Afterword: Concluding thoughts on the politics of memory in Asia

Abstract

Anthropological research on memory and memorial practices has proliferated in the discipline in recent years. This unprecedented ‘memory boom’ has not been without its critics, however. David Berliner (2005), for example, has argued that the study of memory in its multiple discursive forms and settings (social, national, material, cultural...) has resulted in categorical and terminological confusion. On the other hand, as the papers in this collection so aptly demonstrate, the ethnographic study of memory remains a fertile terrain for examining the high stakes involved in struggles to attain voice, presence and representation in history (Litzinger 2000: 69). For studies of memory, Michel-Rolph Trouillot once argued, must firstly attend to competing claims to history, truth, power and subjectivity. ‘What matters most,’ he wrote, ‘are the process and conditions of the production of [historical] narratives (...) [and] the differential exercise of power that makes some narratives possible and silences others’ (1995: 25).