Reawakening Cold War Social Movements Through Memory Work and Archival Performance

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the ways in which artefacts of Cold War social movements are reassembled in and through the creation of archives in the present. We ask: how have artefacts of past social movements been re-engaged with memory work through intergenerational transmission and performance? Through the analysis of selected examples, including a) ethnographic work on a Pan-African social movement in Senegal, b) archival research of Cuban Cold War graphic design, and c) a decolonial pedagogical project taking place at a UK university, we illustrate the different – and at times overlapping – dimensions of the ‘memory-activism nexus’ they engage (Rigney 2018; 2020). Through a theoretical framework that draws from social movement theory, memory studies and performance theory in relation to archives, we identify and analyse contemporary engagements with past social movements. We argue that through distinct interpretations, (re)assemblages, and framings of artefacts, memory work through the creation of archives is necessarily an embodied and performative practice.