Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

As New York City’s massed burial ground, Hart Island’s history has been marked by abandonment and erasure. Here, the dead are unmarked and unmemorialised. I ask what is at stake when advocates urge others to remember and recognise the Hart Island dead, through two claims of political belonging.

Paper long abstract

As New York City’s massed burial ground of one million dead, Hart Island’s history has been marked by abandonment and erasure. Here, in one of the world’s wealthiest cities, the dead are unmarked, unmemorialised and ungrieved.

Today, various activists, relatives and politicians are attempting to reclaim the Hart Island dead into the social world. I ask what is at stake when advocates urge others to remember and recognise the Hart Island dead, through two case studies.

The first is rhetorical insistence from politicians that the Hart Island dead are ‘human beings, fellow New Yorkers, and our neighbours’ (Mayor de Blasio, 2020). Archival materials often emphasized that a Hart Island burial was for the unwanted and unknown. But during my fieldwork, a new discourse emerged in which people talked about the Hart Island dead as citizens of New York City. What does it mean for powerful New Yorkers to recognise the Hart Island dead as fellow citizens?

The second is the claim by some gay activists that Hart Island can be a site of pilgrimage, in remembrance of the AIDS crisis. But reclaiming the past can lead to productive misreadings and new omissions, because history is a risky business.

Hart Island’s politics have been unmistakable for 150 years. Why the sudden interest in grieving the dead of Hart Island? And are these projects of political recognition supposed to signal amends and accountability? If so, for what wrong-doing?