Memorialization as a Mechanism of Power in the Present: The Creation and Contestation of National Narratives in the Wake of Internal Armed Conflict

Abstract

ObjectiveThe objectives of this article are to understand how national narratives are created and maintained, which discourses are utilized, and what inhibits people from understanding perspectives divergent from their own within the context of postarmed conflict processes of transitional justice. Through examining these objectives, I outline what studies of transitional justice can contribute to understandings of Confederate memory in the United States.MethodI conducted 14 months of ethnographic research with conflict victims after a decade‐long internal armed conflict in Nepal.ResultsI argue finding new ways to conceptualize and discuss that Confederate monuments in the United States require acknowledgement of the economic and political power structures that constrain equitable access to public memory projects.ConclusionI conclude that how memorialization processes obfuscate, rather than illuminate, marginalized histories in the present, and legitimate ongoing inequalities must be questioned and redressed.