Objects of Forgetting: Neighborhood markers as elements of social amnesia

What communicates the history of a community within the built environment, and how does it get there? What's more, what exactly is communicated? In this paper I examine the rainbow pylons in Boystown, Chicago, which are popularly referenced as marking the area as a welcoming gay neighborhood. This is all despite their artificial emplacement (driven by city politics) and their lack of connection to any specific place or thing (a tenet of memorial studies). I argue that the pylons, though treated as monuments by the media and public communications, actually serve as anti-mnemonic objects that institute forgetting instead of remembering and a pseudo-memory for those who have only interacted with the pylons after the installation.