drawing not just as a means of producing plans for a building, but as a tool for teasing out the fruits of his imagination” (2000: 7). Morris Adjimi also believes that Rossi’s writings are “richly tangled webs of historical analysis and personal observations – a compelling mix of scholarly research and free association. Rossi’s architecture and drawing are the same” (1991: 269). This perspective is shared by Rossi himself, who writes that “most of my latest designs, like the first draft of projects, are a kind of writing, where writing and design are identified with each other” (Eisenman and Rossi 1979: 3). The following sections of this chapter consider the ways in which Rossi’s drawings, writings and buildings come together in The Analogous City to represent the architect’s understanding of the cosmos and the role of places of the dead within it. magic of the city 118 rachel trigg Figure 7.3: Aldo Rossi (1965) Plan of City Hall Square in Segrate Source: Arnell and Bickford 1985: 56

7.3 The collage as city The Analogous City is a postmodern amalgam of Rossi’s own architectural works and of designs by other architects and artists. Eugene Johnson (1982) identifies the hexagonal plan radiating from the centre of the collage (see Figure 7.1) as Cesare Cesariano’s sixteenth century reconstruction of the ancient city as described by the Roman architect and writer Vitruvius. The young man in the top right corner of The Analogous City is identified as the biblical David, painted by Tanzio da Varallo in about 1620. Johnson notes that Rossi has redrawn David’s hand, which in the original painting held the head of the slain Goliath.2 Johnson believes that city maps contained within The Analogous City “are made up of plans of édifices trouvés [found objects], such as the Spanish Steps and Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, both in Rome” (1982: 50). Bernard Huet also identifies some of Rossi’s architectural sources. He writes that the Analogous City is a typological montage, “where Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp and Terragni’s Danteum magic of the city 119 rachel trigg Figure 7.4: Aldo Rossi (1971) Plan of San Cataldo Cemetery in Modena Source: Arnell and Bickford 1985: 90 join forces with the palace of Knossos, Bramante’s Tempietto, Palladio’s Thiene Palace [and] Borromini’s San Carlino” (1984: 20).

Although he clearly borrows from other architects, the designer whom Rossi most frequently references in The Analogous City is himself. While Johnson and Huet distinguish many works by other architects, they do not identify the eight Rossi designs which are incorporated into the collage. These designs all date between 1965 and 1974. At the centre of The Analogous City is the plan of Rossi’s Memorial to Fallen Partisans (1965) who died during Germany’s World War II occupation of northern Italy, which is part of his design for a City Hall Square in Segrate (Figure 7.3). To the right of the memorial is a plan of the bone repositories and mass grave which are central components of Rossi’s San Cataldo Cemetery (1971) in Modena (Figure 7.4). An elevation of the Cemetery (Figure 7.5) also forms the semicircular border around the upper right of the image. Above and to the left of the Segrate memorial is part of the gridded plan of Rossi’s competition design for the San Rocco (1966) apartment building in Monza, below which is his design for the Gallaratese 2 (1969) apartment building in Milan. A third Rossi magic of the city 120 rachel trigg Figure 7.5: Aldo Rossi (1971) Elevation of San Cataldo Cemetery in Modena Source: Arnell and Bickford 1985: 93 scheme for housing, the design for a villa in Borgo Ticino (1973), radiates at an angle of approximately one hundred degrees from the centre of The Analogous City.

Houses are not the only building typology represented in The Analogous City. Beneath the centre of the collage is a pair of towers which form a gateway between the ocean at the bottom of the image and the city above. The gateway and city walls are an amalgamation of two projects. The towers and wall to the left are taken from Rossi’s design for a bridge in Bellinzona (1974) in Switzerland, while the right section of the city wall is taken from his competition entry for a Regional Administration Centre in Trieste. To the far left of the collage is a curvilinear path taken from Rossi’s design for a City Hall in Scandicci.

Each fragment which Rossi incorporates into The Analogous City, both from his own oeuvre and from those of other architects, is representative of a specific building typology. The location of the fragment within the drawing relates directly to the usual location of the building typology within the city. For example, the city wall and gate in The Analogous City are located at the edge of the metropolis and separate it from the surrounding ocean and mountains, as was the case in real ancient and medieval cities. Housing typologies, such as the residential districts of ancient Rome described by Vitruvius and the modern Gallaratese 2 and San Rocco apartments designed by Rossi, are grouped next to each other and comprise the majority of The Analogous City, as do houses in the real metropolis. The war memorial from Rossi’s design for Segrate is located at the centre of The Analogous City, which accords with the ancient custom of honouring political and military heroes within the centre of the city and with the modern practice of magic of the city 121 rachel trigg commemorating the lives of individual soldiers.

The San Cataldo Cemetery is the only of Rossi’s designs, and the only design by any architect, to be used twice in The Analogous City. Rossi’s double use of San Cataldo may be explained by the changing location of cemeteries in Western cities. Unlike houses and memorials, cemeteries have not had a fixed historical location within the city. As discussed in Chapter 2, cemeteries in ancient and modern times were located near or beyond the edges of the metropolis, while during the Middle Ages and Renaissance they were found at its centre. In The Analogous City, Rossi represents this movement of the location of the cemetery within the city. He places a large image of a cemetery at the centre of the collage and a smaller image at its edge. Rossi thus emphasises the cemetery’s location at the centre of the city, despite the fact that the real San Cataldo Cemetery is situated on the outskirts of Modena. In addition to indicating the movement of the location of the cemetery over time, the relative prominence ascribed to the two San Cataldo Cemeteries implies that the architectural fragments in The Analogous City serve more as representative typologies in an idealised city than as references to projects with a life outside the drawing.

7.4 The collage as cosmos In its incorporation of architectural fragments from many eras, Rossi’s city is timeless, or rather of a non specific time. It is not, however, placeless. The Analogous City is essentially Italian. It brings together real cities and those imagined primarily by Italian architects from ancient Rome and from Renaissance and modern Italy. Images of Rome form much of the basis of Rossi’s collage, as do architectural schemes from the region around Milan, the city in which Rossi was born and spent much of his life (Rossi 1981). In its depiction of a gated city bound by water, The Analogous City also represents Venice, a city in which Rossi repeatedly taught, worked and exhibited.3 His incorporation of idealised building typologies are variations on traditional Italian forms. For example, Rossi’s designs magic of the city 122 rachel trigg for San Rocco, Gallaratese and Borgo Ticino are three different approaches to the use of traditional northern Italian housing forms in a modern context. While San Rocco derives from the courtyard building, Gallaratese is created from the basis of corridor housing and Borgo Ticino from riverside stilt housing.

At the centre of The Analogous City, the Segrate memorial segues into the plan of San Cataldo’s mass grave, which then becomes part of a Roman amphitheatre, as prefigured in Rossi’s earlier collage City with Excavation of a Roman Circus (1972). These three architectural typologies, the memorial, grave and amphitheatre, frequently recur in Rossi’s work and are central to his world view. Within the amphitheatre in The Analogous City is an image (Figure 7.6), drawn in a style which Rossi uses in several architectural schemes,4 of people walking on a plain beneath a star filled sky. This image can be read as a representation of the cosmos. In his study of urban form in ancient Italy, Rykwert notes that “many ancient peoples, including the Romans of course, believed that the earth was circular, and that the sky formed a vault or dome over it” (1988: 46). Figure 7.6: Detail of The Analogous City Rykwert describes one of the earliest Source: Geisert 1994: 99 Roman treatises on city surveying being preceded by an image of “a starry circle representing the sky which is quartered…The size of the diagram did not have any relation to its power, since its working was analogical” (1988: 47). In accordance with ancient Roman tradition, Rossi’s city contains at its centre a representation of the cosmos, which has power over the working of the city through the magic of analogy.

Like the ancient city described by Rykwert, The Analogous City divides into four quarters. The city gates and ocean are to the south of the image, a traditionally designed residential district to the east, a modern residential district to the west magic of the city 123 rachel trigg and the places of the dead to the north. Every form in Rossi’s city has a place in this larger cosmic order. The architectural fragments within the image are united through several structural devices. One of these devices is the repetition of geometric forms in different sections of the upper half of the image. The centre of the image consists of overlapping circles, the upper right quadrant of triangular forms and the upper left quadrant of a series of squares. In contrast to the upper half, the lower portion of the drawing is dominated by natural forms, including mountains, ocean, vegetation and, to the far right of the drawing, clouds. In general, The Analogous City provides a contrast between curvilinear forms associated with nature and geometric forms identified with culture. The location of the two fragments of San Cataldo within the upper half of the image emphasises Rossi’s understanding of the cemetery not as a quasi natural place set within a park, as in the north American tradition, but as an integral part of urban form. The clear structuring of Rossi’s collage also emphasises that the location of a memorial at the centre of the city is not accidental, but rather a crucial component of Rossi’s understanding of the cosmos.

In addition to creating a contrast between geometric forms, and between nature and culture, The Analogous City draws the eye of the viewer into the centre of the image. The edges of the plan for San Cataldo Cemetery and the wall from the square in Segrate form two of many diagonal lines which structurally unite the city fragments into one vision of the metropolis. These diagonals include: David’s outstretched arm; the streets in Cesarino’s city plan; the row of stilt houses; and the boundary between the mountains and the ocean. These lines help to create a sense of order in what would otherwise be a jumbled assemblage of forms. They also Figure 7.7: Detail of The Analogous City create a clear centre to the collage and to Source: Geisert 1994: 99 magic of the city 124 rachel trigg the city and cosmos which it represents.

Rossi is by no means the only modern architect to imagine a new metropolis linked to a specific world view. The Analogous City can be understood in the twentieth century tradition of utopian cities imagined by architects such as Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. However, in terms of methodology Rossi’s more direct precursor is eighteenth century architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The Analogous City contains several references to Piranesi. Johnson (1982) identifies a section of plan, which appears above David’s arm (Figure 7.7), as Piranesi’s work. The fragment is Piranesi’s reconstruction of an ancient marble plan of Rome, of which only fragments now remain. In a drawing called Il Campo Marizo dell’ Antica Roma, Piranesi part depicts, part imagines this plan. The process employed by Piranesi in assembling Il Campo Marizio from real remnants of an ancient artefact is similar to that used by Rossi in The Analogous City. In both drawings, the architect’s knowledge of urban history is coupled with use of the imagination, and an assemblage of architectural fragments is given order through a cohesive vision of the city as cosmos.5

7.5 The collage as memory Rossi also takes Piranesi as a model in creating a more personal imagining of the life of the city. In 1745, only a decade or so before Canaletto painted his imagined view of Venice, Piranesi produced a Figure 7.8: Giovanni Piranesi (1745) Detail of a Carceri series of images called Invenzioni Source: Harvey 1979: 35 magic of the city 125 rachel trigg Capric di Carceri, which can be roughly translated as the ‘whimsical inventions of prisons’. These images consist of cavernous spaces in which humans are dwarfed to insignificance by enormous machinery and never ending staircases (Figure 7.8). Rossi amalgamates several sections from the Carceri series above the left side of the wall in The Analogous City. Though the fragments of the Carceri are difficult to discern in smaller reproductions of Rossi’s collage, they nonetheless add a surreal aspect which is enhanced though the addition of Rossi’s own sketched imaginings. In his use of the Carceri, Rossi does not merely quote from his predecessor. His references to and permutations of Piranesi are not so much postmodern fragments isolated from their original context as components of an understanding of the cosmos which he and Piranesi share. In The Analogous City, Rossi not only represents two places of the dead, but also collaborates with a long dead architect.

In addition to illustrating his theoretical, methodological and cosmological approach to the city, The Analogous City also represents Rossi’s memories. This is most obvious in the almost exclusive use of Italian city fragments, particularly from architectural projects close to Rossi’s birth place. Another connection to his memories is the small group of objects to the far right of The Analogous City, consisting of striped beach cabins and a comparatively oversized coffeepot. These objects are frequently drawn by Rossi, both separately and together.6 The beach cabins appear in an often published drawing called The Cabins of Elba (1973) (Figure 7.9) and Rossi discusses them in his autobiography. He associates the cabins with youth, happiness and summer holidays, with “the sand and the white streets on timeless, unchanging mornings” (1981: Figure 7.9: Aldo Rossi (1973) The Cabins of Elba 25). In The Analogous City, the cabins may Source: Adjmi and Bertolotto 1993: 146 magic of the city 126 rachel trigg act as an allusion to Rossi’s existence outside the drawing. They also have a specific place in Rossi’s cosmic order. The cabins are located on the far edge of The Analogous City’s residential quarter. Their function as a private place in which to change into bathing clothes is supplemented with a more symbolic role. In their frequent appearance in Rossi’s drawings and close connection with his memories, the cabins become a metaphoric changing place between Rossi’s public and private worlds.

The cabins in The Analogous City are anthropomorphised and appear to cluster around a large coffeepot. The coffeepot is, like the cabins, an object of fascination for Rossi. In his autobiography, Rossi recounts childhood holidays, during which he would linger in the kitchen drawing domestic utensils. He states, “I particularly loved the strange shape of the coffeepots enamelled blue, green, red; they were miniatures of the fantastic architectures that I would encounter later. Today I still love to draw these large coffeepots, which I liken to brick walls, and which I think of as structures that can be entered (1981: 2). The Analogous City is just one of many images to incorporate this coffeepot architecture. In a collection of Rossi’s drawings edited by Adjmi and Bertolotto (1993), coffeepots appear in domestic settings at naturalistic scale and as enormous architectural structures the size of large buildings. Rossi even created a real tea service and several coffee makers for Italian design house Alessi (Adjmi and Bertolotto 1993). Like the cabins, the coffeepot can thus be read as a reference to Rossi’s life outside the drawing and a link to his memories and preoccupations.

Although it does not have as clear a link to his biography as do the beach cabins and coffeepots, the sketched silhouette of a man standing at a window can also be read as a representation of Rossi’s, and indeed the viewer’s, life outside the drawing. Like beach cabins, the window is an architectural form which stands at the juncture between the public and the private. As Adjmi and Bertolotto (1993: 23) write, “the window represents an ambiguous line between interior and exterior: between the privacy of domestic space and the public domain of the urban magic of the city 127 rachel trigg landscape…It is from this window that Rossi’s shadow-like figure observes and is observed”. The figure who is represented at the window in The Analogous City can be read simultaneously as a generic urban inhabitant, the viewer of the image and Aldo Rossi himself. The figure looks from an apartment, such as those in Gallaratese 2, and brings his or her own memories and experiences to the understanding of the city.

If the silhouette at the window can be read simultaneously as an everyman figure and as Rossi himself, so too can the San Cataldo Cemetery, and particularly its rows of ossuaries. The ossuaries are shown in drawings of the Cemetery as being triangular in plan. In some Italian burial traditions, still practiced today, ossuaries are used to store the skeletal remains of the dead. At the time of finalising the initial design for the San Cataldo Cemetery, Rossi was in hospital recovering from a car accident. Lying in bed he began to consider “the skeletal structure of the body as a series of fractures to be reassembled” (Rossi 1981: 11). The design for San Cataldo can be understood as being structured around just such a skeletal framework, with the rows of ossuaries becoming a representation of the human ribcage (see Figure 7.4 upside down). If this reading is expanded to the rest of the cemetery plan, a cubic ossuary becomes a head, with a set of u-shaped ossuaries becoming shoulders and arms. Johnson takes this reading further, stating “in this context the cone [above the mass grave] becomes a 25m phallus that carries the dual, and wholly unexpected, meaning of cremation and generation, of death and life” (1982: 53).

Rossi’s incorporation of the ribcage plan of the San Cataldo’s ossuaries into The Analogous City is a representation of the architect’s own painful experiences and a reference to the bodily structure of all people buried in the cemetery. Along with the sketch of the man standing at the window and the anthropomorphised cabins and coffeepot, the plan-as-ribcage begins to bring a human presence to Rossi’s seemingly deserted city. In his autobiography, Rossi writes that years after designing San Cataldo he realised “that to regard death as a kind of fracture is a magic of the city 128 rachel trigg one sided interpretation” (1981: 11). If death as fracture is one side of an understanding, the other side must be death as continuity. Just as architectural fragments merge in the plan of The Analogous City to form one metropolis, so an individual life merges with the ongoing life of the city. In Rossi’s idealised city, death and places of the dead are part of a cosmic, but also very human, order.

7.6 Conclusions The Analogous City was created on the cusp of postmodernity, a time when, as explained in Chapter 2, many theorists argue that the city was being perceived as increasingly fragmented and ephemeral. Analysis of The Analogous City reveals that in the mid 1970s it remained possible for an architect to understand urban form non rationally, as a materialisation of world view. Rossi’s collage reconciles seemingly contradictory notions of the expressiveness of the architectural fragment and of the importance of the city plan as an organising totality. The Analogous City is both a representation of the complexities of a single, non rational, city and a collection of numerous architectural fragments which are separated in time and space. Rossi combines his own, idiosyncratic experiences of urban life with a model of the cosmos which dates to ancient Rome and can still be seen in many Italian cities and towns. The drawing also illustrates the way in which individual memories can be reconciled with a culturally and temporally specific cosmos. Rossi is not only the creator of The Analogous City, but also its inhabitant.

As in ancient times, the city imagined by Rossi has a memorial to the dead at its centre. Like its medieval counterpart, The Analogous City also incorporates the cemetery directly into its sacred core. Rossi’s cemetery is not the parklike graveyard depicted in Buffy the Vampire Slayer nor that perceived by The Unbearable Lightness of Being’s Sabina to exist in rural Bohemia. It shares far more with the urban cemetery Sabina encounters in Paris, in which city streets are mimicked by rows of miniature stone chapels. The memorial at the centre of The Analogous City is also highly urban in its form and is united with the surrounding city fabric. magic of the city 129 rachel trigg As with The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the kind of magic enacted in The Analogous City can be more easily equated with magical realism than with the enchantment of technology. The magical aspects of the collage derive largely from the way in which real city fragments are combined, although sophisticated artistic techniques are used to dazzle the viewer. As with the texts considered in the previous two chapters, The Analogous City simultaneously presents several ways of knowing the world. It also alludes to many of the mythologies through which a culturally specific city can be understood and combines multiple times within one space.

The method used in this chapter to some extent challenges the poststructuralist notion of the death of the author discussed in Chapter 3. This chapter has focused on reading The Analogous City largely in relationship with Rossi’s own life and work, as represented in his theoretical and autobiographical writings, architectural designs and freehand drawings. Though this chapter was highly intertextual in its approach, the method did not extend to a comprehensive discourse analysis. The chapter does not consider, for example, Rossi’s collage in the context of other representations of Italian cemeteries, nor does it generally consider the social and political implications of his work. This is particularly important in the case of the Segrate memorial, which commemorates the dead of one fascist nation during its part occupation by another. The method used in this chapter and the understanding of Rossi’s work in which it results is thus incomplete. The analysis of the text, particularly a text as persuasive, well crafted and even beautiful as Rossi’s collage, does not consider the relationship between The Analogous City and the reality which it represents and recreates.

The power of Rossi’s work and its attraction to architects and theorists may thus relate not to the buildings as constructed, but to their representation. Rossi’s depiction of a magical reality, in which architectural fragments separated in time and space converge to form a new city imbued with an ancient world view, may be magic of the city 130 rachel trigg far more persuasive than his built works. The following chapters, then, look at both the representation and the reality of contemporary places of the dead. They complement detailed analysis of a wide range of texts with an examination of the physical reality of cemeteries and memorials. This approach is used not to test the fidelity of representations in relation to built works, but rather to consider the complex ways in which representations impact upon the understanding and use of the city.

1 In Arnell and Bickford (1985), E Consolascio, B Reichlin and F Reinhart are also credited with working on The Analogous City.

2 Rossi’s competition drawings for the Centro Direzionale in Florence, which like The Analogous City were undertaken between 1976 and 1977, also includes the figure of David.

3 It would be interesting to compare The Analogous City with Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, which presents numerous representations of Venice and was published in Italian in 1972, some four years before Rossi’s drawing was completed.

4 For example, see his 1967 design for a piazza in Sannazzaro de Burgondi, as illustrated in Arnell and Bickford (1985).

5 In another use of this method, in1977 Rossi and eleven other architects proposed additions to the Nolli plan of Rome, which dates from 1748 (Arnell and Bickford 1985). Rossi and his team imagined the rebuilding of the Antonianian Baths in drawings which collage fragments of the older plan with contemporary incursions in a manner similar to The Analogous City.

6 For example, see the many drawings in Adjmi and Bertolotto (1993).

magic of the city 131 rachel trigg Ghosts in the Mall: The city, the body and the citizen in 8 Washington DC

Figure 8.1: A magical view of the city. This postcard, depicting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, was collected on a visit to Washington DC in May 2006. Although the postcard is presented as a ‘real’ image of the city, the sculptured soldiers are located at such a distance from the main component of the Memorial that it is impossible for the bronzed bodies to be reflected in the granite wall, as they are represented here. magic of the city 132 rachel trigg 8.1 Introduction Throughout its history, Washington DC in the United States (US) of America has been understood as a materialisation of American world view. Unlike many other US cities, it was created not for reasons of economic or military advantage, but to symbolise the democratic nation state. The utopian impulse which resulted in the creation of religious communities in the early years of the American colonies was evident in the decision to build a new city in which to house the government of the new republic. Washington DC is thus a place in which the magical aspects of the modern city are readily apparent. Though it was conceptualised towards the beginning of modernity and developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the city is known not for its industrial output, but for its symbolic capital. Washington DC has thus became a model for other cities consciously created as the representation of world view, including Canberra in Australia.

In this chapter, a wide variety of texts are analysed to reveal a discourse which symbolically places the body at the centre of Washington DC. The body is present in the American capital through the memorials honouring the founders and defenders of the nation and through the citizens who visit them. However, the body mythologised in the centre of Washington DC is not that of everybody. There is a long and continuing history of the US being represented as a prototypical democracy. Despite the frequent representation of the US as a place of freedom for all, Washington DC materialises an understanding of the democratic nation state which is both specific and limited. The capital represents two types of US citizens: the minority, whose bodies are magically rendered visible in the mythologies of the city, and the majority, whose are not. This chapter examines who is symbolically buried at the centre of Washington DC and how visitors to the city participate in the reproduction of its mythologies. More specifically, it considers how Washington DC’s memorials, particularly the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and Vietnam Veterans Memorial, create and disrupt the symbolic connection between the American capital and America’s understanding of itself. While there are many critiques of the disjuncture between the rhetoric of US magic of the city 133 rachel trigg democracy and its quantifiable reality, this chapter examines the ways in which mythologies of the American nation state are both sustained and undermined by the monuments in its capital.

The place on which this chapter focuses is the National Mall, a largely open area in the centre of Washington DC which is punctuated by some of the nation’s most important monuments. The development of the Mall and construction of its monuments are discussed in the following section of this chapter. There is a vast array of literature, scholarly and otherwise, examining the Mall and its monuments. Two key scholarly texts, which will be frequently referred to in this chapter, are John Rep’s (1991) Washington on View and the collection of articles edited by Richard Longstreth (1991) entitled The Mall in Washington, 1791-1991. The chapter includes analysis of texts from a wide variety of modes of representation, including paintings, maps, films, design competition guidelines, newspapers, planning documents, journals, museum displays, memos and episodes of television series. It focuses particularly on the representation of the US capital and its memorials through the medium of photography. As a city which attracts a large number of visitors, Washington DC is frequently photographed by holiday makers. Professionally taken photographs of the city’s monuments also appear on memorabilia such as postcards, calendars, posters, t-shirts, guide books and drinking glasses. As will be shown later in this chapter, photographs have been crucial in reproducing the ritualistic way in which visitors approach the city’s memorials, particularly the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The texts used in this chapter were gathered in several ways. The collection of sources began in libraries in Australia. Research was then undertaken at the US Library of Congress in Washington DC. This research focused on the records of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF), a not for profit organisation which championed and oversaw construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The Library of Congress holds a large collection of VVMF records generally dated between 1978 and 1985. Other texts used in this chapter were gathered through magic of the city 134 rachel trigg visits to museums and art galleries in Washington DC, particularly the National Museum of American History, and to shops selling souvenirs and guides to tourists.

In addition to textual analysis, this chapter uses observations made during site visits. Research in Washington DC incorporated three visits to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Two of these visits occurred during weekdays, one during the day and the other at night. The third visit occurred on the weekend immediately prior to Memorial Day, which is a public holiday held in the US on the last Monday in May. On this visit there was a far greater than usual number of visitors to the Memorial.1 In addition to visits to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, research in Washington DC included site visits to the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, World War II Memorial, Korean War Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. With the exception of Arlington Cemetery, these sites were visited both by day and by night.2 Site visits were recorded through written descriptions, the collection of printed guide material and photography.

8.2 The planning and development of the city The detailed development of the National Mall at the centre of Washington DC is set out in Reps (1991), Longstreth (1991) and Kohler and Scott (2006). This section does not attempt to duplicate these works, but to provide a general historic framework for consideration of the myths and metaphors sustained and challenged in the Mall and its monuments. As in the ancient city, there are no burials in the centre of Washington DC. Although Presidents and soldiers are memorialised within the Mall, their actual bodies lie beyond the city boundary, often in Arlington Cemetery in Virginia.3 Although some ancient statesmen and other heroes were given dispensation to be buried within the walls of the city, the real burial place of America’s heroes lies, like all modern cemeteries, beyond the metropolis.

magic of the city 135 rachel trigg Figure 8.2: Pierre L’Enfant (1791) Plan for Washington DC Source: Longstreth 1991: 174 The Mall is thus a place which is entirely symbolic in function and is not required to address the practical issues associated with the burial of real bodies. It was always conceived as such. The Mall appeared in the earliest plan for Washington DC. This was prepared by Pierre L’Enfant in 1791 (Figure 8.2) and is still used as the conceptual model for the central city. In the L’Enfant Plan, the Mall is about one mile in length, with a congress house at its eastern end and the home of the President to its north. These fundamental symbols of American democracy were built as the Capitol building and the White House. An equestrian statue of George Washington was proposed by L’Enfant to be sited at the western end of the Mall. Although central Washington DC developed in the nineteenth century generally in accordance with the L’Enfant Plan, the Mall and its surrounds were largely ignored. New plans for the Mall were occasionally proposed, such as the naturalistic design by prominent landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing, but these had little magic of the city 136 rachel trigg impact on its development. It was not until 1885 that, after a lengthy design and building period, the Washington Monument was finally completed on the site identified by L’Enfant.

The most significant nineteenth century deviation from the L’Enfant Plan occurred in the last decades of the century, when part of the Potomac River at the far western end of the Mall was filled to create a large area of parklands and tidal reservoirs (Reps 1991). In 1902, the Senate Park Commission, which was chaired by Senator James McMillan and included prominent architect Daniel Burnham and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Junior, presented a vision for Washington DC and particularly its central area. The Senate Park Commission’s Plan, which became known as the McMillan Plan (Figure 8.3), maintained the Beaux-Arts principles in the L’Enfant Plan and proposed that the Mall be extended toward a new structure on the reclaimed section of the River (Reps 1991). The McMillan Plan hoped that the Mall would become an axis “clearly defined by an expanse of undulating green a mile and a half long and three hundred feet broad, walled on either side by elms, planted in formal procession four abreast” (quoted in Reps 1991: 252).

Figure 8.3: Francis L V Houpin (1902) Plan from the Senate Park Commission Report, also known as the Mcmillan Plan Source: Kohler and Scott 2006: 190 magic of the city 137 rachel trigg To reinforce the symbolic significance of the Mall, the McMillan Plan proposed that neoclassical temples set within landscaped grounds be placed to its west and south. The Plan specified that the structure to the west should contain a statue of Abraham Lincoln, “the one man in our history as a nation who is worthy to be named with George Washington” (quoted in Reps 1991: 242). The structure to the south was designated as a memorial to a person or persons unknown. The Lincoln Memorial, which was dedicated in 1922, and the canal-like Reflecting Pool to its east were eventually built generally in accordance with the McMillan Plan. The memorial site to the south of the Mall was in time filled with a memorial to Thomas Jefferson.

As well as containing the country’s most important memorials, the Mall became a location for nationally significant museums. The first of these was the Smithsonian Institute, which was completed in 1855 on the southern side of the Mall (Reps 1991). In contrast to the L’Enfant Plan’s confident delineation of the Mall, mid nineteenth century images of central Washington DC show the Smithsonian Institute and half built Washington Monument standing alone in an irregular area of open space. The main Smithsonian building was gradually joined by institutions including the National Museum of Natural History, National Gallery of Art, National Museum of American History, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and National Air and Space Museum (Kohler and Scott 2006). As proposed in the Macmillan Plan, these museums surrounded and defined the eastern end of the Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument.

The section of the Mall from the Washington Monument west to the Lincoln Memorial was envisaged in the Macmillan Plan as being far more open in character. Whether through good planning or good fortune, the western end of the Mall was protected from permanent development by temporary government buildings which, in the first half of the twentieth century, filled much of its area (Longstreth 1991). The western end of the Mall therefore became the focus for the creation of new memorials in the latter part of the twentieth century. The first of magic of the city 138 rachel trigg The White House

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Washington Lincoln The National Mall The Capitol Memorial Monument Korean War Veterans Memorial

World War II Memorial

Jefferson Memorial

Figure 8.4: Memorials and other locations in the symbolic centre of Washington DC Source: Aerial photograph 2008 sourced from http://earth.google.com these was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which was dedicated in 1982 near the Lincoln Memorial, north of the Reflecting Pool. In 1995 the Korean War Veterans Memorial was dedicated in an area south of the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool. The most recent memorial to be built in the Mall is the World War II Memorial, which was dedicated in 2004 and is located at the eastern end of the Reflecting Pool on the same axis as the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument.

In addition to being a site for memorials and museums, during the latter half of the twentieth century the Mall also became a site for political protests and events. Some of the most notable of these were: Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, which was delivered in 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial; the 1969 ‘Vietnam War Moratorium Rally’; the annual anti abortion ‘March for Life’; and recent protests against the war in Iraq. Many other rallies have been held in the space, representing a wide variety of cultural groups and political perspectives. The Mall has also been used for temporary memorials, such as the AIDS Memorial Quilt. This work is an enormous patchwork quilt made up of grave-sized panels dedicated to individual victims of the AIDS virus, which has been laid out in the magic of the city 139 rachel trigg open areas of the Mall five times between 1987 and 1996 (The AIDS Memorial Quilt 2007).

In the last half century the Mall has been twice replanned. However, both of these initiatives have extended, rather than challenged, the principles enshrined in the L’Enfant and Macmillan Plans. In 1965 the architectural firm Skidmore, Ownings and Merrill (SOM), with landscape architect Dan Kiley, prepared a plan of the Mall for the National Parks Service (Streatfield 1991). The SOM Plan proposed the narrowing and formal definition of the Mall with four rows of trees at its eastern end and two rows of trees to its west. The SOM Plan formalised the eastern end of the Mall as a location for museums which, by the mid 1960s, already lined much of its length near the Capitol. Beyond the area of the Mall west of the Washington Monument, the SOM Plan envisaged dense and informal plantings on the swampy land which had been reclaimed from the Potomac River.

Although the SOM Plan had little impact on the use or development of the Mall, in 1997 the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) produced another plan for Washington DC, called Extending the Legacy: Planning America’s Capital for the 21st Century. This Plan, which is discussed in detail later in this chapter, is based on two assumptions: that the principles governing the L’Enfant Plan be maintained; and that those principles be extended throughout contemporary Washington DC, which had grown significantly since the Mall and central city were constructed. Though the implementation of the L’Enfant Plan has varied in pace, and has been challenged by numerous other proposals for the centre of Washington DC, the NCPC Plan sees L’Enfant’s vision of the city extended, virtually unchanged, into a third century.

magic of the city 140 rachel trigg 8.3 The body of the president: Washington Before L’Enfant began his plan for Washington DC, Thomas Jefferson had proposed that the new US capital be a modest city structured by a simple grid (Reps 1991). Instead, with the L’Enfant Plan, Washington DC became a diagram linking the eighteenth century understanding of America’s place in the world with the form of its capital. At the centre of the city are not a temple, palace or cathedral, as would have been the case in the ancient or medieval city, but the homes of Congress and the democratically elected President. The greatness of the US is represented in the L’Enfant Plan in the way in which the urban inhabitant moves about the city. The L’Enfant Plan uses wide landscaped avenues, which exploit the topography of the land and appear diagonal from above, to connect significant buildings. Onto these avenues are superimposed a grid of smaller streets running north-south and east-west (see Figure 8.1). The meeting points of the diagonal avenues and gridded streets were intended to be marked with statues and other monuments (Reps 1991). L’Enfant’s city of avenues and vistas was designed to be understood not from the perspective of a sacred and omniscient being, as in the ancient and medieval cities, but through the bodily experiences of the citizen.

The way in which the body is represented and mythologised in the centre of Washington DC has its antecedents in ancient Greece and Rome. The city founder had a special role in the ancient metropolis. Rykwert states that “the hero-founder had to be buried at the heart of the city; only the tomb of the hero-founder could guarantee that the city lived” (1988: 35). The entombed body of the founder, venerated through rituals and festivals, became symbolically connected to the fecundity of the ancient city. Although, as noted in Chapter 2, burial in the city was prohibited for ordinary citizens, the literal and metaphorical presence of the city founder was believed to ensure that the metropolis grew and prospered.

The notion of the city founder is also important in the mythology of Washington DC. Although Pierre L’Enfant, Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Burnham are all magic of the city 141 rachel trigg associated with its creation, it is the first President of the US who is most consistently represented as being the founder of its capital. This is most obvious in the naming of the city, but is also evident in representations of the city and the man. One striking and often reprinted example of this is Edward Savage’s engraved portrait of George Washington holding a copy of L’Enfant’s plan for the capital (Figure 8.5). Savage’s engraving, dated 1793, depicts the President wearing a coat, waistcoat and knee length pants of dark velvet. His high necked white shirt has ruffles at the chest and wrist and he wears a white wig with his own hair tied underneath in a ribbon. An ornate hat rests on a table. Washington is depicted seated in front of a decorative curtain, beyond which is visible a marble column and a small patch of sky. The image, entitled George Washington Esq. President of the United States of America, represents Washington as a dignified gentleman president and city founder. Washington sits in an ornamental Figure 8.5: Edward Savage (1793) George Washington Esq. interior, holding the plan of his Source: Peatross 2005: 2 capital and looking contemplatively beyond the viewer. The image is structured so that the marble column is located directly above Washington’s legs, with the L’Enfant Plan strategically positioned between the President’s body and the city’s architecture.

In George Washington Esq, the President’s body is transformed into the classical forms of the city whose plans he holds. While Washington’s mortal body is buried at Mount Vernon, his rural property in Virginia4, his symbolic body is represented magic of the city 142 rachel trigg as belonging to the nation and the city. The symbolic transformation enacted in the image would have been particularly persuasive to late eighteenth and early nineteenth century viewers because the engraving was based on a well known portrait of Washington, made from life, which Savage had previously undertaken. The engraving was thus presented as a truthful representation of the President, as it was a descendent of the high art of painting and was based on direct observation of its subject. It is through images such as this that the mythology of Washington as city founder was created and, in later years, perpetuated.

Almost one hundred years after Savage engraved President Washington’s portrait, the Washington Monument (Figure 8.6) was dedicated in the centre of the American capital. The realised monument is an obelisk of white marble, rather than the figurative sculpture of the President on horseback envisaged by L’Enfant. As in the Savage portrait, the Washington Monument transforms the body of the President into classical architecture. The Figure 8.6: Washington Monument (1885) Monument is located on a grassy hill at the Source: Trigg 2006 centre of the Mall. It is 170 metres in height and is thus the tallest structure in the capital (Reps 1991). The Monument’s location and isolation from other structures ensure that it is visible from much of the city. At its base is a circular paved area, edged with numerous staffs bearing the US flag. From the hill upon which the Monument is sited, visitors gain unobstructed views to the White House, Capitol and Lincoln Memorial. At night, the Monument and surrounding flags are dramatically illuminated.

The form of the Washington Monument is connected to an understanding of the magic of the city 143 rachel trigg city which also dates to antiquity. In ancient Greece and Rome, an obelisk was often used as an axis mundi or ‘world axis’ which signified the centre of the universe (Mumford 1961). Although the contemporary American world view is markedly different to that of ancient Greece and Rome, the role of the Washington Monument within the city is remarkably similar. In the sacred cities of the past, the axis mundi symbolically joined the heavens and earth. In the secular Western city, the Washington Monument marks the centre of the democratic nation state. In the highly ordered plan of central Washington DC, the Monument is located on two axes: one running north-south to the White House and the other running east-west to the Capitol and the Supreme Court. The Monument thus represents a meeting place between the houses of the President, Congress and Judges, or between executive, legislative and judicial power. The rational notion of the democratic nation state has, with the Washington Monument, been grafted to the ancient and non rational veneration of the city founder.

8.4 The body of the president: Lincoln Washington is not the only President to be memorialised in the centre of the US capital. As has been noted, a memorial to Thomas Jefferson is located south of the Mall. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan are memorialised by, respectively, a large island parkland, a centre for the performing arts and an international trade centre, all of which are located close to the centre of Washington DC. There is also a large equestrian statue memorialising President Ulysses S Grant on the steps of the Capitol. However, only the Figure 8.7: Lincoln Memorial (1922) memorial to Abraham Lincoln Source: Trigg 2006 magic of the city 144 rachel trigg rivals the Washington Monument in its transformation of architecture into mythology. The Lincoln Memorial is a white marble temple containing a large sculpture of the President and is located at the far western end of the Mall (Figure 8.7). On the inner walls of the temple are the texts of two of Lincoln’s most well known speeches: his Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address. The Memorial is raised on a high base at the end of a long vista and is thus, like the Washington Monument, visible from a significant distance. It is also lit at night.

Like the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial began to be mythologised soon after its creation. The Memorial is, for example, central to Frank Capra’s (1939) film Mr Smith Goes to Washington. The film is about an idealistic young man who is appointed a senator and is sent, from a small town, to Washington DC. An early part of the film contains a montage of Smith visiting the capital’s monuments for the first time. The montage incorporates images of the Supreme Court, White House, Capitol, Jefferson Memorial, National Archives, Washington Monument and Arlington Cemetery. These images are superimposed with other symbols of American democracy, including the constitution, sculpture of a bald eagle, Liberty Bell, flame held by the Statue of Liberty and US flag (Figure 8.8). The montage is accompanied by music, but no commentary. Smith does not verbally identify the landmarks he sees, nor their relationship with the city. Instead, the film assumes that viewers will recognise the monuments it depicts and

Figures 8.8 and 8.9: Stills from Mr Smith Goes to Washington of George Washington superimposed on the Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument (at left) and Mr Smith standing in front of the Washington Monument (at right). Source: Capra 1939 magic of the city 145 rachel trigg understand their relationship to the plan of the city and the symbols of American democracy.

Figure 8.10 and 8.11: The exterior and interior of the Lincoln Memorial, as depicted in Mr Smith Goes to Washington Source: Capra 1939

The Lincoln Memorial is the last monument visited by Smith. He is shown: standing outside the Memorial with the Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool in the background (Figure 8.9); admiring the Memorial’s neoclassical architecture; climbing its stairs; and looking at the sculpture of Lincoln inside the temple (Figures 8.10 and 8.11). Due to the height of the sculpture and the low camera angle, Smith is depicted standing at Lincoln’s feet and looking up to him. The representation of Lincoln’s oversized body at the end of a lengthy montage of symbols of American democracy presents Lincoln as a lager-than-life hero and the personification of American values. Smith describes his excitement at seeing the Lincoln Memorial, saying “Gee whiz! Why Mr Lincoln, there he is. He’s just looking right straight at you as you come up those steps. Just sitting there like he was waiting for someone to come along”. As in the Savage engraving of Washington, the symbolic transformation of the body of the President is here helped by its realistic representation. Smith speaks of the sculpture as if it were an animate object, which can look, sit and wait. For Smith, the sculpted body is transformed into the real President. magic of the city 146 rachel trigg During the course of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, the film’s title character realises that Washington DC and the institutions he reveres are the setting for corrupt political activities. Towards the end of the film Smith returns, disillusioned and discredited, to the Lincoln Memorial. He is found there by his secretary who urges him to fight against corruption. She tells Smith, “Remember what you said about Mr Lincoln? You said he was sitting up there waiting for someone to come along. You were right…I think he was waiting for you”. After being inspired by Lincoln, Smith returns to the Capitol, reveals the corruption he witnessed and reclaims the ideals of American democracy. Mr Smith Goes to Washington thus can be seen as linking the classical architecture of Lincoln’s temple to its historical origins in ancient Greece. Like the Oracle at Delphi and the statue of Athena in the Parthenon, Lincoln is represented as a godlike figure who knows the past and can guide honourable men such as Smith to righteous acts in the present.

The representation of Lincoln as an oracle continues in contemporary culture. An episode of Aaron Sorkin’s television series The West Wing (2004) focuses on the relationship between a fictional President Bartlett and his predecessors. As Bartlett prepares to attend a gala at Ford’s Theatre, the building in which Lincoln was assassinated, his staff complain about his obsessive interest in the former President. One warns, “He’s gonna start [talking about] Lincoln’s first inaugural address and then carry straight through to the letter Lincoln wrote to the woman who lost all her sons” (Sorkin 2004). Bartlett reveals that his staff are not exaggerating his knowledge of his predecessor when he recites a range of detailed facts about Lincoln, such as the exact time he drew his final breath.

Lincoln is not the only President whom Bartlett is shown to admire. During The West Wing episode, the fictional President quotes Woodrow Wilson and George Washington, as well as making several other allusions to Lincoln. Bartlett also receives advice about a difficult political situation from several former, and also fictional, Presidents. At the end of the episode, Bartlett is shown reading a letter magic of the city 147 rachel trigg from one of his predecessors. The letter concludes by telling Bartlett, “Go see Lincoln and listen”. The image of Bartlett reading the letter segues into an image of him climbing the steps to the Lincoln Memorial. The final moments of the episode show the President standing, silent and alone, in front of the sculpture of Lincoln. Like Senator Smith, President Bartlett and his colleagues are shown to treat the Lincoln Memorial as an oracle, which can provide guidance on how to respond to the difficulties of high office.

While The West Wing treats the mythologising of Lincoln in a serious manner, Mr Smith Goes to Washington is parodied in Matt Groening’s television cartoon The Simpsons. An episode called ‘Mr Lisa Goes to Washington’ (1991) depicts eight year old Lisa Simpson winning a family trip to the capital in an essay contest. Like Mr Smith, Lisa witnesses corrupt political activity and loses faith in American democracy. She also goes to visit, “Honest Abe”, stating “He’ll show me the way” (Figure 8.12). However, unlike Smith, Lisa does not find hope at Lincoln’s feet. Instead, she finds she is one of many people asking the dead President for guidance on questions ranging from “What can I do to make this a better country?” to “Would I look good with a moustache?”. The Simpsons reinforces Lincoln’s centrality to the mythologies of Washington DC and the nation, yet gently makes fun of the irrationality of people expecting to gain guidance from an inanimate

Figures 8.12 and 8.13: Lisa Simpson on the Mall, with the White House and Washington Monument in the background, and the sculpture inside the Lincoln Memorial Source: Groening 1991 magic of the city 148 rachel trigg object (Figure 8.13). Young Lisa Simpson, unlike Senator Smith and President Bartlett, is depicted as being unable to gain guidance from the former President.

The manner of Lincoln’s memorialisation in films and television series, with their emphasis on his larger-than-life sculpted body, may be related to the manner of Lincoln’s death. Unlike Washington, who died of natural causes on his family farm, Lincoln was assassinated in Washington DC. Lincoln’s death was particularly shocking to American citizens as he was the first President to be killed while in office. His assassination occurred in public only weeks before the end of the Civil War. Lincoln’s body also has a real presence in the capital which Washington’s does not. Pieces of Lincoln’s skull and hair, the bullet which killed him and the blood-stained cuff of his surgeon are all displayed in the National Museum of Health and Medicine. A cast of the President’s head and the hat he wore on the night of his assassination are displayed in the Museum of American History. The theatre in which Lincoln was shot and the house in which he died have also been preserved and are accessible to the public. In contrast, Washington’s body is located outside the city and neither his death nor his funeral occurred in the capital.

Although there are only 66 years between the deaths of the two Presidents, Washington and his body are associated with the distant founding of the city, while Lincoln is represented as a living oracle from whom citizens, in the Greek sense of enfranchised white males, can seek advice. The abstraction of Washington’s body into a marble obelisk, as well as the absence of his real body from the city, result in his representation as a distant and ethereal figure. In contrast, the figurative representation of Lincoln, reproduction of his speeches on the inside of his memorial and preservation of parts of his body posit the Civil War President as a man of flesh and of action. Washington can thus be understood as the god-like founder of the cosmic image of the city and Lincoln the heroic preserver of its earthly reality. Like the gods and heroes of ancient Greece, the two Presidents are represented as ruling over the fate of the city and the mortals who inhabit it. magic of the city 149 rachel trigg 8.5 The body of the soldier Until the late twentieth century, monuments within the Mall in Washington DC represented only Presidents. The memorials to Washington, Lincoln and, to a far lesser extent, Jefferson and Grant elevated certain Presidents from mortal bodies to mythical beings. Between 1982 and 2004, three new memorials were dedicated within the Mall. The earliest of these, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, was the first to symbolically substitute the bodies of many soldiers for that of a single President. The Memorial’s dedication could thus be seen as a democratisation of the bodies represented in the central symbolic space in the US. However, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial engages with the representation of the body in complex and sometimes contradictory ways.

The primary elements of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Figure 8.14: Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982) (Figure 8.14) are two Source: Trigg 2006 retaining walls, each about 75 metres long, of polished black granite (National Parks Service 2004b). The walls are three metres high at the point where the arms meet and gradually slope down to ground level, so that the far ends of the walls seem to disappear into the earth. The names of the approximately 58 000 American men and women who died in the Vietnam War are blasted into the surface of the walls (National Parks Service 2004b). Unlike the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, and the monuments envisaged in the L’Enfant and Macmillan Plans, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is located away from the major axes of the Mall. It is surrounded by trees and visible only from close proximity. The Memorial is thus designed not as the focal point of a long vista, but as a more intimate experience. magic of the city 150 rachel trigg Although the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is not located on one of Washington DC’s major axes, its granite walls are carefully sited. One of the walls extends directly toward the Washington Monument, while the other aligns with the Lincoln Memorial. Jan Scruggs and Joel Swerdlow, two of the founders of the VVMF, emphasise the importance of the Memorial’s physical alignment. They state, “If the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was to bind their nation’s – and their generation’s – wounds, what better place than in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln?” (1985: 16). Scruggs tells of visiting the Lincoln Memorial late one night when the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial seemed blocked by political infighting. Scruggs (1985) writes that, like Senator Smith and President Bartlett, he looked up from the statue of Lincoln and gained the inspiration needed to solve his problem.

Scruggs and Swerdlow represent the Lincoln Memorial as a commemoration of the soldiers who died in the American Civil War as much as a monument to a President. They believe that “The Civil War had been America’s bloodiest conflict, and yet this memorial carried no sense of violence…it provided a sense of history, it was simple and it relied on words” (Scruggs and Swerdlow 1985: 88). Although the Lincoln Memorial does contain the text of two of the President’s speeches, Scruggs overlooks the fact that, unlike the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the primary feature of the Lincoln Memorial is not words on a wall, but a large sculpture of Lincoln. In addition, the sense of history noted by Scruggs is most obviously provided by the Lincoln Memorial’s resemblance to a Greek temple, rather than to any simplicity of design. Although Scruggs attempts to create a close iconographic relationship between the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the two monuments differ substantially in their relationship to the city and their representation of the body.

The design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was, like the other monuments on the Mall, selected through a national competition. The design brief directed that the Memorial “should be harmonious with its site and with its surroundings, particularly the national monuments in and near the area” (VVMF 1980a: 7). The brief also magic of the city 151 rachel trigg stated that the site “was chosen both for its prominence and for its proximity to the Lincoln Memorial, itself a symbol of reconciliation after the Civil War (VVMF 1980a: 5). The design program, which was released only to registered competitors, contains a large number of photographs of the Memorial site, most of which feature views to and from the Lincoln Memorial.

Though both the brief and the program repeatedly note the spatial relationship between the Lincoln Memorial and the site of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, neither of these documents directed competition entrants to a particular design style for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The program, does, however, provide a summary of the urban design characteristics of the site and notes the system of spatial organisation spatial used in the L’Enfant and Macmillan Plans. The program states that the Constitution Gardens, the part of the Mall in which the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is located, “is based on a rather different design system, and on a smaller scale. Its roots are in English landscape design, which derived in part from an English appreciation of Chinese garden art” (VVMF 1980b: 5). Thus, while the L’Enfant and Macmillan Plans created a city based on an ordered system of avenues and long vistas, the site of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was landscaped to create winding paths and surprise views.

Figures 8.15 and 8.16: Two of the three coloured drawings which accompanied Maya Lin’s entry to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial design competition Sources: Lin 2000: 27 and Peatross 2005: 216 magic of the city 152 rachel trigg The jury for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial competition unanimously selected a design by Maya Ying Lin from 1 420 entries (VVMF 1981b). Lin’s competition entry consists of seven simple drawings and a short, hand written text. The entry includes three almost abstract drawings in which the sharp, black geometry of the Memorial design is contrasted against the gentle blues and greens of the sky and grass (Figures 8.15 and 8.16). None of these drawings indicate detailed features of the design, although one represents the Memorial’s alignment with the Washington Monument. This feature of the design is clearer in a hand drawn black and white plan, which illustrates the relationship between Lin’s design and its site on the Mall. In accordance with the competition guidelines, Lin’s drawings include a site plan, elevations and cross Figure 8.17: Maya Lin drawing of design details sections. While these freehand sketches show the Source: Peatross 2005: 216 Memorial almost exactly as built, they are crudely drawn. The names of soldiers are loosely indicated in one drawing (Figure 8.17), but the remaining drawings are devoid of other design details.

The text which accompanies Lin’s drawings does, however, provide further information about the design. It gives the dimensions of the walls, describes the materials to be used in constructing them and indicates how the names will be arranged. Lin explains how the site will be contoured and even specifies the font and height of the letters to be used for the names of the soldiers. The text emphasises the emotive and symbolic aspects of the design. Lin writes,

walking through this park-like area, the memorial appears as a rift in the earth – a long, polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth. Approaching the memorial, the ground slopes gently downward and the low walls emerging on either side, growing out of the earth, extend and converge at a point below and ahead. Walking into magic of the city 153 rachel trigg the grassy site contained by the walls of the memorial we can barely make out the carved names upon the memorial walls. These names, seemingly infinite in number, convey the sense of overwhelming numbers, while unifying those individuals into a whole (VVMF 1981a).

Lin’s text is more effective than her drawings at explaining the experiential aspects of her design. While the drawings contain no trace of human life, the text is clearly written from the perspective of a visitor. It explains how the design relates to the scale of its site and of the human body and how visitors may respond to it.

Lin’s written explanation was a central part of her submission and explained her design in a concise way. The VVMF, however, wanted traditional architectural drawings which precisely illustrated the intended form, rather than the abstract sensibility, of the design and which did not require an explanatory text. Figure 8.18: Stephen Oles study of the Vietnam Veterans Scruggs and Swerdlow Memorial in spring Source: Peatross 2005: 217 write that Lin’s drawings “looked terrible” (1985: 65) and that the VVMF saw them as a public relations problem. The VVMF asked architect Paul Oles to prepare three drawings of Lin’s design. A month after the winning design was selected, the VVMF wrote to Oles directing that “the three renderings are to illustrate various experiential aspects of the memorial, and show, as appropriate, related features of the setting, such as the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial” (1981c).

magic of the city 154 rachel trigg Two of the renderings prepared by Oles are coloured drawings of the Memorial in summer, one a bird’s eye view looking towards the Washington Monument and the other a perspective looking into the Memorial from its western end (Figure 8.18). The third is Figure 8.19: Stephen Oles study of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in winter with Lincoln Memorial in a black and white drawing of the background Source: Peatross 2005: 174 Lin’s work in winter looking toward the Lincoln Memorial (Figure 8.19). Oles presumedly depicted this scene in winter as, from the site of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial is obscured by trees for most of the year. In contrast to Lin, Oles incorporates people in all of his drawings. However, though there are at least 12 people in each drawing, none face the viewer. The reactions of the visitors are thus not portrayed. The bodies serve as markers of scale, rather than as representations of the experiential aspects of the design. In addition, the names on the Memorial are no more evident in Oles’s drawings than in Lin’s. In only one of the drawings is the reflectiveness of the granite evident and even then the wall oddly reflects only one of the seven bodies in front of it (see Figure 8.18). The three renderings prepared by Oles are neither convincing representations of the symbolic and experiential aspects of the design nor, as are Lin’s, evocative allusion to its simplicity of form. However, they served the needs of the VVMF in providing a more traditional representation of Lin’s design, particularly as they clearly site the Vietnam Veterans Memorial within the spatial and historical context of the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

Unlike the monuments to past Presidents, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial could magic of the city 155 rachel trigg not draw upon forms and myths dating back to antiquity. Its site was not located in a prominent position within the plan of the city and did not lend itself to neoclassical design. In addition, there was no ancient precedent for the form of a memorial to numerous, individual citizen-soldiers. The memorialisation of individual soldiers is a uniquely modern phenomena which, as noted in Chapter 2, is believed to date from the Battle of Gettysburg (Hass 1998). However, the subterranean form of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is not entirely without precedent. Prehistoric European tombs were frequently dug into the earth and early Christian tombs, such as those in the Roman catacombs, were also located below ground (Curl 1993). As discussed in Chapter 2, ancient Greek and Roman soldiers killed away from home were often buried in mass graves surmounted by commemorative stele. All of these burial forms were designed to commemorate the deaths of numerous combatants. However, they were created as places in which individual bodies would, in joint burial, lose their individual identity and instead signify the glory of the empire for which they had died. In its location below the earth and its recognition of many individuals within a single monument, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial can be seen to revive early Western burial traditions quite different from those practiced in ancient Greece and Rome.

In its relationship with the city, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial also relates more closely to prehistoric and medieval precedents than to traditions dating to antiquity. Unlike the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is not designed to be viewed from an ideal, fixed point within the city, but from close proximity. It is expected that a visitor to the Memorial will view it from a number of angles and from both above and below ground. In comparison to the earlier monuments, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is based on a more intimate understanding of the city, in which the bodies of the living and the names of the dead touch and merge. Visitors must get relatively close to the Memorial to see that it is there, and must get closer still in order to read the names on the granite panels. As is shown later in this chapter, visitors to the Memorial must often stand shoulder to shoulder with other visitors, particularly during public holidays and magic of the city 156 rachel trigg other busy periods. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial thus materialises an understanding of the city which is very different to that enshrined in the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. While the latter are aligned with an ancient understanding of the democratic nation state which reveres the godly founder and heroic preserver of the city, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is predicated on a conceptual connection between the living and the dead and a physical connection between bodies.

8.6 The female body The female body was not frequently represented in ancient memorial architecture. Where it was depicted, it was virtually always used as an allegory of war or victory, such as in depictions of the Greek goddess Athena and the Roman goddess Minerva. Although some modern war memorials include representations of women, they are generally depicted mourning husbands or family members rather than playing an active role in wartime activity. Women are also conspicuously absent from the centre of Washington DC. As there have been no female Presidents, there are no monuments in the centre of the US capital dedicated solely to a woman. The architects and planners associated with the founding and development of the city, such as L’Enfant, Jefferson and Burnham, are also exclusively male.

Neither the Washington Monument nor the Lincoln Memorial contain a representation of women. The design for the Washington Monument, prepared by Robert Mills, began the mythologising of the male founders of Washington DC and of the Republic. Mills planned for the obelisk which forms the central component of the Washington Monument to be surrounded by a circular colonnade, with statues of the men who led the Revolution and who signed the Declaration of Independence located in a rotunda. Mills also planned for large sculptures of Washington to be installed in the centre of the rotunda and on top of the portico (Scott 1991). Although Mills’s design for the Monument was never fully magic of the city 157 rachel trigg constructed, it reveals the extent to which the iconography of the Mall was, from the first of its memorials, associated with the male body.

The dominance of representations of men in the Mall is parodied in the episode of The Simpsons, discussed earlier in this chapter in relation to the Lincoln Memorial, in which Lisa Simpson journeys to Washington DC. In addition to seeing the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, Lisa visits the Winifred Figure 8.20: Lisa Simpson visits the Winifred Beecher Howe Memorial Beecher Howe Memorial (Figure 8.20). Source: Groening 1991 This fictional Memorial is depicted as a combination of the classical forms of the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, with a large sculpture of a woman breaking a broom inside. Howe is described by Lisa as “an early crusader for women’s rights [who] led the Floor Mop Rebellion of 1910” (Groening 1991). In contrast to the Lincoln Memorial, the Howe Memorial is virtually empty, with Lisa its only visitor. Lisa is shown admiring the large sculpture of Howe and reading a quote inscribed on the inner wall of the Memorial, which states “I will iron your sheets when you iron out the inequities in your labour laws” (Groening 1991). Although it gently mocks Women’s Liberation, the cause for which American women have arguably been most politically active, the cartoon also acknowledges the lack of recognition of women in the centre of Washington DC. The Simpsons uses the forms traditionally associated with memorial architecture to show the difficulty Lisa Simpson has in understanding her place in the capital. This difficulty is not shared by the male members of the Simpson family, nor by Senator Smith or President Bartlett, other iconic, but fictional, visitors to the Mall.

Although it commemorates the deaths of some 58 000 men, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has been associated in varying ways with the female body. Despite being magic of the city 158 rachel trigg selected unanimously by the jurors of the design competition, Lin’s winning entry for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial initially created considerable controversy. This debate, and particularly the way it was reported and exacerbated by the media, has been described by Sturken (1998), Johnson (1998) and Hass (1998). The controversy is explained by these authors as having ostensibly centred on the lack in Lin’s design of symbolic elements traditionally associated with war memorials, particularly a national flag and a figurative rendering of the combatants. The way in which the Vietnam Veterans Memorial represents the body was also highly controversial. This debate was as much to do with the body of the architect who designed the Memorial as it was about the bodies of the servicemen it represents. At the time of winning the design competition, Maya Ying Lin was an architecture student at Yale University. Not only was Lin young, attending a privileged university and of Asian descent, she was also a woman.

Lin’s body has repeatedly been represented in association with the Memorial she designed. Early depictions of Lin’s design focused on the body of the architect as much as the design itself (Johnson 1998). For example, in June 1981 an article in Architectural Record announced the winner of the Memorial competition. The article consists of two paragraphs and three images: two photographs and a plan. The largest of these images (Figure 8.21) is a black and white photograph of Lin holding a model of her design. The model is presented perpendicular to the Figure 8.21: Maya Lin, as depicted in Architectural plane of the photograph and is Record thus difficult to read. The architect Source: Architectural Record 1981: 47 is shown twisting her torso toward the camera and smiling. The awkwardness of Lin’s pose and display of the model is increased by the cluttered background of the photograph, which dimly depicts two men laughing and a lectern with microphones. magic of the city 159 rachel trigg This image shows very little about the winning design, but reveals the architect to be a young woman of Asian heritage. This concentration on Lin and her body is mirrored in the opening sentence of the text, which states “Maya Ying Lin, a 21- year-old architecture student at Yale University, has won an open competition for a memorial to veterans of the Vietnam War” (Architectural Record 1981: 47).

Although the VVMF was prompt to publicise the identity of the winning architect as proof of the democratic process used in the Memorial competition, the relationship between Lin and the VVMF soon became acrimonious. The VVMF archive contains the typed draft of a letter to Lin to be sent through her attorney, a Mr Barnum. The letter simply states that the VVMF will keep Lin informed regarding arrangements for a meeting and wishes her a good year at university. However, a typed note at the bottom of the letter states:

Note to those reviewing this draft: it is important that the letter go to Maya – though routed thru [sic] Barnum. She is the principal. We have to look like we still feel a friendly bond to her. NOTE: Barnum’s big asset here is twofold (a) Maya is sweet and small and feminine – a natural ‘victim’ and a strong PR figure; (b) the stereotype of the Vietnam veteran (the VVMF) as mean, crazed fiends running around in their fatigues. (being mean to sweet little girls) (VVMF 1982a).

The word ‘false’ is handwritten in front of the word ‘stereotype’. Another handwritten note at the top of the page, pointing to Barnum’s title, states “To the lay reader this word [ie. ‘Attorney’] emphasises the nastiness of Maya’s attitude”. The archives contain further correspondence between the VVMF and Lin, through Barnum. When Lin resisted suggestions that her design be modified, a VVMF internal memo noted that “Barnum seems to be convinced that he may have a recalcitrant/immature client” (VVMF 1982b). Another internal memo states “Maya is in Portland…She’ll be returning to Yale in the fall. She’s cut her hair!!” (VVMF 1983). magic of the city 160 rachel trigg It is highly unlikely that, had the winner of the Memorial competition been a middle aged male, the VVMF would have felt it necessary to comment on his haircut or level of maturity. The correspondence between Lin and the VVMF reveals that the latter was extremely concerned about Lin’s portrayal in the media and the close association of the architect with her design. The VVMF’s letters concentrate strongly on Lin’s gender and refer to her as “sweet”, “small”, “feminine”, “little” and a “victim”. The designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was represented initially as naïve and passive and later, when she refused to accept changes to her design, as wilful and immature. Despite the assuredness and ultimate success of her design, Lin is not treated by the VVMF as being an intelligent and perceptive adult whose concerns about design changes may be more than childish stubbornness. Due to her age and, particularly, her gender, Lin is not represented by the VVMF, nor by journals such as Architectural Record, as an architect. She is represented as the lucky winner of a competition, rather than as a designer working within the tradition of architects such as L’Enfant, Burnham and Mills.

Although the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has often been associated with femininity, and even with female genitalia (Sturken 1998), and includes the names of the servicewomen who died in the war, the existing Memorial also incorporates a figurative representation of women at war. In 1993 a bronze sculpture known as Figure 8.22: Vietnam Women’s Memorial (1993) Source: Trigg 2006 the Vietnam Women’s Memorial was added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The sculpture is located about 100 metres from the granite wall designed by Lin and depicts three women and one man in uniform (Figure 8.22). The women are depicted in a largely passive role. magic of the city 161 rachel trigg One holds a wounded male soldier in a pose reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Pieta sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding Christ. Another holds a military helmet. The women stand protectively together and wait for an unseen helicopter, which the third woman is hailing, to take them to safety.

The Vietnam Women’s Memorial was added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial only after a bronze sculpture of male soldiers was installed near Lin’s design. In 1984, against Lin’s strong objections, a figurative sculpture and US flag were added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The sculpture was the result of a compromise agreement between the VVMF and critics of the Memorial (VVMF 1982c). The sculpture is set some distance from Lin’s design. It represents three male soldiers loosely standing together and looking towards the Memorial walls (Figure 8.23). The men are dressed in army fatigues, hold rifles and carry rounds of ammunition. In contrast to the nurses in the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, the soldiers are upright, alert and heavily armed. One of the men is shirtless beneath his flak jacket and the bodies of all three men are clearly and independently depicted.

Although created in the same material and at roughly the same scale, the two sculptures added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial embody the differences between the representation of men and women in the centre of Washington DC. The servicewomen in the Vietnam Figure 8.23: Sculptural component of Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1984) Women’s Memorial are depicted in a Source: Trigg 2006 largely nurturing role. They care for and mourn male soldiers and rely on their male counterparts to rescue them. In contrast, the servicemen represented in the bronze sculpture are active and independent. They do not need to cling together and await rescue from above. The magic of the city 162 rachel trigg strength of their bodies and power of their weapons enable the men to defend themselves. Although the complex engagement of women in their own representation, particularly in places which symbolise power, is beyond the scope of this thesis, it should not be assumed that the depiction of the female body as passive and nurturing is entirely the result of the subjugation of women’s interests by men. The Vietnam Women’s Memorial, for example, was lobbied for and conceptualised by women and created by a female sculptor (Sturken 1998).

The representation of women as being less than full participants in the making of the nation and its central symbolic space continues in other monuments in the Mall. The World War II Memorial and Korean War Veterans Memorial both make some reference to women. The World War II Memorial includes bas relief panels depicting women working with men on aircraft construction and women and children waiting at home with older men for news on the radio. Women are also acknowledged in a quote inscribed in the Memorial’s plaza, which reads “THOSE WHO STEPPED UP WERE MEASURED AS CITIZENS OF THE NATION, NOT AS WOMEN…THIS WAS A PEOPLE’S WAR, AND EVERYONE WAS IN IT”. This quote is attributed to a wartime colonel and is presumedly intended to glorify the role of women in World War II. It also, however, makes a distinction between citizens and women. The colonel, and the Memorial which quotes him, implies that it was only during the extraordinary conditions of war that women could be counted as full citizens and as participants in the construction and defence of their nation. While Washington DC is frequently represented as the centre of modern, Western democracy, its most recent monument is therefore at best ambivalent and at worst exclusionary towards the role of women as citizens.

The Korean War Veterans Memorial also represents women in an ambiguous way. Like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial (Figure 8.24) creates a visual connection between the bodies of dead servicemen and those of the visitors who come to remember them. The Memorial consists of 19 life sized sculptures of soldiers in a triangle formation, flanked on one side by a magic of the city 163 rachel trigg reflective granite wall etched with faces. This wall reflects the bodies of the bronze servicemen permanently located in front of it, as well as those of visitors, both male and female. At the apex of the triangle of soldiers is a pool of water and a flag pole surrounded by a copse of trees. The Memorial

Figure 8.24: Korean War Veterans Memorial (1995) does not contain a figurative Source: Trigg 2006 representation of women. Although an information brochure by the National Parks Service states that “One- and-a-half million American men and women, a true cross section of the Nation’s populace, struggled side by side during the conflict” (2004a), the sculptures and granite wall which comprise the largest part of the Memorial depict only male servicemen. However, inscribed beneath the flag at the apex of the Memorial are the words “OUR NATION HONOURS HER UNIFORMED SONS AND DAUGHTERS WHO ANSWERED THEIR COUNTRY’S CALL TO DEFEND A COUNTRY THEY DID NOT KNOW AND A PEOPLE THEY HAD NEVER MET”. This inscription, unlike the remainder of the Memorial, represents women as equal to men in defending Korea. The inscription also represents the nation itself as female.

The representation of the country or the earth as intuitive, inert and feminine, and the people who inhabit it as rational, active and masculine, is common in many cultures. The frequent association of the earth within femininity could be one explanation for the initially hostile reception that the design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial received from many veterans. As has been noted earlier in this chapter, Lin described her design as “a rift in the earth – a long, polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth” (VVMF 1981a). James Webb, one of the most vociferous objectors to the Memorial’s design, also noted magic of the city 164 rachel trigg the design’s relationship to the earth, but saw it in purely negative terms. He described the Memorial as “this black slash of earth…this sad, dreary mass tomb, nihilistically commemorating death” (quoted in Sturken 1998: 168). Rather than making a monument in the traditions of ancient Greece and Rome, in which architecture stood erect above the ground and only men could be represented as full citizens, Lin designed a memorial which was earthbound and intended to be experienced as much by female citizens who had remained in America as by the men who had served in Vietnam.

8.7 The body of the visitor The bodies which inhabit the Mall in greatest numbers are those of the millions of visitors, both US citizens and foreign tourists, who journey to Washington DC each year. In ancient times, there were many ways that citizens interacted with their monuments. These included: the making of ritual sacrifices; the remarking of city bounds; the holding of processions or races through the city; and the staging of festivals incorporating singing and dancing (Rykwert 1988). There are several ways that current day visitors interact with the memorials in the Mall. Most formally, visitors participate in ceremonies of remembrance which recur on regular dates such as Memorial Day, Veterans Day and the anniversary of major battles. They march in parades, lay wreaths and leave individual sprigs of rosemary at the base of monuments. Visitors also act less formally to record their visit. They take photographs of themselves standing in front of memorials and send postcards to friends as proof of their journey. These actions, both formal and informal, are virtually identical to those undertaken at monuments and memorials throughout the Western world. However, one of the memorials in Washington DC has inaugurated a new way of interacting with places of remembrance.

Visitors to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial undertake the same, often ritualised, actions undertaken by visitors to monuments in Washington DC and other US cities. They participate in ceremonies, lay wreaths and take photographs of magic of the city 165 rachel trigg themselves in front of the memorial architecture. More uniquely, visitors to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial use pencils and paper to take rubbings of the names of deceased family members, friends or fellow soldiers. These rubbings are taken away as mementos of the visit and as tokens of the names and bodies of the dead. The practice of taking rubbings has become such an established part of a visit to the Memorial that step ladders are sometimes provided to allow people to reach names on the higher sections of the walls. In addition to taking mementos with them, some visitors to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial leave objects behind. These objects take many forms, from military paraphernalia such as dog tags and helmets, to personal items like teddy bears and playing cards, and direct communications to the dead, including letters, poems and photographs. These items are collected by the National Parks Service, which maintains the Memorial, to be stored in perpetuity (Allen 1995).

In May 2006, I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial several times over a one week period. Although I know no one who was killed in the Vietnam War, nor any American citizens who served, I was moved by the austereness of the black granite and its contrast with the flowers and other offerings left at the base of the Memorial. I touched the names engraved into the surface of the wall and took a photograph of my body reflected in the granite. In performing these actions I was responding to the Memorial in the same way as millions of other visitors. Even Lin states that “the first time I visited the memorial after it was completed I found myself searching out the name of a friend’s father and touching it…I was another visitor and I was reacting to it as I had designed it” (2000: 17).

The specific actions performed by visitors to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial have no direct correlation with historical precedent. The rituals were invented after the dedication of the Memorial and seem to have been entirely unpredicted in early representations of the design, including in Lin’s competition entry and Oles’s drawings. Before the Memorial was constructed it was represented in the media as abstract and cold, both physically and emotionally. Details of the design, such as magic of the city 166 rachel trigg the listing of names, were obscured or not represented. In contrast, photographs published after the Memorial’s dedication emphasis the design’s human elements and the emotional response it elicits (Johnson 1998). Even today, over 20 years after the Memorial’s opening, “photographs published in mass circulation publications now repeatedly focus on individual names carved on the wall or on individual visitors standing close to and often reflected in the Memorial’s polished surface” (Johnson 1998: 224).

An example of this are the 16 images published in National Geographic, one of America’s most widely distributed popular journals, in May 1985. One of these images is a small reproduction of an initial Lin drawing of the design, contrasted against a photograph of the architect standing in from of the built Memorial. Another is an aerial photograph of the site, with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the foreground and the Washington Monument and Capitol building in the background. The cover of the magazine shows a man in uniform reaching up to place a flower next to one of the names etched into the wall. Most of the remaining photographs are images of people responding emotionally to the design. They show: men, presumedly veterans standing to attention at the top of the wall while a bugle is played; visitors reaching out to touch the surface of the granite; two men making a pencil rubbing of a name on the Memorial; and a woman bent over and crying into her handkerchief. These and many other similar photographs produced in the mass media not only represent the actions of spectators at the Memorial, they also help to create and recreate the way in which future visitors react. The photographs show visitors how to behave when approaching the new typology of memorial and how a seemingly abstract form can engage the body and the emotions.

The way in which visitors interact with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is more akin to medieval, rather than the ancient, tradition. This is most obvious in the way that spectators are reflected in the surface of the granite walls. Visitors to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial look at the walls and see their own bodies melded with the magic of the city 167 rachel trigg names of the men who died in Vietnam. The granite is transformed from a solid boundary between earth and air to a portal through which the living and dead can pass. Writing in the National Geographic article, Swerdlow describes this effect, stating “The names have a power, a life all their own. Even on the coldest days, sunlight makes them warm to the touch. Young men put into the earth, rising out of the earth. You can feel their blood flowing again” (1985: 573). The objects left at the Memorial in its early years often included letters and notes which visitors had written directly to dead servicemen (Allen 1995). These visitors use the Memorial not merely as a place of remembrance, but as a place at which they can directly communicate with the dead.

The way in which the living communicate with and are confronted by the dead at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has analogies with the tradition of the memento mori, a form of art which acts as a warning of mortality delivered directly to the viewer. Memento

Figure 8.25: Aelbert van der Schoor (c 1660) Vanitas Still Life mori translates from Source: Priem 2005: 20 Latin as ‘remember that you must die’. The art form began in the early medieval period and initially resulted in macabre images of death. A common form of the memento mori was the depiction of the ‘dance of the dead’ in which cadavers in various stages of decay confront the living (Aries 1981). The intent of early memento mori was to frighten the viewer into a realisation of the inevitability of death and the importance magic of the city 168 rachel trigg of living according to Christian moral codes. By the sixteenth century, the memento mori became a graphic meditation on “the swift passage of time, the illusions of this world, and even the tedium of life” (Aries 1981: 327). Paintings of this sort became known as ‘vanities’ as they were intended to serve as a warning of the certainty of death and hence the folly of vanity and greed. A vanity painting was generally a still life (Figure 8.25) which contrasted depictions of items which perish rapidly, such as flowers or fruit, with symbolic reminders of the passage of time, such a skull, an hour glass, an open book or a burning candle (Skira 1989).

In 1998, Kristin Hass published Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The book presents the Memorial within its historical and social context and also provides a detailed examination of the objects which visitors leave at the wall. Hass’s book contains 15 photographs of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Three of these photographs illustrate the Memorial in the broader context of its surroundings. The remaining 12 are close-ups of objects in front of the Memorial. These photographs are contemporary memento mori. They are all of the same size, do not relate directly to the text which they accompany and are not captioned. Objects represented in this way include a box of letters, a cigarette, a metal sculpture of a bird and half laced boots with a US flag placed between Figures 8.26 and 8.27: Objects left at the Vietnam them (Figures 8.26 and 8.27). Veterans Memorial Source: Hass 1998: 49 and 94

The photographs in Hass’s book use the general tradition of the memento mori and the more specific conventions of the vanity painting for composition and rhetorical intent. However, they do not directly translate the conventions of the vanity painting to photography. With the exception of a photograph which incorporates a slightly magic of the city 169 rachel trigg wilting carnation, the photographs do not include the ephemeral objects traditionally depicted in this genre of painting. There are no platters of food waiting to spoil, nor do most of the photographs represent flowers or fruit. The traditional symbols of death, such as a skull or clock, are also absent. Instead of using these established signs, the photographs use objects left at the Memorial as metaphor for the human body.

The original memento mori did not require a substitute for the body. Memento mori relished in the perishability of the human body and depicted not only skulls and skeletons, but also animated cadavers with half rotted flesh and decayed internal organs. Although vanity paintings were generally owned by wealthy citizens, the memento mori of the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century represented the coming of death in general and to all. In contrast, the photographs in Hass’s book, which depict objects left at the wall prior to 1998, do not represent all viewers of the photograph, or even all people killed in the Vietnam War, but single, specific soldiers. The objects represented in the photographs are likely to have been left by the family or friends of particular soldiers. These memento mori do not represent a ‘reminder that you must die’, so much as a reminder that a specific person, a specific soldier, has died.

In the twenty first century the practice of leaving objects at the Memorial appears to have undergone a slight, but significant, change. Objects left at the Memorial in May 2006 still included mementos of specific Vietnam veterans, including letters and photographs, a POW bracelet, combat boots and a Purple Heart (Figure 8.28). However, there were also formal wreaths set up on stands opposite the Memorial, with notes explaining they were given by specific schools, generally from children of primary school age. These children would be far too young to remember the Vietnam War or to have fathers or mothers who served. There were also objects which appeared to have been left at the wall, and at the nearby Vietnam Women’s Memorial, by US participants in more recent wars. A cloth badge left at the latter was stamped with the words “COMBAT VETERAN IRAQ”. Another appeared to be magic of the city 170 rachel trigg Figures 8.28 and 8.29: Objects left at, respectively, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Source: Trigg 2006 of contemporary design and depicted a grinning skull flanked by rifles and inscribed with the words “US ARMY MESS WITH THE BEST DIE LIKE THE REST” (Figure 8.29).

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial thus appears to have at least three functions for the present day visitor. It represents the bodily sacrifice of individual servicemen, acts as a means of communication between the bereaved and their dead and reminds the viewer that he or she will also be affected by death. The Memorial dissolves many of the differences between its visitors. Everybody who visits the wall is reflected in its surface: whether they were supporters or opponents of the war; whether they lost a close family member in the war or were born decades after it ceased; and whether they are citizens of the US or of another nation. The Memorial is a potent form of contemporary monument because, unlike the Washington Monument or Lincoln Memorial, it does not provide a straightforward representation of a powerful individual or the American nation state. The Memorial and the magical, unpredictable responses it evokes allow visitors to consider their place in the world while avoiding totalising mythologies and unbridled nationalism.

magic of the city 171 rachel trigg 8.8 The body of the consumer In ancient Greece and Rome, medieval Europe and even the modern West, citizens did not need to be instructed in the meanings of their monuments and the ways in which they were to be approached. Ancient citizens commemorated the founding of their cities through annual rites; those in the Middle Ages linked their festivals to the Christian calendar and centred them on the cathedral; while modern citizens participated in ceremonies and marches of remembrance for the casualties of war. In these festivities the bodies of visitors did not stand apart from memorials, but were an intrinsic component of the recurring rituals which gave them meaning.

In postmodern society, historic monuments have been perceived as isolated fragments within chaotic cities designed only to create a nostalgic sense of collective memory (Harvey 1990; Boyer 1994). The Vietnam Veterans Memorial resists this generalisation as it combines references to previous architectural traditions with a contemporary aesthetic and a sensitive response to its site. These factors ensure that the Memorial is physically and conceptually connected to the Mall and, through the Mall, to the remainder of the city. However, the innovative form of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial meant that visitors initially required instruction on how to approach and engage with its architecture. As has been shown, this instruction was provided by the contemporary media, particularly through the medium of photography. In contrast to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the most recent monument to be constructed in the Mall transfers the didactic role to the Memorial itself. This change is the result of a differing understanding of the Mall and of the way in which the bodies of visitors should interact with places of the dead.

Early in the new millennium, the NCPC prepared a Memorials and Museums Master Plan (2001) to guide the siting and design of memorials and museums in Washington DC. The Master Plan links the creation of monuments to the contemporary understanding of the city and the nation. It asserts that “The memorials and monuments that define Washington’s Monumental Core express magic of the city 172 rachel trigg America’s connections to its past and aspirations for its future. They help us understand what it means to be American” (NCPC 2001:1). The Master Plan identifies values which it believes are transferred from American world view to American capital. It states that “Washington DC is a symbolic city where many of the nation’s values – democracy, opportunity, diversity, and mobility – were born and are defended and redefined” (NCPC 2001: 12).

The primary objective of the Memorials and Museums Master Plan is however, not to enable the representation of American values, but to prevent new memorials being built on the Mall and to encourage the distribution of memorials and museums across Washington DC. The bulk of the Master Plan consists of guidelines based on the premise that memorials and museums “can provide a source of community identity and pride, bolster local neighborhood revitalization efforts and serve as a means of expanding neighborhood-based tourism” (2001: 9). The Master Plan appears to be far more concerned with the economic impacts of memorials and museums than it is with their symbolic presence. The Plan reiterates the ‘Commemorative Zone Policy’ which the NCPC, and other government bodies responsible for the authorisation of memorials, adopted in 2000. The Policy requires that no further memorials be constructed in the Mall. The rationale for the prohibition on new memorials in the centre of Washington DC is that requests for such works have proliferated over recent years (NCPC 2001).

In 2002 the Journal of the American Planning Association published a symposium, commissioned to mark the centenary of the McMillan Plan, on past and future planning for Washington DC. Within this context, Richard Longstreth looked at planning for commemorative monuments and specifically at the Memorials and Museums Master Plan. He noted that, with the exception of major monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial, the illustrations accompanying the McMillan Plan suggested that memorials in the Mall be kept small and subordinate to the overall plan (see Figure 8.3). Longstreth expresses alarm at the prospect of the restrained design of the Mall being overrun with contemporary memorials and comments that magic of the city 173 rachel trigg the effect “will be analogous to a theme park in that the whole will be subsumed by an array of individual attractions” (2002: 134). Kim Dovey, commenting on the relationship between the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the mediation of power, believes this theme park effect to have already eventuated. He writes that the Mall is a “packaged tour of American identity, framed by the large constellation of monuments through which the nation-state affirms and legitimizes its domination” (1999: 190).

Longstreth (2002) holds the Vietnam Veterans Memorial responsible for the large number of recent proposals for monuments on the Mall. In his view, the Memorial shows that monuments can act as powerful instruments for a cause. Longstreth does not state precisely what cause the Vietnam Veterans Memorial advocates. He does, however, speculate that the success of Lin’s design may be due to its anti monumental approach. He notes that, “the scheme is unobtrusive, not as an integral part of a larger whole like the statues and tempiettos in renderings of the McMillan Plan, but rather as something entirely unlike that whole, a thing whose presence, moreover, is barely detectable until one arrives in its immediate precinct (2002: 134)”. Longstreth implies that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is successful because it does not conform to the single perspective of the city offered by images such as those presented in the McMillan Plan. The Memorial resists the ordering of space in such plans, in which monuments are sited at the intersections of avenues and termination of vistas and must be of a height and bulk to enable them to be seen from a large distance.

In marked contrast to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Korean War Veterans Memorial, the World War II Memorial corresponds with the understanding of memorials contained in the Macmillan Plan and supported by Longstreth. Unlike the other two contemporary memorials, the World War II Memorial is of a neoclassical style. Designed by Friedrich St Florian, it consists of a large plaza built around the pre existing Rainbow Pool and surrounded, to the north and south, by pavilions connected by a row of columns (Figure 8.30 and 8.31). The Memorial is magic of the city 174 rachel trigg Figures 8.30 and 8.31: World War II Memorial (2004) looking north and a detail of the bas reliefs Source: Trigg 2006 highly ornamented and incorporates: bas relief panels depicting scenes from the war; a ‘Freedom Wall’ studded with thousands of gold stars; numerous inscriptions on the base and walls of the plaza; large bronze eagles bearing laurel wreaths; and choreographed waterworks.

The designs of the three contemporary memorials are partly related to their location within the Mall and, more generally, within the plan of central Washington DC. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Korean War Veterans Memorial, which both tend towards a minimalist design, are located away from the major axes of the Mall. Unlike the monuments envisaged in the L’Enfant and Macmillan Plans, these Memorials are not designed as the focal point of long vistas. Instead, they are surrounded by trees and are visible only from close proximity. In contrast, the World War II Memorial is situated in a prominent position on the central axis which runs from the Capitol through the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. A stone at the main entrance to the World War II Memorial is engraved with the words, “HERE IN THE PRESENCE OF WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN, ONE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FATHER AND THE OTHER THE NINETEENTH CENTURY PRESERVER OF OUR NATION, WE HONOUR THOSE TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICANS WHO TOOK UP THE STRUGGLE DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR”. In its location on the axis, neoclassical design and magic of the city 175 rachel trigg patriotic inscriptions, the World War II Memorial is presented as continuing the symbolic tradition created by the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

Unlike the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and to a lesser extent the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the World War II Memorial conceives of the visitor as a consumer. While the former encourage active participation by the visitor, the latter assumes that visitors need to be educated and entertained. Unlike the other memorials on the Mall, the World War II Memorial is designed with the assumption that visitors will be largely unfamiliar with the events which it memorialises. It contains numerous inscriptions to educate the visitor about the events of World War II and incorporates detailed bas relief panels to ensure that the visualisation of these events is not left to the imagination. Design features, such as a wall of gold stars intended to represent the Americans who died in the War, serve a didactic function while also being visually impressive.

The Memorial also incorporates complex waterworks, which are coloured at night. These waterworks are part of the Rainbow Pool, which existed on the site long before the World War II Memorial was created. A book published to mark the dedication of the Memorial states that “the historic waterworks of the Rainbow Pool have been restored and contribute to the celebratory nature of the memorial…the dancing water throughout the memorial creates a sense of light and life” (Brinkley 2004: 12). As indicated in this quote, the World War II Memorial is designed to celebrate American victory. It includes inscriptions which depict the US as being largely alone in fighting and winning World War II. Although it quotes President Harry Truman as stating “THE HEROISM OF OUR OWN TROOPS…WAS MATCHED BY THAT OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE NATIONS THAT FOUGHT AT OUR SIDE”, it also cites President Franklin Roosevelt as saying “THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, IN THEIR RIGHTEOUS MIGHT, WILL WIN THROUGH TO VICTORY”. Most significantly, one of the pavilions at the edge of the Memorial states “1941-1945 VICTORY ON LAND VICTORY AT SEA VICTORY IN THE AIR”. This quote is described in the commemorative book as magic of the city 176 rachel trigg being surrounded by “four bronze columns support[ing] four American eagles that hold a suspended bronze laurel, the traditional symbol of victory” (Brinkley 2004: 19). This inscription ignores the two years that World War II had been waged prior to the entry of the US, as well as the vastly greater numbers and proportions of citizens of other nations who fought and died in the War.

Although it is located on an axis and designed in a neoclassical style, and hence according with Longstreth’s (2002) argument balances a strong visual impact with respect for the physical context of the Mall, the World War II Memorial does not engage with the body of the visitor. Unlike Figure 8.32: West Potomac Park as envisaged in the Memorials and Museums Master Plan, with the the Lincoln Memorial, it does Lincoln Memorial in the background Source: NCPC 2001: iv not overwhelm the body with over scaled entry steps and an oversized body of a mythologised President. Nor does it, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, merge the body of the visitor with names and symbols of the dead. Instead, the Memorial is an attraction, similar to that in a museum or art gallery, at which visitors are taught about the impacts of war and invited to view art and architecture. In this the Memorial is consistent with the Memorials and Museums Master Plan which, in images such as Figure 8.32, represent the Mall as a site for recreation rather than as a place in which visitors engage with the myths which create and perpetuate the American world view. Ironically, with the Master Plan and monuments such as the World War II Memorial, the Mall at the centre of Washington DC may become exactly what Longstreth fears: a series of attractions aimed at consumers rather than a cohesive whole which represents the democratic nation state and the citizen. magic of the city 177 rachel trigg 8.9 Conclusions Unlike the previous three chapters, which contained relatively frequent references to magic and its representation, this chapter has seldom referred directly to the notion of the magic of the city. However, as in the Sunnydale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Aldo Rossi’s imaginary city, the Mall at the symbolic centre of Washington DC is haunted by non rational understandings of the city. The magic of the city is embedded in the memorials in the Mall and in the rituals and which continue to give them meaning. The ways in which that magic is enacted in Washington DC’s most prominent memorials differs according to: the form of the memorial, including its sculptural and textual embellishments; its location in the city plan; and the way in which it is approached by visitors, be they US citizens or foreign tourists.

The Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial connect ancient forms, such as the obelisk and the temple, to the symbolic roles played by those forms. The majority of buildings in the centre of the city share the neoclassical style of these monuments. The repeated use of neoclassical architecture creates a mythical, and entirely invented, connection between the democracies of ancient Greece and modern America. However, whereas emperors and other heroes were buried at the centre of the ancient city, the contemporary American capital gives that place of veneration to its elected Presidents. In the monuments and myths which create and reproduce the American world view, Washington is the god-like founder of the nation and Lincoln its heroic preserver. The rational notion of the democratic nation state, which like the US was largely forged during the Enlightenment, has in Washington DC been combined with the ancient and magical veneration of the city founder and defender.

The repeated use of neoclassical architecture in the centre of Washington DC also privileges a particular way of understanding the relationship between the body and the world. The Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial are designed and magic of the city 178 rachel trigg sited with a classical understanding of the human body. Through the location of the former in the city plan, Washington’s body is magically transformed into an ancient and abstract symbol which connects the three branches of US government to each other and to the citizens whom they serve. Similarly, the oversized body of Lincoln at the end of the Mall is proportioned and located so as to represent the President as the ultimate embodiment of American values.

More significantly for the understanding of Washington DC as a whole, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial are located on the central axis of the city plan. They are intended to be viewed not from the perspective of a real body moving about the capital, but from ideal locations such as the steps of the Capitol and the gates of the Whitehouse. The siting of these monuments implies the existence of a perfect body which can see and understand the overall design of Washington DC. Although its is impossible for a real body to experience the city only from the vantage points created by the diagonal avenues in the L’Enfant Plan, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial are designed as if this idealised vision were humanly possible. The centre of the American capital is thus based on a world view in which the human body, and by extension humanity itself, can magically be made perfect.

The perfect human body represented in the L’Enfant Plan, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial is not that of everybody. As has been shown in this chapter, these Memorials are based on an understanding of the ideal citizen as male. Although women are depicted in several of the memorials on the Mall, they are represented as the passive supporters and nurturers of men, rather than as full and active participants in the founding and defence of their nation. In this the linkage between ancient Greece and modern America is more than mythical. Although it has not been examined in this chapter, it is likely that the memorials on the Mall conceive of the body as not only inherently male, but also inherently white. The representation of ethnicity in Western memorials may be a productive area for future research, as may the ways in which women participate in the creation of magic of the city 179 rachel trigg memorials and other monuments.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Korean War Veterans Memorial enact a different kind of magic to that represented in the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. Whereas the latter are predicated on the existence of an ideal body, the former represent the human body as individual and mortal. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Korean War Veterans Memorial are small in scale and modest in embellishment. They are located away from the axes of the L’Enfant Plan and McMillan Plans and are surrounded by mature trees. These Memorials are designed to be viewed not by a perfect body from a distant vista, but by a moving body in close proximity. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is, in particular, based on an understanding of space, and of the body in space, which is far more intimate than that embedded in the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. With its multiple representations of the body, in text, sculpture and the reflections of visitors, the Memorial magically removes the boundaries between the living and the dead. As in the medieval memento mori, the Memorial confronts the visitor not only with the perishability of individual soldier-citizens, but also with the reality of his or her own mortality.

Unlike the other four memorials examined in this chapter, the World War II Memorial is not conceived according to a magical understanding of the city. Although, like the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, it is neoclassical in style, the World War II Memorial does not create a connection between Greek and American democracy, nor between the myths of the ancient world and those of the contemporary city. Unlike its predecessors, the Memorial is intended to educate and entertain, rather than to create and reproduce a particular world view through the magical use of form, space and ritual. The World War II Memorial is thus far more rational than the other memorials on the Mall. It simply takes forms and materials generally associated with monumental architecture and combines them with unambiguous depictions of the events which it memorialises. magic of the city 180 rachel trigg

1 This included many of the estimated 100 000 motorcycle riders who were in Washington DC for the ‘Rolling Thunder’ rally. This ride through the city is held annually to honour Vietnam War veterans, prisoners of war and others who served in the armed forces or were killed in action (The Washington Post 2006).

2 Unlike the cemeteries represented in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Arlington Cemetery is closed to the public at night.

3 Pierre L’Enfant, Washington DC’s first city planner, is one of the few non military personel whose remains are buried at Arlington.

4 The State of Virginia neighbours the District of Columbia, in which the capital is located.

magic of the city 181 rachel trigg Remaking the map: the city and the world in Anzac Parade 9 in Canberra

Figure 9.1: Detail of Anzac Parade, with the Australian War Memorial at its northern end as envisaged in The Griffin Legacy Source: NCA 2004: 187 magic of the city 182 rachel trigg 9.1 Introduction This chapter examines the ways in which a large number of memorials on Anzac Parade in Canberra, Australia’s capital city, represent national mythologies. As in the previous chapter, the analysis focuses on the central commemorative space within the capital city of a modern democracy. Chapter 8 concluded that, although it is still defining and redefining its world view, Washington DC is secure in its self- perceived centrality to the United States and indeed the entire democratic world. This is not the case with Canberra. Unlike Washington DC, the Australian capital’s central commemorative space does not contain monuments to city founders or to political and military leaders. Instead, the memorials on Anzac Parade represent the relationship between Australia and the rest of the world. Anzac Parade attempts, not entirely successfully, to create a mythology in which Australia is not historically, geographically or culturally isolated. In Washington DC, it is through the representation of the body that the nation’s understanding of itself is transformed into the fabric of the city. In Canberra, the symbolic transformation from world view to urban form is attempted through a remaking of the map.

As in Chapter 8, this chapter uses textual and discourse analysis, as well as an examination of the city itself. The texts used in this chapter were gathered through institutions such as the National Library of Australia and the library associated with the Australian War Memorial. Several visits to Canberra were undertaken between 2002 and 2007. As in the previous chapter, site visits were recorded through written descriptions, the collection of printed guide material and photography. There is a large amount of scholarly literature examining the planning and development of Canberra. Key texts referred to in this chapter include those by Paul Harrison (1995), John Reps (1997), James Weirick (1998) and Paul Reid (2002). The National Capital Authority’s Griffin Legacy (2004) also contains a detailed overview of the city’s creation and development, which is of particular use here. There is significantly less which has been written specifically about Anzac Parade. Ken Inglis (1998) has examined the Parade within the context of his exhaustive study of war memorials in Australia1 and Michael McKernan (1991) has magic of the city 183 rachel trigg undertaken a detailed history of the Australian War Memorial, the primary monument on Anzac Parade. The focus of McKernan’s work is, however, on the Memorial as a museum rather than as a national monument or commemorative work.

A text which may be expected to appear in a chapter on the non rational understanding of Australia’s capital is Peter Proudfoot’s (1994) The Secret Plan of Canberra. Proudfoot posits that the plan of Canberra references a wide range of exotic, esoteric and even occult models, including Greek and Roman cosmology, Chinese geomancy and crystal iconography. As evidence of his arguments, Proudfoot draws frequently from a manuscript called The Magic of America, which was written by Marion Mahony Griffin, one of the architects of Canberra’s plan, long after it had been created.2 James Weirick (1998) has strongly refuted Proudfoot’s arguments. While this thesis shares a title word in common with Mahoney’s manuscript, as well as Proudfoot’s very general belief that the design of a city accords with the way in which its inhabitants understand the cosmos, this should in no way be interpreted as acceptance of Proudfoot’s hypothesis that the Griffins inserted ‘secret’ meanings into the design of Canberra.

As in Chapter 8, this chapter incorporates the analysis of texts from a variety of modes of representation, including maps, planning documents, paintings, newspapers, cartoons, journals, poems and photographs. However, unlike Chapter 8, this chapter does not include analysis of films or television series. While there are innumerable films and television shows which depict Washington DC and its places of the dead, Canberra does not appear to feature in the popular Australian imagination in the same way.

9.2 The planning and development of Anzac Parade Like Washington DC, Canberra existed as a myth long before it became a reality. After selecting the site for the new capital in 1909 (Harrison 1995), the Federal magic of the city 184 rachel trigg Government held an international design competition for Canberra in 1911. The process for and outcomes of this competition have been thoroughly documented, particularly by Reps (1997). In 1912, it was announced that American architects Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin had won the design competition (Figure 9.2).

The centre of Canberra, like ancient cities and Rossi’s The Analogous City discussed in Chapter 7, is in the Griffin Plan marked by a circular site located on higher ground. This prime site is in the Plan occupied by an institution called the ‘Capitol’. Though the Capitol in Washington DC contains the US Congress, the central institution in the Griffin Plan

Figure 9.2: Walter Burley and Marion Mahony was intended to be a general Griffin’s winning plan for Canberra (1912) administration building for “popular Source: NCA 2004: 14 assembly and festivity more than for deliberation and counsel” (Griffin quoted in Reps 1997: 144). The Griffin Plan is still used as the conceptual model for Canberra and has, to a large extent, been realised in the contemporary city. However, as with the L’Enfant Plan, the Griffin Plan has been subject to numerous revisions and extensions.

The place on which this chapter focuses is Anzac Parade, which is the location of the Australian War Memorial and other nationally significant commemorative magic of the city 185 rachel trigg works. The history of war memorials in the Australian landscape has been comprehensively surveyed by Ken Inglis, most notably in his book Sacred Places (1998). Inglis details the evolution of war memorials in Australian cities and towns and considers such places to be ‘holy ground’ or, as the title states, ‘sacred places’. Inglis devotes a section of Sacred Places to what he refers to as the ‘sacred way’; that is, Anzac Parade. He states that “for the planners of Canberra, Anzac Parade was a gesture towards Walter Burley Griffin’s vision, marking his ‘land axis’ between Mount Ainslie and Capital Hill” (1998: 402). Anzac Parade was, according to Inglis, to be “Canberra’s modest equivalent of the Mall in Washington – or, to invoke classical antiquity as the planners did, a ‘sacred way’ such as had joined Athens to Eleusis, flanked by sculptures commemorating heroes, gods and civic events” (1998: 403). Inglis sees Anzac Parade as a place, and associated set of memorial practices, linking Canberra to ancient Greece by way of eighteenth century Washington DC. This perspective accords with a modernist understanding of the city. Although Inglis sees Anzac Parade as a celebration of local gods and heroes, the memorials which line Anzac Parade do not so much apotheosise Australians as map complex relationships between the nation and the of the rest of the world.

The avenue which has become Anzac Parade was present in the original Griffin Plan for Canberra and is located on the land axis which diagrammatically connects Mount Ainslie to Capital Hill. Griffin described the avenue as “a broad formal parkway to be maintained open in the centre and banked with foliage on the sides” (quoted in Reps 1997: 144). In the Griffin Plan, this avenue was surrounded by residential areas and its end, at the base of Mount Ainslie, was marked with a casino. A nearby entrance to a national park was indicated by a semi circle of commemorative structures, the nature of which was unspecified. In a schematic view from Mount Ainslie produced by Mahony (Figure 9.3), the avenue is clearly evident. However, as is appropriate in a large scale city plan, the character of the buildings at the base of the mountain and on either side of the avenue are only loosely indicated. magic of the city 186 rachel trigg Figure 9.3: Detail of Marion Mahony Griffin’s (1912) View from Summit of Mount Ainslie Source: NCA 2004: 47

As envisaged in the Griffin Plan, Anzac Parade now runs from the northern bank of Lake Burly Griffin to the foot of Mount Ainslie. The Parade was dedicated in 1965 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the World War I landing of Australian troops at Gallipoli (NCA 2004). It is just over one kilometre in length and, unlike the National Mall in Washington DC, is used by traffic. At the northern end of the Parade is not the casino envisaged by the Griffin, but the Australian War Memorial. Although the Memorial was not a feature of the original plan for Canberra, The Griffin Legacy states that the change was supported by Griffin and that it “represents a significant and sympathetic adaptation of Griffin’s concept” (NCA 2004: 59).

Anzac Parade is today a tree lined avenue with wide median and verges (Figure 9.4). The median is surfaced in red gravel and contains regularly Figure 9.4: Anzac Parade Looking north from Lake Burley Griffin Source: Trigg 2007 magic of the city 187 rachel trigg placed beds of shrubs, while the verges are informally landscaped with eucalypts and native grasses.3 Within the verges are 16 sites allocated for memorials. Twelve of these sites are currently occupied with memorials,4 the locations of which are shown in Figure 9.5. However, while the roadway of Anzac Parade is visually dominant not only within Figure 9.3, but also within central Canberra, the memorials alongside the roadway are invisible to a viewer standing within its median. As is revealed in the remainder of this chapter, this lack of physical prominence is indicative of the way in which the memorials disappear from the mythologies surrounding the Australian capital. The remainder of this chapter is thus structured not around the order in which a pedestrian would encounter the memorials, but around the magical understandings represented in the Australian capital.

The construction of memorials in Canberra is directed by the Guidelines for Commemorative Works in the National Capital (2002a) prepared by the NCA. The Guidelines, which are also discussed later in this chapter, define commemorative works such as memorials as “a physical expression of prevailing ideas and beliefs within the community” (NCA 2002a: 5). The Guidelines set out criteria for appropriate memorial subjects and identify and classify potential memorial sites. They identify Anzac Parade as one of several locations in Canberra, including the Russell Precinct and the Royal Military College Duntroon, at which it is appropriate to locate memorials honouring “military sacrifice, service and valour” (NCA 2002a: 12). More specifically, the Guidelines declare that Anzac Parade will be the location for “memorials that commemorate Australian Defence Force service in all wars or warlike operations” (NCA 2002a: 13). They also match a wide range of other possible memorial subjects to specific locations, such as: city planners and designers to Mount Ainslie: early governors and premiers to the area between King Edward Terrace and King George Terrace; and historians, scientists, philosophers and intellectuals to the ‘Humanities and Science’ campus near the National Library of Australia. The Guidelines for Commemorative Works in the Capital are illustrated with numerous photographs, including seven images of Anzac Parade magic of the city 188 rachel trigg Australian War Memorial

Aust Hellenic Memorial Kemal Ataturk Memorial Aust Army National Memorial RAN Memorial Aust National Korea War Memorial Aust Service Nurses National Memorial Aust Vietnam Forces National Memorial RAAF Memorial Desert Mounted Corps Memorial Rats of Tobruk Memorial New Zealand Memorial New Zealand Memorial

Australian-American Memorial

Parliament House

Figure 9.5: The memorials on Anzac Parade, in the context of central Canberra Source: Aerial photograph 2008 sourced from http://earth.google.com and its memorials.

The policy approach outlined in the Guidelines for Commemorative Works in the National Capital has been reinforced in The Griffin Legacy (2004). The text of The Griffin Legacy proposes no change to the role or character of Anzac Parade. It offers no propositions or strategic initiatives for the Parade and recognises that the Australian War Memorial, like Parliament House, is “a successful reinterpretation of the Griffin Plan which [is] consistent with, and strengthen[s], the framework and spirit of the plan” (NCA 2004: 151). The Griffin Legacy does, however, provide a magic of the city 189 rachel trigg telling visual representation of the intended character of Anzac Parade (Figure 9.1). The plan proposes that outdoor activities be held at the Rond Terrace Amphitheatre at the southern end of the Parade and provides an image of people gathered there for an event. While the banks of Lake Burley Griffin are depicted filled with tents and teeming with people, and the occasional hot air balloon, the Parade is depicted as being deserted of both people and cars. The grand and serene symmetry of Anzac Parade is represented as being incompatible with a disorderly confluence of people. With the exception of the Australian War Memorial at its northern end, the twelve, varyingly shaped memorials which currently line the sides of the Parade have vanished from the image. The individual memorials in the central commemorative space in Canberra are thus not represented as contributing to the city’s broader understanding, but rather are subsumed into the cosmic diagram which connects Parliament House to the Australian War Memorial.

9.3 Cartographers and conquerors: mapping the great southern land Mapping has always been a crucial activity in the understanding and occupation of Australia. In the Cartesian sense, Australia was the last of the inhabited continents to be mapped. The location of the continent in relation to Europe meant that it was not discovered by Europeans and their systems of mapping until the seventeenth century, and was not colonised until the end of the eighteenth century. For Europeans, Australia existed as a myth long before it was verified as a reality. Six hundred years before the continent was claimed by Europeans, the ancient Greek cartographer Ptolemy speculated that there must be a large land mass in the south of the earth to balance the northern continents of Europe and Asia. Although this notion largely disappeared during the Middle Ages, it was revived with the early fifteenth century translation of Ptolemy’s work into Latin (Richards and O’Connor 1993).

European maps from the fifteenth century onwards generally accorded with the Ptolemaic vision of the world and incorporated a large southern land mass magic of the city 190 rachel trigg (Richards and O’Connor 1993). For example, the first world map produced by Gerardus Mercator in 1538 included a large land mass vaguely indicated at the south of the globe (Figure 9.6). This continent was labelled Terra Australis Incognita, which can be translated as ‘Australian land unknown’. Although Mercator is better known as the inventor of a mathematically accurate system of cartographic projection, his map of 1538 incorporates mythical sea creatures swimming near the coast of the southern continent. Furthermore, the margins of the map illustrate the four ‘elements’ of fire, water, air and earth, as well as scenes from astrology. Similar maps were produced by Abraham Ortelius (1570), Cornelius de Jode (1593) and Petrus Plancius (1599) (see Clancy 1995). For early Cartesian cartographers such as Mercator, geographical knowledge gained from scientific surveying techniques was indistinguishable from that gained through analogical relationships and astrological speculations. The understanding of the world presented in maps such as Mercator’s was thus magical, in that it did not differentiate between rational and non rational ways of knowing the world in general and the ‘great southern land’ in particular.

The conjectured existence of a southern continent also influenced the literary imagination of the Renaissance and early Enlightenment. For example, in 1676 Gabriel de Foigny created a utopia set within a mythologised Australia. In The Southern Land, Known, de Foigny combines realistically described geographic Figure 9.6: Detail of Gerardus Mercator (1538) Terra Australis Incognita details with a fantastical Source: Harwood 2007: 84 magic of the city 191 rachel trigg utopian society. De Foigny’s European explorer-hero describes the southern land as “an earthly paradise that, while containing all the riches and curiosities imaginable, is exempt from the irrationalities of our world” (1993: 46). While he explained its geographic location in great detail, de Foigny speculated that the southern continent was inhabited by ‘Australians’, who, as well as living peacefully and communally, were hermaphrodites who existed solely on fruit. Thus as with Mercator’s maps, de Foigny’s novel seamlessly combines knowledges gained through rational and non rational means, as well as realistic and highly imaginative representations of the southern continent.

The rational ‘discovery’ of Australia by European systems of mapping occurred in 1788, over two and a half centuries after Mercator’s map was created and a century after de Foigny imagined the continent inhabited by hermaphrodite vegetarians. The start of the continent’s colonisation is celebrated in twin memorials at Lake Burley Griffin. The Captain Cook Memorial Jet and Globe were opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1970, precisely two hundred years after Captain James Cook first sighted the eastern coast of Australia (NCA undated c). The Memorial Globe consists of a large, bronze sphere with the continents, major lines of latitude and longitude, and routes of Cook’s voyages marked out. The division of the earth according to Cartesian systems of

Figure 9.7 The Captain Cook Memorial Jet and Globe, as depicted in logic is used in Tomorrow’s Canberra Source: NCDC 1970: 51 the Memorial magic of the city 192 rachel trigg Globe to commemorate Cook’s claiming of Australia for the British monarchy and for a scientific rationality.

In Tomorrow’s Canberra (1970), the Memorial Globe is depicted in the foreground of an unusual, nocturnal image of Canberra (Figure 9.7). In this image, the round form of the Memorial Globe is mirrored by the moon rising above the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge. Both moon and Globe are, however, pictorially subordinate to the Captain Cook Memorial Jet, which is depicted erupting from Lake Burley Griffin. The Jet completes the symbolic intent of the Globe, as it demonstrates that humanity’s mastery of the Australian landscape has reached such a point that not only can Lake Burley Griffin be created in the centre of Canberra from an intermittent stream, but plumes of water can also be summoned from its depths. The magical quality of the Memorial Jet and Globe is represented through the inclusion in the Tomorrow’s Canberra image of a group of people who have gathered at night to watch the Jet and to stand, as if in a druidic ritual, in the glow emanating from the base of the Globe.

In addition to the Captain Cook Memorial Jet and Globe, there are two memorials on Anzac Parade which were opened by members of the British royal family. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Memorial and the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) Memorial, both of which are located on the eastern side of Figure 9.8 RAN Memorial (1986) the Parade, were respectively Source: Trigg 2007 dedicated in 1973 by Prince Phillip and in 1986 by Queen Elizabeth II. Other memorials on Anzac Parade were unveiled by, or in the presence of, Australian prime ministers, ministers or governors general. While many of the memorials on magic of the city 193 rachel trigg Anzac Parade represent Australia as gaining independence from Britain by sacrificing troops in war, the RAAF and RAN Memorials could be seen to represent Australia as a continuing part of the British Empire and its modern incarnation, the Commonwealth.

The RAN Memorial represents the bodies of Australian sailors as being an inherent part of their vessel. It combines stylised, bronze depictions of navy personnel, such as navigators and divers, and parts of a ship, such as the cannons and anchor (Figure 9.8). The sculptural component of the RAN Memorial, which is titled ‘Sailors and Ships – Interaction and Interdependence’ (NCA undated b), is set within a pool of water, which also flows over the base of the sculpture. Unlike many other memorials on Anzac Parade, the RAN Memorial does not allude to Australia’s relationships with international theatres of war but rather, like the memorials in the Mall in Washington DC, focuses on the bodies of the servicemen.

The original components of the RAAF Memorial (Figure 9.9) share the representational strategy

Figure 9.9: RAAF Memorial (1973 used in the RAN Memorial. They consist of three and 2002) Source: Trigg 2007 steel stelae fronted by an abstract bronze sculpture described as representing “man’s [sic] struggle to conquer the elements” (NCA 2002b: 17). The motto of the RAAF, ‘per ardua ad astra’, or ‘through diversity to the stars’, is inscribed on the plinth on which these elements sit. Behind these original components of the RAAF Memorial are three granite panels inscribed with images, as well as quotes from a poem entitled High Flight. The panels were added to the Memorial in 2002 and, according to the booklet issued at their dedication, depict planes and their crews in Europe, Asia and the Pacific (NCA 2002b). The men and women depicted in the panels wear uniforms suitable for a range of climates. The panels also depict magic of the city 194 rachel trigg various landscapes, seen from the air, and a field of memorial crosses (Figure 9.10). This representation of people and places connects Australia to the rest of the world through the magic of flight. While the figures in the RAN Memorial are represented sailing through an anonymous, watery landscape, Figure 9.10: Detail of RAAF Memorial those in the recent components of Source: Trigg 2007 the RAAF Memorial are able, through the power of surveillance, to symbolically colonise the lands over which they fly.

9.4 Storytellers and singers: mapping the great southern land II While Australia has been understood according to a Cartesian rationality for a relatively short period of time, the continent has been mapped for many thousands of years. Indigenous peoples have long mapped the land through song, dance and storytelling, as well as through temporary and permanent artworks (Trigg 1998). Aboriginals used complex systems of mapping not only to define space, but also to communicate an understanding of the world. Many Aboriginal artworks, both ancient and contemporary, represent a combination of social, mythical, geographic, legal and religious understandings (Trigg 1998). For those who have the, often secret, knowledge to read them, such artworks are a comprehensive map of a particular area of land and a thorough depiction of the world view of a particular Aboriginal group. The artworks are thus a clear example of a magical way of understanding the world, as they represent both the rational knowledge needed for survival in a specific environment and the mythical knowledge needed to comprehend humanity’s place within that environment.

magic of the city 195 rachel trigg The forecourt to the Australian Parliament House in Canberra is the location of one such map. The forecourt contains a large mosaic which is based on a painting (Figure 9.11) by Michael Tjakamarra Nelson of the Warlpiri people and derives from the tradition of central Australian sand paintings (Commonwealth of Australia 1993). A guide to artworks in Figure 9.11: Michael Tjakamarra Nelson design on and around Parliament Houses which mosaic in Parliament House forecourt is based states that the mosaic depicts a Source: Commonwealth of Australia 1993: 26 gathering of men from groups of the kangaroo, wallaby and goanna ancestors and “has complex layers of mythical meaning known only to Warlpiri elders” (Commonwealth of Australia 1993: 26). In the mosaic, kangaroo, goanna and wallaby tracks converge on a series of ochre and white concentric circles. The surrounding area is marked by small stippled patches of lemon, pale pink, ochre, deep green and pale blue. The colours and forms of Nelson’s painting are reminiscent not only of the red earth conventionally associated with central Australia, but also of the flowers which bloom after desert rains.

As it is based on a technique of temporarily incising the sand with stylised markings, it is highly likely that Nelson’s painting, and the mosaic which is based upon it, are a depiction of the land and mythologies of the Warlpiri people. The mosaic can also be read in the context of its location in front of Parliament House. In addition to depicting an important Aboriginal meeting place located in central Australia, the mosaic can be seen as representing the gathering place for Australia’s democratically elected representatives in the symbolic centre of the magic of the city 196 rachel trigg nation state. This reading is encouraged by the placement of the mosaic within a pool of water, making it an ‘island’ within the Parliament House forecourt analogous to Australia’s island-continent geography.

The mapping of Australia was crucial to the practices of colonisation, such as the creation of settlements and the division and allocation of land, and to the legal systems which supported such practices. The legal notion of ‘terra nullius’, a phrase meaning ‘land unowned’ or ‘land empty’, was used in Australia not only to allow, but virtually to require the imposition of Cartesian systems of understanding and representing space (Trigg 1998). Under British law of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a country which is without settled inhabitants or established systems of law, and which is peacefully settled, is deemed to be subject to British law from the time of settlement (Trigg 1998). In Australia, Indigenous ways of knowing and caring for the land were ignored by colonists and replaced by Cartesian systems of mapping and the legal fiction of terra nullius.

The myth that Australian was not occupied by sentient peoples prior to European colonisation is surreptitiously supported by sculptures at the Australian War Memorial. The building contains a Figures 9.12 and 9.13: A platypus and a koala, as depicted in the courtyard of the Australian War Memorial cloister-like space at its Source: Trigg 2007 centre, which is designated as a contemplative courtyard. The upper level of the courtyard is colonnaded and contains the ‘Rolls of Honour’ which list the names of Australian men and women who have died at war. The lower level of the courtyard contains a ‘Pool of Reflection’ and an ‘Eternal Flame’, both common elements of modern memorials. Less commonly, the eastern and western walls of the lower courtyard level contain a series of sculptures designed by Leslie Bowles5 (Freeland magic of the city 197 rachel trigg 1995; AWM 1997-2008). These sculptures have been incorrectly identified by Freek Colombijn as “gargoyle[s] in the shape of a Gothic demonic face” (1998: 573). The Figures 9.14 and 9.15: Aboriginal men depicted in the courtyard of the Australian War Memorial sculptures actually depict Source: Trigg 2007 the heads of a wide variety of Australian fauna (Figures 9.12 and 9.13), including kangaroos, lizards, koalas, wombats, parrots, possums and bush turkeys. At the far end of each of the two rows of fauna are sculptures of Aboriginal men (Figures 9.14 and 9.15). The men are represented in the same style as the birds, animals and reptiles. They are depicted only from the neck up, with their heads moulded into a square outline and a decorative border on the either side of their faces.

The inclusion of these Aboriginal men in a gallery of native fauna identifies the Indigenous inhabitants of Australia as animals rather than humans. The way in which the men are represented draws upon conventions associated with the adornment of medieval churches, the display of hunting trophies and the categorisation of scientific specimens. The men, along with the koalas, possums and other species of wildlife exotic to European colonists,6 are at once gargoyles, captured quarry and unusual biological phenomena. Their depiction contrasts sharply with that accorded to the men and women memorialised in the upper part of the courtyard. While the representation of the unnamed Aboriginal men concentrates on their generic facial features, the depiction of the men and women killed in war focus on the individual identities symbolised by their names. The courtyard of the Australian War Memorial represents Aboriginals as animals to be conquered and classified, nothing like the noble men and women whose individual losses are mourned in the upper parts of the cloister. magic of the city 198 rachel trigg In addition to classifying Aboriginals as animals, the courtyard of the Australian War Memorial, like all of the memorials on Anzac Parade, silences the violence associated with colonisation. The legal notion of terra nullius is a fiction partly because it is based on the myth that Australia was a country peacefully annexed for the British crown. While there has been significant debate in recent years about the extent of the bloodshed associated with colonisation,7 it is generally agreed that in many instances Indigenous peoples actively resisted occupation. Although the conflict involved in the colonisation of the continent and dispossession of Indigenous peoples could be understood as Australia’s first war, the primary monument to the Aboriginal dead in Canberra exists not in the Australian War Memorial, nor on Anzac Parade, but in the National Gallery of Australia.

The Aboriginal Memorial in the National Gallery was created in 1988, the year celebrated by non Aboriginal Australians as the bicentenary of white settlement, to “commemorate all the indigenous people who, since 1788, have lost their lives defending their land” (NGA 1998). The work was created by Figure 9.16: The Aboriginal Memorial (1988) 43 artists from Central Arnhem Source: Trigg 2007 Land in northern Australia and consists of 200 painted, hollow logs arranged in a shape which is rectangular in plan, with a wide serpentine path running through the middle (Figure 9.16). Painted logs such as those which comprise The Aboriginal Memorial are traditionally used by the peoples of Arnhem Land as coffins. The bones of the deceased are ritually interred within a log painted with totemic designs (NGA 1998). The art adviser who conceptualised The Aboriginal Memorial has described it as representing “a forest of souls, a war cemetery and the final rites for all Indigenous Australians who have magic of the city 199 rachel trigg been denied a proper burial” (NGA 1998). The work is thus a powerful response to Western ways of mapping and understanding Australia and the associated denial of Aboriginal rights to land, culture and, in some cases, life.

9.5 Soldiers as colonisers I: mapping the nation through war in Europe Although he created the plan for the city, the only structure designed by Walter Burley Griffin and built in Canberra is a tomb for Major General Sir William Throsby Bridges located at the Royal Military College Duntroon (Weirick 1998), far from the centre of the city. Due to the large number of troops killed and the distance between their homeland and their places of death, Bridges was the only Australian casualty of World War I whose body was repatriated (Inglis 1998). Griffin had initially conceived of a far grander burial place for Bridges. In 1916, he wrote to the Minister for Home Affairs and suggested that the ‘Capitol’ at the centre of Canberra become the site of a memorial to the Anzacs. He stated, “would it not be acceptable policy and would not Lady Bridges be willing that General Bridges’ tomb be incorporated within the national memorial to the ANZAC heroes which it is proposed to place in the most important point in the Federal Capital” (quoted in Reid 2002: 127). Although Griffin had only been living in the country for four years, he understood the mythical significance the Anzacs held for Australia.

World War I coincided with the early stages of the construction of Canberra. During the five years of the War, from 1914 to 1918, one of the most powerful myths Figure 9.17: Will Dyson (1929) Calling Them Home Source: McKernan 1991: xiii about the creation of the nation magic of the city 200 rachel trigg emerged. This myth is connected to the actions of the Australian New Zealand Army Corps, or ‘Anzacs’, who fought in Western Europe and the Mediterranean Basin and were eulogised particularly for their conduct in the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. This campaign was fought largely by Australians and New Zealanders, under British command, against local Turkish troops. Although the Anzacs suffered a significant defeat, the date on which they landed at Gallipoli is now the Anzac Day national holiday commemorating all Australians killed in war.

In 1929, Will Dyson published a cartoon in an Australian newspaper entitled Calling Them Home (McKernan 1991). The foreground of the cartoon (Figure 9.17) shows an Australian soldier playing a bugle. The ghostly figures of other soldiers, presumedly casualties of World War I, are depicted moving towards the bugler. From his solemn stance and the effect of his song on the soldiers, it can be surmised that the bugler is playing The Last Post, which is still used in memorial ceremonies in Australia and other Commonwealth nations. In the background of Dyson’s cartoon is the Australian War Memorial, which was not completed until 12 years after the cartoon was published (McKernan 1991). Calling Them Home thus depicts two types of apparition: the ghosts of the war dead and the, at that time, unrealised proposal for a memorial with which to symbolise their deaths.

Dyson’s cartoon represents the Australian War Memorial as a symbolic sepulchre for the 60 000 Australians who died and were buried overseas during World War I (McKernan 1991). Until the creation of the Australian War Memorial, and smaller commemorative works in cities and towns across the nation, there was no place within Australia for families and friends to mourn the war dead and undertake the rituals associated with burial. Calling Them Home is based on the magical understanding that the souls of the dead could be summoned ‘home’ to Australia and, more specifically, to symbolic interment in the Australian War Memorial.

magic of the city 201 rachel trigg The museum component of the Australian War Memorial today contains a small room in which Will Longstaff’s (1927) painting Menin Gate at Midnight (Figure 9.18) is the only exhibit. This painting, which shares a similar perspective to Dyson’s cartoon, is represented in the museum as a painted precursor to the built Memorial. The painting depicts ghostly soldiers marching over the fields of Flanders, a vision Longstaff claims to have seen (Inglis 1998). The soldiers march in a single direction with helmets on and bayonets fixed. They are at first difficult to discern from the poppies and stands of wheat which also inhabit the fields. Amidst these symbols of death in war, the ethereal bodies are transformed from individual soldiers to representations of all who died.

Menin Gate at Midnight is the only artefact in the Australian War Memorial’s large collection to be displayed individually and Figure 9.18: Will Longstaff (1924) Menin Gate at Midnight in permanent darkness. Source: Postcard sold at Australian War Memorial 2006 The black walls of the room, against which the illuminated painting appears as a religious icon, create an atmosphere of reverence. The most prominent element in Longstaff’s painting is the Menin Gate Memorial which, a sign informs the viewer, is located in the Belgian town of Ypres. The sign states that the Gate “is dedicated to the quarter of a million men of the British and Empire forces who died in the battles around Ypres. The names of over 54 000 soldiers who have no known grave are inscribed on the Menin Gate, among them 6 198 of the Australian Imperial Force”. Another sign beside Menin Gate at Midnight informs the viewer that, during 1928-1929, Longstaff’s painting

was displayed in many cities and towns around the country. Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony was played as the huge crowds filed past…One thousand signed reproductions of the work were made in 1928, under magic of the city 202 rachel trigg Longstaff’s direction, and a cheaper version was sold door-to-door to aid the RSL and, later, the Australian War Memorial Fund.

Reproductions of Longstaff’s depiction of a European memorial were thus used to fund the construction of the primary memorial in Australia.

The museum component of the Australian War Memorial uses other imaginative means to evoke a connection between the landscapes of Australia, Western Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. The section of the museum dedicated to the remembrance of World War I contains a series of dioramas depicting the Figure 9.19: World War I diorama in places in which Australian soldiers Australian War Memorial Source: Trigg 2007 fought and died. While some of these dioramas emphasise the exotic nature of the terrain, others represent the harsher realities of warfare. One, for example, depicts the aftermath of a battle in Western Europe (Figure 9.19). It shows soldiers looking for the bodies of their dead and injured comrades within a muddy and pitted landscape. The starkness of the land, greyness of the sky and muted uniforms of the soldiers accentuate the somber subject of the diorama. This is emphasised by the representation of the battle as having taken place near an existing graveyard. The fresh graves of Anzacs, marked in the diorama with white crosses, contrast with older stone headstones and small crypts. In dying and being buried in Europe, the diorama represents Australian soldiers as becoming part of a foreign land and as claiming that land for their own country.

The notion that wartime death and burial can be a symbolic form of colonisation was perhaps first established in Rupert Brooke’s (1914) poem The Soldier, which magic of the city 203 rachel trigg contains the lines

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England.

The notion of benign colonisation through death and burial is also central to the Kemal Ataturk Memorial located at the northern end of Anzac Parade, on one of two memorial sites closest to the Australian War Memorial. The Ataturk Memorial was dedicated in 1985, the year of the seventy fifth anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign. It consists of a wall which is semi circular in plan and which contains a bust of Ataturk at its centre (Figure 9.20). A crescent and star, which are featured on the Turkish flag, are moulded into the rear of the wall. More recently, ochre coloured columns have been installed around the wall in order to provide for the display of interpretive material. The area around the wall has also, since 1985, been paved with cobblestones radiating from a central plaque, beneath which is located soil taken from Anzac Cove in Turkey.

Figure 9.20: Kemal Ataturk Memorial (1985) The literal incorporation of part of Source: Trigg 2007 Turkey into the Ataturk Memorial is metaphorically reinforced by text inscribed beneath the bust of Ataturk. This text is the transcript of a speech delivered by Ataturk in 1934, almost two decades after thousands of Turkish and Australian soldiers killed each other at Gallipoli. The section of the speech quoted on the wall states:

THE HEROES THAT LOST THEIR BLOOD AND SHED THEIR magic of the city 204 rachel trigg LIVES…YOU ARE NOW LYING IN THE SOIL OF A FRIENDLY COUNTRY. THEREFORE REST IN PEACE. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE JOHNNIES AND THE MEHMETS TO US WHERE THEY LIE SIDE BY SIDE IN THIS COUNTRY OF OURS. …YOUR SONS ARE NOW LYING IN OUR BOSOM AND ARE AT PEACE. AFTER HAVING LOST THEIR LIVES ON THIS LAND THEY HAVE NOW BECOME OUR SONS AS WELL.

For Ataturk, as for Dyson and Longstaff, the death of soldiers in battle has a transformative effect on the land on which they died. However, for Ataturk there is no need for the ghostly return of the war dead to the Australian War Memorial or other symbolic site. Instead, the Turkish leader represents the dead as resting peacefully on foreign soil, having become adopted by Turkey through the processes of honourable battle and subsequent peace making.

The Australian Hellenic Memorial (Figure 9.21) also commemorates the deaths of Anzacs in the battlefields of the Mediterranean, although this time in Greece rather than Figure 9.21: Australian Hellenic Memorial (1988) Turkey and in World War II Source: Trigg 2007 rather than World War I. The Memorial, which was dedicated in 1988, consists of the broken shaft of an oversized Doric column, set within an amphitheatre. Two pieces of rusted metal are located opposite the column and the rear of the Memorial is surrounded by cypress pines. A plaque near the Memorial gives unambiguous instruction for its interpretation. It states:

the Australian-Hellenic memorial depicts the harsh but beautiful magic of the city 205 rachel trigg landscape of Greece across which soldiers fought and died. It is a landscape that since the beginning, has contrasted with man’s [sic] artefacts of civilisation, cultivation and war…This ground is the most placid of places, an amphitheatre of seats where an audience contemplates this Greek tragedy.

The Memorial assigns new meanings to architectural forms associated with a specific time and culture. It takes an amphitheatre, used in ancient Greece as the setting for dramatic entertainment, and transforms it into a location from which contemporary observers are invited to imaginatively project themselves into World War II. In creating this space-time discontinum, the Memorial symbolically connects the geographies, cultures and histories of Australia and Greece not, as in the Ataturk Memorial, through magical words, but through the use of architectural forms which are assumed to be meaningful to viewers.

The connections between the landscapes of Australia and the Mediterranean are created on Anzac Parade not only symbolically, but also literally. The Parade acts as a repository for European materials and artefacts which have been repatriated Figure 9.22: Display of war relics in Australian to Australia. This is evident not only in War Memorial the soil beneath the Ataturk Memorial, Source: Trigg 2007 but also in a pine tree in the grounds of the Australian War Memorial. This tree is reputed, according to a sign placed at its base, to have been grown from a pine cone sent home by an Australian soldier in Gallipoli. The museum component of the Australian War Memorial also houses a large number of war ‘relics’. Items on display in the museum in 2007 included a second century Palmyrene bust, a sixth century Byzantine floor mosaic and innumerable twentieth century signs and magic of the city 206 rachel trigg artefacts from Western Europe (Figure 9.22). In addition, two stone lions which now stand at the entry to the Australian War Memorial were once part of the Menin Gate, making Longstaff’s painting one of two connections between Canberra and the city of Ypres. The items displayed in the Memorial’s museum were either given to Australian soldiers or were taken from battlefields as souvenirs.8 Their collection and display constitutes another way in which the landscapes of wartime Europe are brought closer to those of contemporary Australia.

Although it is nominally a secular building, the Australian War Memorial uses forms historically associated with religious architecture to house its relics. The central area of the building replicates the layout of a medieval cloister, with colonnaded walkways surrounding a courtyard. On the lower level of the courtyard, above the gargoyle-like sculptures discussed earlier in this chapter, are the names of places in which Australian forces have served. This listing is in roughly chronological order, beginning with Sudan, South Africa, China and the Indian Ocean in the south western corner of the courtyard and ending with Bougainville, the Philippines, Borneo, Korea and Vietnam in the south eastern corner. The names of places arrayed around the courtyard reveal that it is not only the dead of World War I who are intended to be magically summoned to the Australian War Memorial. During World War II, Kenneth Slessor extended the image created by Longstaff and Dyson to the dead of another war in another land, as well as to the medium of poetry. Slessor’s poem Beach Burial (c1944) describes the graves of Australians killed at El Alamein in North Africa. It begins with the lines “Softly and humbly to the Gulf of Arabs/The convoys of dead sailors come” and goes on to explain that, “between the sob and clubbing of the gunfire”, someone has time “to pluck [the sailers] from the shallows and bury them in burrows/And tread the sand upon their nakedness”.

Although the burials in Slessor’s poem are portrayed as rapid and rudimentary, they are not entirely anonymous. Each grave at El Alamein is described as being marked with a cross, “a driven stake of tidewood”, onto which is written, by a magic of the city 207 rachel trigg “ghostly pencil”, the words “unknown seaman”. Although there were significant battles at El Alamein during World War II, as in Kundera’s description of the Bohemian cemetery examined in Chapter 5 it is difficult to know whether the details of burials described by Slessor are based on historic fact or poetic imagination. Regardless, Beach Burial continues the symbolic colonisation of parts of Western Europe and Northern African through death in war. Slessor’s ghostly sailors magically claim the beaches of El Alamein for Australia, just as the spectral soldiers imagined by Dyson and Longstaff forever inhabit the fields of Belgium and France.

Like Beach Burial, two of the earliest memorials on Anzac Parade link Australia to the deserts and shores of North Africa. The Desert Mounted Corps Memorial, dedicated in 1968, and the Rats of Tobruk Memorial, dedicated in 1983, are both copies of works originally located in north Africa. The first Desert Mounted Corps Memorial was located in Port Said in Egypt and dedicated in 1932 (Inglis 1998). The Memorial was recast and recreated after the destruction of the original during the Suez Crisis of 1956. The Desert Mounted Corps

Figure 9.23: Desert Mounted Corps Memorial commemorates the actions of Memorial (1968) Source: Trigg 2007 Anzacs in World War I. It consists of a bronzed soldier on a rearing horse, with a second soldier, described by an information plaque as a New Zealander, standing beside a wounded horse (Figure 9.23). In reference to the exotic geography occupied by the Desert Mounted Corps, the men are dressed in lightweight desert fatigues and wear wide brimmed hats, while the horses are depicted with fringed bridles.

magic of the city 208 rachel trigg While the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial is a figurative representation of Australian soldiers overseas, the Rats of Tobruk Memorial is a brick ziggurat with a bronzed flame at its centre (Figure 9.24). The Memorial was first constructed in north eastern Libya, not far from the Egyptian border, and has three plaques at its base. The centremost plaque is inscribed with the words “THIS IS HALLOWED GROUND FOR HERE LIE THOSE WHO DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY”. The hallowed ground referred to on the plaque is actually Tobruk, rather than Canberra. The plaque is affixed to a stone which was once the front step of the Tobruk post office. An information sign located near the Memorial states that the stone formed part of an original commemoration in the Tobruk War Cemetery. Like Slessor’s poem, the recreation of the Desert Mounted Corps and Rats of Tobruk Memorials transplants a small part of North Africa, and its wartime history, to the centre of Canberra. It Figure 9.24: Rats of Tobruk Memorial (1983) also stakes a symbolic Australian claim in the Source: Trigg 2007 North African desert, equivalent to the claims which the Ataturk Memorial, Australian Hellenic Memorial and Australian War Memorial make on Western Europe.

While there are thus many works on Anzac Parade commemorating the Australian soldiers who died in World Wars I and II and in Western Europe and Northern Africa, Griffin’s idea of literally enshrining the body of an Anzac in the centre of Canberra was not taken up until over 70 years after he suggested it. In 1993 the body of an unknown Australia soldier was disinterred from the Villers-Bretonneux war cemetery in France and entombed within the ‘Hall of Memory’ in the Australian War Memorial. A formal funeral service was held for the soldier on 11 November 1993, a day which is celebrated in Australia as Remembrance Day. The then Prime Minister, Paul Keating, delivered the eulogy at the service. Keating (1993) magic of the city 209 rachel trigg spoke of the Anzac legend which emerged from World War I as being that of “triumphs against the odds, of courage and ingenuity in adversity…of free and independent spirits whose discipline derived less from military formalities and customs than from the bonds of mateship and the demands of necessity”. In many ways, the repatriation of a body representative of all Anzacs buried overseas marked the end of Australia’s need to symbolically colonise the territory of other nations. It meant that the spirits which were called ‘home’ by Dyson’s cartoon and by many of the memorials on Anzac Parade had at last been symbolically fixed within Australian soil. The complex ways in which relationships between Australia and the rest of the world were subsequently represented on Anzac Parade is examined in the remainder of this chapter.

9.6 Soldiers as colonisers II: mapping the nation through war in Asia

Figure 9.25: Guan Wei (2002) Dow: Island Source: NGA 2004: 28

One of the more recent acquisitions made by the Australian National Gallery in Canberra is Guan Wei’s series of 48 paintings entitled Dow: Island (2002). When viewed together, Guan’s paintings create a map, three metres high and nine metres long (NGA 2004), of a mythical territory (Figure 9.25). This territory consists of islands, painted in a Chinese landscape style, isolated within a stormy ocean. At the bottom of the paintings is what appears to be a large land mass. When the painting is viewed from closer proximity, numerous faceless, pink animals can be magic of the city 210 rachel trigg seen in crowded boats between the islands (Figure 9.26). As in Mercator’s early maps, the ocean is inhabited by dragons and other monsters, while the southern land mass is patrolled by large, black crows. In discussing Dow: Island, Guan has stated, “the map is very important to human thinking. I’m interested in maps of the Middle Ages which included strange animals and birds…The work is like a big history that includes ancient animals and human migrations and the situation of refugees in the present (NGA 2004: 28). Dow: Island can be read as representing Australia as both the great southern land of ancient and medieval geographies, discussed earlier in this chapter, and the prosperous democracy envisaged by migrants who once arrived at, and continue to arrive in, the nation. Guan’s Figure 9.26: Detail of Guan Wei (2002) paintings can also be seen to represent Dow: Island Australia as a strange and foreboding place Source: NGA 2004: 28 which continues to be located outside the mythic geography of Asia.

Located approximately half way along Anzac Parade are the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial (AVFNM) and the Australian National Korean War Memorial (ANKWM). Like Guan’s painting, these Memorials represent aspects of Australia’s historic, geographic and mythic relationships with Asia. The two Memorials, which were inaugurated in 1992 and 2000, have many similarities. They both incorporate prehistoric memorial forms and also use contemporary montages of words and images to represent the experiences of soldiers at war. In addition, unlike the Ataturk Memorial, Desert Mounted Corps Memorial and Tobruk Memorial, and despite the far greater proximity of Australia to Korea and Vietnam than to Turkey or France, the AVFNM and ANKWM make no attempt to symbolically colonise places in which Australians have died, but rather represent the battlefields of Asia as foreign soil.

The AVFNM consists of three large concrete stelae, raised from the ground on a magic of the city 211 rachel trigg plinth and accessed by a long ramp (Figure 9.27). The stelae torque slightly toward each other, creating a cave-like space within. The internal faces of two of the three stelae contain words and images. Despite its subject matter, the form of the Memorial is Figure 9.27: Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial (1992) reminiscent not of Asian Source: Trigg 2006 architecture, nor of the neoclassical forms often used in memorials, but of prehistoric standing stones. These formations, the best known of which is Stonehenge in southern England, consist of circles of large rocks in the midst of which is an altar. In Neolithic times, the altars were used for rituals including the making of sacrifices, some of which may have been human (Castleden 1993). The incorporation of prehistoric forms into the Memorial can be read as equating the soldiers who died in Vietnam to human sacrifices. This reading is supported by the placement near the centre of the Memorial of a black, granite stone, which is rectangular in both section and plan and roughly the size and shape of an altar.

The granite stone at the centre of the AVFNM is inscribed with the words “CONTAINED WITHIN THE CIRCLE SUSPENDED ABOVE ARE THE NAMES OF THOSE AUSTRALIANS WHO DIED IN THE VIETNAM WAR 1962-1973”. The circle to which this inscription refers is suspended over the centre of the Memorial by a grid of wires. As the wires are light and transparent, they virtually disappear from view and the granite circle appears to hover over the Memorial like a helicopter rotor. A large image on the stele to the west of the Memorial, which directly faces the entry ramp, is also imprinted with a black and white image of magic of the city 212 rachel trigg soldiers and helicopters (Figure 9.28). A sign at the base of the stele states that the image is an enlargement of a photograph taken by Mike Coleridge in August 1967 and shows Australian soldiers being airlifted to the Nui Dat base.

The men in Coleridge’s photograph are depicted crouching and grouped protectively together. They hold weapons and some, like the soldiers in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC, have rounds of ammunition slung over their shoulders. However, the soldiers in the AVFNM are not, like their American counterparts, the sole focus of the photograph. While the emphasis in the figurative component of the Memorial in Washington is on the sculpted bodies of young soldiers (see Figure 8.23), the image on the Memorial in Canberra portrays a jumble of bodies Figure 9.28: Detail of Australian Vietnam and machines. Although the Australian Forces National Memorial soldiers are depicted in open terrain, Source: Trigg 2007 the Vietnamese landscape in which they stand is difficult to discern. The men look in varying directions and there is no clear centre to the image.9 The confused effect created by the image is increased by its having been reproduced from a newspaper photograph and thus being considerably pixellated.

The inner face of the northern most stele in the AVFNM is also adorned. However, rather than containing an image, the stele is covered with phrases spelt out in metal letters. Although the phrases are grouped into rough blocks of text, they do not form meaningful paragraphs. Instead, each phrase is an independent magic of the city 213 rachel trigg expression relating to the wartime experiences of soldiers and, occasionally, of family and friends at home. The phrases include quotes which appear to be from newspaper articles and televisions reports, as well as from the letters and other correspondence of soldiers. Some of the phrases are written in a formal style, while others use colloquial language and acronyms.

Taken together, the phrases on the AVFNM represent the physical danger and confusing environment confronted by service men and women during the war. Phrases such as “THE ENEMY JOINED OUR COMMAND RADIO NET, THREW COLOURED SMOKE AND ALMOST SUCKED THE CO INTO LANDING”, “THIS IS PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON IN YOUR LOCATION” and “THE RAAF DUST- OFF PILOTS HAD NO LIGHT AND SHOWED GREAT SKILL IN COMING DOWN” reflect this combination of danger and strangeness. Other phrases used on the Memorial, such as “SUNRAY WAS DIRECTING THE LIGHTFIRE TEAM – BUSHRANGERS – FROM HIS POSSUM”, “NOBODY’S GOT 365 DAYS AND A WAKEY TO GO” and “MAGPIE 35, HIT MY SMOKE”, are virtually indecipherable to a non combatant, yet manage to express a sense of danger and of a surreal, almost dreamlike reality.

One of the longer phrases quoted on the AVFNM originates from a song, entitled I Was Only Nineteen (1983), by the Australian band Redgum. The song describes the death of a soldier, on the same day that US astronauts landed on the moon, in the midst of a battle in the jungles of Vietnam. The part of the song quoted on the Memorial states

THEN SOMEONE CALLED OUT ‘CONTACT!’ AND THE BLOKE BEHIND ME SWORE WE BOOKED IN THERE FOR HOURS, THEN A GOD-ALMIGHTY ROAR FRANKIE KICKED A MINE THE DAY THAT MANKIND KICKED THE MOON magic of the city 214 rachel trigg GOD HELP ME, HE WAS GOING HOME IN JUNE.

Like other quotes on the Memorial, the remaining lyrics of I Was Only Nineteen refer to the physical and psychological environment encountered by Australian soldiers in Vietnam. The song states that though the troops “made their tents a home” with “VB and pin ups on the lockers”,10 they were always reminded of their jungle surroundings by the “agent orange sunset through the scrub”. The song goes on to state that “the Anzac legends didn’t mention mud and blood and tears”, emphasising the differences between the mythologies created during World Wars I and II and the reality encountered by the soldiers in Vietnam. However, neither the song nor the Memorial creates a simple dichotomy between the real experiences of combatants overseas and the mythologising of those experiences in Australia. As can be seen from the phrases quoted on the Memorial, the soldiers in Vietnam made sense of their existence by describing the landscape in terms just as magical to the non combatant as the Gallipoli experience was to them. More than any other Memorial discussed in this chapter, or indeed elsewhere in this thesis, the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial is designed from the perspective of the combatants. It does not attempt to symbolically colonise foreign ground, or to create a connection between the bodies of the soldier and the citizen, but rather scars a small part of the Australian capital with the international experiences of the veteran.

In contrast to the enclosed form of the AVFNM, the Australian National Korean War Memorial consists of a grey, granite wall upon which are mounted the Figure 9.29: Australian National Korean War Memorial (2000) crests of the RAN, RAAF Source: Trigg 2007 magic of the city 215 rachel trigg and Australian Army, as well as a scroll listing the 21 countries which contributed combat or medical units to the United Nations (UN) command during the Korean War (Figure 9.29). The wall is set on a large plinth, upon which stands the words “KOREAN WAR 1950-53”. On either side of the wall are grids of steel poles, within which are located bronze sculptures of an Australian soldier, sailor and pilot. The sculptures depict the three servicemen on patrol and are similar in style to those incorporated into the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington DC.

In front of the main component of the ANKWM is a triangular form inscribed with the words, “THIS OBELISK IS IN MEMORY OF THE MEN FROM AUSTRALIA WHO FELL IN THE KOREAN WAR AND HAVE NO KNOWN GRAVE. THEY DIED WITH MEN FROM OTHER COUNTRIES FIGHTING TO UPHOLD THE IDEALS OF THE UNITED NATIONS”. Signage at the Memorial explains that this inscription is identical to that at a UN cemetery in Pusan in South Korea. Within the wall which comprises the primary component of the Memorial is an area, oval in plan, which is faced in steel. In the centre of this area is a granite boulder relocated from Korea. Behind the boulder are words in Korean script, which signage at the Memorial translates as meaning “peace and independence”. Inscribed behind the boulder are also the words, in English, “IN MEMORY OF THOSE AUSTRIANS WHO DIED IN THE KOREAN WAR 1950-1953 AND IN HONOUR OF THOSE WHO SERVED”.

Like the photograph and quotes in the AVFNM, the recast sculpture in the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial and inscription stone in the Tobruk Memorial, the ANKWM attempts to create a symbolic connection between Australia and a place in which Australian troops died. It uses the relocated boulder, inscription in Korean script and words taken from the Pusan memorial to link two countries which were once united in war. However, while the earlier Memorials each use one primary metaphor to relate the landscapes of Australia to those of a foreign battlefield, the ANKWM contains a uncertain array of forms, images, texts and symbols. magic of the city 216 rachel trigg The representational strategies used in the ANKWM may relate partly to the fact that fewer Australian citizens are familiar with the details of Australia’s involvement in the Korean War. Of the 12 memorials on Anzac Parade, the ANKWM is the only one which provides a historical overview of the subject war within the fabric of the Memorial.11 The inner face of the area at the centre of the Memorial is almost entirely covered with images and text. To the northern side are: a montage of newspaper articles, letters, telegrams, quotes and other written material; text outlining the roles of the RAN, Australian Army and RAAF in the war; and a montage of photographs whose subjects include soldiers in trenches and aircraft on a runway (Figure 9.30). To the south are: a paragraph of text on Australia’s role in the War; a map of Korea showing sites of battle and dates of significant events; and another montage of photographs.

While the AVFNM and ANKWM both contain montages of words and images, the former uses Figure 9.30: Interior of Australian National Korean War Memorial mysterious textual fragments Source: Trigg 2007 while the latter incorporates large portions of newspaper articles, lengthy interpretative texts and maps which appear as if they have been taken from textbooks. Unlike other memorials on Anzac Parade, the ANKWM does not mythologise Australia’s involvement in war nor its subsequent relationships with North and South Korea. It utilises several forms historically associated with memorial architecture, such as the obelisk and the altar, but does not draw upon the meanings associated with those forms. Although, with the inclusion of a boulder, the Memorial literally contains a part of Korea, it does not attempt to symbolically colonise foreign soil. Neither does it represent the strange experiences of soldiers overseas, as does the AVFNM. Instead, like the World War magic of the city 217 rachel trigg II Memorial in Washington DC described in the previous chapter, the Australian National Korean War Memorial is primarily didactic in function. Like a museum exhibit, it rationally attempts to educate the visitor, rather than to express the nightmarish experiences of the veteran or to colonise a foreign land with the ghostly presence of the war dead. Although the work may be successful as an educational tool, as a Memorial it fails to create a magical understanding of the city or the world.

9.7 Tracing tangled destinies: mapping the nation in the Pacific The National Museum of Australian contains a gallery called ‘Tangled Destinies’. The gallery describes the history of the Australian environment and “explores the idea that a society is shaped – maybe even defined – by the way it responds to the challenges and opportunities of its environment” (Smith 2004: 94). In contrast, on Australia’s destiny is represented as on Anzac Parade as deriving not from its environment, but from its wartime engagement with foreign nations. The nations with which Australia has most frequently shared the duties of war and, most recently, peacekeeping are clustered on the edges of the Pacific Ocean. Those nations include Papua New Guinea, East Timor, the Solomon Islands and, particularly, New Zealand and the United States of America.

The New Zealand Memorial is the most recent work dedicated on Anzac Parade and also that which most directly represents the mythologised wartime relationship between Figure 9.31: New Zealand Memorial (2001) Source: Trigg 2007 Australia and its Anzac ally. magic of the city 218 rachel trigg The Memorial consists of two large and irregular bronze arches located on either side of the southern end of the Parade (Figure 9.31). The arches are thicker at the base than the top and have a roughly diamond shaped pattern etched into them. Bronze plaques at the base of each arch state that the Memorial represents the idea that “each of us [are] at a handle of the basket”. The base of each of the arches is inscribed with a work by New Zealand poet Jenny Bornholdt. The poem states,

This sea we cross over and over. Tides turning on gold and sheep. On rain. On sand. On earth the fallen lie beneath. On geography. On women standing. Matilda waltzing. On people of gardens and movement. On trade and union. This sea a bridge of faith. This sea we are contained and moved by.

Bornholdt’s poem represents Australia and New Zealand as sharing a common fate based largely on a shared geography. The location of the two nations on either side of the Tasman Sea is alluded to in the image of a sea crossed many times. Both nations are depicted as being reliant on the export of “gold and sheep” or, more generally, minerals and livestock. Embedded in the pavement beneath the Memorial arches are the names of places in which Anzacs have fought, including North Africa, France and Turkey. The Memorial represents Australia and New Zealand not only as having a joint history of wartime suffering and sacrifice, but also as sharing a common destiny. magic of the city 219 rachel trigg While Australia’s relationship with its most enduring ally is represented in the New Zealand Memorial, as well as in the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial and in the name ‘Anzac Parade’, references to other nations on the western side of the Pacific are largely absent from Canberra’s chief commemorative space. Although Malaya, Singapore, Timor, Ambon, Java, Papua New Guinea, Bougainville, the Philippines and Borneo are recognised in the central courtyard of the Australian War Memorial as places in which Anzacs fought, there is no specific acknowledgement of Australia’s relationship with nations in its immediate region, other than New Zealand. This is despite there being two memorials on Anzac Parade specifically commemorating Australia’s World War II involvement in Europe and North Africa and also despite the deaths of 8 000 Australian soldiers in Japanese concentration camps across the Pacific (Inglis 1998).12

Australia’s destiny is represented in Canberra as being most densely tangled with that of the US. The most obvious example of this relationship is the Australian- American Memorial, which is located at the northern end of Kings

Avenue, just south of Constitution Figure 9.32: The Australian-American Memorial Avenue, and is flanked by the viewed from the south bank of Lake Burley Griffin, as depicted in The Future Canberra offices of the Department of Source: NCDC 1964: 71 Defence and the Australian Defence Force. The Memorial also acts as a landmark and orienting point in the various plans for Canberra. The Future Canberra (1964), for example, includes a sketch of the Memorial and surrounding offices viewed from the opposite side of Lake Burley Griffin (Figure 9.32), while Tomorrow’s Canberra (1970) incorporates an artist’s impression of the defence precinct with the Memorial at its centre (Figure 9.33).

As these images indicate, the Australian-American Memorial consists of a 37 metre magic of the city 220 rachel trigg column surmounted by an eagle astride a globe. Although aluminium, the column has been sand blasted to resemble stone (NCA undated a). A plaque at the bottom of the pillar reads “IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF THE VITAL HELP GIVEN BY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DURING THE WAR IN THE PACIFIC 1941-1945”. The plaque also states that the Memorial was dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II in 1954. This is peculiar as the War in the Pacific is seen by many historians as marking the transfer of Australian military allegiance from Britain to the US (Inglis 1998). The Australian-American Memorial is still considered to be of such importance that its inauguration is included in The Griffin Legacy’s timeline of significant events in the development of the capital (NCA 2004). It is the only memorial within Canberra, with the exception of the Australian War Memorial, which has its significance marked in this way. It is also the only war memorial within Canberra to be located beyond Anzac Parade, despite having been created well after the completion of the Australian War Memorial.

Figure 9.33: Artist’s impression of the Australian- American Memorial from Tomorrow’s Canberra Source: NCDC 1970: 55 The Australian capital shares a similar development history with its American counterpart. Like Washington DC, Canberra did not evolve slowly from a small settlement to a national capital. Both cities correspond more closely to ancient systems of urban formation, in which settlements were planned before they were made (see Chapter 2). The plans for both Washington DC and Canberra were originally created by foreign architects and then imperfectly implemented by local bureaucrats. The Griffin Plan, like the L’Enfant Plan for Washington DC, is still used as the conceptual model for the Australian capital. In addition, just as the National Mall appeared in the first plan for Washington DC, so Anzac Parade was present in the first plan for Canberra. magic of the city 221 rachel trigg The similar planning approach to the Australian and US capitals is contemporary as well as historic. Both cities have recently reconfirmed and reinterpreted their original plans, in Washington DC through Extending the Legacy (1997) and in Canberra through The Griffin Legacy (2004). As discussed in the previous chapter, in 2001 the NCPC prepared a Memorials and Museums Master Plan for Washington DC. The year after the Master Plan was released, the NCA prepared its own Guidelines for Commemorative Works in the National Capital for Canberra. The Australian Guidelines have a very similar approach to the American Master Plan, with one significant difference: the former consciously aims to make Canberra a place which is valued not only by its own citizens, but also by the inhabitants of other nations. The NCA’s Guidelines envisage “a National Capital which symbolises Australia’s heritage, values and aspirations, is internationally recognised, and of which Australians are proud” (NCA 2002a: I italics added). The Griffin Legacy also betrays an anxiety for Canberra to garner international acclaim. It contains a section entitled ‘International Significance’ which outlines the historic and ongoing recognition of the Griffin Plan and stresses that “the design of Canberra is firmly established in the international canons of town planning and landscape architecture” (NCA 2004: 24). As the Australian-American Memorial is far more prominent within the landscape of Canberra than the monuments which commemorate Australian losses in the remainder of the Asia Pacific, so the international town planning canons to which The Griffin Legacy aspires are based on European and American precedent, rather than on the considerable Asian traditions of urban formation.

9.8 Remembering the maternal and the modest: mapping the nation as home The Australian Service Nurses National Memorial is one of the newer commemorative works on Anzac Parade. When viewed from the Parade, the most prominent feature of the Memorial, which was dedicated in 1999, is a green, glass wall (Figure 9.34). From this direction the wall appears opaque, and the words magic of the city 222 rachel trigg “AUSTRALIAN SERVICE NURSES” can be seen written in steel at its base. At closer proximity, it can be seen that the wall incorporates a chronological list of wars in which Australian nurses have served, as well as the phrase “beyond all Figure 9.34: Australian Service Nurses National Memorial praise”. Although when (1999) viewed from Anzac Parade Source: Trigg 2007 viewed from Anzac Parade the wall appears flat, when viewed from the side (Figure 9.35), the Australian Service Nurses National Memorial is revealed to consist of two walls which curve toward each other.

The panels from which the Nurses Memorial is composed have images and text sculpted and etched into their surfaces. The images depict women in nursing uniform and indicate the physical environments in which they existed during war (Figure 9.36). The text, according to an information plaque near the Memorial, consists of quotes taken from the diaries and letters of nurses, recreated in the original handwriting. The text includes the phrases, “patients were nursed in blankets, there were no sheets, no running Figure 9.35: Australian Service Nurses National water”, “they come to us Memorial viewed from north Source: Trigg 2007 straight from the trenches their magic of the city 223 rachel trigg muddy clothing frozen on them” and “we either patched up the wounded to return to duty or to medivac them home to Australia”.

Like the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington DC, the Australian Service Nurses National Memorial represents the roles of nurses at war as primarily maternal, rather than medical. The Memorial’s semi ovid form, and the fact that the images and more personal text can be seen only from within the two walls, connects the female presence at war with a private and interior world. The relationship symbolised in the Memorial is not that between Australia and the rest of the world, but between women and home. The rear of the Nurses Memorial is bordered by a low hedge of rosemary. While this herb is in Western culture often associated with remembrance, it is also used in cooking and grown in backyards Figure 9.36: Detail of Australian Service Nurses National Memorial around Australia. One of the panels Source: Trigg 2007 on the Nurses Memorial makes reference to the stereotypically feminine arts of gardening and cooking. It quotes a nurse’s diary or letter as stating, “we grew tomatoes near the wards so we could give the boys a tomato sandwich”.

The servicewomen depicted in the Australian Service Nurses National Memorial wear traditional, nun-like uniforms. The sexual role played by servicewomen, particularly in more recent wars, is thus not represented in the Memorial. Nor is war represented as an escape or an adventure, as it is occasionally for the men depicted elsewhere on Anzac Parade and in the Australian War Memorial. The memorials in Canberra, like those in Washington DC, represent men as the nation builders who defend Australia and provide connections with the outside world, while women are the nurturers who defend the home and nurse the country. magic of the city 224 rachel trigg In contrast to Washington DC, there is no city founder of either gender mythologised in the centre of Canberra. The Australian capital does not contain monuments to wartime generals nor to national leaders such as prime ministers or governors general. The National Canberra Plan acknowledges this and speculates that, “as the nation matures, an Australian equivalent of the Lincoln Memorial might be seen as a powerful symbol of the nation” (NCPA 1990: i). The Plan also acknowledges that “who might occupy [the memorial’s] central place of pride is a matter which would not be easily resolved” (NCPA 1990: i). Although Canberra contains an obvious axis mundi at its centre, this takes the contemporary form of a national flag, rather than the phallic shaped Washington Monument at the centre of Washington DC. When memorials in Canberra are dedicated to the memory of an individual Australian, they do not replicate the precedents set in the Washington Figure 9.37: Peter Corlett (1988) Simpson and his donkey, 1915 Monument and Lincoln Memorial, but rather are Source: Trigg 2007 small in scale and affectionate in nature.13 The gardens surrounding the Australian War Memorial contain several sculptures representing individual Anzacs. One of these is a bronze sculpture by Peter Corlett (1988) depicting Private John Simpson leading a donkey laden with a wounded soldier (Figure 9.37). The story of Simpson and his donkey has been told to many generations of Australian children. Although the story is almost one hundred years old, the shop at the Australian War Memorial continues to sell an illustrated book called Simpson and Duffy (Small 2001). The book tells of how a medic in the Australian Army, called Simpson, used a donkey found roaming the hills of Gallipoli, which he called Duffy, to carry wounded soldiers to safety. The book informs children about the details of the Gallipoli campaign, as well as instructing them on the horrors of war and mythologising Simpson. It states, for example, that “often the donkey’s back was red with blood magic of the city 225 rachel trigg from the soldiers’ terrible injuries…Simpson just kept walking while the bullets whined and spat around him” (Small 2001: 15). The book tells of Simpson’s death from gunshot wounds and, in drawings by Ester Kasepuu, depicts his grave and several memorials, including the one in the grounds of the Australian War Memorial.

Another example of the way in which individual Anzacs have been memorialised in Canberra is the bronze sculpture of Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop (1995), also by Peter Corlett. Dunlop was a medic, prisoner and diarist in World War II. The sculpture (Figure 9.38) depicts Dunlop not as a young soldier, but as an older man with slightly hunched shoulders.14 He is shown dressed in a neat suit and stands, gently smiling, with his hat at his side and a scarlet poppy in his lapel. As with Simpson, Dunlop is represented not as a larger than life wartime Figure 9.38: Peter Corlett (1995) Sir Edward ‘Weary’ hero, but as a relatively ordinary individual. Dunlop Source: Trigg 2007 Although his smile and use of his nickname indicate that age has not withered Dunlop’s sense of humour, he is depicted, above all, as mortal. Again, this is in contrast to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, which represent their subjects as immortal gods and heroes.

Anzac Parade and the grounds of the Australian War Memorial are not the only places in Canberra to contain commemorative works to the wartime dead. One of the main galleries in the National Museum of Australia is called ‘Nation: Symbols of Australia’. It exhibits symbolic artefacts used throughout Australia, such as a Cobb and Co coach lamp, Victa lawnmower and Hills Hoist clothes line. The gallery also contains items which have an almost sacred meaning for Australians, such as the preserved heart of the racehorse Phar Lap. Within the ‘Symbols of Australia’ magic of the city 226 rachel trigg gallery is a full sized replica of a war memorial located in the small town of Braidwood (Figure 9.39). The primary element of the Braidwood War Memorial is a sculpted representation of a soldier in uniform. The soldier is depicted in an informal pose, wearing a felt hat with one side turned up and standing with the butt of his rifle on the ground.

From the details of the soldier’s uniform and the fact that the Braidwood War Memorial was unveiled in 1922, it is clear that the sculpture is intended to represent an Australian combatant of World War I, known colloquially as a ‘digger’. In addition to being a specific historical figure, the digger has been seen to Figure 9.39: Replica of Braidwood Memorial in represent the best characteristics of an Australian National Museum of Australia Source: NMA 2004: 76 citizen. As the Museum puts it,

for many, what has been seen as the spirit of the digger in the trenches of Gallipoli and France – dogged persistence against all odds, acceptance of hardship, dry humour, courage, ready generosity, modesty so extreme that it borders on self degradation – is also quintessentially Australian (NMA 2004: 76).

These characteristics are represented not only in the Braidwood War Memorial, but also in the thousands of similar memorials located in towns throughout Australia. Similar qualities, with the additions of diversity, social responsibility, freedom and concern for the environment, are listed in the Guidelines for Commemorative Works in the National Capital (NCA 2002a) as being typically Australian. Despite seeking international recognition, the recently adopted policy thus requires the representation of Australian values in Australian memorials. magic of the city 227 rachel trigg 9.10 Conclusions The conclusions sections of previous case study chapters within this thesis commence with an overview of the ways in which a particular place of the dead is represented in one or more texts, before commenting on the use of textual analysis and discourse analysis in the construction of the chapter. In this chapter, the process will be reversed, with conclusions in relation to methodology being considered prior, and as an introduction, to conclusions regarding content. In Chapter 4, it was explained that the quality of an argument constructed using discourse analysis is highly contingent on the quality or richness of the texts examined. In addition, to paraphrase Rose (2001), the most persuasive discourse analyses are those which bring together a wide range of texts which may previously have appeared to be unconnected. In Chapter 8, for example, it was possible to achieve a convincing discourse analysis due to the number, quality and variety of texts which depict the Mall in Washington DC, as well as the general coherence of the world views represented in those texts. In comparison, the discourse analysis in this chapter has proved far less persuasive, firstly due to the more limited range of texts available for consideration, and secondly because of the myriad of representational strategies used in the memorials on Anzac Parade.

Analysis in Chapter 8 considered texts including: an iconic black and white movie; a long running and an internationally recognised cartoon series; an often reprinted portrait of a president; heated correspondence between an organisation and the architect it commissioned; a cult television political drama; the rather sexist inscriptions on a recent memorial; and a magical postcard. In contrast, the texts available for consideration in this chapter have, with the exception of Dyson’s (1929) cartoon and the paintings by Longstaff (1924) and Guan (2002), been generally restricted to land use planning documents. Such documents are far less rich than those used in the previous chapter and are less likely to represent either a magical realist narrative or the sophisticated iconography necessary in the enchantment of technology. This may not have been problematic had the magic of the city 228 rachel trigg memorials on Anzac Parade not themselves largely failed to create a magical understanding of the city.

Like the Washington DC of the L’Enfant Plan, which is able to be understood from a single, enlightened perspective, the Canberra of the Griffin Plan is a chimera which will never entirely be made real. However, the Mall at the centre of the L’Enfant Plan succeeds in creating a magical understanding of the city because the meaning inscribed in the large scale plan is reaffirmed, with some variation according to historical context, within the monuments and memorials which punctuate its length. In contrast, although the centre of Australia’s capital is still laid out in accordance with the conceptual model created by the Griffins, neither the city nor its central place of commemoration represent the diversity and complexity of contemporary Australia. Anzac Parade is not the grand and cohesive ‘symbolic way’ envisaged in 1965, nor is it a modest evocation of a humble nation devoid of jingoism and self acclaim.

Some of the memorials on Anzac Parade do, however, have magical aspects to them. Many of the memorials created prior to the interment, in 1993, of an unknown soldier in the Australian War Memorial represent the haunting of the collective Australian imagination by the ghosts of men killed in World Wars I and II. This magical reality is most convincingly represented not in the memorials themselves, but in Longstaff’s painting in the Australian War Memorial and Dyson’s cartoon, which depicts the same building. However other works on Anzac Parade, including the Desert Mounted Corps, Tobruk and Kemal Ataturk Memorials, map this creation of sacred geographies on foreign soil. The Australian mythologising of the battlefields of World Wars I and II inverts the fascination which the great southern land once held for Europe. The memorials on Anzac Parade, like the maps used by medieval sailors, evidence the magical allure of the unknown, whether it be a continent undiscovered by Western civilisation or the place in which a son or brother died. magic of the city 229 rachel trigg The more recent memorials on Anzac Parade map Australia’s relationships with Asia and the Pacific, but largely avoid any reference to the complexity inherent in Australia’s relationships with its geographic neighbours. Whereas the memorials to World Wars I and II symbolically colonise other lands with the Australian dead, the Asian geographies represented in the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial and Australian National Korean War Memorial remain decidedly foreign. While the former emphasises the strangeness of the jungle landscapes in which the Vietnam War was fought, the latter depicts the wartime experiences of Australians in a far more didactic way. Unlike many of the memorials on Anzac Parade, the Australian National Korean War Memorial does not attempt to magically breach the distance between Canberra and a place in which Australians fought, but instead presents a rational and singular depiction of the war and its combatants.

While the landscapes of Vietnam and Korea are to varying extents represented on Anzac Parade, those of other Pacific nations with which Australia has had wartime relations are largely absent. The two significant exceptions to this absence of the Pacific from the symbolic geographies of Canberra are New Zealand and the US. Australia’s relationship with its Anzac ally is represented in the New Zealand Memorial and the Desert Mounted Corps Memorial. While the latter, somewhat condescendingly, represents Australia as defending its smaller ally, the two nations are depicted in both memorials, as well as in the naming of Anzac Parade, as sharing a common history, geography and destiny. Australia’s relationship with the US is in Canberra mapped far more ambiguously. The Australian-American Memorial is more a victory column than a representation of a lasting friendship between two equal nations. The National Capital Authority and its predecessors in Canberra also appear to mimic the planning directives of the National Capital Planning Commission in Washington DC.

The other imaginative geography which is absent from Anzac Parade, although it occasionally appears elsewhere in Canberra, is that of Australia’s original magic of the city 230 rachel trigg inhabitants. It is interesting to consider the potentially productive symbolic dislocations which would occur if The Aboriginal Memorial, which currently resides in the National Gallery of Australia, were transferred to the Australian War Memorial or to an appropriately protective structure on Anzac Parade. Such a gesture would add prominence to the representation of local geographies on Anzac Parade, which are currently mapped primarily through the Australian Service Nurses National Memorial.

Although Australia remains, for the moment at least, predominantly Angle-Celtic, it is also a post colonial nation. Like India and the countries of South America, from which many magical realist writers have emerged, Australia is attempting to reconcile thousands of years of Indigenous understandings of place with more recent colonial and multi cultural ways of knowing the world. Magical realism may thus have been an appropriate representational strategy with which to inscribe a specifically Australian world view in Canberra. Instead of the panoply of references and styles which currently exists at the centre of the Australian capital, the understanding of Anzac Parade as magical may have resulted in a place which represents both the very real sacrifices of Australian soldiers in foreign lands and the strange and wonderful aspects of the country for which they died.

1 Inglis released a revised edition of his book, Sacred Places, in 2008.

2 The manuscript was written in the 1940s and as not been published. A copy of the manuscript does, however, reside in the Australian National Library in Canberra.

3 The trees lining the road are Tasmanian Blue Gums, while the shrubs in the median are Zealand hebe (NCA 2007).

4 In September 2007, the Minister for Veterans Affairs’ announced an international competition to design an Australian Peacekeeping Memorial, which is to be sited at the south-eastern end of Anzac Parade. The Memorial is due for completion in September 2009 (NCA 2007).

5 According to the Australian War Memorial (1997-2008), these works were created between 1925 and 1931, while Bowles was head sculptor of the Memorial’s modelling section.

6 And perhaps to visiting scholars such as Colombijn (1998). magic of the city 231 rachel trigg

7 See, for example, Windschuttle 2002 and Manne 2003.

8 According to a sign at the Memorial, the stone lions were given to the Australian Government in 1936 by the Burgomaster of Ypres.

9 It should be noted that, in contrast to the reading presented here, Colombijn sees these soldiers as “tough, self assured men, draped with bandoleers” (1998: 575).

10 ‘VB’ is ‘Victoria Bitter’, which remains a popular brand of Australian beer.

11 Although, as alluded to earlier in this chapter, interpretative material has recently been added to the Kemal Ataturk Memorial.

12 A total of 22 000 Australians, many of whom were forced into labour on works such as the Burma-Thailand Railway, were held in Japanese occupied territory during World War II (Inglis 1998).

13 Representations of city founders and national leaders in Canberra are largely confined to the National Portrait Gallery which, incidentally, is also located on the Griffin Plan axis which connects Parliament House to the Australian War Memorial.

14 This Memorial is a copy of an original which was unveiled in Melbourne in 1995 (Inglis 1998).

magic of the city 232 rachel trigg Representing absence at edge and centre: East Perth, 10 Lower Manhattan and the unearthing of the dead

Figure 10.1: The exposed slurry wall in Daniel Libeskind’s competition winning master plan for the World Trade Centre site in New York Source: www.wtcsitememorial.org

magic of the city 233 rachel trigg 10.1 Introduction This chapter examines the way in which the dead are represented, and hidden, in two very different places. It focuses on a set of cemeteries in East Perth, a suburb of the geographically isolated city of Perth in Western Australia (WA), and on Lower Manhattan in New York City, the economic, cultural and symbolic centre of the contemporary Western world. Despite their many differences, Perth and New York are both represented as places of prosperity and opportunity. The cities are also depicted as beacons of modernity, where shining glass and steel towers dominate the skyline and gridded plans ensure that valuable inner city land is distributed in an efficient manner. However, the rational understanding of the world embedded in these cities is disrupted by traces of the non rational. In Perth, a magical understanding of the world is manifest in an Aboriginal spirituality which emerges from beneath the earth in seemingly unpredictable and unruly ways. In Manhattan, the dominant world view is disrupted by an understanding of the city as a darkly Gothic place. As in Perth, the magical is in Manhattan largely hidden underground until events such as the destruction of skyscrapers through terrorist attack suddenly render it visible.

The first place on which this chapter focuses is Lower Manhattan in New York City and specifically the area now known as ‘Ground Zero’ (Figure 10.2). This area is bounded by Vesey Street to the north, Church Street to the east, Liberty Street to the south and West Street to the west.1 Until 2001, the area contained 16 acres and six of the seven buildings of the World Trade Figure 10.2: Ground Zero in the context of Centre. On the morning of 11 Lower Manhattan Source: Aerial photograph 2008 sourced from September 2001, over 2 800 people http://earth.google.com magic of the city 234 rachel trigg died on this site when planes were flown into Towers 1 and 2 of the World Trade Centre. These attacks resulted in the destruction of all six buildings within the World Trade Centre ‘superblock’, as well as several neighbouring buildings (Stephens 2004).

Proposals for redeveloping the site previously occupied by the World Trade Centre, now known as ‘Ground Zero’, began almost immediately after the terrorist attacks. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) was formed in late 2001 to assist in planning and coordinating the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan and, in particular, the World Trade Centre site (LMDC 2002). The complex process of planning for the site is being overseen by the LMDC but involves a plethora of other stakeholders. This process has been documented in detail in Stephens (2004) and Goldberger (2004), as well as in journals and newspapers such as Architectural Record, The New York Times and The New Yorker. This chapter will not duplicate the analysis provided in these sources, but will instead focus on the adopted master plan for the site, as well as proposed designs for a memorial to the victims of the terrorist attacks.

There is a large amount of literature on Lower Manhattan and particularly the redevelopment of Ground Zero. For example, Michael Sorkin and Sharon Zukin (2002) have edited an anthology of writings about the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York, called After the World Trade Centre: Rethinking New York City. Sorkin (2003) has also written his own book length critique of the process of redeveloping Ground Zero, which incorporates his design proposals for the site. Paul Goldberger (2004), an architectural critic for The New Yorker and The New York Times, has published his account of the rebuilding of New York after the terrorist attacks and a compendium of architectural proposals for the city has been published as Imagining Ground Zero (Stephens 2004). Daniel Libeskind (2004), the winner of the master planning competition for Ground Zero, has also documented his perspective on the design process in his autobiography, Breaking Ground. Even Joseph Rykwert has added an afterword to his text The Seduction of magic of the city 235 rachel trigg Place in order to refer to the events of 11 September 2001 and their impact on the understanding of buildings and cities.2

The other place examined in this chapter is the East Perth Cemeteries3 in Perth, WA. The Cemeteries are currently bounded by Plain Street to the west, Wittenoom Street to the north, Waterloo Crescent to the east and Bronte Street to the south (Figure 10.3). The outer boundary of the Cemeteries is fenced and public access is restricted. The Cemeteries are surrounded by an unusual mix of land uses. Directly to the west is the State Government’s Vehicle Inspection Centre while further west, and to the north across Wittenoom Street, are townhouses and apartments created during the redevelopment of much of East Perth in the 1990s. To the east is Gloucester Park, Perth’s only permanent harness racing track, and to the south is the State Government’s Main Roads Department.

Perth Jewish Memorial Cemetery Residential Development Residential Development

East Perth Cemeteries Swan River

Vehicle Inspection Centre Gloucester Park

Pioneer Gardens Main Roads Department

Figure 10.3: The East Perth Cemeteries in its local context, with the unbroken line indicating the current extent of the Cemeteries and the dotted line indicating the extent of the Cemeteries in the late nineteenth century Source: Aerial photograph 2008 sourced from http://earth.google.com

In contrast to Lower Manhattan, there has been little written about the East Perth Cemeteries from a scholarly perspective. This is perhaps due to the geographically peripheral nature of the city and the, for many decades, industrial nature of the suburb in which the Cemeteries are located. There are, however, several magic of the city 236 rachel trigg professional studies which have been undertaken as part of the conservation of the Cemeteries over the last 20 years. These are: James Richardson and David Davies’s (1986) two volume East Perth Cemetery: Resting Place of Western Australian Pioneers; Oline Richards’s (1991) East Perth Cemetery Landscape Conservation Study; and Ronald Bodycoat’s (1992) The East Perth Cemeteries Conservation Plan.

The modes of representation analysed in this chapter include newspaper articles, architectural plans, television series, maps, paintings, postcards, songs and cartoons. The texts considered in reference to the East Perth Cemeteries include modes of representation which were created using a technical methodology and may thus be considered more rational than those used elsewhere in this thesis. In particular, Bodycoat’s East Peth Cemeteries Conservation Plan was prepared using the methodology required by the Australian Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance, also known as the ‘Burra Charter’. The method used in this chapter is thus more directly Derridian than previous chapters, as it involves the analysis or ‘deconstruction’ of texts which have already been considered by researchers including Richardson and Davies (1986), Richards (1991) and Bodycoat (1992), as well as various writers on New York City and Ground Zero.

The texts which are examined in this chapter in the context of the East Perth Cemeteries were gathered primarily through research at the Battye Library in Perth. Those which represent Ground Zero and Lower Manhattan were gathered through an eclectic range of processes including newspaper, journal and internet searches and a visit to the New York Public Library. Like Chapters 8 and 9, this chapter also uses observations made during site visits. East Perth was visited many times between 2002 and late 2006, while New York was visited in mid 2006 and early 2008. These visits were recorded through written notes, sketch drawings and photographs. The site visits were used particularly to examine the differences between the two cities as they are represented in texts, both fictional and non magic of the city 237 rachel trigg fictional, and as they exist on the ground. The use of site observation is particularly important in this chapter, as the method applied here involves a careful reading of texts not only for that which is represented, but also for that which is hidden.

10.2 Unearthing Lower Manhattan In 1997, art critic Robert Hughes presented a television series and a book, both entitled American Visions. The book attempted “to look at America through the lens of its art” (Hughes 1997: vii), but also became “a love-letter to America” (1997: viii) from an Australian citizen who had lived in New York since the 1970s. American Visions represents the world view of a migrant and, as Tuan would describe it, a cosmopolite.4 In his book, Hughes associates New Figure 10.4: Georgia O’Keefe (1927) The Radiator Building York not only – Night, New York Source: Hughes 1997: 378 with modernist art, but also with modernist architecture and city planning. As evidence of his argument that “New York made modernism; modernism made New York” (1997: 337), Hughes presents a large variety of early twentieth century representations of the urban landscape. Images such as Georgia O’Keefe’s (1927) The Radiator Building – Night, New York, Joseph Stella’s Figure 10.5: Joseph Stella (1920- (1920-22) The Voice of the City of New York 22) The Voice of the City of New York Interpreted: The Bridge Interpreted: The Bridge and Hugh Ferriss’s Source: Hughes 1997: 377 magic of the city 238 rachel trigg (1922) Study for Maximum Mass Permitted by the 1916 New York Zoning Law, Stage 4 are used by Hughes to show that modernist architecture, and particularly the skyscraper, represented New York to both the residents of the city and to the world at large (see Figures 10.4 - 10.6).

The skyscraper, as Hughes (1997) and many other commentators including Taylor (1992), Koolhaus (1994), Rykwert (2000) and Nye (2005) explain, was Figure 10.6: Hugh Ferriss (1922) Study for Maximum created due to the scarcity of land in places such as Mass Permitted by the 1916 Manhattan Island. However, the skyscraper New York Zoning Law, Stage 4 Source: Hughes 1997: 419 functioned not only to address land shortages in an economically rational way, but also, as Hughes puts it, to “replay the myth of frontier expansion. Not horizontal expansion, with the wagons rolling westwards. But vertical expansion, a land grab in the sky, the creation of wealth out of empty air” (1997: 405). Rem Koolhaus concurs with this description of the mythologies represented by the skyscraper, stating that “Manhattan has no choice but the skyward extrusion of the Grid itself; only the skyscraper offers business the wide- open spaces of a man-made Wild West, a frontier in the sky” (1994: 87). Tuan has noted that “very tall buildings in today’s skyline mostly cater for the needs of business and finance, which are directed to goals of abstract wealth that have no limit” (2007: 49), and has also declared that skyscrapers are the first building type in history which “owes nothing to the template of a rotating cosmos” (2007: 49). The magical creation of valuable real estate from air resulted in an architectural style which, although modernist, “bore little or no relation to the kind of minimal, functionalist, austere” (Hughes 1997: 405) architecture of early twentieth century Europe. New York skyscrapers such as the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building combined the land use efficiency of very tall buildings with architectural details from a range of times and places. magic of the city 239 rachel trigg As well as being portrayed in the paintings cited by Hughes, the modernist mythology of New York is represented in a large number of modes of representation and individual texts. In the early twentieth century, for example, the city and its skyscrapers were depicted in numerous postcards. One of the most compelling of these representations was a postcard (Figure 10.7) which envisaged the city as a mass of skyscrapers accessed by aerial roads and railways, as well as light planes and zeppelins. The postcard was titled The Cosmopolis of the Future and its creator described it as “a weird thought of the frenzied heart of the world in later times” (quoted in Koolhaus 1994: 84). These and other representations of New York understood the modern city to be characterised by height, density and an abundance of transport options.

The World Trade Centre in Lower Manhattan was the apotheosis of the modern city Figure 10.7: Cosmopolis of the Future (c 1908) envisioned in Cosmopolis of the Future. It Source: Koolhaus 1994 brought together a conglomeration of office towers, two of which were momentarily the tallest in the world, within the crowded geography and sky scraping architecture of Lower Manhattan. The Twin Towers at the centre of the World Trade Centre complex were constructed between 1972 and 1977 using what were then high technology techniques (Harris 2002). The narrowly spaced columns on the exterior of the buildings not only gave them a distinctive façade, but also carried part of the structural load. With the remainder of the load borne by a central core, the office floors within the Towers were able to be open plan (Stephens 2004). The World Trade Centre’s only departure from the vision presented The Cosmopolis of the Future was the way in which it was accessed. Rather than being approached from magic of the city 240 rachel trigg the air, much of the transport infrastructure servicing the complex, including subways and parking garages, was hidden beneath the ground. When architecture and aircraft did eventually converge on the World Trade Centre site, the event made Lower Manhattan not the cosmopolis of the future, but the site Figure 10.8: The Chrysler Building as depicted 5 in the opening credits of Sex and the City of enormous death and destruction. Source: Star 1998

The television series Sex and the City (1998-2004), which was created by Darren Star, is one of many contemporary texts to represent the Twin Towers. The series is set in New York and repeatedly uses well known locations, such as Central Park, Wall Street, the Museum of Modern Art and Times Square, as integral components of storylines and character development. In recognition of their symbolic significance, Sex and the City incorporated images of the Twin Towers in its opening credits. Episodes of the series commence with images of landmarks, including the Chrysler Building (Figure 10.8), Brooklyn Bridge and, in later seasons, the Empire State Building.6 Until 2001, the opening sequence of images included a detail of the shaft of the Towers (Figure 10.9). The images used in Sex and the City’s opening credits focused on modernist elements of the buildings, such as their regular geometry, identical height and bulk and structurally significant exterior columns.

Like most texts which represent the World Trade Centre, Sex and the City did not depict the rows of Gothic Figure 10.9: The Twin Towers as depicted in the opening credits of Sex and the City arches which ornamented the bottom Source: Star 1998 magic of the city 241 rachel trigg of the Twin Towers (Figure 10.10). Rykwert has criticised this aspect of the Towers’ design, stating that “their gothicky detail fused the sterile oversimplification of modernism to a fussy historicism” (2004: 247). However, the historicist detailing of the Twin Towers accords with a conception of buildings which is neither strictly functional nor austerely modernist, but shares similarities with the medieval understanding of the city. Like the cathedrals which became the symbolic centre of the medieval city, the World Trade Centre was surrounded by open plazas (see Figure 10.10). Although inhospitable to pedestrians (Harris 2002; Rykwert 2004), the plazas allowed the towers to be viewed from ground level. The plazas also ensured the prominence of the Towers when viewed from afar, as in the opening credits of Sex and the City. Like medieval cathedrals, the Twin Towers symbolically marked the economic centre of Lower Manhattan, and of New York, the US and the world.

The Gothic design details of the Twin Towers are a faint reminder that, although it is most frequently associated with modernity, New Figure 10.10: The base of the World York was initially a city more medieval than Trade Centre and surrounding plazas modern. When Dutch colonists first arrived in Source: Stephens 2004: 21 Manhattan, they set out to create an orderly settlement with rectangular farm lots separated by ditches (Koolhaus 1994). Despite these intentions, the early city was characterised by irregularly sized and located allotments. This early heritage is visible in the meandering street pattern of Lower Manhattan, which remains aligned to the Dutch allotments. Like a medieval city, New York was initially walled, in an attempt to protect colonists from the indigenous inhabitants of Manhattan (Homberger 1994). The alignment of the wall, which eventually became Wall Street, thus marked an early separation between cultures and cosmoses. In the magic of the city 242 rachel trigg late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wall Street evolved into the administrative and symbolic centre of the capitalist world economy.

The medieval understanding of New York is also evident in later images, such as New York Environs (Figure 10.11). Although this lithograph was produced in 1859, it accords with the medieval practice of condensing the Figure 10.11: John Bachman (1859) New world. The image depicts Manhattan York Environs Source: Abu-Lughod 1999: 21 encircled by Staten Island, New Jersey, the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. A large proportion of the image is taken up by the waters of the East and Hudson Rivers, which define the shape of Manhattan and separate it from its neighbouring boroughs. The perspective used in New York Environs is vastly skewed, so it appears as if Manhattan Island and its waters comprise almost half the globe.

By the time New York Environs was produced, New York had become colloquially known as ‘Gotham City’. This description of the city was first recorded by author Washington Irving in the early nineteenth century, although it is likely that it was in common usage before that time (Taylor 1992). Gotham was a real town in England whose residents were, throughout the Middle Ages, reputed Figure 10.12: Gotham City, as represented in Batman (1989) to be mad (Taylor 1992). Source: www.answers.com/topic/gotham-city magic of the city 243 rachel trigg The understanding of New York as a medieval city of lunatics provides a magical alternative to its conception as a beacon of rational modernity. The mythologising of New York as Gotham has been supported by innumerable Batman comics and movies, which derive a fictional metropolis from the architecture of the real city. Movies such as Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) are set in a dark and chaotic Gotham City (Figure 10.12) and feature a flawed hero who attempts to rid the metropolis of crime before returning to the ‘batcave’, his lair beneath the city.7

The representation of New York as a place in which a dark history is hidden beneath a shiny surface is also manifest in song. Singer and writer Ani Difranco’s (1998) song Fuel begins with the lyrics

They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan And they discovered a slave cemetery there May their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon And we’ve moved on to the electric chair.

These lyrics relate to the 1991 unearthing in Lower Manhattan of an eighteenth century burial ground containing the remains of hundreds of African slaves.8 In a more general sense, Difranco’s song also relates to the layers of history which accumulate in a city such as New York, as well as in the lives of individuals. Fuel posits that there are things hidden beneath the foundations of contemporary New York which require understanding and acknowledgement. Difranco laments the contemporary loss of connections with the past, which she equates to disrespecting the dead. She sings “we’re digging up all the graves/And we’re spitting on the past”.

Fuel ends with the notion that the only cure for the contemporary rupture with history is to magic of the city 244 rachel trigg Go back to that corner in Manhattan And dig deeper, dig deeper this time Down beneath the impossible pain of our history Beneath the unknown bones, beneath the bedrock of the mystery.

Difranco represents New York as having a history which is not only metaphorically, but also literally, buried. It is this underground city, with its hidden histories and uncertain relationship with modernism, which the events of 11 September 2001 brought to light.

There are many things hidden beneath the skyscrapers and gridded street network of New York. These things include aqueducts, sewers and tunnels, as well as abandoned subway stations, storage spaces for libraries and museums and crypts beneath the city’s churches and cathedrals. (Solis 2005). While the World Trade Centre stood, it incorporated seven stories of underground infrastructure, including shopping malls, pedestrian passages, subway stations and truck ramps. Its vast basement also housed “bank vaults containing gold and other precious metals” and a storage space for CIA contraband, “including drugs and weapons” (Solis 2005: 191). The most immediate impact of the destruction of the World Trade Centre was the creation of a debris strewn void in the place which had once been the symbolic centre of the city. The force of the descending buildings was such that not only the contours of the surface, but also “the subterranean topography of downtown Manhattan was completely altered” (Solis 2005: 191).

The only part of the World Trade Centre which remained on Ground Zero after the terrorist attack was a one metre thick slurry wall made of bentonite. The wall formed a ‘bathtub’ around the site, which stopped the waters of the Hudson River from flooding its foundations (Stephens 2004). The razing of the World Trade Centre exposed this slurry wall, which descends over 20 metres below street level to bedrock (LMDC 2003b). The slurry wall has been described by the LMDC as providing a “symbol and physical embodiment of the resilience of American magic of the city 245 rachel trigg democracy and freedom in withstanding the attacks September 11th, 2001” (LMDC 2003a: 5). It is also, as is discussed later in this chapter, central to recent plans to memorialise the World Trade Centre and those who died in its destruction.

The buildings of the World Trade Centre were not all that were obliterated on 11 September 2001. On 3 November 2001, less than two months after the World Trade Centre became Ground Zero, the Mayor of New York called a halt to the search for individual remains at the site. Mayor Giuliani stated “I've known from the beginning, from the first night, that it would be a burial ground. The medical examiner…told me that the crush of the buildings and the high degree of heat was going to mean that…the vast majority of people would disappear because they would evaporate” (Steinhauer 2001). The bodies of many of the people who died at Ground Zero have never been identified or recovered.9 Death certificates were simply issued to families of the missing who, as they had no bodies to bury, were given urns of dust from the site (Steinhauer 2001).

Jonathan Safran Foer’s (2005) novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close describes the emotions and actions of a nine year old boy named Oskar in the aftermath of his father’s death at Ground Zero. Oskar attempts to cope with his sorrow by dreaming up inventions which save lives or allow the living to remain in contact with their dead. One of his inventions, for example, is a skyscraper for dead people. Oskar explains that “they could be built underneath the skyscrapers for living people that are built up. You could bury people one hundred floors down, and a whole dead world could be underneath the living one” (Foer 2005: 3).10 As his father’s body is not recoverable from Ground Zero, Oskar and his family bury an empty coffin. In the denouement of the novel, Oskar returns to his father’s grave with his grandfather. When they dig down to the coffin and open it, Oskar is surprised that his father is not inside. He states, “in my brain I knew he wouldn’t be, obviously, but I guess my heart believed something else…I felt like I was looking into the dictionary definition of emptiness” (Foer 2005: 321). magic of the city 246 rachel trigg As with the slaves buried in the African Cemetery in Lower Manhattan and with Oskar’s father, the dead of Ground Zero must be symbolically unearthed before they can be permanently laid to rest. The individual recognition of people who died en masse is a ritual which has been exacted many times in Western history, from the repatriation of war heroes in ancient Greece to the exhumation of soldiers killed in the American Civil War, the reburial of Anzacs on the battlefields of Western Europe and the identification of Kosovo Albanians buried in mass graves. The ritual unearthing of the dead at Ground Zero will be unique to neither Western culture in general nor to US history in particular. What will, however, be exceptional is the intersection of pre and post modern mythologies in the symbolic centre of the modern world.

The destruction of the World Trade Centre provides an opportunity for New York to begin to engage with its buried histories. The fate of Ground Zero is, however, being determined through a process that combines the rationalist paradigms of urban planning with attempts to reinvigorate old mythologies and symbolise new ones. The initial redevelopment brief for Ground Zero was prepared by the LMDC and took the form of six ‘concept plans’ (LMDC 2002). Like many such briefs, it outlined: the processes to be used in redeveloping the site; the goals and objectives of the process; and a preliminary program of land uses, including commercial office space, cultural amenities, public open space and transport systems. The brief did not seek to mythologise the events of 11 September 2001 nor to detail the emotions of the relatives of the dead. It blandly stated that a memorial should be provided within the redevelopment and “should be respectful, contemplative and inspirational, could be spatial or symbolic, and could function as a place unto itself or as a connector between different places” (LMDC 2002: 14).

The initial brief for the redevelopment of Ground Zero also contained a series of memorial precedents. The memorials included in this section of the brief include the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, Battle of the Somme Memorial in Thiepval in France, Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC and Berlin magic of the city 247 rachel trigg Jewish Museum in Germany. The latter, which was designed by Daniel Libeskind, is a zinc-clad zig-zag with a voided space running through its centre. The Berlin Jewish Museum, which has also taken on the function of a memorial, has been described by its designer as “the spiritual site wherein the nexus of Berlin’s precarious destiny is an once mirrored, fractured and transformed” (Libeskind 1993: 64) and, by one of the designers of the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, as “a jagged break in the Star of David, of Jewish history in Berlin, broken by the Holocaust…[an] unnameable void” (Raggatt 2002: 42). When the LMDC announced, in February 2003, that Studio Daniel Libeskind had won the master plan competition for the World Trade Centre site11, the hope must have been that Libeskind could recognise and ritually rebury the dead of September 11 in the same way that he had magically mediated between Berlin and its ghosts.

The competition winning iteration of Libeskind’s master plan for Ground Zero distributed commercial towers, with retail spaces at ground level, to the north and east of the site (Figure 10.13). It reinstated Greenwich Street, which had been terminated with the creation of the World Trade Centre superblock, and left the footprints of the Twin Towers and a sizable area to the south west of the site bare (Stephens

Figure 10.13: Daniel Libeskind’s winning master 2004). The most dramatic plan for Ground Zero Source: Stephens 2004: 61 element in Libeskind’s master magic of the city 248 rachel trigg plan was a 1 776 foot tall building with roofline angled to emulate the raised arm and flaming torch of the Statue of Liberty. This building, which eventually became known as the ‘Freedom Tower’, was intended to be the tallest building in the world, with the height chosen to correspond with the year in which the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed (LMDC 2003a). Other symbolic elements in the master plan included a plaza, called the ‘Wedge of Light’, in which it was intended that no shadow would be cast between 8:46am, the time at which the first of the Twin Towers was struck by hijacked plane, and 10:26am, the time at which the second Tower fell. The design also proposed the creation of a ‘Park of Heroes’, in which the paths taken by emergency workers would be traced (LMDC 2003a).

With the exception of Libeskind’s, all seven of the designs which reached the shortlisting stage of the LMDC’s master plan competition largely conceptualised Ground Zero as a tabula rasa on which building could occur without reference to history. Where the other shortlisted master plans did incorporate historical references, such as the reinstatement of the Manhattan grid or the retention of the Twin Towers’ footprints, they were inevitably related to the modern history of the site. In contrast, Libeskind included obvious references to US history in general, and New York history in particular. He also claimed that the design evolved from his own history, stating “I arrived by ship to New York as a teenager, an immigrant, and like millions of others before me, my first sight was the Statue of Liberty and the amazing skyline of Manhattan. I have never forgotten that sight or what it stands for. This is what this project is all about” (LMDC 2003b: 10).

However, as with the World War II Memorial in Washington DC and the Australian National Korean War Memorial in Canberra, many of the historic references in Libeskind’s master plan appear self conscious and didactic. Sorkin, for example, has vehemently criticised the winning master plan, describing it as consisting of “a flaccid iconographic agenda and a grafted rhetoric of redemption and loss, so craven and self-serving as to make the skin crawl” (2003: 12). Many of the design elements which carry symbolic meaning have either been removed in later editions magic of the city 249 rachel trigg of the master plan or are not readable from the ground. For example, the symbolic significance of the height of the ‘Freedom Tower’ will be understandable only to those who have read about its design. It is also unlikely that the ‘Wedge of Light’ will remain free of shadow during the crucial times, while the ‘Park of Heroes’ has virtually disappeared in recent alterations to the master plan (Stephens 2004).

However, the most compelling feature of the master plan, which thus far remains intact, will be able to be read from the site itself. Libeskind’s master plan envisages the exposure of the World Trade Centre’s slurry wall and the creation of a memorial park 10 metres below ground level. The importance of this gesture is emphasised in the fact that Libeskind entitled his master plan ‘Memory Foundations’. In a drawing included in his autobiography, Libeskind describes the exposure of the slurry wall as “revealing the heroic foundations of democracy for all to see”. He has also, in the statement submitted as part of his master plan, described the slurry wall as

the most dramatic element which survived the attack, an engineering wonder constructed on bedrock foundations and designed to hold back the Hudson River. The foundations withstood the unimaginable trauma of the destruction and stand as eloquent as the Constitution itself asserting the durability of Democracy and the value of individual life (LMDC 2003b: 10).

While Libeskind’s style of expression may be hyperbolic and even self serving, his exposure of the slurry wall is a literal unearthing of Ground Zero. Libeskind provides for a ritualised way in which visitors to the World Trade Centre site could see, and perhaps touch, the earth in which friends and family died and, until earth from the site was removed as part of the construction process, predominantly remained entombed. The exposure of the slurry wall also resonates with both the dominant and alternative mythologies with which New York can be understood. It combines the rational display of engineering excellence with the magical revelation magic of the city 250 rachel trigg of a city which is dark, chaotic and occasionally very painful.

Although the LMDC states that the slurry wall “is fundamental to Studio Daniel Libeskind design” (LMDC 2003b: 9), its exposure was not required in the competition guidelines for the design of a memorial on the World Trade Centre site. The LMDC program (2003b) requires that the memorial: recognise each victim of the terrorist attacks; provide an area for quiet contemplation; incorporate a sepulchre for the unidentified remains of victims; and ensure a visual delineation of the Twin Towers’ footprints. Nonetheless, the winner of the World Trade Centre site memorial competition accorded with Libeskind’s master plan and incorporated the exposed slurry wall.

Michael Arad and Peter Walker’s winning design for the memorial at Ground Zero is entitled ‘Reflecting Absence’. The design envisages the creation of an open cavern in each of the footprints of the Twin Towers. The caverns are lined with waterfalls, which drop from the surface of the site to a reflecting pool 10 metres below ground level, and then another five metres to the base of the caverns (Stephens 2004). One of the caverns (Figure 10.14) is planned to contain a gigantic, black sarcophagus housing the unidentified remains of victims of the Figure 10.14: One of the underground caverns in Michael Arad and Peter terrorist attacks. Although it is not Walker’s ‘Reflecting Absence’ design for a memorial at Ground Zero represented in the drawings which Source: Stephens 2004: 39 accompanied the winning competition entry, Arad and Walker’s design allows visitors to walk down a ramp next to an exposed part of the slurry wall (Stephens 2004). magic of the city 251 rachel trigg While it meets the requirements of the competition brief and generally accords with Libeskind’s master plan, Arad and Walker’s design for the memorial at Ground Zero accords with neither historic precedents for the design of mass memorials nor with the mythologies of New York. It represents the city and its, now primary, place of the dead as neither a light and modern metropolis nor a dark and disordered Gotham. It has also been criticised for looking like a underground parking garage and being inappropriate to New York’s climate (Stephens 2004).

In contrast to Arad and Walker’s memorial design, a team led by writer Paul Auster has created a unique memorial to the World Trade Centre and the people who died in its destruction, which magically unites individual stories with overarching mythologies of the city. The Sonic Memorial Soundwalk (2005) is a varied collection of narratives associated with Ground Zero. Auster describes it as “a nationwide collaborative project to chronicle the life of the World Trade Centre and its neighbourhood”. The narratives recorded on the Sonic Memorial were collected from people calling into a public radio phone line and are arranged so as to be heard in logical sequence while walking around the former World Trade Centre site. Auster (2005) explains on the Sonic Memorial that “most of our monuments are mute, but this is a sonic memorial, a walking memorial”.

New York historian Robert Schneider is captured on the Sonic Memorial describing Ground Zero and its Lower Manhattan neighbourhood. He states,

you’ve got this crazy, twisty, squorly network of streets that go back to Dutch New York and twentieth century skyscrapers right next to each other. You’ve got an eighteenth century church like St Paul’s in the shadow of the World Trade Centre. Once it was past and present that were densely mingled down there. St Paul’s church, the African American burial ground, the old streets cut to fill Dutch farmsteads. Now what’s crowded there together is the souls of all those people who died there (Auster 2005). magic of the city 252 rachel trigg The Sonic Memorial also includes: radio coverage from the morning of 11 September 2001, prior to the terrorist attacks; the sound of the wind recorded at the Twin Towers by an artist in residence; a message left on an answering machine by a man killed in the attacks; an interview with a Mohawk iron worker employed in the construction of the Twin Towers; prayers from a service, at the Atlantic Mosque in Brooklyn, for victims of the attacks; piano music recorded at the ‘Windows of the World’ restaurant on the top of one of the Towers; a poem written by a woman who lost colleagues at Ground Zero; an interview with a trapeze artist who walked a wire stretched between the Towers; music used in the Towers’ elevators; and a hip-hop song dedicated to the World Trade Centre and the people who died there. The Sonic Memorial provides an aural catalogue of ways of knowing the world in general and the World Trade Centre in particular. It acknowledges both the modern mythologising of New York as an indomitable city of glass and steel and the alternate understanding of the metropolis as a place of chaos and pain. Unlike Arad and Walker’s ‘Reflecting Absence’ memorial, the Sonic Memorial combines the rational and the magical, as well as the personal and the collective, into a single, cohesive representation of the city and its place of the dead.

10.3 Unearthing East Perth Although Perth was established in the early part of the nineteenth century, its mythical foundation recreates ancient rituals of city formation. The felling of a tree is one of the acts with which the Romans and other ancient cultures used to mark the commencement of a new settlement (Mumford 1961). The speaking of ritualistic words and the consumption of ceremonial foods were also important parts of city creation in ancient times (Rykwert 1988). The mythical founding of Perth imbues these ancient rituals with modern significance.

Perth is reputed to have been established with the felling of a tree on Mount Eliza, magic of the city 253 rachel trigg the escarpment which now overlooks the city’s centre. This seminal moment in Perth’s history is represented in a painting by George Pitt Morison (1929) displayed in the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA). Although it was created one hundred years after the establishment of the city, The Foundation of Perth (Figure 10.15) is painted as if the artist personally witnessed the event. The work shows Governor James Stirling reading the city proclamation while two colonists, one male and one female, stand ready to demolish a tree with axes. The scene is set in light bushland, with the Swan River visible beyond Mount Eliza. The Figure 10.15: George Pitt Morrison (1929) The Foundation of Perth founding of the city is depicted Source: AGWA 2007: 2 as being observed by a group of soldiers in British uniform, who stand to attention and carry the Union Jack, as well as several free settlers. To the edge of the painting a man is depicted unpacking glasses and bottles of beer from a picnic hamper. These items are presumedly to be used to celebrate the official founding of the city.

Despite its foundation story mythologically connecting Perth to the cities of the ancient world, and regardless of its location on the opposite side of the globe from the European and North American centres of modernism, the modernist conception of the city is realised in Perth as much as in New York. However, while New York has expanded vertically, Perth has sprawled horizontally. The city’s growth has not been bounded by an island geography such as Manhattan’s, nor has Perth, like its northern hemisphere counterpart, been required to provide for many millions of residents. While the expansion of Perth to the east and west is prevented by the Indian Ocean and the Darling Ranges, there are few barriers to the city’s development to the north and south. Moreover, the city’s sandy soils and relatively magic of the city 254 rachel trigg flat topography allow low density development to be constructed cheaply and easily. With the exception of the 1960s and 70s, when many of Perth’s subdivisions were planned around cul de sac access, the suburbs of Perth have been consistently laid out in a gridded pattern.

As well as organising space around an orderly grid, Perth has mimicked New York’s partiality for the skyscraper. While in Manhattan the skyscraper was a rational solution to land scarcity which quickly gained symbolic meaning, in Perth the skyscraper has been largely stripped of practical purpose. Although land is not particularly scarce in the Western Australian capital, numerous towers have been built in its centre. It is the image of these skyscrapers with which Perth is sold as an international tourist destination. Websites such as that operated by travel guide publishers Lonely Planet and international journal National Geographic make statements such as “the city centre's skyscrapers dominate a picturesque riverside location”(Lonely Planet 2008) and “Perth evokes a frontier feeling - a sense that the bush is never far away - that belies its modernistic skyline and air of prosperity” (National Geographic 2008). Both these websites, as well as popular online encyclopaedias such as Wikipedia, contain picturesque images of the Perth skyline, frequently at dusk. This association of image with city is echoed in the official websites for Perth, such as the Figures 10.16 and 10.17: Banner images from the State Government’s tourism website for Perth (top) and the City of State Government’s Perth’s homepage (bottom) Source: www.experienceperth.com and www.cityofperth.wa.gov.au tourism website (www.experienceperth.com) and the City of Perth’s homepage (www.cityofperth.wa.gov.au). The banner images which appear on both of these sites (Figures 10.16 and 10.17) feature the city’s skyline and represent Perth as a magic of the city 255 rachel trigg city of lights dominated by clean and shining modernist architecture.

The Aboriginal inhabitants of the area around the Swan River saw the land very differently to the European colonists and their modern, city building, descendents. The mythologies of the local Nyungah people12 emphasise not the arrival of the colonists and the felling of a tree on Mount Eliza, but the creation of the Swan River by the Waugal, a great serpent which moved throughout south western Australia creating the landscape with undulations of its body (Jacobs 1996). Differences between Aboriginal and European understandings of Perth continue to the present day. In 1988, the bicentenary of the colonisation of Australia, Aboriginal artist Sally Morgan painted Greetings from Rottnest. This work (Figure 10.18) depicts tourists visiting the island of Rottnest, which is located a short ferry ride from mainland Perth. The tourists in Morgan’s painting are shown enjoying the sunshine in brightly coloured vacation wear. They don sunglasses and smiles Figure 10.18: Sally Morgan (1988) Greetings from Rottnest and carry cameras to record Source: Morgan 1996: 71 holiday memories. The tourists depicted in Greetings from Rottnest are, however, unaware that they are standing on the buried bodies of numerous Aborigines.

As discussed in Dovey (1999), Rottnest Island once served as an Aboriginal magic of the city 256 rachel trigg prison. Although it was not inhabited prior to colonisation, the Island was between 1838 and 1904 used as a place for the incarceration of Aboriginals who had broken colonial law in mainland Perth (Rottnest Island Authority 2003). Prisoners who died during their incarceration were buried in an unmarked graveyard on the Island. In 1917 Rottnest was declared a public reserve and soon became a low cost tourist resort. The location of the Aboriginal burial ground was forgotten and campgrounds, buildings and streets were constructed on top of it (Dovey 1999). Although the heritage significance of the burial ground has now been recognised (Rottnest Island Authority 2003), generations of holidaymakers once walked directly on the graves of Aboriginal prisoners. The profanement of their burial place is represented in Morgan’s painting by the bodily position of the corpses, which are depicted in individual cells with their hands in a prayer-like position. In contrast, the ignorance of the holidaymakers is represented by their sunglasses: every one of the men, women and children in Morgan’s painting are depicted shielding their eyes. The visitors can be seen as protecting themselves not only from the strong sunlight, but also from the realities of colonisation and the hidden histories of Indigenous Australia.

Rottenest is by no means the only place in Perth in which Aboriginal histories and ways of knowing are hidden beneath the surface. Several authors, including Ansara (1989) and Jones (1997), have examined the controversy over the redevelopment of the Swan Brewery site. However, it is Jane Jacobs (1996) who has most clearly explained the relationship between Aboriginal claims for this site and the emergence of a, previously hidden, sacredness in the centre of the supposedly secular, modernist city of Perth. The Swan Brewery is located on the northern bank of the Swan River, below the Mount Eliza escarpment on which Perth was ceremonially founded. The Brewery ceased operations in 1979 and in the early 1980s was bought first by a private developer and then by the State Government (Jones 1997). While the Government aimed to develop it as a mixed use recreation, tourism and arts complex, Aboriginal activists claimed that the Brewery site was a resting pace of the Waugal and thus a place of sacred magic of the city 257 rachel trigg importance for the local Nyungah people. Aboriginal groups lobbied, both through political mechanisms and in the courts, for buildings on the site to be demolished and the area returned to a park-like state (Jones 1997).

Although Aboriginal activists were ultimately unsuccessful in defeating the State Government’s plans for the Swan Brewery site, they did unsettle the opposition between rational and magical ways of understanding the city. As Jacobs states, during the controversy over the Brewery site, “residents and urban authorities in Perth were confronted with the unlikely presence of the Aboriginal sacred in the city” (1996: 104). This Aboriginal sacredness was unsettling not only because it was a non rational and non Western way of understanding the world, but also because it was unexpected. Jacobs explains that

Aboriginal sites are often subject to strict protocols of disclosure and many ‘secret’ sites are known only to properly authorised individuals. The ‘hidden’ sense of the sacred is also, in a paradoxical sense, elaborated by a history of non-Aboriginal repression – the failure of colonial Australia to recognise and give legal status to such sites (1996: 115).

The controversy over the Swan Brewery, like Morgan’s representation of Rottnest, brought to light buried histories and alternate ways of understanding Perth. It is not the unearthing of these alternate understandings which is remarkable about Perth, but rather that they are so consistently removed from the city’s mythologies. The case study considered in this section of the chapter thus takes the opposite approach to those examined elsewhere in this thesis, in that it focuses on a place of the dead in which the magic of the city is not revealed, but hidden. Like the Twin Towers in New York, the East Perth Cemeteries are inherently connected with a modernist understanding of the city. The Cemeteries were the first formal place of the dead in WA and were created soon after the arrival, in 1829, of colonists to the area which is now Perth. In accordance with modern magic of the city 258 rachel trigg practice, the Cemeteries were initially located well beyond the city proper, although Perth soon expanded to encompass the site. The earliest remaining gravestone in the Cemeteries dates to 1830, although it is likely that earlier, unmarked, burials occurred (Richardson and Davies 1986).

The largest extent of the East Perth Cemeteries is illustrated in a map from 1897, which shows the site as consisting of separate lots administered by different faiths and cultures (Figure 10.19). The lots to the east of Plain Street were allocated to the Church of England13, Roman Catholics, Wesleyans and Congregationalists, while those to the west were allocated for Hebrew, Chinese and Presbyterian burials.14 The map Figure 10.19: The East Perth Cemeteries in 1897 Source: Public Works Department, Perth Sewerage Plans, State shows the late Records Office of Western Australia, WAS 399, Cons 1647, Item 5647. nineteenth century Cemeteries as being surrounded by land uses including gardens, a clay pit and the headquarters of the Western Australian Cricket Association. The area also contained a mulberry plantation, which was located in the large lot immediately north of the Cemeteries and presumably used to raise silk worms. As depicted in magic of the city 259 rachel trigg this map, the burial of the dead was one of many colonial enterprises undertaken in East Perth, others of which included the extraction of clay to construct the city’s buildings, the production of silk to clothe its inhabitants and the playing of cricket to civilise, exercise and acculturate its citizens.

In 1899 the East Perth Cemeteries were, with the occasional exception of an interment in a family tomb, closed for burials. On 2 July 1925, The Western Mail newspaper ran an article entitled ‘The Forgotten Dead: East Perth’s Reproach’. The article was accompanied by what must then have been a lavish spread of photographs showing the condition of some of the graves in the Cemeteries (Figure 10.20). The text above the photographs links the site to the state’s colonial history. It proclaims, “here sleep some who laid the deep foundations of our race. Western Australia has forgotten the East Perth Cemetery, where lie many pioneers who set the state on its road to prosperity”

(‘Polygon’ 1925: 29). The Figure 10.20: Photographs of the East Perth captions of the photographs Cemeteries accompanying article an entitled ‘The Forgotten Dead: East Perth’s Reproach’ emphasise the decrepit Source: The Western Mail 1925: 11 condition of the graves and are written in an emotive style. For example, the captions declare that above one tomb “an angel ponders”, while other graves are described as being “choked” with weeds and appearing “as though a cyclone had magic of the city 260 rachel trigg passed”. Another caption refers to pine trees surrounding graves as “the green spires of grief” (‘Polygon’ 1925: 29).

The article which accompanies these photographs is credited to a writer with the pseudonym ‘Polygon’ (1925). The article combines a romantic vision of the geographic and historic significance of the Cemeteries with a rational argument that the site should be restored. It begins by describing the Cemeteries as “a resting place for pioneers” and goes on to explain that “forgetfulness has laid its spell over the graveyard and the trees stand dark and quiet” (‘Polygon’ 1925: 29). However, the article also sets out, in a logical sequence, the positive features of the site, including its proximity to the city, good drainage and fine views. The writer visualises the hilltop site as a memorial not only to the people buried in the Cemeteries, but to all WA pioneers. He or she proposes that the site “could be made the symbol of all the unmarked graves in the interior, and when the low cairns in the desert ha[ve] fallen and the rough-hewn inscriptions in the sides of trees ha[ve] rotted away, a more enduring memorial on this spot might remain” (‘Polygon’ 1925: 29). Although it was not immediately acted upon, The Western Mail’s magical vision for the East Perth Cemeteries to become a memorial to white pioneers has, as is discussed latter in this chapter, largely been realised.

As with many Australian places of the dead, particularly those dating from the nineteenth century, Aboriginal culture is almost invisible at the East Perth Cemeteries. The site is situated near the Swan River, on one of the highest points in the landscape, and would therefore almost certainly have had significance for the Aboriginal people who hunted, fished and gathered food in the area. The Cemeteries are not, in any of the texts examined in the preparation of this chapter, represented as important to Nyungahs. It is also unknown how many Aboriginals are buried in the Cemeteries. This is partly because Aboriginal burials are likely either to have originally been memorialised with wooden grave markers, which would rapidly have rotted away, or to have been unmarked. An article in The West Australian in 1950 stated that the seventh person buried in the Cemeteries was magic of the city 261 rachel trigg “Christian, a native in the employ of Mr Throller” (Uren 1950: 17). The writer comments that “Christian must have been named more in hope than in realisation, unless Christianity came surprisingly swiftly to him” (Uren 1950: 17). There is now, however, no record of the burial of this man.

There are only two physical reminders of Aboriginal presence remaining in the East Perth Cemeteries. The first is a tombstone, located on a prominent position in the existing cemeteries, which records the 1864 death of three white men who were killed while travelling in the north of WA. The tombstone states, “THEY WERE MURDERED, apparently whilst asleep in the night by ABORIGINAL NATIVES with whom, as there is every reason to suppose, THEY BELIEVED THAT THEY WERE ON FRIENDLY TERMS”. The three men memorialised on this tombstone were surveyors killed while mapping the area around Roebuck Bay in the north west of WA. The tombstone, which was erected by the State Government of the day, legitimates the dispossession which, as discussed in Chapter 9, was the inherent and intended consequence of colonial mapping practices. The tombstone also represents the acts of Aboriginal people defending themselves and their lands as the murder of sleeping innocents. In contrast to the tombstone to European surveyors, there is no reference in the Cemeteries, nor in any of the texts which represent them, to the many Aboriginals who were killed during the colonisation of Perth.

The only Aboriginal whose burial in the East Perth Cemeteries remains marked is Tommy Dower, who travelled on expeditions as a guide to prominent colonists John and Alexander Forrest. After assisting in the colonisation of much of north western Australia, the Forrest brothers became, respectively, the Governor of WA and the Mayor of Perth (Stannage 1979). Dower’s tombstone, which was erected by the State Government Aborigines Protection Board, states that Dower “was possessed of more than ordinary intelligence and ability”. This assurance, combined with his assistance to the Forrest brothers and “services to the colony”, seems to have earned Dower the dubious honour of negation of his Aboriginality, magic of the city 262 rachel trigg thus permitting his memorialisation in the East Perth Cemeteries.

Aboriginals are not the only early inhabitants of Perth to have left little or no trace in the East Perth Cemeteries. It is estimated that during the 70 years of its operation, some 10 000 burials occurred at the East Perth Cemeteries in something like 4 500 graves. With approximately 800 gravesites remaining and an interment rate of just over two bodies per grave, less than 20% of burials have left a physical memorial (Richardson and Davies 1986). Richardson and Davies state that “it is noteworthy that within the cemetery as presently defined there are very few non-Caucasian burials” (1986: 47). They provide a table listing, presumedly, nationalities which were present in Perth during the operation of the Cemeteries and which might reasonably be expected to be represented in the city’s only burial ground of that time. Richardson and Davies note that there are no memorials to Afghans or Indians still existing within the cemeteries, with only two marked Chinese burials, eight marked Japanese burials and, as discussed, one marked Aboriginal burial (Richardson and Davies 1986). The relative absence in the East Perth Cemeteries of burial markers for the non white inhabitants of Perth is due not only to the effects of time and vandalism, but also to the removal of headstones by the State Government.

At their closure, the East Perth Cemeteries consisted of 14 separate lots. In 1932 the East Perth Cemeteries Act declared 11 of those lots to be disused burial grounds. These lots, which were the site of Jewish, Chinese and Presbyterian Cemeteries on the western side of Plain Street (see Figure 10.19), were at that time vested in the Crown, for control and management by the State Gardens Board. In the late 1940s and early 1950s all cemetery monuments west of Plain Street were removed. Portions of Wickham and Horatio Streets, which had segmented the site east of Plain Street, were incorporated into the burial grounds to create one large cemetery lot (compare Figures 10.19 and 10.3). Eleven remaining tombstones from the Jewish cemetery were relocated to the Christian cemetery area and placed on the unconsecrated ground of what had previously magic of the city 263 rachel trigg been Wickham Street. Likewise, some remaining tombstones in the Presbyterian Cemetery were placed on land that had once been Horatio Street. An unknown number of monuments from the eastern side of Plain Street were removed and destroyed (Richardson and Davies 1986). The bodies from the Jewish, Chinese and Presbyterian Cemeteries were excavated, heaped into piles and dumped. Some may have been reinterred at Karrakatta Cemetery (Richardson and Davies 1986). The Reserves Act of 1952 formalised the recreation of the boundaries of the East Perth Cemeteries by excising the lots that constituted the Jewish, Chinese and Presbyterian Cemeteries and reserving them for education purposes. The land was then made available to the Perth Girls’ High School for use as tennis courts (Richards 1991).

While Richardson and Davies appear dismayed that the graves of largely non white residents of Perth were excavated and discarded, Bodycoat represents the events as part of an unproblematic process of urban rejuvenation. In summarising the events of the 1950s and 60s, Bodycoat states that “repairs and a clean up [were] carried out; areas containing unmarked graves were graded and grassed…the former cemetery sections on the west side of Plain Street (Presbyterian, Jewish and Chinese) were excised” (1992: 27). Bodycoat also notes that “memorials from the Presbyterian, Jewish and Chinese cemeteries were removed to the Cemetery Reserve on the former road reservations” (1992: 27). This implies that all of the tombstones west of Plain Street were retained and moved to the other side of the road. This implication, as is discernable from Richardson and Davies and from visits to the site, as well as from newspaper articles from the late 1950s, is patently false.

The works to the western side of the Cemeteries were discussed in The West Australian in June 1952. The article states that “explorers, statesmen, public servants, members of the judiciary, citizens and pioneer farmers and pastoralists will be remembered again when the restoration is completed” (‘HWS’ 1952: 2). Such people are represented in this and other articles published in The West magic of the city 264 rachel trigg Australian as being rightfully part of the collective memory of Perth. Conversely, the Chinese, Jewish, Presbyterian and Aboriginal dead were represented in neither the physical fabric of the Cemeteries nor the local media. The destruction of the graves west of Plain Street and the conservation of the remaining cemetery lots were referred to in The West Australian as “the restoration and beautification of this significant plot of ground that looks down on the city, and is removed from the throb of the city’s heart” (‘HWS’ 1952: 2).

Works at the former Cemeteries site were, however, represented in a more macabre manner in a 1958 article from The West Australian titled ‘Dozers Plough Up Human Bones’. The article states that “the bones of people buried years ago in the old East Perth Cemetery have been uncovered by bulldozers levelling the area for tennis courts” and that “jutting out from the embankments piled up by the machines are thigh bones, pieces of skulls, ribs and backbones” (The West Australian 1958: 3). The article also tells of the discovery of pieces of marble and brickwork on the site, as well as coffin handles, name plates and timbers, some of which were taken back to the offices of The West Australian. Although the article provides some detail on the history and location of the site, it does not reveal that the remains were found in the area which had once been the Chinese, Jewish and Presbyterian Cemeteries. The article thus contributes to the magical disappearance of non Christian and non white histories from the early years of Perth’s development.

The invisibility of cultural difference at the East Perth Cemeteries has continued in the past two decades. The Cemeteries were in 1991 placed under the planning control of the East Perth Redevelopment Authority (EPRA), which was formed as part of a Federal Government initiative aimed at transforming inner city industrial sites into mixed use urban villages (Department of Health, Housing and Community Services 1992), and in 1994 given to the management of the National Trust of Australia (NTA). In accordance with The Western Mail’s proposal of in 1925, EPRA has actively managed the East Perth Cemeteries as a place of magic of the city 265 rachel trigg colonial history. The site has been intermittently, but consistently, represented in the WA media as a place in which the achievements of pioneers should be recognised. For example, The West Australian published, in 1984, an article which refers to the site as “East Perth’s Pioneer Cemetery” (Aris 1984: 12) and, in 1997, a piece which describes the East Perth Cemeteries as “Australia’s only remaining colonial cemetery in a metropolitan area” (Duffy 1997: 26).

Although significant physical changes have occurred to the East Perth Cemeteries since their closure, in the 1990s EPRA initiated a program of works which partly attempted to return the site to its late nineteenth century state. The work included: the renovation of some headstones and grave fencing; the removal of bitumen footpaths laid in the 1950s; and the placement of new paths “aligned to their original 19th Century configuration” (EPRA 1992: 2). Work-for-the-dole participants were used to undertake mowing, weeding, tree planting, paving and other maintenance activities (Rasdien 2000) and signs were installed indicating the location of the burial grounds of the various Christian faiths and the year of their reservation. Large fences were erected around the remaining Cemeteries area, with entry permitted only between 2pm and 4pm on Sundays.

EPRA also permitted a series of actions consciously representing the Cemeteries as a memorial to pioneers. Most obvious of these is the creation of a park in the south western corner of the existing Cemeteries site. The land on which the park now sits was reserved for cemetery use in 1882 (Bodycoat 1992). The site was never used for burials and in 1960 was vested in the National Parks Board as a public park (Richardson and Davies 1986). As with the rest of the Cemeteries, the land was largely ignored in the intervening years, until EPRA named it ‘Pioneer Gardens’ and in 1997 carried out various landscaping works. The park is now a grassed area with some perimeter planting, a winding footpath and some timber seats and rubbish bins. The primary feature is a pole bearing a large Australian flag, placed within the park at the instigation of a local Rotary Club. Due to its hilltop location, the flag is visible from some distance, presenting Pioneer Gardens magic of the city 266 rachel trigg and the East Perth Cemeteries as places intrinsically connected to Australian identity and culture (Figure 10.21). This memorialisation of pioneers is also ritualised through a Foundation Day Pioneer Memorial Service, held yearly in St Bartholomew’s Church, which is located within the Anglican section of the East Perth Cemeteries, by the Royal Western Australian Historical Society (NTA undated).

Although the invisibility of cultural difference in East Perth has continued in recent years, the bodies of the forgotten dead have, to some extent, been symbolically rediscovered. Near the Figure 10.21: View of Pioneer Gardens and the central area of Perth from the corner of Plain and Bronte Streets, on a remaining East Perth Cemeteries Source: Trigg 2002 lot now used as a vehicle inspection centre (see Figure 10.3), a small plaque marks the former site of the Chinese Cemetery. The Royal Western Australian Historical Society erected the plaque in 1994. It states “many Chinese who emigrated to Western Australia in the nineteenth century were buried in unmarked graves at this site”. This monument renders the official destruction of the Chinese graves invisible by implying that the burial sites were never marked. This notion of the graves of the non Christian dead being unmarked is contradicted by a small article published in The West Australian two years after land was granted for the establishment of the Chinese Cemetery. The article tells of the “unusual spectacle of a Chinese funeral” (The West Australian 1890: 2) in the city and describes the cortege route and burial ceremony. The funeral rites included the burning of lights around the gravesite, the throwing of copper coins and earth into the grave and the repeating of prayers in magic of the city 267 rachel trigg “periphrastic terms” (The West Australian 1890: 3). It is difficult to believe that after such a burial ritual the site would have been left unmarked, and indeed people who were living in East Perth prior to the 1950s have since commented on the many Chinese gravestones west of Plain Street (Richardson and Davies 1986).

The Bronte Street plaque also tells visitors that “an official memorial to these early pioneers is located in the East Perth Cemeteries”. In conjunction with the reference to unmarked graves, this sets up a clear distinction between the formal memorialisation of pioneers within the bounds of the remnant Christian cemeteries and the less important marking of the place of the non Christian and non white dead outside the cemetery bounds. Like the plaque, the official memorial was also erected in 1994, to Chinese “who worked and died in the Colony and helped forge Western Australian history”. The memorial is placed in a seemingly random position within the remaining Cemeteries (Figure 10.22) and stands isolated in a corner of the site. It is an amalgam of Western and Chinese styles and consists of a square column with Chinese inscription, topped by a blue painted cap

Figure 10.22: A Memorial to and placed upon a small rectangular plinth. An Chinese burials in the East inscription in English declares that the monument Perth Cemeteries Source: Trigg 2001 was unveiled jointly by the Governor of Western Australia and a Trustee of the Chung Wah Association.

Another site memorialising the non Christian dead at East Perth is the Perth Jewish Memorial Cemetery located on the corner of Wickham and Plain Streets (see Figure 10.3). The Memorial, which was completed in 2001, is roughly square and contains eight headstones and three brick memorials located around a circular area of paving (Figure 10.23). As well as providing a designated viewing position for the headstones, the paving also marks out the Star of David. A short article in magic of the city 268 rachel trigg The West Australian represents the creation of the Jewish Memorial Cemetery as proof of the area’s white pioneering history, rather than as evidence of the eradication of its multicultural past. The article, entitled ‘Convict Link at Historic Ground’, opens with the statement that “it took three Figure 10.23: Perth Jewish Memorial Cemetery and neighbouring townhouses convicts to get a Hebrew burial Source: Trigg 2007 ground for Perth in 1867, but it took a dedicated Jewish community effort to ensure an important part of WA history was restored” (Mcnamara 2001: 5).

The site of the Jewish Memorial Cemetery directly abuts the rear boundaries of several townhouses, built in the past decade as part of EPRA’s redevelopment of East Perth. As the balconies of these residences hover above the site, it appears from the street as if the Memorial is part of the private space of the townhouses. This impression is increased by the iron fence that surrounds the Memorial, with gates that seem to be permanently locked. The eight headstones that comprise the main feature of the Memorial have been twice relocated. In the 1950s, as discussed earlier in this chapter, they were taken from the Jewish cemetery and incorporated into the Christian cemeteries east of Plain Street. Now separated from the bodies of the Jewish dead, the gravestones have been relocated to their original position of isolation from the Christian dead, in a Memorial which is unobtrusive and difficult to access.

With the creation of the Chinese Memorial and the Jewish Memorial Cemetery, the non white and non Christian dead have been partly reintegrated into East Perth. However, the banal form, small scale and unobtrusive locations of the recent memorials means that they are insufficient representations of the decades of magic of the city 269 rachel trigg cultural exclusion which occurred in East Perth and in other parts of the city. The memorials also ignore the excavation, within living memory, of the Cemeteries west of Plain Street and the obliteration of the bodily remains found therein. Although it may continue to be inadequately recognised on the ground, the Aboriginal sacredness unearthed at Rottnest Island is at least represented in Morgan’s powerful painting. The uncomfortable and uncanny aspects of Western Australian history are, however, largely invisible in the East Perth Cemeteries and in the texts which represent it. The magic of this place of the dead is not that it reveals the dominant or alternative understanding of a specific city, but that it almost completely silences the multiple perspectives which were inherent in its creation. At the East Perth Cemeteries the magic of the city is not a positive or even a benign force, but rather a way in which alternate understandings and histories are repeatedly obscured by colonial mythologies.

10.4 Conclusions As is evidenced in their gridded streets and skyscraper studded skylines, rational principles of urban planning appear to have guided the development of New York and Perth throughout the twentieth century. Both cities have been represented as modern, orderly and economically successful, with Wall Street in Lower Manhattan marking the centre of the global capitalist economy and the Western Australian capital prospering, particularly in the past decade, from a booming minerals sector. However, despite their long and continued association with modernity, New York and Perth retain traces of the non rational understanding of the world.

The founding and development of New York and Perth are each represented in two sets of mythologies. In New York, the creation of the mythical modern metropolis has been accompanied by the projection of the city as a dark and dangerous Gotham. The city’s underside has long existed in literal form in the crooked streets of Lower Manhattan and the tunnels and basements which run beneath the metropolis, as well as in metaphorical form in movies, books and song lyrics. In magic of the city 270 rachel trigg New York an alternate mythology has thus grown parallel to a more orthodox understanding. In Perth, colonisation has been accompanied by a denial of sacred Aboriginal ways of seeing the world and a transposition of the British world view, and its resulting spatial order, onto an entirely ‘other’ geography. This has resulted not in the creation of two parallel ways of understanding the city, but in the consistent domination of one set of mythologies over another. While the sacred ‘other’ understanding of the Western Australian capital occasionally surfaces in places such as Rottnest Island and the Swan Brewery, it has yet to be reconciled with the conceptualisation of Perth as a place created by European, and particularly British, pioneers.

The two places of the dead considered in this chapter are both marked by absence. The primary characteristic of Ground Zero in New York is currently the lack of the Twin Towers and other buildings of the World Trade Centre and of the approximately 2 800 people who died within them. The East Perth Cemeteries are today marked by the absence of the Chinese, Jewish and Presbyterian Cemeteries and by the denial of Aboriginal connections to land. However, in New York, the literal absence of the World Trade Centre and its dead is planned to be symbolically and permanently revealed, while in Perth the absence of the non white and non Christian dead is largely concealed.

Lower Manhattan and East Perth are both places in which the representation of history and the commemoration of the dead have been contested. At Ground Zero, there is ongoing speculation about how, and when, to memorialise those who died in the destruction of the World Trade Centre. As the bodies of most of the dead have literally disappeared, the way in which they are commemorated is particularly important to families and friends. In addition, the deaths of individuals in an event of national and international significance ensures that their specific commemoration is intrinsically connected to the collective memorialisation of 11 September 2001. magic of the city 271 rachel trigg The redevelopment of Ground Zero has proceeded rapidly, with a new master plan being adopted barely 18 months after the World Trade Centre was razed. The completion of four new towers on the site is expected by 2013, with significant penalties in place if the construction schedule runs late (Collins 2008). The rational forces of city development are also ensuring that the financial, legal and structural ramifications of building at Ground Zero are carefully calculated. However, despite the practical requirements of building in a high density city with correspondingly high land prices, the site continues to be understood as magical. The exposure of the slurry wall at Ground Zero promises to provide an inversion of the architecture of the Twin Towers, as well as a symbolic tomb for the disembodied dead. As noted previously in this chapter, the exposure of the slurry wall also resonates with both sets of New York’s mythologies. It reveals the solid foundations on which the city’s shining architecture is constructed, as well showing that the magical metropolis can be wracked by darkness, madness and doubt.

In contrast, the absence of the bodily remains of the non white and non Christian dead has at the East Perth Cemeteries has been largely obscured. For almost 100 years, the Cemeteries have been used to illustrate the understanding of Perth as the sole product of European pioneers. The legal definition, physical expression and textual representation of the Cemeteries have all been used to emphasise the presence of early white colonists and obfuscate the burial of a variety of non white and non Christian ‘others’. A city understood as being created by the ceremonial felling of a tree on a hilltop is very different to a city acknowledged to be haunted by a bustling conglomeration of Chinese, Afghani, Jewish, Indian and Japanese dead and by an abiding Aboriginal sacredness.

The existence of Chinese and Jewish citizens in the colonial city of Perth has been recognised, in very a modest way, some 50 years after their dead were removed to make way for tennis courts. The Chinese Memorial and Jewish Memorial Cemetery in and near the East Perth Cemeteries do not, however, symbolise the absence of the cultural ‘other’ from the histories of Perth so much as legitimise their removal. magic of the city 272 rachel trigg The inability of these Memorials, with the other commemorative works within the East Perth Cemeteries, to convincingly represent the absent dead is significant not only for the newly gentrified East Perth, but also for the city as a whole. If Perth is unable to come to terms with the relatively minor absence of the cultural, and particularly the Aboriginal, ‘other’ from its colonial cemetery, it is difficult to see how the city will be able to reconcile its dominant understanding with its many histories.

1 This definition is taken largely from LMDC (2002), which uses a combination of landmarks and streets to describe the bounds of Ground Zero.

2 The Seduction of Place was originally published in 2000. A revised version with afterword was released in 2004.

3 Although it is discussed elsewhere, including Richardson and Davies (1986) and Davidson (1991), as the ‘East Perth Cemetery’, the second place on which this chapter focuses will here be referred to as the ‘East Perth Cemeteries’. This is because, although they currently appear to be a continuous burial site, throughout operation the Cemeteries were spatially, conceptually and administratively separated.

4 Tuan has described “cosmopolites” as “people in love with the splendour and plenitude of life” (1996: 182).

5 Despite concerns after 2001 about the safety of tall buildings in New York, there are now numerous plans for new skyscrapers in Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs (Lange 2006).

6 The image of the Empire State Building was actually a replacement for the images of the Twin Towers, which were removed from the show’s credits after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

7 Incidentally, Burton has also directed a film version of Washington Irving’s (1819) gothic fairytale Sleepy Hollow, which is set in the state, but not the city, of New York.

8 For details of this find, see Cantwell and Wall (2001).

9 Body parts were, however, being recovered from the site as late as October 2006 (The Australian 2006).

10 A similar idea has occurred to Italo Calvino (1997) and is documented in his Invisible Cities.

11 The international design competition was held after there was significant public concern over the six ‘concept plans’ which were prepared by architectural firm Beyer Blinder Belle and contained in the LMDC’s initial brief for the redevelopment of Ground Zero.

12 The Aboriginal peoples of Perth and the south west of WA are variously referred to as ‘Noongars’, ‘Nyoongars’ and ‘Nyungars’. In this thesis the spelling ‘Nyungah’ will be used, as it is that adopted by the local Swan Valley Nyungah Community (see Trigg 1998).

13 The Anglican Church in Australia is also known as the Church of England. magic of the city 273 rachel trigg

14 The section for Presbyterian burials was located on the western side of Plan Street, with the Chinese and Hebrew Cemeteries, due to the late formation of the Presbyterian Church in WA. According to Richards (1991), the Church was only formed in 1879, and the Presbyterian Cemetery site was thus one of the last to be allocated.

magic of the city 274 rachel trigg 11 Conclusions

11.1 On method Much of this thesis has involved the deconstruction of magical stories. The thesis commenced with the words, usually found in fairy tales and fables, “once upon a time”. It uses methodologies which have to date been largely restricted to cultural studies and the arts, and is based on an understanding of the world which is derived from the theory and practice of postmodern literature and the way in which contemporary anthropology conceptualises art. The case studies have examined, in Chapters 5 and 6, the representation of the cemetery in a novel and a television series and, in Chapter 7, an idiosyncratic depiction of the city by an architect who was as interested in remembering the past as he was in building for the future. Even the lengthy case studies considered in Chapters 8, 9 and 10, each of which apply the more complex and intertextual method of discourse analysis, have a narrative component. Chapter 8, for example, tells the story of the evolution of the National Mall in Washington DC, while Chapter 9 incorporates numerous vignettes describing individual memorials in Canberra. Chapter 10 is, in contrast, a ‘tale of two cities’ which describes the mythical understanding of the metropolis and its places of the dead in the seemingly unconnected locales of New York and Perth.

The narratives in this thesis have woven together two interconnected strands: the examination of places of the dead and the notion that the contemporary, Western city may still be understood in non rational ways. In the first four chapters, which provided the theoretical and methodological base for the thesis, these strands were separated. Thus Chapter 2 considered the history of places of the dead, Chapter 3 proposed the notion of the magic of the city and Chapter 4 described the ways in which textual analysis and discourse analysis would be applied in this thesis. The six case study chapters gradually spun these strands together. Each of the case study chapters present their own findings regarding the representation of places of magic of the city 275 rachel trigg the dead in the contemporary, Western city. The role of this concluding chapter is to relocate the separate strands considered in Chapters 2 to 4 and to relate them to the findings of Chapters 5 to 10.

The methods used in this thesis have proved more successful in some case studies than others. With the exception of the consideration of The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Chapter 5, all of the case studies incorporated some form of intertextual comparison. Chapter 6, for example, compared the insights gained through textual analysis with those provided by archival research, while Chapter 7 examined a variety of texts created by architect Aldo Rossi. As is required in the application of discourse analysis, Chapters 8 to 10 each referred to a much larger number and variety of texts. Most of the case studies also considered, to some extent, the ways in which the subject texts represent social and political realities. Chapter 5 considered the impact of totalitarian forms of government on individual understandings of the world, while Chapter 7 noted the problematic nature of Rossi’s Segrate memorial to the Italian partisans of World War II. More significantly, Chapters 8 and 9 examined the understanding of the central spaces of commemoration in two Western democracies and Chapters 9 and 10 considered the ways in which Indigenous understandings of place have been largely discarded in the dominant mythologies of the Australian cities of Canberra and Perth. Chapter 10, moreover, also analysed the way in which a place resulting from a prominent terrorist attack may be understood and mythologised. This intermingling of intertextuality and of social and political analysis in most of the case studies reveals that, as in theory, it is also difficult to distinguish between textual analysis and discourse analysis in application.

There are, however, some conclusions which can be made about the application of each method. Textual analysis was applied in a relatively direct way in Chapters 5 to 7. In each of these chapters it was important to provide a detailed introduction to the texts being considered. In Chapter 5 this initial analysis was separated from the remainder of the case study, while in Chapters 6 and 7 the introduction to the texts magic of the city 276 rachel trigg was incorporated into the more general analysis. In the absence of a large number of intertextual comparisons, these introductions were particularly important as they enabled the analysis to be grounded in the historical context of the making of the texts. This was most noticeable in Chapter 5 which, without reference to Stanley French’s (1975) scholarly consideration of the American rural cemetery model, may have been in danger of becoming a uncritical celebration of a very rich, but nonetheless not particularly serious, text. Even with its textual comparison, the analysis of Buffy the Vampire Slayer relates far more strongly to the way in which reality is recreated than it does to the way in which the city is lived.

The case studies have shown that discourse analysis is more successful when not only a large number of texts, but more importantly texts from a large number of modes of representation, are examined. The analyses in Chapter 7 and in the first half of Chapter 10 were more revealing and convincing than those in Chapter 8 and in second half of Chapter 10. This is at least partly due to the more varied array of texts considered in relation to Washington DC and New York as compared to Canberra and Perth. In particular, the American places of the dead were far more likely to be represented in films and television series than were their Australian counterparts. This may relate to the greater prominence of Washington DC and New York in American popular culture and also to the larger number of films and television series produced in the United States. Regardless, the incorporation of pop culture texts generally enlivened the analyses, rather than reducing their level of scholarliness. This was particularly the case in Chapter 8, which included consideration of a movie from the late 1930s, a contemporary cartoon series and a political television drama.

In regards to research on the built environment, it should be noted that some of the least convincing discourse analyses, as in Chapter 9 and the second half of Chapter 10, resulted from the examination of architectural and planning texts and from the consideration of the built environment itself. Although further research needs to be undertaken to confirm this finding, the case studies considered here magic of the city 277 rachel trigg imply that discourse analysis should be applied to the study of the built environment only when there is a sufficient diversity and quality of texts available. Where a particular site is represented in a limited number and variety of texts, it may be more fruitful to apply more traditional methodologies, including archival research and a thorough site analysis.

11.2 On places of the dead The case studies examined in this thesis reveal that places of the dead remain important in Western cities. Cemeteries and memorials continue to be depicted in a wide range of current day modes of representation, including songs, novels, photographs, newspapers, cartoons, drawings and the popular mass mediums of film and television. Places of the dead remain capable of arousing intense public debate, as is evident in the design process for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC and, more recently, the design for a memorial in New York to the victims of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Places of the dead can also attract significant political cache, as is demonstrated in the dedication of all memorials on Anzac Parade, as well as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Australian War Memorial, by Australian prime ministers, ministers, governors general and members of the British royal family.

Despite particular internationalised memorial and cemetery models being loosely replicated throughout certain time periods, the case studies considered in Chapters 5 to 10 reveal that places of the dead continue to be representative of the culture in which they were created. The Parisian cemetery of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, American cemetery of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Italian cemetery of Aldo Rossi’s Analogous City are each culturally specific. Similarly, the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC evidence a very different world view to that mapped in the Anzac Parade sculptures memorialising John Simpson and Weary Dunlop. Contemporary cemeteries and memorials are, however, most persuasive when they have a connection, in form or in ritual purpose, with the magic of the city 278 rachel trigg longer history of places of the dead in the Western city. This finding may appear to conflict with the cultural specificity of successful cemeteries and memorials. However, the most compelling places of the dead considered in this thesis reinvigorate pre existing forms with contemporary meanings and place them within new, culturally and spatially specific, mythologies.

As well as balancing a cultural specificity with a connection to the history of places of the dead, the case studies considered in this thesis have found that contemporary places of the dead are most successful when they do not attempt to prescribe a specific reading, but instead are able to be understood in different ways by different viewers. The most obvious example of this is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC, the design of which connects to the plan of the American capital and reflects prehistoric and medieval commemorative precedent, yet is able to be interpreted in individual and idiosyncratic ways. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial allows visitors to interact with their dead through the merging of inscribed names and reflected bodies on a single surface. In comparison, the World War II Memorial in the same city combines numerous figurative depictions with a complex array of symbolic representations and a great deal of text. Unlike the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the work does not encourage visitors to make their own meanings from memorial forms, but rather explains, in great detail, how World War II is to be understood and remembered.

Other contemporary places of the dead which attempt to prescribe a specific understanding of the world include the ‘pioneer’ East Perth Cemeteries and many of the memorials on Anzac Parade in Canberra. The National Australian Korean War Memorial is, in particular, an awkward conglomeration of forms and symbols which relies on explanatory diagrams and text to create meaning. It could also be argued that the competition winning iteration of Daniel Libeskind’s master plan for Ground Zero attempts to impose a selective and sentimental understanding of American history on the inhabitants of New York. Although Libeskind’s master plan may leave much to be desired, his retention of the exposed slurry wall at Ground magic of the city 279 rachel trigg Zero is a gesture which both resonates with the mythologies of New York and reads as an appropriate, and sufficiently open, acknowledgement of the suffering which befell the city on 11 September 2001.

As with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, more successful examples of contemporary places of the dead allow, and indeed encourage, a variety of understandings. For example, the graveyards depicted in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: illustrate the American garden cemetery model; allude to the early modern understanding of cemeteries as places of horror and disease; provide locations for the slaying of monsters; act as liminal sites for the maturation of teenagers; and accommodate the human dead. Although entirely different in form, location and meaning, The Aboriginal Memorial in the National Gallery of Australia can also be interpreted in numerous ways. It can be read as: archaeological artefact; Western appropriation of Indigenous memorial forms; homage to the individual Aboriginal dead; and politically charged inditement of white Australia.

11.3 On history The case studies considered in this thesis have shown that, when considered from a contemporary perspective, the success of a cemetery or memorial is not directly related to the historical period in which it was created or which it references. As noted above, it is the maintenance of a connection between a historically specific architectural form and its meaning which is important, rather than the period in which the form was originally used. For example, it is the connection between the ancient forms and mythologies associated with the American capital which make the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial successful, rather than the reference to ancient architecture per se. The World War II Memorial in Washington DC and the Australia National Korean War Memorial in Canberra both incorporate references to ancient architectural styles, but neither is particularly meaningful to contemporary city dwellers. Conversely, Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial is one of the few places considered in this thesis to reference medieval memorial practices, magic of the city 280 rachel trigg but is nonetheless one of the most successful examples considered here.

The ability of postmodernity to make meaning from a variety of historically referenced forms may be one of its more positive aspects. As does Rossi in The Analogous City, contemporary urban dwellers can assemble a variety of historical fragments into an understanding of the city which is both culturally constituted and also individually meaningful. However, the assembly of a cohesive, postmodern world view is not as simple as combining a variety of architectural styles in one location. This is evident in the example of Anzac Parade, the memorials on which reference prehistoric (Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial), ancient (Australian Hellenic Memorial), modern (Royal Australian Navy Memorial), postmodern (Australian Service Nurses National Memorial) and even Aztec (Rats of Tobruk Memorial) styles of representation. In this case the result is not an understanding of the city which links historical style to mythological meaning, but rather an assortment of isolated monuments which are irreconcilable within a singular world view.

11.4 On the magic of the city This thesis began with the elaboration of an alternate, non rational way of understanding the contemporary, Western city. It drew from the narrative genre of magical realism and Gell’s (1999) conceptualisation of art as a ‘technology of enchantment’ to posit that the magical is an active element in the everyday understandings of contemporary urban dwellers, as well as in the more enduring mythologies of the city.

According to Gell, an enchanted understanding of the world is not an unfortunate relic of pre modern thought, but an inherent result of the scientific processes which came to the fore during modernity. As concluded in Chapter 3, the city can thus be understood as a collective work of art in which urban form is linked to cosmological understanding, with both form and understanding being regularly reinvigorated by magic of the city 281 rachel trigg rituals and other collective events. The places of the dead considered in this thesis conform with this notion. For example, Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer depicts a place in which myth is instrumental to the understanding of the city and the universe. In order to survive in the enchanted metropolis of Sunnydale, residents must understand the relationship between the city’s form and the myths and rituals which give it meaning. Many of these myths and rituals are centered upon, or occur within, the cemeteries. Moreover, the cemeteries are the places in which those who ignore the dark side to the enchantment of technology meet their end. As represented in Buffy, to dismiss Sunnydale’s mythical elements is literally to court danger and death.

The notion of the urban artefact and its relationship to city mythologies is also crucial to Rossi’s cosmology, as is evident in his book The Architecture of the City and his collage The Analogous City. Although his magical understanding of the city may be better demonstrated in his books and drawings than in his built works, for Rossi the meanings of a city are inscribed within its street layout and anchored by its monuments. These meanings are not static, but rather evolve over time. Though the monuments of a city retain their form, their meanings and relationships to urban rituals may change.

The memorials in the centre of the American capital are also understandable as manifestations of the enchantment of technology, according, as they do, with the notion of Washington DC as a prototypical democracy with origins in ancient Greece. This notion is embedded in the L’Enfant Plan, which combines the ancient belief that a city can be planned as a reflection of the universe with a Beaux-Arts understanding of the city as a conceptual totality able to be understood by enlightened citizens. This magical understanding is particularly evident in memorials with classical form, such as the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. However, it is also evident in memorials with a modernist or postmodernist design. The forms of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Korean War Memorial are both subservient to the structure imposed by the L’Enfant Plan. magic of the city 282 rachel trigg Yet these two memorials add contemporary nuance to earlier understandings, as they precipitate more personal interactions between visitors and their dead than do the earlier memorials in the centre of the American capital.

The enchantment of technology is also evident, albeit to a lesser extent, in Canberra. The conception of the Australian capital as a place in which a local landscape is combined with internationally recognised understandings of democracy to form a coherent vision of the world is embedded in the Griffin Plan. The memorials on Anzac Parade largely, however, map Australia’s relationships with the rest of the world, rather than reinforcing a local sense of geography and culture. With the partial exception of the Australian War Memorial, the commemorative works on Anzac Parade do not contribute greatly to a magical understanding of the city. They do not anchor the understanding of the city to its form, nor play a prominent role in mass rituals and other public events. The ceremonial role of Anzac Parade exists largely independently of the memorials which line its sides.

As detailed in Chapter 3, ‘magical realism’ relates to an understanding of the world in which the real and the marvellous are combined in a seamless way. Unlike the enchantment of technology, which works at the collective scale, magical realism is more likely to depict the non rational as a common, everyday occurrence. Many of the texts considered in this thesis also depict this kind of magical reality. It is present in The Unbearable Lightness of Being when Tereza imagines the medieval statues to be waving at her, and also when she dreams that her dead self has been abandoned in the cemetery by her husband. In early seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the metaphoric understandings of individual characters magically become real. For example, a girl who envisages herself as being overlooked by her peers literally becomes invisible, while Buffy’s boyfriend actually turns into a monster. The seamless combination of the magical and the real can also be found in Rossi’s Analogous City, where imaginative references to the architect’s own life are incorporated into his historically and culturally specific vision of the metropolis. magic of the city 283 rachel trigg Magical realism as defined by Faris (1998), Durix (1998) and Bowers (2004) also provides a narrative strategy for the representation of the cultural ‘other’. Several chapters in this thesis examined places in which certain members of the population are symbolically or actually excluded from the city and its places of dead. Both teenagers and vampires are, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, represented as being ‘other’ to the city and to the rational adults which inhabit it. Rather than belonging to the city, Buffy and her friends are depicted as uneasily sharing the heterotopic space of the cemetery with vampires and demons.

More significantly, the commemorative spaces in the capitals of both Australia and the United States of America represent substantial proportions of the population as ‘other’. Chapter 8 revealed that the bodies of women are excluded from symbolic representation in the Mall in Washington DC. Although it was not discussed in the case study, it is highly likely that the bodies of non white men are also largely excluded from symbolic commemoration in the American capital. On Anzac Parade in Canberra and in the East Perth Cemeteries in Perth, not only Aboriginal bodies, but also Indigenous ways of understanding the world, are absented. These two Australian cities incorporate references to the existence of an Aboriginal sacredness only in carefully controlled circumstances, such as in the forecourt of Parliament House and in the East Perth Cemeteries memorial to an Aboriginal tracker who assisted early colonists. The case studies considered in Chapters 9 and 10 thus reveal that the magic of the city is not always positive or benign. The mythologies and metaphors which help some urban dwellers feel at home in a complex world can exclude other citizens from being recognised and remembered within the city and its places of the dead.

11.5 On future research The acknowledgement that the contemporary, Western city continues to be understood through non rational ways of knowing has many possible applications magic of the city 284 rachel trigg to future research. Most obviously, the notion that places in the contemporary city may still be understood as non rational may be applicable to the study of places which Foucault (1987) identified as heterotopias, including museums, galleries, parks, gardens, schools and prisons (see Chapter 1). These places may be understood to have resisted or undermined the understanding of the city based solely on rational epistemologies. It is interesting to note that all of these places, with the exception of parks and gardens and the addition of churches and universities, are categorised as ‘special uses’ in urban planning documents and on city zoning maps. Such places were never entirely reconcilable with the scientific logic which the profession of urban planning purports to apply, but may be more understandable through the heterotopic notion of the magic of the city.

Further study could also focus on the idiosyncratic ways in which individuals understand the cities in which they exist, as with fictional characters (such as Sabina and Tereza) in magical realist texts (such as The Unbearable Lightness of Being). Research could be undertaken in this area using existing methodologies, such as mind mapping and personal interviews, to uncover the non rational ways in which contemporary urban dwellers make sense of their environments.

The notion of the magic of the city could also add to the understanding of vernacular forms of architecture, such as the house, as well as the understanding of suburban areas in which many, if not most, inhabitants of cities in Australia and North America continue to prefer to live. The ongoing attraction of suburban areas to city dwellers has puzzled researchers for many years. Research into the impacts of various housing typologies has generally focused on rational factors such as: the price of land and building construction; the availability of services; the distance of housing from employment, education and, more recently, entertainment opportunities; and the environmental implications of the continuing expansion of the urban fringe. Taking the importance of non rational understandings seriously could help to explain contemporary planning mysteries such as the reluctance of many urban dwellers to embrace urban consolidation. magic of the city 285 rachel trigg It may also assist in developing more nuanced understandings of ‘rational’ or ‘practical’ places such as industrial estates, heavy rail networks and port facilities. Acknowledging the magical ways in which such places are understood may assist in reducing the sense of fracture and dislocation often experienced when such places become redundant in the post industrial cities of the West. While the removal of most industrial sites from contemporary cities may be inevitable, the metaphoric understandings associated with such places should be considered in schemes for redevelopment and renewal.

The notion of the magic of the city may assist in the recognition of multi ethnic and multi religious contributions to contemporary, Western culture. As in the literary genre of magical realism, combining indigenous cosmologies with colonial ways of knowing and with multiple postcolonial perspectives offers the possibility of a re enchanted understanding of the metropolis. This collective project would focus on commonalities between the multiple communities existing in specific places, while also acknowledging and protecting the specific characteristics of those communities. As argued by Leonie Sandercock (1998) in Towards Cosmopolis, the contemporary conceptualisation of the city should move beyond the binary choice between ‘either/or’ to embrace the possibilities inherent in ‘both/and’.

In the Australian context, productive reconsiderations of colonial mythologies must be based upon Aboriginal ways of understanding country. Acknowledging Indigenous mythology and native title as opportunities, rather than as primitive fancy and legal imposition, offers the possibility of positive and creative engagements between Aboriginal and non Aboriginal cultures. In a practical sense, the discovery of magical ways of understanding the contemporary Australian city could arise from a serious engagement between artists from differing modes of representation and planners, architects, engineers and other professional city builders who ostensibly act within rational epistemologies. The apology offered to the ‘Stolen Generation’ of Indigenous Australians by the Commonwealth magic of the city 286 rachel trigg Government creates an optimistic platform from which to begin this work.

The notion of the magic of the city, and the possibility of establishing a collective understanding of the urbanity able to be embraced by a multiplicity of cultures, is relevant for other Western nations, most obviously the United States of America, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, which are attempting to come to terms with their colonial pasts. This project is also relevant to European nations, such as Great Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands, which are grappling with the opportunities and difficulties created by the arrival of large numbers of city dwellers from non Western cultures and non Christian religions. As in the ancient, medieval and modern worlds, collective imagining of urban mythologies may be just as vital to the stability of post industrial, multi ethnic nations as more rational considerations.

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