"Memory Lives in New Orleans: The Process and Politics of Commemoration"

Le Menestrel (CNRS, Mondes américains

Whether transient or perennial, memorials act as vehicles for memory. They need not necessarily be cast in stone or concrete, but also include what has been called by Jack Santino "spontaneous" shrines, defined as non-official, "ephemeral" forms of mourning, emphasizing their transformative possibilities as acts of resistance [START_REF] Santino | Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death[END_REF] . Erika Lee Doss uses the notion of "temporary memorials". "The emotional life of public memorials is especially dependent of the fact that temporary memorials are created to be experienced: to be felt, not simply to be seen" [START_REF] Doss | The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials: Towards a Theory of Temporary Memorials[END_REF] . From this perspective, commemorative practices take a variety of forms. In New Orleans, the most official commemorations include the ritual ringing of the bells on August 29, at 9:38 a.m., marking the moment of the first levee break, the laying of wreaths in devastated neighborhoods, and the dedication of memorial monuments. Festive celebrations that are an essential aspect of the cultural landscape of the city, such as Mardi Gras, second lines and even Jazz Fest have assumed the character of commemorations, at least in the year following the disaster. Other large-as well as smaller-scale non-official practices function as tributes to the city and as assertions of a sense of belonging. These include bumper stickers, graffiti, bracelets, and tattoos, which stand as a memorial device that literally incorporate the pain [START_REF] Gentry | Trauma Written in the Flesh: Tattoos as Memorials and Stories[END_REF] . Institutional or individual initiatives also contribute to this commemorative process through the publication of countless essays and photo albums by both New Orleanians and outsiders, documentaries, art exhibits, readings, benefit and tribute music albums. The Internet has also become a rich vehicle for memory through the creation of public archives [START_REF]Such web sites dedicated to oral history were created for other disasters like the 2004 Asian tsunami[END_REF] .

In fact, E.L. Quarantelli, a veteran of the field of Disaster Studies who created the pioneering Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware in the 1960's, views these diverse commemorative practices as manifestations of a "popular culture of disaster", and he urges further their exploration by researchers in the field [START_REF] Quarantelli | The Disaster Research Center Working Paper #[END_REF] . Together, these practices constitute a highly eclectic set of places, spaces and moments where memory is convened.

Within the commemorative process, conferences have themselves provided a way for local academics, sometimes in collaboration with colleagues from out-of-state or abroad, to pay tribute to their native city and its population, to contribute to the healing process, and to show their support by applying their skills to a deeper understanding of the disaster 9 . Indeed, our workshop is itself an integral part of this on-going commemorative effort. However, the perspective of those among us who were residents of New Orleans at the time is necessarily marked by the scars left by this memory. The vivid experience of evacuating, returning, and living in a disaster zone, the emotions, feelings, images, and smells live in the memory of New Orleanians in ways that cannot be held at an objective distance 10 .

Anthropologists are routinely called upon to deal with the challenging combination of empathy and distance and of their status as both insider and outsider. One of our methods is to make the context of production of our work explicit through an introspective approach that necessarily frames and influences our research. Critical assessments of our own methods have become an integral part of our discipline and, in this spirit of reflexivity, we have a duty to take the commemorative character of this conference into account.

As for my own experience, I came to New Orleans in mid-October of 2005 to conduct fieldwork on the decision-making process of people affected by the hurricanes to return. After 15 years of extensive fieldwork in Louisiana, my feelings of helplessness, loss, anger, and moral duty provoked this entry into the field of disaster research, a field that was totally new to me [START_REF] Henry | Working The Field. Accounts from French Louisiana[END_REF] . Enduring feelings of powerlessness and intrusion made fieldwork extremely uncomfortable 12 . I derived some comfort, however, from the fact that the people I interviewed acknowledged the benefit of telling their story, sometimes for the first time, and of having their words recorded by an outsider, a European, at a time when the city's very existence was being questioned by their fellow citizens. It is in this perspective, as a support for memory, that conducting fieldwork in a disaster zone became more tolerable both for me and for those whom I interviewed. This paper makes no claim to cover the commemorative process in full. Because my fieldwork ended after the first anniversary of Katrina, none of my numerous field interviews up to that point addressed commemorative practices, and I was not able to study the usage of memorials or the participants involved. Despite these gaps, however, my experience in the field during that first year and my participant-observation of the first anniversary provided a point of departure for our collective reflection.

In this paper, commemorations are understood as multivocal, multifaceted practices, rituals, or ceremonies that mark the disaster. This definition excludes print and virtual memorials. I am interested only in objects and events that are meant to be seen, that occupy public space, and that take place locally, in New Orleans. I will focus on different stages of commemorative events, from the very aftermath of the disaster to its first and subsequent anniversaries, selecting practices that first emerged in 2006 and continue to be invested with remembrance. Within this perspective, I chose three forms of memorials: the house as the material expression of home, the Lower Nine Monument, and Katrina second lines. These practices use different objects as vehicles for grief, memory, and oblivion. Each dimension is given different priority depending on the time and place of the event and the actors involved.

These different ways of framing memory express conflicted views of the disaster, of its implications, and of the ways to cope with it. Who is being memorialized and how? What is officially marginalized or forgotten, and what struggles are revealed? How is oblivion articulated, and according to what logic? This paper is grounded in the observation that Katrina commemorations, rather than remembering what happened due to the hurricane, act mostly as responses to the multiple failures that inequitably affected the population and that exacerbated discrimination. This may explain the eclecticism of commemorative practices and the different meanings with which they are invested. Each practice seems to reflect the positioning of its organizers and acts as a space of contest.

DEMOLISHING OR RECONSTRUCTING?

"How do you commemorate the anniversary of something that is still happening? The devastation of our city is not just something that happened a year ago, it's something that was going on yesterday, continues today and will go on tomorrow", wrote New Orleans journalist Jordan Flaherty in August 2006 [START_REF] Flaherty | New Orleans, One Year Later[END_REF] .

Through this statement that points out the endless character of Katrina, Flaherty illustrates the temporality of disaster as a process as opposed to an event. While up until the 1970s disaster studies focused on the ability to mobilize the affected population, American and French researchers have subsequently posited a "continuity principle", arguing that in addition to disrupting social organization, disasters also reveal latent vulnerabilities and preexisting social divisions. According to Claude Gilbert, "the difference between the normal conditions and crisis situations is perhaps not as great as it would appear since there is less of a break than there is a continuity between the 'organized disorder' of the original condition and the 'disorganized disorder' of the aftermath" [START_REF] Gilbert | Le pouvoir en situation extrême[END_REF] . The post-accident crisis, through its very characteristics, appears as an 'excess' of the normal condition, this shift being sufficient to trigger significant disturbances".

From this perspective, the disaster appears to be more a cathartic factor than a force that destabilizes the social order. These analyses lead us to view the disaster itself as a social construction, a "revealing crisis" [START_REF] Oliver-Smith | Anthropological Research on Hazards and Disasters[END_REF] . This theoretical approach has decisive consequences for the research methodology to be adopted, because it leads us to focus less on studying an event than on revealing the conditions under which disasters are produced and on the "social creation of vulnerability" 16 . Indeed, Katrina has been used as an umbrella event that covers much more than the hurricane itself, a use of which this resident disapproves because it places blame on natural causes instead of human responsibility. On the city's official web site dedicated to the fifth anniversary, there is no mention of the levee breaks, and Katrina is actually defined solely as a hurricane 18 . Other names given to the disaster by the population are far more explicit and have been taken up by the local media, including "the flood", "the federal storm", "the federal floods", "the levee breaks" or "failures." These labels point to the role of the government in this disaster before, during and after the hurricane stroke. Far beyond August 29 th and the week that followed, the temporality of the disaster embraces an unfolding tragedy, particularly obvious and staggering one year after the event. As Rebecca Solnit puts it, we are in fact faced with "a succession of disasters." [START_REF] Solnit | A Paradise Built in Hell. The extraordinary communities that arise in disaster[END_REF] In fact, it took the mayor, city council, and civic leaders eighteen months to agree on a unified planning process with professional assistance, the Unified New Orleans Plan (UNOP), and on the preparation of a citywide infrastructure plan [START_REF] Stephen | Reconstruction of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: A Research Perspective[END_REF] .

A year after the disaster, about one third of the people had returned to the city. Most schools and hospitals, particularly those serving the poor, remained closed and overall, public services were operating at less than half capacity. There was no long-term planning for the city's reconstruction or for coastal restoration. Piles of debris continued to obstruct the sidewalks in the most devastated neighborhoods, and piles of flooded-out cars were still under the interstate highway that traverses the city. Some corpses were even found six months after the waters receded. In other words, to the extent that all neighbourhoods were taken into account, traces of the disaster were as visible on the date of the first commemoration as were signs of recovery.

The process of rebuilding was not only painfully slow, it began in fact by the bulldozing of 2,500 of the most severely damaged homes. This demolition, which the Nagin administration undertook toward the end of December, 2005 without contacting the homeowners, was experienced as a continuation of the destruction caused by the levee breaks in the most devastated neighborhoods, and it further deteriorated relationships between the population and public institutions [START_REF]old Yungay after the 1976 earthquake and avalanche[END_REF] . As a result, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), one of the most active civic associations in the city in the defense of evacuees' "right to return" and assistance in home rebuilding, filed suit against the city 22 . "Memorials, not Demolitions," clamored their slogan, expressing the need for symbolic acknowledgement of grief long before the anniversary or the demolition of wrecked houses. On December 28, they won a settlement that required the city to notify homeowners of anticipated demolitions and to provide them with the opportunity to appeal. On April 6, the City Council passed an ordinance that allowed residents until the one-year anniversary of Katrina to clean and gut their homes before risking demolition. Once again, the use of the first anniversary as a deadline for demolition rather than a moment of remembrance reveals the gap between institutional and official priorities and those of the population.

HOME AS MEMORIAL "No Place Like Home": A Sense of Place

At the 2006 Jazz Fest, although many New Orleans musicians remained in mostly involuntary exile, few missed the opportunity to pay tribute to their city. In fact, the atmosphere was filled with an exhilarating energy, and many bands made the crowd feel their loyalty to the city through their presence and through the unique echo of their songs, whether written for the occasion or invested with new meanings. When they sang "No Place Like Home", the Soul Rebelswho were and still are established in Houston -started a call and response on "504", signing the numbers of the New Orleans area code with their hands as a rallying call that was particularly performative at this occasion.

Whether native or not, New Orleanians are deeply attached to their city 23 . All commemorative practices share an allegiance to the notion of home in all of its meanings, from the material house to the social network of interactions that it embodies. Countless commemorative publications, music albums, and memorabilia (Tee-shirts, bracelets, bumper stickers etc…) have evoked "home" since Katrina and paid tribute to the city. The notion of "home" overlaps with the notion of "community", also widely applied.

Beyond the spatial unit, it refers to a network of relationships and mutual support that is assimilated to family ties. New Orleans is often referred to by its residents as "a small town", or by academics as "a collection of urban villages" [START_REF] Berry | Up from the Cradle: New Orleans Music since World War II[END_REF] . Indeed, one may be from New Orleans, but one was born or raised in a specific neighborhood, like Treme, Gentilly, Uptown, Back O'Town, Mid-City, New Orleans East, the Ninth or Seventh Ward. The sense of belonging to a "close-knit community", the sense of always having the opportunity to run into friends are often mentioned by residents as an asset and, for non-natives, as a substitute for deeply rooted family ties, in one of the most sedentary population in the country 25 .

Grieving Home

"Three or four times…we were driving…I just pulled off the road; I just started weeping, just for no reason. There's a reason, I'm sure, but just uncontrollable. And Millie [his wife]'d asked, 'What's wrong?' [he cries out]: My home!! Because it wasn't just a house, New Orleans was always my home."

Although a first visit four days after the storm reassured musician Don Vappie about his house in Covington--miraculously spared by the six trees that fell off on his property--he recalls his sorrow during a subsequent visit in late September. For many, the confrontation with disaster after a more or less extended period of exile stands as the first occasion to experience grief and to release pain that had been repressed until that moment. Situations varied widely. Like Don, those who had been spared by the disaster were overwhelmed by emotions related to their dismantled home, in its broader meaning. Those who lost their houses had to confront various sights. Some came "home" to dwellings that were completely flattened or had floated or been driven some distance from their original emplacement; others were still standing but were totally decayed in the inside and infested with black mold…Wrecked houses appeared naked, as even their most intimate and trivial personal belongings were totally exposed to public view, dumped all over in graphic violation of their privacy.

The regulations that governed people's rights to return to their homes and the whole process of "look and leave", as well as the threat of having one's wrecked house gutted or even demolished definitely exacerbated people's grief. In addition to their emotions, people had to deal with physical reactions: "The day me and my husband came back we came back to the house… It was…I don't know what to say…my husband opened the door and we went in and he just started bleeding from the nose because of the odor. He couldn't take it. They had mold everywhere. The furniture was soaking wet. It was just horrible to walk into something knowing that it wasn't like that when you left it. We couldn't stay in there. We left right back out because we didn't come prepared for what we saw in there" recalls Gloria, a 50-year-old member of Acorn staff who lived in the upper 9 th . The pending decisions to let people return extended the grieving process from their first visit to cleaning and gutting. The limited time allowed for residents to see their houses and the required safety uniforms (tetanus shot, gloves, masks, boots) contributed to a sense of dispossession, as did the large X-shaped markings left by authorities that branded every single building in the city, an extraordinarily powerful evocation of the disaster. What was left was no longer a house, it was "something"like Gloria said above--an estranged place that had been intruded upon by natural elements and unknown human beings. Discovering one's devastated house was like experiencing death, and witnessing an absence or the phantom of something that was no longer present: In Spike Lee's documentary When The Levee Broke, Tanya, an active community organizer of the Lower Ninth Ward from ACORN, eloquently conveys her feelings: "It was like talking to a friend who had been disfigured. You know who you're talking to, you just don't recognize him". Indeed, the flood caused a disruption of the boundary between built and natural environments. While debris was scattered in nature--like belongings or even vehicles perched in trees--nature intruded on built-up spaces, like mud and rafts of marsh grass and flotsam in yards and ruined houses. For some, the disruption was more literally a matter of life and death in which the flood turned their home, their living spaces, into coffins. However, for most New Orleans residents, after a first phase during which the experience of devastation actually enabled people to find closure, the healing process involved erasing all of the traces left by the disaster on their homes to collectively reengage in the present. Objects of everyday life became invested with particular meanings. In less affected neighborhoods, refrigerators and freezers stood silent sentry on sidewalks in front of most houses and apartments. From a distance, they lined up like the solid white crosses in a military cemetery.

Wrapped with duct tape, sometimes even locked with a shackle or sprayed with skulls and messages like "Do Not Open", they carried the putrid contents in their forever sealed guts.

Acting as ephemeral memorials, refrigerators were used in a performative way, clearing out the house from a symbol of destruction and death. Many were also constructed as canvasses for the expression of derision and protest, and in fact, whether paint-sprayed on refrigerators or on plywood panels or printed on T-shirts, humor has widely served as a coping mechanism while contributing to another kind of commemorative discourse.

In the most devastated neighborhoods, though, these new, functioning houses have made the gaping holes where demolished houses have not been rebuilt seem even emptier, sometimes with orphan door steps or foundation pillars among the vegetation, and the wrecked and abandoned houses, some unclaimed and overtaken by nature even now, five years later, seem all the sadder. Side by side with a neat, rebuilt house, the void immediately summons memory of loss and disaster, of people who did not return, or who died, while emphasizing the determination of the ones who returned.

In this sense, and in the context of neighborhoods still struggling with recovery, the house -whether devastated, gutted or restored -acts as a memorial, embracing both remembrance and oblivion. Indeed, the memorial erected in the Lower Ninth Ward used this symbol in support of the right to return.

The Lower Nine Monument

To reach the Memorial from the city, one must cross the Claiborne Avenue Bridge.

The site, laid out in a circle in the median, stands as a monument to the people who lost their lives in the hurricane. On one side, eleven blue poles show the flood levels in various parts of the city, while on the other side of the circle stands the frame of a newly constructed house (which could also be viewed as a gutted house) painted in red, standing on grey slab, foundation and porch, which symbolize what has remained from the disaster. In the frame of the window stands a sign: "I am coming home. I will rebuild. I am NO !". Red chairs facing the house were meant by the sponsors to symbolize those who survived and returned, while a lone blue chair represents those who were lost to the flood. Further on, a paved walk leads to a marble gravestone in remembrance of "the victims and survivors of Hurricane Katrina and Rita," apparently seeking to give the memorial a broader, more regional reach. Located in a median directly past the off-ramp of a high-speed road, with no crosswalks in sight, not far from the foot of a bridge that lacks pedestrian access, the memorial is designed to be seen from the window of a passing car or tour bus more than as a place that welcomes visitors on foot. In this sense, it emphasizes the isolation of the Lower Ninth Ward and its image of marginality, which dates from its first settlement in 1852. Built on marsh land, the Lower Nine was further isolated from the city by the construction of the Industrial Canal, completed in 1923, which created a separation with the Upper Ninth. The memorial's inauguration illustrates the process of concealing not only the causes of the flood, but also the conflicts between the city and the state over recovery plans. On August 27, 2006, Cynthia Lewis led the ceremony to inaugurate the memorial, surrounded by about fifty journalists, military, and firemen. A man read the Bible verses Matthew 22-33, chapter 14: "God bless the breaches in our lives…the breaches of levees..of families…of homes. Put peace in our families, oh God, peace, be still." Although the mention of the levee failures was noteworthy, the focus was on the assertion of the right to return denied to the black population, and on the promise of rebuilding, against the original plans of the city's BNOB commission. Governor Kathleen Blanco went on a great length about it, haranguing the crowd: "We're coming home. ..No doubt that the Ninth Ward is coming home, she repeated. "This is an act of love and healing to remember, but we're gonna honor the past by building the future. It means building safer, smarter and stronger than before. Do I hear you? …so much of our culture was lost in the Lower Nine...Do I hear you? The Lower Nine is coming back!".

Cynthia Lewis made similar promises: "Everyone who lived in the Nine who wants to come home can come home". In a traditional fashion dating from a series of blunt, awkward statements 27 , re-elected Mayor Ray Nagin attempted to throw some humor, while identifying himself as an uncompromising black militant [START_REF]Nagin also endorsed this role the previous day, at the Hands Around The Dome ceremony, where he was[END_REF] .

"We plan to build NO BIGGER not smaller. I don't care who don't like it...We gonna take any resources we can. Ladies and gentlemen, do not be discouraged, do not be bamboozled, do not be hoodwinked as Malcom X used to say. This land is valuable. Build higher and better so that you can come back like nothing happened. Build your mansion, the first floors for cars, and the jacuzzi upstairs ! [laughter in the crowd]..!".

Tacit enmities was however visible: Blanco, who initiated the Louisiana Recovery Agency to establish a competing recovery plan, was announced as a "guest" in the printed schedule, and came second in Nagin's thanks after Lewis. In the crowd, several slogans were unambiguous about their claims and protests: "Stop ethnic cleansing" read a sign with blood dripping from the letters.

Behind what appeared to be a united narrative, the official ceremony integrated the different dimensions that made it a multivocal and contested event. While official speeches were taking place, a black woman sitting in front of the monument was interviewed by Fox News. Outraged by the officials' rhetoric of political opportunism, she exclaimed "Stop the talk, show me! I am very upset. Nothing is being done with the money. They're not rebuilding. It's not making sense. It's killing us, this mould and debris!...I'm licensed in environment.

The water is not good. I'm sick of hearing the mayor's talk, councilmen… If Katrina didn't kill me, they're doing a pretty good job!" Pic 2 Indeed, the ceremony encapsulated the issues at stake at the time of the first anniversary: the active defense of the right to return by the population and grassroots civic organizations; the power struggles between the city and state administrations; the protest against the local government for its responsibility in the continuation of the disaster; the empowerment of homeowners; the insistence on the necessity of forgetting, and of looking towards the future.

In fact, Gaëlle Clavandier characterizes official commemorative ceremonies as constructed on a curative logic of forgetting 29 . Forgetting the disaster is perceived as the only way to overcome the disorder caused by tragic death and to return to "normalcy", ("like nothing happened" claimed Nagin). Memory is convened as a duty, but discourses on progress, improvement and efficiency prevail.

The Imperative of Remembering Indiscriminate Loss of Life

The contestation of meaning and the rhetoric of forgetting called for other informal memorials to the victims of Katrina. On the ramp leading up to the St. Claude Avenue Bridge, the sole access for pedestrians to the rest of the city from the Lower Ninth Ward, people had spray-painted names (i.e. "R.I.P Lil Jimmy") expressing their grief on a space that links the Lower Ninth to the city, highlighting its belonging and refuting its marginalization [START_REF] Rosa | Tours and Detours. Walking the 9th ward[END_REF] . In 2010, however, the graffiti were not there anymore. 31 During the year that followed Katrina, ceremonies were held to acknowledge loss, showing remembrance as an essential step in the recovery process. The Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association, then a nascent association, organized a public memorial service standing at the levee wall that included the reading of 1,500 names, and a walk from the levee to Flood Street past the Martin Luther King School.

The imperative to remember is best expressed by the Katrina Commemoration Foundation. They explain why they organize a commemorative march every year by stressing the absolute necessity of "never forgetting" and "remembering" the lives that were lost, specifying the circumstances in which people died instead of speaking of the victims in broader terms: "We remember the suffering of those left in the sweltering heat without food and water on I 10, in Convention Center and under the Causeway (…), we remember those killed by the police trying to save their families on the Danzinger Bridge, in Algiers and on Poland Avenue (…). While we may want to forget Katrina, we cannot because we believe in a brighter hopeful positive future and we must learn from the past to build for the future." 32 .

On August 29, 2006, the Katrina Commemoration Foundation organized a "healing ceremony" at the Lower Ninth Ward levee breach that would precede the "Katrina march/second line" 33 . More than a hundred people walked to the levee where two speakers were declaimed the names of deceased [START_REF]Caucus' mission is "to foster civic engagement among young people of color on issues of social and economic justice, human rights, the environment[END_REF] . A group of women dressed entirely in white and wearing turbans and necklaces burned incense and chanted, accompanied by batá ritual drums. The leader of the ceremony was a minister of the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church known by the name of Olayela Daste 35 . She asked for a moment of silence before beginning to speak. She invoked various saints of the Yoruba religion (also called Orisha religion) such as Ologun, deity of the depths, and Ogun, deity of war and technology, combined with references to New Age energies ("the warrior") and Native-American spirituality. After the ceremony, the "Katrina march/second line" paraded to Hunter's Field Park on the corner of North Claiborne and St. Bernard Avenues in the seventh ward. The march culminated in an event sponsored by major national companies (CNN, MTV…), where a dozen local and national civic, human rights, and African-American organizationsamong which the Hip Hop Caucus -were scheduled to speak before a concert given by fifteen hip-hop performers 36 .

Pic 3

By contrast with these eclectic commemorative ceremonies dedicated to The Lower Ninth victims that drew on a variety of registers (ranging from Christian services to ancestor worship, from spiritual remembrance to hip-hop tributes), the Lower Nine Monument did not seem to meet expectations of remembrance, and might not have been the object of a significant collective investment, although fieldwork on usage of the site would be necessary to support this assertion. Also, the fact that it is now referred to as "the Lower Nine Monument" seems to question its function as a memorial, a site of remembrance. Contested views over a proper large-scale official memorial are explicit through the Katrina National Memorial Park, which claims to "build a REAL people's Memorial" 37 . The project includes a wall of names filled with gold leaf of 4,500-5,000 New Orleanians victims, a number that contrast with official figures of about 1800. "New Orleans, the United States of America and the International community cannot afford to forget those loved ones we lost", proclaims the non-profit association, positioning itself against the rhetoric of oblivion. An eternal flame set in a granite pool in the shape of a woman's womb further completes the language of loss and immortality. Furthermore, by associating the bond between New Orleans and its victims with the ties between a mother and her unborn child, the monument naturalizes the deep attachment of New Orleanians to their city. While claiming an educational purpose through the use of cutting-edge green technology, this project as it is formulated is focused on the memory of lost lives and uses an emotional language of images and symbols through the monument and a mosaic of edited photographs of the disaster. It is noteworthy that the Louisiana legislature approved a House Bill in 2006 that established the Hurricane Katrina Memorial Commission, whose official goal was to make "recommendations for an appropriate memorial to commemorate those who lost their lives in Louisiana in Hurricane Katrina, as well as a site or sites for the memorial"; However, to date, no such memorial exists five years after the disaster. Rather, a variety of permanent official memorials have been erected in different towns and locations, among which a cross in Shell Beach, a sculpture in Slidell, a tombstone at the Convention Center, and mausoleums at the Charity Hospital Cemetery.

Located near City Park between Saint Patrick Cemetery and the New Orleans

Archdiocese Cemetery, the Katrina Memorial of the Charity Hospital Cemetery is little known within the neighborhood, which is the site of multiple cemeteries. This memorial is laid out in the shape of a hurricane with the idea of creating "a healing shape out of the form that brought us such pain," according to the originator of the concept, Dr. Jeffrey Rouse, a psychiatrist employed by the Orleans Parish coroner's office responsible for unclaimed bodies. It is also shaped as a labyrinth, such that a visitor may wander and meditate among the mausoleums, deprived of any name. [START_REF]Dispatch. Reflecting On Anonymity at the-New Orleans Katrina Memorial[END_REF] This opportunity for meditation is supported by benches that face the reflective surfaces. The combined reflection on these polished walls of a person seated on the bench and the planted beds highlights the contrast between the mobility of the leaves and branches and the immobility of the mausoleums. This sight makes people physically feel the interaction between life and death and the reintegration of the dead into the living. The location on the grounds of Charity Hospital, which until Katrina provided health care to low-income residents, restores dignity to the indigent and nameless deceased. The anonymous memorialization of unclaimed victims also broadens the spectrum of remembrance, "like a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, emphasizing indiscriminate loss of life", as the Times-Picayune journalist Doug McCash expressed it [START_REF] Mccash | New Orleans Katrina Memorial is almost perfect[END_REF] . Walking around these massive mausoleums is in fact a humbling experience.

Pic 4 Pic 5

The site also clearly displays contested views of the disaster. As soon as one comes through the entrance gate, one sees a series of tombstones with texts signed by different officials. Among them, Nagin's tribute refers to "those who perished as a result of hurricane Katrina" on an initial series of tombstones that include the memorial's many supporters. A large black, central tombstone that matches the mausoleums and stands in their midst is signed by the coroner's office, with a different wording than Nagin and giving details about the "failures of the levee system" and the "desperate circumstances" and "harrowing days" faced by the population.

Living Memorials The Stigmatization of Public Housing

It is no coincidence that the Lower Nine Monument anchors the memory of victims and of the will to return into a neighborhood of homeowners. It is a neighborhood where 59% of households were occupied by owners, a rate that is higher than the city itself (46,5%) and among the highest ownership rates in black-populated neighborhoods in New Orleans [START_REF]Higher rates of homeownership are found in Pontchartrain Park[END_REF] .

Contrary to the image of irresponsible renters that is associated with the black population, the Lower Nine's population makes a point of emphasizing homeownership as a way to legitimize the right to return and the reconstruction of their neighborhood. The slogan "I'm from the 9 and you ain't takin' mine", used by ACORN on T-shirts and worn by many residents captures the significance of the notion of home ownership. At the heart of the notions of individual achievement and self-help, it is also inseparable from the definition of American citizenship [START_REF] Thomas | The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit[END_REF] . The Lower Ninth became a symbol of social promotion and empowerment for African-Americans in New Orleans, used as a strategic tool for survival and for asserting their rights as full-fledged citizens. This is one of the reasons why the Lower Nine came to symbolize injustice and discrimination against the black population in the national and international press. The denial of homeowners' rights to return and rebuild triggered unanimous protest. Several non-profit associations exclusively dedicated to the rebuilding of the Lower Nine have been funded since Katrina, adding to those that already existed [START_REF] Them | the Lower Ninth Ward Homeowners Association, the Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association, and Lowernine[END_REF] . Homeowners also became the focus of rebuilding projects that have received international media attention like Habitat for Humanity's Musicians' Village and Make it Right, which has publicized the number of residents who "have achieved their dreams of homeownership" through these programs 43 .

Allusions to homeownership were frequent during Katrina's first anniversary. At the ceremony held for the "Lower Nine Monument", Cynthia Lewis and Ray Nagin explicitly addressed homeowners. The slogan "I'm coming home! I will rebuild! I am N.O.!" was incorporated into the memorial and posted on individual houses, positioning homeowners as the fabric of the city and as the driving force of reconstruction and of the fight over the right to return. At Hand Around The Dome, a ceremony organized by African American Leadership Project and sponsored by NAACP, Nagin did not hesitate to repeatedly contrast homeowners with criminals. City Council President Oliver Thomas' comment that public housing should be for people who work instead of "soap opera watchers"--before apologizing for his remark--completed the stigmatization of renters as second-class citizens 44 .

The closing of four extensive public housing complexes in New Orleans in 2007 made the need for low-income housing even more critical and revealed the blatant racial discrimination behind housing decisions and policies. St Bernard parish has since Katrina fought desperately to prevent the creation of housing for low-income families and an influx of renters, at one point even approving a law, later repealed, that prohibited homeowners--who are overwhelmingly white--from renting to anyone other than a blood relative [START_REF] Robertson | Housing Battle Reveals Post-Katrina Tensions[END_REF] . Violence and dependency make up the distorted public image of public housing and contribute to the stereotyping of renters as opposed to homeowners. 46

Second Lines and Jazz Funerals as Living Memorials

On January 15, 2006, a coalition of over 30 social and pleasure clubs united to form the Social Aid and Pleasure Club Coalition Task Force. After four months of forced exile, thousands of displaced New Orleanians came from Baton Rouge, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta (and some from as far away as San Francisco, New York, and Portland) to participate in the second-line parade, and to check on their home, neighborhood, friends, and family. For some of them, it was their first return to the city since the storm. The "All-Star Second Line" was organized by between 20 and 30 different clubs and drew over 8,000 people who wore black T-shirts that said, "Renew New Orleans". The parade functioned as a reunion, and as a way to reclaim the streets [START_REF] Breulin | Putting the Ninth Ward on the Map: Race, Place, and Transformation in Desire, New Orleans[END_REF] .

Second-line parades are emblematic of New Orleans culture. They are organized and paid for by Social Aid and Pleasure clubs, the descendents of 19 th century benevolent and mutual aid societies that provided health, unemployment, and burial insurance for their members. They developed the tradition of jazz funerals, wherein a brass band plays dirges on the way to the cemetery, and then picks up the tempo to fast tunes. Today, most clubs hold an annual second-line parade in which the club members and the brass band constitute the first line, whereas everyone else is a second liner. While the all-star second-line was attended by a socially eclectic crowd and was invested with a special meaning since it was the first since Katrina, second-lines usually gather a more homogeneous population: "The majority of participants in the second-line tradition are not owners of homes, real estate, or large, public businesses. Yet through the transformative experience of the parade, they become owners of the streets, at least for the duration of their performance", notes Helen Regis 48 . Whereas homeowners have been the focus of most commemorative ceremonies, second-lines provided non-homeowners an opportunity to enact collective property by claiming popular ownership of public space. The unified second-line that was held after Katrina, as well as other second lines and jazz funerals dedicated to the disaster, have all functioned as commemorative practices. Returning to the normalcy of second-lines as central cultural events within New Orleans' African-American working-class took on a special meaning at a time when the fencing off of major public housing complexes was unfolding. Through second-lines, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs reasserted their civic engagement and crucial leadership functions for the most disadvantaged African-Americans [START_REF] Weil | The Rise of Community Engagement After Katrina[END_REF] .

Second-lines held after the disaster also evoked the maintenance of a sense of continuity and normality through a festive calendar that contributes to the social fabric of the city. The unseen aspect of the disaster was thus transformed into the ordinary of African-American expressive culture, apparently serving as a strategy for re-taking control of commemorative practices. In this process of reappropriating devastated neighborhoods and reclaiming streets kept in desolation, in this struggle against dispossession, second-line traditions stood in the front line.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006. A Katrina jazz funeral is organized by the Black Men of

Labor and the Popular Ladies Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs. The Treme Brass band provides the music, followed by first responders, and a horse-drawn hearse. The route, from the Convention Center to the Superdome, situates the event not as a remembrance of the storm, but rather as a remembrance of the thousands of people who were left in hellish conditions at these two sites because the government failed to provide basic assistance. Forty-five minutes passed before the music actually started, giving time for a huge, eclectic crowd to gather that included numerous journalists. A flyer was passed around with a long text condemning violence as entirely opposed to the club's ethic 50 . As the parade proceeded, the music became more and more upbeat, and jubilant participants started to sing along furiously. An overwhelming need to take part in this parade could be sensed among the marchers, and despite the burning sun, people did not miss a beat, dancing, hammering the streets, and raising their fist while singing call-and-response. Everybody was either wearing various Katrina T-shirts calling for action and expressing blame of various kinds (from "Fuck Bush" to "The job's not done yet"), or displaying tattoos dedicated to Nola.

While in the aftermath of Katrina, it was not unusual to see wrecked houses with spray-painted messages insulting Katrina, symbolic jazz funerals dedicated to the disaster have had a soothing function, helping to put an end to anger, anxiety and uncertainty caused by death. The horizontality of the casket plays on the idea of resting through the prone posture of a person asleep 51 . As in any other funeral ceremony, jazz funerals mark a ritualized separation between life and death, allowing the grieving process to start and, eventually, opening the way towards a reincorporation of the dead into life. However, the message here was not one of oblivion. As opposed to official slogans from state authorities that pressed people to focus on reconstruction (Recover, Rebuild, Rebirth), the Black Men of Labor had their own version of the ubiquitous "triple R". "Remembrance, Renewal, Rebirth", said their banner, acknowledging the necessity to grieve, and making memory a condition of the reconstruction process. In fact, for the jazz funeral sponsored by French Quarter Hotel Monteleone at the occasion of the fifth anniversary, a sign on the casket read as: "It's time to put the old girl to rest", as if to say that five years later, the separation phase was still not complete. Indeed the recent recurrence of disaster in the form of the BP oil spill can be symbolically interpreted as the failed neutralization of the death represented by the disaster. Katrina needed to be buried in 2010 once and for all, as though the spectres of the deceased were still wandering about and might contaminate the living through epidemic death [START_REF] St | Hurricane Katrina Casket[END_REF] . In fact, the oil spill was symbolically incorporated into the jazz funeral through a BP tool box that was thrown into the coffin [START_REF]From this perspective, Clavandier notes the social and psychological dangers of floating corpses[END_REF] .

A traditional popular memorial practice in New Orleans, the jazz funeral acts as a communal expression of death and grief. The metaphoric progression from death and mourning to celebration has naturally been applied to the recovery of the city. Other jazz funerals to honor the deceased--both literally and symbolically through the death of the city-were organized after Katrina. Helen Regis has shown how the names, images, and memories of the deceased have been integrated into some social and pleasure clubs' anniversary parades, in particular through the wearing of memorial T-shirts [START_REF] Regis | Blackness and the politics of Memory in New Orleans second lines[END_REF] the significance of "wearing the pain", and represented a direct reference to second-line practice as a living memorial. "Through the practice of designing and wearing memorial shirts", argues Regis, "second liners' very bodies become living memorials to the dead, as the images of those who have gone before are paraded through the streets of the city, traversing from five to seven miles of cityscapes in embodied grief. Through the wearing of memorial shirts, the entire parade is transformed into a memorial (…). Unlike the cool and stationary cement, glass, and stone memorials of endowed buildings, the tactical memorials of New Orleans second liners are moving monuments made of flesh and blood." 55 Through living memorials, the dead and the living are inextricably tied together. Memorial T-shirts stand as a performative practice through which the dead materialize -whether through a tomb, an object, a photograph…and is reintegrated into the living, contributing to the completion of the grieving process. During this reunion, "the funeral is concluded on the celebration of a new order, where death gains a positive status, regenerating the community and the bereaved who become an integral part of the living again." 56 Second lines, as an already existent commemorative practice and central cultural event among African-Americans, act as a source of empowerment for those who were dispossessed and as a continuously renewed commemoration of their role in the social fabric of New Orleans.

Pic 6

Conclusion

Based on a logic of oblivion, "commemorative memory", as borne by public officials, needs to carry a positive message for the present, argues Gaëlle Clavandier 57 . While its project is to create the conditions for a return to normalcy, what she calls "event memory", based on shared experience and emotions, has clear project per se other than to continue living. These two types of memory, she argues, are both necessary and coexistent.

Whereas public officials discourses are constructed on a logic of oblivion, the eclectic set of public commemorative practices in New Orleans share a language of remembrance.

They express the imperative of reparation and of healing, of remembering all New Orleanians regardless of their social status. They also assert the reclaiming of collective ownership and the restoration of dignity both by and for those who were indigent and dispossessed. The life of memory expressed by these commemorative practices in New Orleans gives voice to the reintegration of the dead into the living, a condition for the reconstruction process, in every sense of the word.

  Pic 1Built within three weeks at the behest of New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood Council Inc. and City Council member at the time Cynthia Ward Lewis, the monument (whose materials, labor and construction, were donated) was designed by Bostonbased architects Stull and Lee, Inc. "to honor the victims of Hurricane Katrina and to celebrate the indomitable spirit of the survivors determined to rebuild their community" 26 .

  . Indeed, at the 2006 Hands Around The Dome ceremony, several children were wearing a memorial T-shirt designed with a color photograph and the following captions. "Memory lives in New Orleans. Aftermaths of Katrina. Darryl G. Milton aka 'Spook'. R.I.P. Sunrise: 4.6.1977 Sunset: 8.29.2005", indicating like on other memorial T-shirts the nickname and dates of birth and death of the deceased. By invoking the living dimension of memory, this T-shirt emphasized

1

  Anthony Oliver-Smith, 1986, The Martyred City: Death and Rebirth in the Andes, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press: 190. 2 Ibid. ; Christian Delécraz, Laurie Durussel (dir.), 2007, Scénario Catastrophe, Genève: Musée d'ethnographie de Genève, In-Folio.

With more than 300,000 members and chapters in one hundred cities across the country, ACORN was created in Little Rock in 1970, and has its headquarters in New Orleans where the association included 9,000 members before Katrina.