Dealing with the memories of terrorism: Understanding the social meanings of spontaneous memorials

This article questions the success of official memorials in overcoming wounds caused by social traumas, such are terrorist attacks.

This research article traces the process of transition from spontaneous to 'official' memorialisation of the 2016 Brussels terrorist attack by questioning which factors trigger the heritagization process of spontaneous memorials and their contents. With a view to critically assess the significance of heritage values in relation to terrorism, this article scrutinises how these values are grasped, narrated and articulated by the local authorities, government and archival institutions in the preservation, conservation and heritagization of spontaneous memorials. There is an emphasis on the two facets of heritagization: how meanings attached to a memorial and its objects are created and expressed by the community of bereavement, and how the transformation of places, practices, objects into diverse forms of 'heritage' evolves. This article brings a new perspective on the heritagization of spontaneous memorials, seen as important in determining how a traumatic event such is a terrorist attack will settle in the collective memory on the long term, by becoming historicized.

Whilst the interest of memory scholars in political violence and more specifically in terrorism is not novel, there appears to be a certain urgency to reflect upon memories of terrorist violence in collective, European immaginarium. By questioning how to deal with these memories and how the process of remembrance of the victims of terrorism will pave its way into a European memory culture, this article analyses spontaneous memorialization of the victims of terrorist attacks in Brussels (2016).