Transnational Memory Activism and Performative Nationalism

Abstract

This chapter will trace how transnational memory activism has ended up with the performative nationalism. Some transnational memory actors intended to perform nationalism by spreading their national agenda in the global memory space. In many a case, however, transnational memory activists perform the mnemonic nationalism unconsciously. The global memory space tends to de-territorialize national memories. It intensifies the international competition among contested national memories, too. The de-territorialization of memories in the global memory space coincides with the performative nationalism. Japanese anti-nuclear memory activists’ march to Auschwitz, Korean comfort women activists in the transpacific, and Polish memory activists patronizing the Holocaust Jewish victims exemplify the performative nationalism in the global memory space.