The Vietnam Veterans Memorial
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial
This chapter examines the veterans' view on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. It highlights the injustice felt by the Vietnam veterans and explains that they view the memorial as a way to neatly transfer them from a subjugated to a dominant subject position. The chapter argues that the memorial is opposed to memorialisation in that it does not attempt to look back and pass judgement or lay blame. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's concept of sensation and affect, the chapter contends that the memorial presents a nonhuman wound and that the strength of its design comes from the way in which it came to create a whole new set of local values, inventing a variety of violent conditions that were then tossed out into the social field and improvised upon.
Keywords: Vietnam Veterans Memorial, veterans, Washington D.C, dominant subject position, Gilles Deleuze, sensation, affect, nonhuman wound
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