Description
Until recently, it was very rare for stories of sexual violence to be told in the memorials that populate public spaces around the globe. Over the past two decades, however, memorials dedicated to victims/survivors of sexual violence across both war and peace have begun to appear in multiple countries across the globe. This proliferation is in many ways a positive step towards what Viet Thanh Nguyen might call a more “just” memory culture and, following James E. Young, many of the memorials could be described as “counter-memorials” in that they seek to disrupt dominant narratives and provide a voice for those who have been silenced. However, sexual violence memorialisation can also reproduce, for example, nationalism or militarism.
This paper examines the politics of the memorialising the 2020 death of Vanessa Guillén, a US Army soldier who was sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, and murdered by a fellow serviceman. Guillén’s death has been memorialised in ways that are very unusual for victims of military gender-based violence. Focusing on her inclusion in the Women’s Military Memorial at Arlington Cemetery, I trace how her story has been scripted in a way that seeks to neutralise critique of the military setting in which her death occurred.
