Remembering the American Vietnam War Veteran: A Holistic Quagmire of Memory
Arts
HAVC 191J: Visual Culture of the Vietnam-American War
By approaching sites of memory as defined by Pierre Nora, my research is concerned with the processes, visceral understandings and experiences of the Vietnam War produced by American veterans’ creative productions and expressions. More precisely, I argue that the creative productions of veteran-artists allow for the examination of memory and experiences of the Vietnam War to be re-imagined and reconstructed in the present. I utilize memorials, imagery, and memoirs in order to address the manifestations of memory in terms of materiality and symbolism. In the case of memoirs, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien offers an aesthetic and visceral narrative that extends bodily memories and trauma into language. The novel provides a foundational structure in understanding how memory functions in conveying the psychological and emotional effects of war. I focus on the chapter, “How To Tell a True War Story” to analyze the narrator’s re-visiting, repetition, and re-elaboration of a traumatic memory in attempts to make a coherent sense and vision of the experience of death. The novel emphasizes the continuous repetition of memory undermined by ambivalence and ambiguity to reveal the oscillating relationship between fact and fiction in telling a true war story. The relationship between objects and memory is also seen in memorials. The National Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. and the Above and Beyond memorial at the National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago are sites of memory that represent a collective narrative, but the distinct material structure of Above and Beyond makes visible the individual experiences and histories of each veteran. Shifting the focus of the Vietnam War towards the experiences of the veterans brings to the forefront a wide range of memories and narratives. I have selected specific artwork from the permanent collection of the National Veterans Art Museum in order to visually examine the connection between self-identity, social realities, memory, and the production of art. Ultimately, by combining analyses of narrative and imagery, my goal is to call attention to a discourse of the Vietnam War that centralizes the American veterans at its core. In order to re-understand and re-negotiate the Vietnam War, it is necessary to consider the dimensions of war in all its times and places – in other words, to be inclusive of the whole scope of the veteran experience in and outside of combat as well as during and after the war. The creative productions that belong to American veterans provide a holistic quagmire of personal memory that attempt to re-imagine, reinterpret, and represent meanings and understandings of the war.
