The Diversity of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall: A Study in Meaning Transitions of the Memorial Space
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Chen, Han-Wei
Abstract
As the largest memorial of the former president Chiang Kai-shek and a must to visit for foreign tourists, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (中正紀念堂) has been a vital vehicle for the Kuomintang (KMT) to pass on their cultural heritage. From different perspectives, it can be regarded as a manifestation of grand art, a symbolic place for the social movements gestating Taiwan’s democracy during the 1980s, or simply a big park downtown. How have such different meanings been inscribed in a memorial hall that originally aimed to sanctify an authoritative leader? This research applies Henri Lefebvre’s triad of concepts: spatial practice, representations of space and representational space to analyze how the state exercises control over the landscape and how citizens react to such manipulations. The political, economic and living logics are all of concern. I contend that before high politics engaging in there had been a variety of activities happening in the place. I classify them by legitimacy and visibility, and discuss how strategies and tactics in the theory of everyday practice are used by different groups of actors to endow the place with meanings that belong to cultural memory or communicative memory, a distinction made by the theory of collective memory. During such a process the actors challenge, add to or negotiate with the meanings of the place that the state has tried to control, culminating in a complex of spatial practices. Among them the political logic that has been challenging the state is the least legitimate but the most visible and sensational, making it abler to change the existing meaning. The economic logic has rather successfully desacralized the hall, at the same time commodifying and privatizing it. The living logic has been changing the boundary of the “publicness” symbolized by the hall via daily practices that also deposit as communicative memory of the powerless, proving that it is possible for them to apply tactics of everyday life to influence the authoritative culture memory. Unlike studies that focus on the symbolic conflicts manipulated by political groups, I emphasize the importance of the everyday practices of the seemingly powerless citizens. The variation of meanings of the memorial hall is not simply a product of the political logic, but a multitude of citizens using the place as they like it. The control of the state is never so ramified enough to regulate the meanings and memories the citizens endow with the place. Therefore, I point out a different route to spatial publicness that opens its future to everyone interested in the place.
Subjects
Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
spatial practice
everyday practice
cultural memory
communicative memory
SDGs
Type
thesis
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