A University of Sussex PhD thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details 1 USING MONUMENTS THOMAS HOULTON Thesis submitted for the qualification of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX September 2015 2 STATEMENT I hereby declare that this thesis has not been, and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. However, this thesis incorporates to the extent indicated below, material already submitted as part of required coursework and for the degree of: MA in Museum Studies which was awarded by New York University, 2008 Thomas Houlton, September 2015 Elements of this thesis are based on the MA dissertation Re-burying the Uncanny: The Cenotaph, the counter-monument and ways of Remembering in the 20th Century (2008). 3 UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX THOMAS HOULTON DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE USING MONUMENTS SUMMARY This thesis examines monuments as cultural objects, and repositions them as points of intersection between psychoanalysis, society, art, remembrance and politics. Building on psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott’s work on object use, this thesis maps the disruptive nature of monuments, and their propagation of difficult or irresolvable questions. The first chapter is a research trip diary which details a journey through Poland, Austria and Germany in search of Holocaust monuments. It is a piece of critical self-reflexion, a point from which the subsequent chapters stem, forming the point of interaction with the monuments as physical objects. Chapter two examines the elusive presence of Rachel Whiteread’s Memorial to the Austrian Jewish Victims of the Shoah. Using Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s formulations on cryptonymy, this chapter explores the possibility that Whiteread’s work is a false archive that disguises a hidden centre. This, it is suggested, could parallel a similar characteristic within Holocaust discourse. The third chapter uses Winnicott’s work on antisocial behaviour, object use and fear of breakdown. It looks at monuments that are used non-ritually (transgressively, playfully, sexually) and questions how much of our relationship with the monument is based around anxiety, rather than a legitimate protection of society from antisocial elements. Chapter four examines the relationship between plants and remembrance. It focuses on Paul Harfleet’s The Pansy Project, looking at the etymology of the word ‘pansy’ alongside its alliance to queer politics and history, and how the radical excess of queerness becomes, through its performance as a flower, a means of propagating remembrance beyond conventional forms. The conclusion to the thesis makes a case for the necessity of a re-engagement with Winnicott’s psychoanalysis, and an approach towards our monuments that is rooted in their thing-ness: public objects that can be truly public, with all the questions and difficulties that brings. 4 CONTENTS SUMMARY…………………………………………………………………………………………………..…3 CONTENTS…………………………………………………………………………………………………..…4 IN MEMORIAM …………………………………………….…………………………………………………5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………………………6 INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………………….……………7 CHAPTER 1: RESEARCH DIARY (AN IMAGINED HOLOCAUST) …………….………………………48 CHAPTER 2: THE ELUSIVE MONUMENT……………………………………………………………..146 CHAPTER 3: THE USEFUL MONUMENT …………………………………….……………………….190 CHAPTER 4: THE LIVING, QUEER MONUMENT …………………………..……………………….249 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………..……………………………………….292 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………………………….298 5 - IN MEMORIAM - Walter Dickerson Peter Houlton Dick Houlton Eileen Bright Laurence Simmons Pat Hill - 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was funded in part by an AHRC Doctoral Award, AHRC Research Training Support Grant, McCarthy Travel Bursary and the School of English Doctoral Research Support Fund. My thanks go to the AHRC and Sussex School of English for their support. I would like to thank the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence at the University of Sussex. To that community of people I extend my gratitude: Rachel O’Connell, Sam Solomon, Matthew Beetar, Gaspard Pelurson, Béatrice Châteauvert-Gagnon, Jacob Engelberg, Georgina Mind, J.D. Rhodes, Michael Lawrence, Sharif Mowlabocus and Francesco Ventrella. Thanks also to Kat Harris, Camilla Bostock, Laura Gill, Lana Harper, Oliver Penny, Dominic Walker, Kiron Ward; and to Paul Harfleet and Yivgeny Fiks. Enormous thanks go to my parents, Sue and Richard Houlton, who have provided me with the most incredible love and encouragement over the years. I couldn’t have done any of this without them. Muriel Dickerson, Sybil Houlton and Audrey Simmons: thank you for your insightfulness, humour and love. Thanks to Paul Dickerson for his advice and generosity. Thanks also to Liz Houlton, Pam Cox, Kate Cox, Helen Avison, Mags Cox and their families, Andrew, Amanda, Joshua, Amelia and Samuel Dickerson. Thank you also to Karen Whiting, Gill Duncan and Kay White-Wilcox, who always make visits north a pleasure. Big thanks also to: Esh Alladi, Giséle Bone, Joe Bunker, Sarah Burson, Priya Daniel, Amy Dartington, Flora Ellison, Georgie Gateshill, Kat Gulick, Emma Jenkinson, Zac Lamdin, Dilly Lane, Kate Mills, Holly Morgan, Kieran Rafferty, Lisa Reck, Ali Riley, Nat Ruchat, Tess Segal, Lee Smith, Anna Supple, Selina & Paul Stafford, Scott Whittaker, Chris Yianni. Dulcie Few, Kieran Devaney, Helen Jukes and Tom Bunstead: thanks for being the most amazing bunch of people, constantly encouraging me to transform my thoughts and emotions into ever better words. You’re the absolute best. Hannah Cooper, Ryan Davey, Jennifer Hodgson and Grania Pickard: I wouldn’t be able to do anything without your love, wisdom and silliness. Thank you. Diarmuid Hester, Mike Jones, Joe Ronan, Mike Rowland and Zac Rowlinson: your humour, advice and positivity have been incredible throughout this process. There aren’t enough pints to say thanks. Laura Joyce and Naomi Booth: you know why. My sincerest thanks are reserved for my supervisors, Vicky Lebeau and Lindsay Smith. There is not enough space to do justice to how much their empathy, pragmatism and humour meant that not only my thesis stayed on track but that I stayed on track as well. Their unwavering support and their generous, perceptive feedback have kept me going. For that, and for the relaxed, collaborative nature of our supervisions, I am indebted. INTRODUCTION A MONUMENT PURPORTS TO REFER TO THE PAST BUT IS ALWAYS 1 CONTEMPORARY. CROSSING THE NARROW PLANK FROM THE CAIQUE THAT HAD BROUGHT US TO THE SHORE, ONTO THE SLIPPERY ROCKS OF THE GALLIPOLI BEACHES, WATCHING A GREEK SAILOR, DARK CURLY-HAIRED FILM STAR FACE, PICKING SPINY BLACK SEA URCHINS OUT OF THE SHALLOWS – TO EAT, THEY SAID. AND ALL THOSE YOUNG MEN, FROM 2 THE 1914-18 WAR, BURIED UP THERE ON THE HILL. 1 James Hamilton-Paterson, Seven-Tenths: The Sea and Its Thresholds (New York: Europa Editions, 2009). 2 Marion Milner, Eternity’s Sunrise: A way of keeping a diary (1987) (Hove: Routledge, 2011), p.5. 8 Monuments, as this thesis will go on to show, are cultural objects that are deeply concerned with the present time. Not only are they historical artefacts, markers of the past preserved for us to remember through, or commemorate with, they affect and influence our contemporary moment. As the opening quotations attest to, the monument is a cultural form imbued with significance, mapped out as it is between temporalities, hovering on the edges of our perception even as we notice it. The quotation from James Hamilton-Paterson’s book Seven-Tenths (2009), a meditation upon the place of the oceans in our society and consciousness, details a visit he makes to the USS Arizona Pearl Harbour memorial in Hawaii. He observes that monuments ‘purport’ to refer to the past: through their inscriptions, physical age, aesthetics or concerns they seem to be marked as ‘other’ to our current moment. And yet, at the same time, they are ‘always contemporary’. Hamilton-Paterson does not only mean that these are objects that exist in the here-and-now, visible and accessible, but that they are societally or culturally contemporary: they are existing, ‘being’ in the present. How does that existence become ‘noticed’ by us, the people who demand, construct, pass by, remember at and use a monument? The second quotation, from psychoanalyst Marion Milner, points towards this mixture of past-and-present that Hamilton-Paterson suggests. Stepping off a boat, immersed in the sights of a new place as a tourist, Milner experiences an intrusion of the past prompted by the monument she notices perched on the hill above the beach: ‘all those young men…buried up there on the hill’. The Gallipoli monument is not central to Milner’s journey, nor does she afford it the rich description she does the handsome Greek sailor, or the sea urchins. Yet the presence of that monument, and the First World War it commemorates, enfolds itself into her narrative, eliding divisions between past and present,