Memory practices and theory in a global age

Abstract

This chapter explores the significance of memory for political, social and cultural theory. Rather than viewing memory as anachronistic (classical theory) or epiphenomenal, collective memory is an integral and a constitutive part of theory. The three-decade-long preoccupation with mnemonics continues unabated in popular and academic parlance. The burgeoning field of memory studies conceives of collective memories as situated in social frameworks (i.e. family, nation and personal experiences anchored by symbolic markings), manifested in cultural practices (i.e. externalized into archival repositories such as memorials and museums), and shaped by political circumstances (i.e. wars, catastrophes and debates generating lasting meanings of these events). Social frameworks and historical circumstances change over time and with them the aforementioned alignments of temporalities (e.g. the discourse of progress in modernity). The post-Cold War emergence of global norms and structures has inaugurated a third wave of theorizing about memory. Studying (and theorizing) memory allows us to shift our focus from time to temporalities, and thus to understand what categories people, groups, and cultures employ to make sense of their lives, their social, cultural and political attachments and the concomitant ideals that are validated – in short, the political, cultural and social theories which command normative attention.