Abstract
The memory boom, a multifaceted process fundamentally consisting in the increasing presence of the past in the present, occurred in practice simultaneously with the ostensible (transnational) stabilization of a neoliberal consensus, itself a complex process informed by deregulation, privatization, the abandonment of the politics of redistribution and the erosion of social and economic rights. By drawing attention to the concurrent characters of the history of the memory boom and the history of neoliberalism, this contribution aims to push towards an engagement with the ways in which economic transformation and memory are intertwined. This should enable us to better understand the critical political and mnemonic juncture that we find ourselves at. The question arising is whether memory has in any way the necessary critical potentialities to underlie the pursuit and realization of a radically democratic present and future. Author’s noteI make a similar argument in an article titled “Towards a Disentanglement of the Links between the Memory Boom and the Neoliberal Turn”, forthcoming in the online journal “Intersections”. The two texts borrow from each other.
Highlights
Cristian CercelThe memory boom, a multifaceted process fundamentally consisting in the increasing presence of the past in the present, occurred in practice simultaneously with the ostensible (transnational) stabilization of a neoliberal consensus, itself a complex process informed by deregulation, privatization, the abandonment of the politics of redistribution and the erosion of social and economic rights
Historicizing the so-called memory boom would perforce imply accounting for the fact that ‘since about 1980 [...] both the public and academia have become saturated with references to social or collective memory’ (Olick and Robbins 107)
The end of the 1970s and the 1980s are the timeframe associated with an ‘emphatic turn towards neoliberalism in political-economic practices and thinking’ (Harvey 2)
Summary
The memory boom, a multifaceted process fundamentally consisting in the increasing presence of the past in the present, occurred in practice simultaneously with the ostensible (transnational) stabilization of a neoliberal consensus, itself a complex process informed by deregulation, privatization, the abandonment of the politics of redistribution and the erosion of social and economic rights. By drawing attention to the concurrent characters of the history of the memory boom and the history of neoliberalism, this contribution aims to push towards an engagement with the ways in which economic transformation and memory are intertwined. This should enable us to better understand the critical political and mnemonic juncture that we find ourselves at.
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