Visiting Instructor of Sociology Dee Britton presented a paper and chaired a panel at the First International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois on May 5-6. Her paper was titled "Visualizing and Remembering Terrorism: A Symbolic Interaction Analytic Framework."
Public memorials representing national identity were declared an archaic public art form during the 1960s and 1970s. Modernity's focus did not include representational commemorations of tradition and history. And yet, the postmodern United States is constructing numerous memorials that attempt to integrate a social understanding of terrorism and vulnerability into a heritage that has emphasized invincibility, power, and might. The time compression of these postmodern national memorials has resulted in a change of the form, location and intent of the commemorations. Most memorials have transformed from "LestYou Forget" to "We Won't Forget" memorialization projects. The time
compression and memorial typology have been directly controlled by the people who have commanded the collective memory process.
This paper defines a new analytic symbolic interaction framework that includes: the Lost, the Bereaved, the Survivors, the Agents, the Creators, the Invisibles, the Interpreters, and the Perpetrators. This framework will then be used to analyze the design and construction of memorials for terrorist activities in the United States and theirimpact upon U.S. national identity.
