Santa Clara's Public Memory through Plaque

In 1966, The National Historic Preservation Act was passed to address what the United States Conference of Mayors reported as a “feeling of rootlessness,” and there are now thousands of preservation commissions and over one million historic sites that feed a culture of nostalgia and attempt to address the amnesia produced by suburban uniformity (Farrar). What has been described as the “heritage industry” holds cultural and ideological implications (Katriel).

This map plots plaques as a commemorative practice in Santa Clara County and the surrounding area, with a focus on the city of Santa Clara, the Mission, and the university. Plaques, as a commemorative practice, innately erase history and memory in the way that they function. This is not to say that plaques are inherently negative, but rather to consider how plaques encourage or discourage ways of thinking about the past. One way plaques work to establish and maintain gap-filled public memory is their inevitale, permanent repetition—and “what is repeated is always the same” (Vivian, quoted in Phillips 217).

Native memory and space is invalidated, erased, or otherwise misrepresented or misremembered. Plaques continue this trend. The nature of a plaque both hinders a viewer’s historical/memorial imagination by establishing a beginning and chronological moments of the place’s history. They most often do not include relationships, instead isolating both people and events. When they include certain relationships, they omit others, focusing a viewer's attention on making the same connections across time and space that the plaque establishes and solidifies. This exhibit intends to further that “what” has happened in a space is not the only valid precedent for remembrance—that public memory must go beyond “what happened here.” Memory involves relationships, and this exhibit intends to create an opportunity for viewers to make connections across plaque, space, and time. Scholars have addressed how historicizing the past destroys memory—this exhibit means to display how the chronological framework of text on a plaque fits into and expands this argument. It is hoped that viewers may enter a framework that sees what plaques do in order to understand memory beyond what a plaque wants for any space.

Those who argue that "you can't put a textbook on a plaque" are correct. However, if we presume that a plaque's purpose may oftentimes be to commemorate or preserve the most vital background information of a space, place, or even person, we can begin to question why certain pieces of information are included or excluded. Let us imagine that a plaque is like a slide on a powerpoint presentation: its text is limited and concise, sharing only the information which a presenter deems most relevant to share on the slide itself. Information on a plaque could be seen as bullet points on a slide. Now, we're all aware that a plaque doesn't encapsulate the entire history or memory of a space. But which bullet points does the plaque include, and how are they worded? What overview of history does a viewer walk away with?

How often do you encounter plaques? What is your relationship with plaques like, if you take a moment to consider it?

Do you question the in-between when you read a plaque? The inevitable spaces between words that represent memories untold? Do you take its information as fact at face value? Do you wonder about the plaque at all? 

This project is intended to foster questions. May your questioning be life-giving, loving, kind, and justice-seeking.

May we move forward into a more loving future by changing the way we understand our past.

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WORKS CITED

Skowronek, Russell K. Situating Mission Santa Clara De Asís, 1776-1851: Documentary and Material Evidence of Life on the Alta California Frontier: a Timeline. Acad. of American Franciscan History, 2006.

Vivian, Bradford. ‘‘A timeless now." Memory, & repetition. In Kendall Phillips, "The Failure of Memory: Reflections on Rhetoric and Public Remembrance." Western Journal of Communication, vol. 74, no. 2, 2010, pp. 208–223.