Memory as a Field Site: Interviewing Displaced Persons

Abstract

Six and a half years after the start of the Arab uprisings, the initial euphoria of popular mobilization and optimism in revolutionary change is an increasingly distant memory. While a few countries in the region are moving in the direction of greater openness, most are gripped by a resurgent authoritarianism that is ever more repressive. Some states are collapsing amid mass violence and humanitarian catastrophe. In others, threat of brutal punishment continues to enforce red lines against permissible speech and action, even as those red lines continue to shift.