Memory-Work on the Move through a “Tiny” Actant: Building Regenerative Memorialization Capacity and The Equal Justice Initiative’s Community Soil Collection Project

Keywords: actor network theory, Equal Justice Initiative, lynching, memory-work, regenerative memorialization
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 39

Abstract

The Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, illustrates the power of memory on the move where the past is connected to the present and the aspirations for the future via complex networks. Perhaps the most striking results of the memory work associated with these networks are three impressive structures. The Legacy Museum, on the site of a warehouse where enslaved Blacks were held captive before auction, uses mixed media to provide a narrative of systemic racism. The National Monument for Peace and Justice, located a short distance from the museum, includes a pavilion-style structure with hanging columnar memorials of 4,400 documented lynchings that occurred between 1887 and 1950. The Peace and Justice Memorial Center across the street from the monument includes memorialization of lynching victims from 1950-1959. The Equal Justice Initiative facilitates the community soil collection from lynching locations in the U.S. and then displays the soil collected at one of the above three sites of memory. In this paper, using newspaper articles, agencies’ documents, interviews, and autoethnography, I argue that the soil is an important actant in making real and personal visceral memorialization by making the past physically present. Accordingly, I examine the organization, ceremonies, and displays associated with soil collection to show how interscalar flows and nodes associate with actor networks may be propelled and constituted by a “tiny,” yet durable, actant—the soil—to work towards socio-spatial justice via building regenerative memorialization capacity. My aim is to highlight the agency of nonhuman actants in the constitution memory-work.