Collective memory and the politics of urban space: an introduction

Abstract

The proliferation of recent works on the place ofmemory in social life and political culture has calledattention to the various struggles over rememberingand forgetting the past and, hence, the imagining ofalternative futures. Moreover, numerous geographershave highlighted the important role that spaces ofcommemoration play in reshaping the geographies ofmemory and oblivion (Dwyer and Alderman 2008;Foote 2003; Foote and Azaryahu 2007; Forest et al.2004; Hebbert 2005; Hoelscher and Alderman 2004;Johnson 2004; Legg 2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2007; Pred2004; Rose-Redwood, 2008; Till, 2003, 2005, 2006).Scholars from both the social sciences and humanitieshave contributed to the interdisciplinary field of‘‘memory studies’’ (Till 2006), which now has itsown set of professional publication outlets, such asthe journal Memory Studies (launched in January2008). Additionally, the new scholarly forum,H-Memory, first went online in March 2007 andserves as an informal network to promote theexchange of ideas among those grappling withquestions of memory.Fueling much of the analysis of memory is arecognition that the past—as we commemorate andidentify with it—is a selective social and geographicconstruction. What memories are ultimately madevisible (or invisible) on the landscape do not simplyemerge out of thin air. Rather, they result directly frompeople’s commemorative decisions and actions asembedded within and constrained by particular socio-spatial conditions. All indications suggest that we arecurrently witnessing the revalorization of individualand collective memory at a time when historicalamnesia appears to be at an all-time high. Many aresearching for and building places of memory that canprovide a sense of ‘‘temporal anchoring’’ in a world ofup-to-the-minute media saturation and ‘‘informationoverload’’ (Huyssen 1995, p. 7). A growing heritageindustry, often centered on tourism and preservation,has driven some of this search. Memory can beprofitable even as it is important to one’s sense of timeand place, although Lowenthal (1996) warns us aboutthe pitfalls of being ‘‘possessed by the past.’’ Estab-lishing places of memory has also taken on greatmeaning and value for social actors and groups—and,indeed, entire nations—as they seek to establish thelegitimacy of their public identities and histories,