>=0::: 0 ~ z UJ --J 0 UJ I­ ~ U.I C 0:: C < « (.!) z 0:: ~ < « ~ Z til C til Vl :::J z ... .... < <l.'" Z z 0 C 0 «'" UJ Vl ~ Z J: Z -J u 0 U.I ... 0 ~ « Z 0 z 0 ::J > --' UJ V) ':: 0 til Z Z I- C > ...'" « ., 0:: 0 U.I ~ 0 0 z « « ....... CO ::::J '" 0 ... ~ 0 J: J: ~ ~ ... ~ ..... u 1111111 ...:------.y-_. s-<></" ~ ~~ ~\;J ~ 3'15 ]V) -:t'I? The Un iversity of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London Re membering the victims of 9/11 and its aftermath © 2003 by The Unive rsity of Chicago All rights reserved . Published 2003 Printed in the United States of America 1211 100908 07 06050403 12345 ISBN: 0-226-57157-2 (cloth) ISBN: 0-226-571 58-0 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Monuments and memory, made and unm ade / edited by Robert S. Nelson and Margaret Olin. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-5 7 15 7-2 (cloth: alk . paper)-ISBN 0-226-57158-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Monuments. 2. Monuments-Conservari on and restoration. 3. Historic sires. 4. Hisroric sites-Conservarion and restoration. 5. Memory-Social aspeers. I. Nelson, Robert S. , 1947- II. Olin, Margaret Rose, 1948­ CC135 .M647 2003 306,4'7-dc21 2003010129 Part of chapter 6 was published in a different version as Margaret Olin, "Touching Photographs: Roland Barthes's 'Mistaken' Identification," Representations 80 (2002 ): 99-ll8. "The Wodd Trade Center," by David Lehman, is raken f.rom Valentine Place (New York: Scribner, 1996). © 1996 by David Lehman. Fim published in The Paris Review no. 136 {fall 1995): 74. Reprinted by permissioFl of the aurhor. All rights reserved. @ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American Nati ona l Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39,48-1992. 106 PART Two of monuments themselves, is the subject of part 3. There the issues of grief, of forcible destruction of the local by the "universal," present in these essays, take center stage. NOTES 1. "Der moderne Denkmalkultus, Sein Wesen und seine Enrstehung" was first published to accompany the draft fo r a law. It was republished in Riegl's collected essays, Gesammelte Aufsatze, ed. Karl M . Swoboda (Vienna: Ben no Filser, 1929), 144-93; translated as "The Modern Cult of Monuments: lts Character and Its Origin;' by Kurt W. Forster and Diane Ghiratdo, in Oppositions 25 (1982): 21-51. 1111111 5 2. Walter Benjamin, "The Image of Proust;' in Illuminations: Essays and R e~ectiol1s, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968),214. See also the essay by Jonathan Monumentality of Time: Bordo, below. 3. The most fa mous of them being "Ozy mandias" (1817) by Percy Bysshe Shell ey. Giant Clocks, the Drum Tower, the Clock Tower W U HUNG This essay investigates two essential problems in regulati ng and pre­ senting time. The first concerns the relationship between time keep­ ing and time telli ng; the second, the places and ins t rum ~ nt s that fa­ cilitated these two practices. I will focus on the period in Chinese history when the notion of public time was closely associated with the idea of monumentality- when giant clocks were created to legit­ imate political authority and when time was announced to a popu­ lace from imposing buildings in the center of a city. Whether con­ cealed inside the palace or exposed to the public, these clocks and buildings brought order to the country and helped construct differ­ ent social spaces and identities. The three types of mechanical! arc hitectural constructions stud­ ied in this essay-the traditional drum tower (often accompanied by a bell tower), the Western-style clock tower, and giant clocks- point to dive rgent systems of technology, spatial conception, and politi­ cal power. Oversized chronographs were routinely commissioned by Chinese emperors as symbols of political control over a unified time/ space. Sometimes installed in the throne hall, such clocks com­ plemented the drum tower in a marketplace to defi ne twin centers in a traditional Chinese capital. Beca use of its governmental affiliation 108 Wu H UNG MONUMENTALITY OF TiME 109 and public role, the drum tower was instrumental in maintaining imperial found in other early civilizations (hence "monumentality" in a general sense)4 dominance as well as in shaping a community; it derived its monumentality belonged to a special class of objects known as liqi, or "ritual paraphernalia." from both its architecture and its sound; its meaning is explicated in both of­ These objects-ceremonial jade carvings and bronze sacrificial vessels-al­ ficial inscriptions and private memoirs. When the drum tower fell silent and ways utilized the most advanced techniques ava il able at the time and "squan­ was replaced by the clock tower around the early twentieth century, these dered" an excessive amount of human labor. Though some had exaggerated events signified the appearance of a new kind of monumentality pertaining to sizes, they remained portable and maintained typological connections with a crucial shift in China's historical temporality from a traditional empire to a their utilitarian prototypes. They were called "heavy objects" (zhongqi) for modern nation-state. their political and psychological importance, not for thei r physical appearance and actual weight. Never intending to dominate public view, they were sacred Time Keeping and Time Telling in Traditional China properties of lineage temples, accessible only by the lineage members on spe­ cial ritual occasions. Underlying this art/ architectural tradition was a political People who connect public time telling to Big Ben outside the Houses of Par­ tenet that power could be maintained only by keeping it secret.5 This tradi ti on liament in London will have trouble distinguishing time telling from time never disappeared even after architectural monuments gained increasing pop­ keeping, because in that case a single clock, which moves and sounds auto­ ularity toward and during the imperial era: lofty buildings and colossal statues matically, performs both roles. Bu t in the ancient Chinese system, two sets of were now constructed to celebrate an enduring political or religious institu­ equipment were employe d in separate places for these two purposes. Time tion, and mountain-like tumul i immortalized individual rulers.6 Consequently, keeping relied on horology and as tronomy, which allowed the government to throughout China's imperial history from the third century B. C. to the early regulate seasons, months, days, and hours. In his Science and Civilization in twentieth century A.D., two traditions of symbolic art and architecture, one China, Joseph Needham emphasizes over and over the political significance of concealing power and the other displaying it, worked together to construct an time keeping to a Chinese emperor. i Hellmut Wi lhelm considers ancient Chi­ increasingly complex social and political space. nese astronomy and horology a secret science of priest-kings. 2 Time telling, on Once we connect time keeping and time telling to this art/ architectural the other hand, conveyed a standardized official time to a large population. context, we can study more closely the spatial concepts related to these two The principal instrument for this purpose was a drum tower (sometimes ac­ practices, as well as the structures and equi pment created fo r them. Time keep­ companied by a bell tower) . A drum tower was not a "clock" because it did ing consistently served to define the centrality of political power, and in stru­ not compute time and did not record the passage of time. It came alive only at ments made for this purpose readily fe ll into the category of liqi. For three designated moments, when it amplified signals from an official clock and thousand years, Chinese political theory held that harmony between time and transmitted these signals to the public. What a drum tower presented to the space was the foundation of rulership over a unified country. This idea was al­ public, therefore, was not a continuous, even, and unidirectional movement of ready firmly established in the Book of Documents (Shang shu ), one of the time, but an official schedule of projected operations and recurring events. 3 Confucian classics written during the second and firs t millennia B.C. The book Time keeping and time telling therefore both provided important means begins with the "Canon of Yao" ("Yao dian"), which records that Yao, a leg­ for exercising political control, but the former helped control knowledge while endary sage emperor in the time of Great Harmony, established a system that the latter helped control a populace. The locations of these two types of con­ allowed him "to compute and delineate th e sun, moon and stars, and the ce­ trol also differed: time keeping, as a secret science, was practiced in the sealed lestial markers, and so to deliver respectfully the seasons to be observed by imperial domain; time telling was by nature "public" and had to be exercised people."7 In this system, time was conceived from and framed within the "four in an open social space. These two locations, as we ll as the two kinds of po­ ends" of the world, and the mythological emperor could thereby define his po­ litical control they implied, were further related to different ideas and tradi­ sition at the center of this temporal/spatial structure known as China.8 tions of monumentality in ancient China. The triangular relationship between ti me, space, and political authority As I have explained elsewhere, no monumental architecture was pursued gained a more complex and dynamic form around the thi rd century B.C.