JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 24, Number 2, 2004 Page: 472
261-512 p. : ill. (some col.), ports. ; 22 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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472
A "museum" may be any real or imaginary site where the conflict or
interaction or simulation of or between personal or collective memory
occurs. Museums are more than cultural institutions and showplaces of
accumulated objects: they are the sites of interaction between personal
and collective identities, between memory and history, between informa-
tion and knowledge production. (12)
Hence, web memorials are not only sites of unhaunted memory, but also
sources of information for grief counseling, religious education and
inspiration, community-building, and various clearly laid-out political
agendas and voices.
The homepage ofvirtualmemorials.com introduces itself as follows:
"We create memorials that celebrate the lives and personalities of those
we have lost and provide a place where these cherished images and
biographies will have a permanent home." The "we" here collapses the
distinction between public and private: a family's personal loss can
become, through the memorial, part of a national loss and thus subject to
national grief. Like a museum artifact or object, the images and photo-
graphs of the deceased, who are ordinary members of the public, affirm
the significance of the life lost. As Crane writes, "Being collected means
being valued and remembered institutionally; being displayed means
being incorporated into the extra-institutional memory of the museum
visitors" (2). The reader is then invited to visit a memorial by clicking on
any of the many names that appear on the rest of the page, or on one of the
three photographs pictured beneath the caption. Once inside a memorial
page, you can choose to enlarge the photograph, or to read the biography,
travels, reflections, or passages about family life. You can sign the Guest
Book, learn about support groups, click on affiliated pages, and read more
about "us," the memorial website.
Crucially, the homepage sees the web as providing a permanent place
for memory, even though it also uses the changeability and easy
replaceability of images on the web to its advantage. For example, after
September 2001, virtualmemorials.com added a new sidebar (now re-
moved) that expressed sympathy to those affected by the events of
September 11 and a hope for peace and an end to violence. The site thus
wrote itself into a national dialectic of mourning and grief. At the same
time, a single click would eliminate this message of sympathy and take the
viewer to an affiliated page such as barnesandnoble.com in order to
purchase books such as The Day Diana Died and How to Survive the Loss
of a Love. Because all pages on the web memorial are the same distancejac
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Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition (U.S.). JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 24, Number 2, 2004, periodical, 2004; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28644/m1/218/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .