Making Collective Memory About the Collective

 Rory Engel

Making Collective Memory About the Collective

Seeing the cases that each group individually put together was my favorite part of this project because you could really see the different facets of Kenyon come together to create a cohesive understanding of the last hundred years here. In some ways, I think it helped to reinforce some of the choices that Liv, Julián, and I made in the Notable People case, but in other ways, it brought up critical points of what we could have done differently. For instance, after we finished presenting, the class had a productive conversation following Avery’s comment that our case solely revolved around white men. This was something we had conversations with during many of our meetings together in the Special Collections and Archives. While we wanted to feature more diversity, we felt a bit limited by both the boxes we were given as well as the culture of the school at the time we were looking at, which was predominantly white men. We also considered that other cases might include people and experiences from different backgrounds and how the exhibition as a whole would be more all-encompassing. For instance, in cases such as Student Life, the group talked about student organizations such as Black Student Union. A broader perspective was also created through cases such as Women at Kenyon. 

In Chapter 6 of The Struggle For the People’s King, titled “#MeToo, Black Feminism, and the Queenmakers,” Hajar Yazdiha focuses on the problem of white women being accredited for movements such as Me Too. In contrast, black women’s experiences and roles in the movement have been overlooked. In explaining this dilemma, she brings up the fact that there is intersectionality within collective memory, and with this, she believes that we go back and give events of the past a deeper look to acknowledge a truthful recalling of history. According to Yazdiha, this process must include both restoration and reconciliation. Restoring a memory is simply speaking it back into existence and making people aware of it. An example of this is when Oprah Winfrey mentions in a speech the raping and killing of Recy Taylor. Even the mention of Taylor’s name is powerful in forcing people to recognize this horrible incident and confront the injustice of it all. Reconciling, however, goes further than this and is the chance to reclaim spaces for black women. Yazdiha uses the example of historian Barbara Ransby, who summarized the motivations behind the fight for black women’s equality. She explains, “They did not simply want brown faces in high places. Their demand was that elected officials take a long hard look at the lives of people like Hamer, people at the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy. They wanted these officials to develop policies that improve these conditions.” (Yazdiha 2023:162) The Me Too movement and Black Lives Matter are two examples of how people are going beyond the fight for acknowledgment of the long history of ignoring and diminishing black people (and, more specifically, women).

The idea of making space for underrepresented people and perspectives is something that I have been reflecting on a lot since presenting our case, and I think it is constructive to do so in conversation with this chapter of Yazdiha’s book. Though the entirety of our class’s cases gives a more holistic narrative of Kenyon’s past, simply looking at the Notable People case only tells the narrative of white men. Even further, it could create the sense that only the work of white men can be considered notable. Though this was not our intention in the slightest, one could argue that it was also not the intention of white feminists to ignore the voices of black women in their activism. While this chapter does not complicate our work, I think it has made me realize that we could have scratched the surface a bit more to create a more inclusive and diverse group of people. Also, in thinking about Yazdiha’s discussion of restoring and reconciling with the past, including people of color and women in the notable people case would have recognized their existence in the past and emphasized their impact at Kenyon and the world. I am still grappling with the fact that, in our case, we presented the notable people of Kenyon from the last 100 years, a time when the school was more largely made up of white men. Knowing this, I think our case simply reflected its time. This is why I believe it is crucial that we had so many different themes for the cases, which gives space to groups of people at Kenyon who may not have been as recognized historically. Though very different from large movements such as Black Lives Matter, I think including underrepresented groups such as black women in our case could have been a significant way to give acknowledgment and credit that was not previously there. Even further, it would help to reconstruct the collective memory of who and what success we may find at Kenyon.

References

Yazdiha, Hajar. 2023. The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.