Écrire le monument : site, mémoire, critique

As contemporary monument-makers begin to challenge the very idea of the monument, the author suggests an alternative approach to our critical writing about monuments. Public art in general, and Shoah memeorials in particular, then to beg traditional art historical inquiry. Most discussions of Holocaust memorial spaces ignore the public dimension of those spaces. In this alternative critique of Holocaust monuments, the author finds that it may be precisely the public's interaction with the monument that finally constitutes an aesthetic performance. In looking at the ways our memorial representations of history may finally weave themselves back into the course of ongoing events, the author proposes a critique of these memorials that would both reinvigorate the monument with the memory of its own coming into being, and recognizes the role of the critic-viewer within the memorial text.