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The Future of Memory
Abstract
The author compares and contrasts the public discourse over memory in Western Europe and North America. The greater awareness in continental Europe of memory as a political resource and site of contestation has profound implications for elite behavior and mass responses. It also has the potential to alter the dynamics by which collective and institutional memory is created, recalled, and altered.
... On the relation between memory and identity, Richard N. Lebow (2008) made the observation that some "memories and commemorations may become inconvenient if they stand in the way of changing or reformulating identities, " (p. 29). ...
This ethnographic research examines the role of Islam in modern Kurdish society in Iraq and Turkey. The major findings are that despite their commonalities, Kurdish national narratives are undermined by the factionalism and sectarianism woven throughout the histories of Islam and Kurdish relations in the region. The result of this is a conflict-ridden codependency between secular and Islamist parties and identities which includes a contest for authority over national narratives. The research also demonstrates how specific Western masculine archetypes have been subsumed into local masculine ideation, influencing the content and format of propaganda used in these contests.
... The analysis first specifies the terms and notion of an institutional (historical) memory as it is applied in this study. As a point of departure in understanding the notion of institutional memory, the theoretical framework and terms created by Richard Ned Lebow (Lebow 2008) were used. According to Lebow, institutional memory is a type of memory that is created, maintained, developed and purposefully promoted by a government, that is -at the state-level or from 'above' . ...
Belarusian institutional historical memory (as defined by Richard Ned Lebow) and the interpretation of Belarusian national history have experienced radical shifts in the past several decades. The first shift (1990–1994) was characterized by radical rejection of the interpretational and methodological patterns of the Soviet period, resulting in the creation of a new concept of Belarusian national history and historical narrative.
The second shift in the existing historical narrative and institutional memory followed rapidly. It came with the transformation from a parliamentary republic into a parliamentary-presidential (1994) and then presidential republic (1996). The second wave demonstrated a clear shift towards a methodological, theoretical approach and terminological framework typical of the historiography of the Soviet period. These changes were in response to the growing demands for ideological control of institutionalized historical research supported by the government in the same decade.
One of the characteristic features of recent Belarusian state-sponsored historiography (Lyč, Chigrinov, Marcuĺ, Novik and others) is the linking of post-Soviet national initiatives to Nazi occupation and collaboration in World War II. Another typical feature is simplifying historical explanations and often using undisguised pejorative terminology.
The last shift in institutional historical memory also resulted in further re-interpretations of many symbolic centres and milestones of Belarusian history (for example, the period of the first years of post-Soviet independence, the introduction of new national symbols (Pahonia coat of arms and white-red-white flag) and the interwar nationality policy of Belarusization of the 1920s.)
... The hypothesis can be made that, beyond transnational dynamics, several parallel state transformations can have been instrumental in leading to similar memory evolutions while starting from very different contexts (Danilova 2015;Volker 1987). Moreover, it invites us to draw on memory issues to think of new ways to conceptualize the very notion of political regimes and to build interstate comparison from a transnational memory dynamic (for a start in this direction, see Lebow 2008;and Gensburger 2016a). ...
This introduction to the special issue start from the point that studying the politics of memory should also involve studying the governance and policies of memory: its administrations. The increasing importance of transnational and local scales in memory studies seems to have made the nation a less relevant starting point from which to conceptualize memory. Yet, states progressively attempt to administer memory. This suggests that we should focus at once on transcending methodological nationalism and bringing back the state in the study of the politics of memory. This involves thinking about administrations of memory both in terms of the processes of dispensing or aiding memory and as the state bodies that are authorized and expected to manage memory. As such, this introductory chapter is structured around two issues: (a) the interactions between transnational, national, and local scales in policy trajectories, practices, and discourses on memory and (b) the role of governance and administration in understanding memory as a category of public intervention. Both sets present a thumbnail case to illustrate the issues at stake, and taken together, they develop our ongoing reflexions on memory as a contemporary conduit for practicing politics and setting up political institutions. The ambition is for memory studies to gain a firmer understanding of the governmental and technocratic co-production of political languages for memory as they are themselves shaped in the policymaking process by (trans)national institutional practices and bureaucratic conduits. In turn, political science approaches on the whole may gain from a firmer appreciation and conceptualization of the structures and carriers of collective memory in and across particular political cultures, which may also lead to more reflexive policy instrumentation and programming in contemporary societies trying to deal in and with the past.
... Consequently the potential issue of false memories has been intertwined within the field of DID, suggesting a causal link between therapeutic approaches and the recovery of memories after amnesic periods of time (Brandon et al. 1998;Walker and Antony-Black 1999). Different approaches to concepts of memory have also been illustrated between Western Europe and North America (Lebow 2008). ...
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is an uncommon disorder that has long been associated with exposure to traumatic stressors exceeding manageable levels commonly encompassing physical, psychological and sexual abuse in childhood that is prolonged and severe in nature. In DID, dissociation continues after the traumatic experience and produces a disruption in identity where distinct personality states develop. These personalities are accompanied by variations in behaviour, emotions, memory, perception and cognition. The use of literature in psychiatry can enrich comprehension over the subjective experience of a disorder, and the utilisation of 'illness narratives' in nursing research have been considered a way of improving knowledge about nursing care and theory development. This research explores experiences of DID through close textual reading and thematic analysis of five biographical and autobiographical texts, discussing the lived experience of the disorder. This narrative approach aims to inform empathetic understanding and support the facilitation of therapeutic alliances in mental healthcare for those experiencing the potentially debilitating and distressing symptoms of DID. Although controversies surrounding the biomedical diagnosis of DID are important to consider, the lived experiences of those who mental health nurses encounter should be priority.
... In order to fully grasp its deep political, sociocultural, and historical meanings, I propose to think about memory as the suspended time of praxis. I differentiate memory from broader cognitive processes, discursive practices, archiving methods, and specific forms of remembering with which memory is usually equated (Van Dijk 2007;Ernst 2013;Lebow 2008;Brockmeier 2010). Even if those processes constitute elements in memory construction, they cannot be conflated with memory in itself (Van House and Churchill 2008). ...
Using postwar El Salvador as a case study, I argue against the dominant paradigm that situates the repressive role of the state as both the central object of memorialization and the main subject of history. Instead, I focus on the ways in which the memory of insurgent collective action is constructed among young members of the popular classes in postwar El Salvador. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research in the communities of northern Morazán, I understand memory as the suspended time of praxis. Media—such as Internet, Facebook, and TV play a key role in this process, impinging on the ways youth relate with the revolutionary past of their relatives making sense of their present living conditions. I argue that memory must be understood as a particular form of praxis, one that is embedded in historic concrete forms of class constitution in which the role of media has become a constitutive element in the labors of memory, particularly among young people.
... Collective memory is the cultural and social construction of social memories by larger social groups (Lebow 2008). While individuals may have multiple interpretations of past events and practises, through processes of contestation and debate, social groups come to a common and collective agreement about the meaning and significance of history (Booth and Rowlinson 2006) and tradition (Olick 1999;Shils 1981). ...
Strategic management research has demonstrated that firm-specific resources can confer a distinct competitive advantage. This research, however, tends to assume that the resources are fixed and immutable and that they operate inside the organization. We offer a competing view in which resources are socially constructed and operate primarily on external stakeholders. Drawing from emerging research in social memory studies, we argue that historical narratives are an emerging means of socially constructing firm-specific social memory assets that can be used to create competitive advantage. We illustrate our argument through an analysis of how Tim Hortons, a now iconic Canadian company, uses historical and tradition-based narratives to construct its brand identity.
El objetivo principal de esta investigación es el análisis de las memorias emblemáticas creadas por los sectores populares, la intelectualidad radical y los tinoquistas durante la dictadura de Federico Tinoco Granados (1917-1919) y la transición democrática – conocida como Proceso de la Restauración – llevada a cabo entre 1920 y 1924. Se analizarán las confrontaciones de estas memorias en los medios de comunicación, el espacio público y en las instituciones del Estado y el efecto a largo plazo que tuvo las políticas de conciliación formuladas e impulsadas por el gobierno de Julio Acosta García en el recuerdo colectivo del periodo dictatorial.
El primer capítulo tendrá como propósito identificar los eventos de ruptura, situaciones que debilitan o destruyen la convivencia social de los individuos y grupos que componen la sociedad. Para lograrlo, el capítulo repasará primeramente la dinámica social y la legitimación del Golpe de Estado del 27 de enero de 1917, los discursos de protesta, los movimientos sociales que se enfrentaron al régimen y la represión del Estado. Debido a que la experiencia del golpe de Estado es diferenciada en cada grupo social, la última parte del capítulo tendrá como objetivo la localización del evento de ruptura que permitirá la construcción de cuatro memorias emblemáticas: salvación, resistencia, sanción y conciliación.
El segundo capítulo se centrará en el análisis de la memoria de salvación y las estrategias simbólicas que permiten la apropiación y conexión de las experiencias individuales que forman el emblema de salvación. Los responsables de este proceso son los actores sociales que se transformaron en portavoces de la memoria – los tinoquistas –, las conmemoraciones, actos públicos y los monumentos. Se pondrá especial atención al papel de los Clubes 27 de Enero como los principales portavoces del régimen y los responsables de legitimar mediante actividades sociales y desfiles al golpe de Estado del 27 de enero, como una fecha gloriosa. Posteriormente, se analizarán las políticas de la memoria que utilizó el tinoquismo para inmortalizar esa fecha en el espacio público de la ciudad de San José.
El tercer capítulo analizará los nudos de la memoria de la memoria de resistencia, que surgió a partir del asesinato político de Rogelio Fernández Güell y que se transformó en la base moral de las tesis de sanción de los “restauradores”. Se ofrecerá un breve esbozo del movimiento armado liderado por Fernández Güell, su muerte, cómo es recibida la noticia en la capital, la confrontación de las versiones del asesinato y el impacto a nivel nacional e internacional del folleto de Marcelino García Flamenco como catalizador del emblema de resistencia. Posteriormente, se detallarán los pormenores que llevaron a la construcción de una memoria heroica, por medio de las conmemoraciones, monumentos y funerales de Estado, y el papel de estos espacios como lugares de confrontación entre las tesis de sanción y conciliación.
El cuarto capítulo está enfocado a dilucidar los efectos de las políticas de conciliación surgidas durante el gobierno de Julio Acosta, en el largo plazo. En la primera parte, se explorará el impacto político que tuvo la revolución del Sapoá y la creación de las proclamas que sustentaron el espíritu de sanción. En la segunda parte, se analizará las intenciones de los portavoces de las tesis de sanción, “los restauradores”, para crear una memoria de sanción y cómo estos esfuerzos debieron luchar por su espacio en contra de las políticas de conciliación, de naturaleza eminentemente anti-memoria. En la tercera parte se analizará en el largo plazo los efectos del perdón y el olvido en la política costarricense, tomando en cuenta el uso electoral de los “estigmas tinoquistas” en las carreras electorales de 1927, 1931 y 1935; el uso que hicieron del tinoquismo José Figueres Ferrer y Alberto Cañas para legitimar la Guerra Civil de 1948; y la construcción de la memoria emblemática de conciliación, como un producto del contexto posguerra civil y materializado en el monumento a Julio Acosta García inaugurado en 1963.
Cambridge Core - Latin American History - Exiled Among Nations - by John P. R. Eicher
This article presents a comparative perspective of the preambles in the post-communist constitutions of former Soviet Bloc countries. We follow the view that constitutional memory , i.e. history through legislation in a constitution, is a form of public and institutional memory, which is the object of a variety of intensely manipulative pursuits. The central questions focus on how particular countries use history in their preambles, and how these states represent themselves. Empirically, the article addresses and compares the 29 current preambles of the successor states of the former Soviet Bloc. We argue that excessive and exclusionary use of history in constitutions becomes a significant tool in identification and identity building, which can even compromise critical academic historiography. In the light of the preambles, the longer the national history, the better. Moreover, we claim that until recent years, signs of US post-1989 hegemony can even be read in several post-communist preambles. In general, the public histories of nation states are not composed of just a single imagination, but of a multitude of competing opinions. Therefore, a comprehensive historical perspective is needed to build a broad and balanced narrative of the past, an issue not well suited for the introductory parts of constitutions.
This article examines the political use of history as construction of traditions, concentrating on the identity building surrounding the National Day commemorating the Revolution of 1956 (23rd October) in Hungary. The study analyses public discourse, represented by Hungarian newspapers, related to the commemorations. Our discussion draws on three ideal types: 1996 (Hungary's new democracy), 2006 (renewal of historical conflict) and 2016 (legitimisation of the administration). We claim that the question is not merely of an invention of tradition but a separation between legacy and tradition. Whereas legacy is given, although not always remembered, traditions can be selected and commemorated.
The chapter aims at elucidating the dynamics of mutual demonization between China and Japan that is anchored in the “Siamese twin” analogy of the 1930s episode. We argue that shadow projection, scapegoat behaviour, revival of geopolitical discourses, and identity politics have been responsible for the dilemma of mutual demonization between both countries. Domestic abuse of political power, driven by the misuse of historical narratives and the formation of an adversarial transnational coalitions, has further complicated the situation. Mutual demonization processes have worrisome implications for bilateral relations and general peace and stability in Northeast Asia. It concludes that political leadership, civil society, and mass media in each country should campaign against the excessive politicization of historical memory politics and the formation of adversarial coalitions
Academics working on intelligence failure are famous for their pessimism. This paper is more optimistic and sees strategic culture as helpfully constraining the likely options of our enemies. It suggests that there is a wealth of innovative work here that we might exploit here to assist with strategic estimates and argues that it is puzzling that we have not tried to harness it before in a more programmatic way. It examines sets of different but related ideas about notions of strategic culture, historical analogies and social learning that have been developed by leading political scientists and then asks what they might contribute to improved intelligence analysis.
Using two case studies under the Christian-conservative Orbán government, this essay explores how ‘future memories’ are being constructed and sustained by revisionist history writing about the history of communism, especially in instrumentalist memories using pedagogical instruments: the secondary literature curriculum and the Museum of Trianon. It argues that canonization revised by counter canonization is necessarily opening space for revisionism.
Seventy years since the start of World War II, revisionists across Europe have been arguing that Stalin was as much to blame for starting the war as Hitler. No historical fact, it seems, not even the one that every school pupil knows -that Hitler was responsible for the war — is any longer secure. At the same time, the British Conservative Party, the party of Churchill, has aligned itself in the European Parliament with a far-right grouping, the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR), which includes the Latvian For Fatherland and Freedom Party and the Polish Law and Justice Party, whose former spokesman, Michał Kaminski, appealing to the old canard of Judeo-Bolshevism (Żydokomuna), explains the murder of Jews in Jedwabne in 1941 with reference to the ‘crimes’ supposedly committed by Jews during the period of Bolshevik rule in eastern Poland. As Adam Krzeminski rightly says, World War II is still being fought,2 and, we might add, more intensively today than at any point in the last seven decades.
This article studies the relationship between sustainability and institutional memory in postwar Croatia. Is institutional memory preserved after interventions end? Is so, how and by whom? What are the causes of loss of institutional memory? What are the consequences for sustainability and accountability? When international organizations pulled out of peacebuilding operations in Croatia in the mid to late 2000s, they quickly lost their institutional memory of their projects. Donors, international nongovernmental organizations, and intergovernmental organizations all lost their ability to recall the work they had done in the past. Using interview, ethnographic data, and archival documents gathered over five years (2008-2013), I define three types of memory-archival, human, and electronic-and show how each of these forms of memory eroded as international projects in Croatia ended. The loss of international memory has implications for international organizations' own stated goals of sustainability and their ability to achieve and assess sustainability, and for the downward accountability of donors to their beneficiaries and the countries they worked in.
Amongst recent documentary films portraying the Basque conflict, Iñaki Arteta's Trece Entre Mil/Thirteen Amongst a Thousand (2005) stands out as a significant contribution to the construction of collective memory. Its compilation of testimonies from thirteen families left bereaved
by political violence develops a sustained, cumulative reflection on the nature of grief and personal loss. At the same time, in its seeking out of the communal via the individual and in its engagement with acutely contemporary issues, the film also constitutes a courageous political intervention,
one that bears comparison with the testimony-based documentary work of Peter Davis, Claude Lanzmann and Marcel Ophüls. The film's harrowing interview sequences exploit subtle variations in filmic texture, interwoven with fragments of home video and snatches of news media coverage, to
achieve what Lanzmann conceptualizes as 'transmission'; that is, for Arteta's audience, interpellated as members of civil society, to gain an empathetic, empirical appreciation of the human dimension of political violence.
After centuries of being torn apart by conflicts that remain deeply embedded in the European collective memory, Europe's most recent history is being written as a narrative of redemption. In order to establish itself as a political, economic and social entity, Europe has been emphasizing its common cultural roots and historical features of unity. For this purpose, narratives of identity have been produced in the context of European and national institutions that seek to replace fractures by pluralisation and forgetfulness by redemption. However, the codification of European culture and identity has turned out to be an extremely difficult task: the conceptual devices for theorizing Europe as a social unity and cultural identity are insufficient and unsuitable. In addition, the conceptualization of identity tends to be primarily related to notions such as belonging, memory and continuity rather than to the idea of an in-progress project taking place in the present and in the future. Recent theoretical approaches reveal how European identity narratives require hybrid multilayered configurations in order to accommodate national, ethnic and cultural features, as well as post-national political and economic unification. This paper attempts to explore some processes of identity construction in an European context and to discuss how elements that embody the ambiguity that runs through European culture -unity and diversity, commemoration and forgetfulness -are registered in the social memory.
This article examines the role of commemorative processes as a form of symbolic reparation and their potential use in deeply divided societies. After discussing definitions and contexts of symbolic reparation, it will then explore the tensions inherent in this process as it speedily encounters hybridisation, the construction of narratives of ethnic identity and the political contestation of memory in deeply divided societies. An overarching question will be how symbolic reparation might meaningfully allow for the seeding of human rights norms and values in divided societies, and thus aid the recasting of both inter-communal relations and engagement between citizen and state.
This article examines the dynamic relationship between the two major dimensions of memory and justice in the context of post-communist countries: truth-telling and retroactive justice. This interdependent and uneasy relationship is illustrated by recent attempts at constructing a new historical narrative of the communist past in Romania in the wake of the de-secretization of the files of both the Communist Party and the communist secret police (Securitate). A systematic analysis of the activity of institutions that have been directly involved in research and public education about the recent past – the National Archives, the National Council for the Study of Securitate's Archives, and the Institute for the Investigation of Crimes of Communism – is undertaken. The work of these three institutional actors shows a direct relationship between truth-telling in its various forms (access to archives, opening the files and exhumations) and any subsequent retroactive justice and restitution. The main argument of the paper is that while deep-seated dichotomies between former communist and anti-communists in addressing the past still persist, a more nuanced way of seeing the regime that explores the ambiguous line that divides outright repression from cooptation is emerging.
Memory is a defining feature of the human condition. But the vectors and social dynamics of memory, the linkages between the individual and the collective, and the roles that traces of the past play in constituting identities and in shaping political life are complex, varied and contested. So too are the ethical demands that memory makes on us. What is clear, though, is that violence — its grim modalities, its diffuse consequences, its representation and comprehension — must stand at the centre of any understanding of memory and politics. The articles in forum explore some of the intersections between memory, politics and violence. In this introduction I set the scene for them, examining some of the relevant issues at stake and outlining some of the key positions in the scholarly literature.
This article uses the controversial November 2008 Belfast homecoming parade of local men and women in the British armed services as a case study to examine the mechanisms at work picking away at inter-communal trust, and the speed and persistence of their application, a defining characteristic of these mechanisms. The article conceptualises trust partially by reference to social capital, and closely examines how issues of post-conflict memory and contested space intersected and damaged nascent networks of inter-community trust. The article will also tentatively suggest means by which such cultural conflicts can be allowed to combust without ripping away grassroots trust and threatening civil disorder.
The notion of the past as a foreign country has become a standard trope in contextual approaches to the study of history, emphasizing specificity, particularity and contingency. The logic of these approaches suggests that the future is equally foreign. While not dismissing the idea of context as useful and important in the study of history, politics, anthropology, sociology and most other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences for that matter, this article offers a critique of certain aspects of contextual approaches. More specifically, the discussion demonstrates that contextualist approaches posit an essential incommensurability between past and present, and by implication the future, that has quite profound implications for both normative theory and methodology. By way of illustration, the article considers the matter of responsibility or accountability for the past, present and future in relation to some specific examples. In concluding, it suggests a “project of commensuration” of past, present and future as both methodologically more coherent as well as more tenable in normative terms.
We report a series of studies of historical reasoning among professional observers of world politics. The correlational studies demonstrate that experts with strong theoretical commitments to a covering law and cognitive-stylistic preferences for explanatory closure are more likely to reject close-call counterfactuals that imply that "already explained" historical outcomes could easily have taken radically different forms. The experimental studies suggest that counterfactual reasoning is not totally theory-driven: Many experts are capable of surprising themselves when encouraged to imagine the implications of particular what-if scenarios. Yet, there is a downside to openness to historical contingency. The more effort experts allocate to exploring counterfactual worlds, the greater is the risk that they will assign too much subjective probability to too many scenarios. We close by defining good judgment as a reflective-equilibrium process of balancing the conflicting causal intuitions primed by complementary factual and counterfactual posings of historical questions.
The growth in the USA of 'recovered memory therapy' for past sexual abuse has caused great public and professional concern. It became apparent that the polarisation of views and fierce controversy within the American psychiatric community was in danger of bringing psychotherapy into disrepute and it seemed important to examine objectively the scientific evidence before such polarisation developed in the UK.
A small working group reviewed their own experience, visited meetings and centres with expertise in this field, interviewed 'retractors' and accused parents, and then began a comprehensive review of the literature.
There is a vast literature but little acceptable research. Opinions are expressed with great conviction but often unsupported by evidence.
The issue of false or recovered memories should not be allowed to confuse the recognition and treatment of sexually abused children. We concluded that when memories are 'recovered' after long periods of amnesia, particularly when extraordinary means were used to secure the recovery of memory, there is a high probability that the memories are false, i.e. of incidents that had not occurred. Some guidelines which should enable practitioners to avoid the pitfalls of memory recovery are offered.
Introduction: Memory, trauma and world politics
- Duncan Bell
Past as present, myth, of history? Discourses of time and the Great Fatherland War
- Regula Ludi
History at risk: The case of the Enola Gay
- Richard H Kohn
New threads on an old loom: National memory and social identity in postwar and post-communist Poland
- Annamaria Orla-Bukowska