History's remains: Of memory, mourning, and the event

Research in Phenomenology

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 75-96

  Naas, Michael ^a  

^a DEPAUL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 61149498697     PISSN: 00855553     EISSN: 15691640     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/15691640360699618     Document Type: Review

References (18)

1. An earlier version of this text was read at Southern Illinois University (at the "Philosophical Collaborations" conference in March 2001), Vanderbilt University, and Grinnell College. My thanks to Robert Hahn, David Wood, and Alan Shrift for their kind invitations to these institutions and for the many helpful suggestions they and their colleagues were able to bring to this work
2. The Work of Mourning, ed. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Hereafter cited as WM.
3. Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 61-62.
4. The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 100.
5. All passages from Laws, trans. R. G. Burv (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).
6. As for the ceremonies, the lawgiver must set moderate amounts for each of the four property classes and the law-warden must act as "overseer" to make sure all the arrangements are carried out in a proper and moderate way (959e).
7. This speech and much of the information to follow concerning the controversy surrounding the Unknown Soldier of Vietnam was found on the official web site of Arlington National Cemetery: www.arlingtoncemetery.com.
8. Hannah Arendt writes in The Human Condition (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books. 1959), 161: "The monuments to the 'Unknown Soldier' after World War I bear testimony to the then still existing need for glorification, for finding a 'who,' an identifiable somebody whom four years of mass slaughter should have revealed. The frustration of this wish and the unwillingness to resign oneself to the brutal fact that the agent of the war was actually nobody inspired the erection of the monuments to the 'unknown,' to all those whom the war had failed to make known and had robbed thereby, not of their achievement, but of their human dignity."
9. For an excellent analysis of such attempts to glorify war and the war dead through the construction of a "Myth of the War Experience," see George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
10. See Plato, Apology 32b
11. and Xenophon, Hellenica, (I.7.15-16).
12. This technique uses computer analysis of remains to reconstruct facial features that can then be compared to photographs.
13. Cohen continued: but "if advances in technology can ease the lingering anguish of even one family, then our path is clear."
14. This was not to be the end of the controversy. Because the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest and most distinguished medal, was awarded to the remains of an unknown soldier who proved to be Michael Joseph Blassie, the question arose whether Blassie had been, or should be, awarded this medal. It was ultimately decided that the Medal of Honor had been awarded to the Unknown Solider and not to Blassie, and that, as a result, it must not remain with him, that is, it must not be or continue to be attached to his name or his remains.
15. New Yorker, 1 October 2001, 39-40.
16. New York Times, 3 February 2002, A1, A14.
17. Glas, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., and Richard Rand (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1986), 2b, 70a, 32b. This latter is translated by Leavey and Rand, "Falls (to the tomb), remain(s)."
18. Originally published as Glas (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1974), 8b, 82a, 41b.