Abstract
As noted in prior chapters, the IJzer Pilgrimage began as a simple commemoration ritual to the sites of the ten primary IJzer martyrs. Since it was difficult to prioritize one over the other, the IJzertoren was built to commemorate not only these ten, but all of the fallen sons of Flanders. But once built, some five years after the idea was broached, the IJzertoren became a symbol for the conflict over which Flemish memory to commemorate: the heroic behavior of the Flemish soldiers of World War I, the martyrdom of those same soldiers, amnesty for the Activists of the Great War, and then, after destruction and reconstruction, amnesty for the Flemish/Nazi collaborators of World War II, or the history of the Flemish people and the primacy of the Dutch language within Flanders. Paul Connerton provides a useful context with which to understand the specific memory perpetuated by the IJzer pilgrimage. For Connerton, social memory is an element of political control and regulation over a society’s memory and is usually a consequence of the hierarchy of power.1 Social memory images of the past commonly legitimize a present social order.2 Participants in any social order must accept a shared memory and he argues that images of the past and recollected knowledge of the past are conveyed and sustained by ritual performance. If there is such a thing as social memory, then Connerton finds its origins in commemorative, ritualistic ceremonies.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 5.
Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 198.
Frijda, Nico, “Commemorating,” in Collective Memories of Political Events, eds., J. Pennebaker and B. Rime (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Publishing, 1997), 106.
Fritz Staal, Rules Without Meaning (Berlin: Peter Lang, 1989), 27.
See Simon Coleman, Reframing Pilgrimages: Cultures in Motion (London: Taylor and Francis Books, 2007).
Antoine Prost, “Monuments to the Dead,” in Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, trans. Arthur Goldhammer and ed. Pierre Nora, 3 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996–1
Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 9.
Ian Reader and Tony Walter, eds, Pilgrimages in Popular Culture (London: Macmillan, 1993), 220.
E. Marx, “Communal and Individual Pilgrimage: The Region of Saints’ Tombs,” in Regional Cults, ed. R. P. Werbner (London: Academic Press, 1977).
Frank Seberect, “Beeldvorming over collabortie en repressive bij de naoor-logse Vlaams-nationalisten,” in Herfsttij van de 20ste eeuw Extreem-rechts in Vlaanderen 1020–1990, ed. R. Van Dooslaer (Leuven: Kritak, 1992), 65–82.
Louis Vos, “The Flemish National Question,” in Nationalism in Belgium: Shifting Identities, 1780–199S, eds., Kas Deprez and Louis Vos (Hampshire: MacMillan, 1998), 94.
E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (first published in 1912; London: Allen and Unwin, 1964).
N.H.H. Graburn, “Tourism: The Sacred journey,” in Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, ed. V. Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978).
D. Chidester and E. Linenthal, American Sacred Space (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1995).
See Victor Turner, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage” in The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967)
Victor and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press 2011 [1978]), 252.
See John Eade and Michael Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred: The A nthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2014 Karen D. Shelby
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Shelby, K.D. (2014). IJzerbedevaart: The Pilgrimage to the IJzer. In: Flemish Nationalism and the Great War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137391735_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137391735_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48305-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39173-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)