The Monumentalization of Shame

Abstract

Abstract This chapter investigates the complex role memorials play as expressions of public penance. It focuses on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, exploring how it functions as a form of political communication, a site of shared mourning, and a vehicle of trauma management. Drawing on the work of Jürgen Habermas, the chapter defends the Memorial as the expression of an affirmative biopolitics in which the German state marks a decisive break from a collective life context that maintained itself by usurping and destroying the lives of others. I then explore how the Memorial responds to (and offers consolation for) the vicarious trauma of later-born Germans who tread a thin line between identifying with and identifying as the victims. I suggest this consoling work weakens the admonitory force of the Memorial and its capacity to provoke reflection on the friend–enemy distinction that founds the nation-state.