Collective Memory Work Research Articles

Magic of feminist bridging

Are feminist coalitions magical enough to survive and endure while questioning and shaking the colonial/racist foundations of Swedish academic knowledge production and the overall Swedish society? Can feminist bridging and collective writing remain a magical process even when grappling with difficult experiences and memories of othering and racialisation? This is a creatively and collectively written article on feminist coalition building, and its importance in thinking, articulating and deconstructing race, racialization and racist structures. More than two years ago, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, came together to explore our differently situated experiences of disidentifying with Swedish academia and society in a collective we call Loving Coalitions. Against the background of Swedish exceptionalism, historical amnesia of Sweden’s colonial past and present, and the deafening silence on Swedish whiteness and racism, we are sharing our poems, letters, texts and testimonies of racist interactions in Swedish academia and society. While doing so, we discuss how moving away from conventional ways of doing research and experimenting with creative methodological alternatives, such as automatic writing, epistolary formats, poems, fiction, collective memory-work, allow us to acknowledge and embrace our different life backgrounds and academic trajectories as a mode of knowledge production. We hope and believe that our experiences, refl ections and ways to resist racism and Othering in Sweden and Swedish academia through alternative coalition building, based on mutual care and love, can be relevant in a Danish context as well.

Popular historical films as collective memory-work in Eastern Europe: from Polish KATYN to Romanian AFERIM! and Hungarian BET ON REVENGE

Abstract Historical film – a film genre supported in the Cold War era – has re-emerged in the 21st century in Eastern European cinemas, its success signalled by popularity, dedicated state financing funds or political support. This article frames the phenomenon within the Assmannian model of three communicative generations, suggested to be interlinked on the level of both the creative staff and the audience of Eastern European historical films. Based on box-office data of the Lumiere Database of the European Audiovisual Observatory, and research referring to further elements of canonization, it is argued that titles such as Polish Katyn (2007), Romanian Aferim! (2015) or Hungarian Bet on Revenge (2016) – the first majority production historical films to achieve significant audience, and, consequently, critical success in their domestic markets in the 21st century – signal a successful collective memory-work process. While in the major Polish market this may be inscribed within the three communicative generations of the victims, the forgetters and the mourners doing memory-work – possibly processing collective traumatization too –, the two small national examples fall outside the validity of the Assmannian model. In order to somewhat refine this apparent opposition between 21st century Eastern European major and small national collective memory-work through historical films, further examples from the Polish, Hungarian and Romanian top lists are examined. Poetic-medial features – the actualization of “trauma narratives” (Alexander 2012) or of postmodern irony, the employment of cinematic and/or televisual visuality – seem to facilitate collective memory-work differently for major and small national domestic audiences, activating or not their belonging to the three communicative generations with respect to the historical events represented in the films.

Intra-Acting With Technology During Remote Fieldwork in Homes: Curating Video Interviews and Drawing Methods

The ubiquity of remote research practices and the increased adoption of videoconferencing tools are forcing researchers to pay attention to the features of these technologies and how they shape the research encounter. This article draws on experience from a Norwegian research project about digital vulnerabilities and living with smart home technologies. Participants were invited to draw floor plans of their homes, enact everyday routines, and perform a house tour on camera. By enacting collective memory work, reviewing, and discussing fieldnotes and other materials from the interviews, the authors have reflected upon experiences and identified lessons and implications for further research. Drawing on a socio-material approach that views digital technologies as active participants in enacting the research event, the article highlights how the presence of videoconferencing technology shapes the research situation and how data is generated. We show how videoconferencing tools can provide both access to and constraints on what can be done and who can participate and underline the importance of skills for both researchers and participants. We demonstrate how the handholding of the camera and the frame of the lens direct what is seen during a video interview, and how power dynamics between participants and researchers are shaped. We conclude that researchers need to be mindful of how agency is negotiated between technology and humans during remote fieldwork.

The Place and Pace to Remember

We begin with the question "what do we want to keep that the pandemic has given us?" Largely co-written in 2021, this reflexive essay serves as a snapshot in time, at one stage of the pandemic, reflecting upon earlier, shared experiences at one institution of higher education. We locate each of our identities and positionalities in that space and beyond. Our essay uses Moya Bailey’s 2021 discussion of an ethics of pace to frame our thinking and collective memory work and to counter what we identified as the distinct efforts of institutions of higher education to not have places for institutional memory. We articulate that without memory places, it is impossible to build both a history of justice work in institutions of higher education and accountability that this justice work is seen through. And we ask, how are we to build justice and healing in higher education when the place is designed so that we can't remember things, and when there seems to be a goal to not have institutional memory that remembers how, why, and by whom justice work is done? We answer the question: "what do we want to keep that the pandemic has given us?" with this: "the pace and place to remember."

“È così che è nato il mito dell ’america” – media reflexivity in Emanuele Crialese’s Once We Were Strangers (1997) and Nuovomondo (2006)

ABSTRACT Emanuele Crialese’s films about Italian emigration draw attention to their own mediality, just as in the films of the Taviani brothers (1984, 1987) and Gianni Amelio’s Lamerica (1994). Based on a study of Once We Were Strangers (1997) and Nuovomondo (2006), this article uses the concept of Bildspannung (‘image tension’) to explore the original potential of this media-reflexive technique. The technique involves both references to other media and intramedial forms of difference, as described by Pascal Bonitzer’s (2000 [1978]) concept of décadrage. How is it possible to ‘deceive any controlling immobility of the look’ (ibid. 201) and what (semantic) function does this theory of images serve in relation to collective (media-influenced) memory work on the phenomenon of Italian emigration?

Remembering learning to play: reworking gendered memories of sport, physical activity, and movement

ABSTRACT In this article, we explore young women’s memories of their experiences with sport, physical activity, and play during their childhood. Through collective memory work – sharing, discussing, writing, and analysing sporting memories/histories – we examine (re)constructions of young women’s experiences of gendered relations of power, bodily awareness, and regulation within movement-based practices. The approach taken explores relationships between theory and method, a feature of post-qualitative inquiry. Forming a collaborative memory workshop with six young women (aged 19–22) and two researchers, we illustrate how working memories facilitates the interrogation of taken-for-granted assumptions about women’s active bodies. Represented through two memories in this paper, their production, representation, and analysis were a collaborative effort, not solely representative of two individual experiences. Despite growing up within a period wherein women’s access to and engagement with sport and physical activity is more available, common, and diverse compared to the youth of past generations, young women’s experiences explored here illustrate the ways in which movement-based practices are located within the confluence of postfeminist sensibilities including, intensely scrutinised gendered body cultures, potent neoliberal configurations, and discourses of empowerment. It is these new sporting and active femininities and the gendering experiences of physical culture that are explored within this paper through memory work and collective biography.

Recalling the Past Within a Social Network’s Collective Memory Work: How Did Korean Twitter Users Shape #Equal_Punishment_for_Equal _Crime From Their Experiences?

On 19 May 2018, more than 12,000 women gathered at Hyehwa subway station in Seoul, South Korea to protest discrimination against Korean women and spy camera involved crimes. This rally was a response to an incident in which a male nude model in a class was secretly photographed by a female model at Hongik University. This study examined how discourses on Twitter regarding the incident led to the demonstration and what was the memory working that shaped significant discourses through critical discourse analysis. First, a discourse that “women have long been victims” emerged through personal remembrances. Second, photographs of the female suspect standing with police officers directed a discourse that “women have been treated unfairly by public authorities” through collective witnessing. Third, many women contextualized the incident as a gendered event by connecting the past feminist movements. Finally, through appropriating past slogans and accumulated hashtags on Twitter, the main slogan of the rally #Equal_punishment_for_equal_crime was established. This study provides an under-researched context of digital mnemonic practices and the logic of connective actions by analyzing feminist movements in South Korea.

63 windows: Generating Relationality Through Poetic and Metaphorical Engagement


 In this paper, an artist-researcher and scholars from the fields of cultural studies, theology, and educational and social sciences reflect on their artistic experiences to think about what kinds of affects, meanings, and responses emerge when engaging with the sound artwork 63 windows. The experiences are discussed particularly in relation to the metaphor of the window and weaved together with the perspectives of collective biography and memory work, the ethics of care, and the narrative and interpretation theories. On this basis, the paper suggests that relational ethics of care emerges in the continuous and puzzling process of attentive engagement with art: first (1) with imagination, then (2) experiencing belonging and distance, and finally (3) arriving at the understanding of mutual connectedness of life.

Praying with Blathmac

The mid-eighth-century Old Irish text known as the poems of Blathmac is a long devotional composition meditating on the mystery of Christ’s cross and its significance for salvation history. Since the discovery and subsequent publication of the text nearly six decades ago, the work has garnered considerable scholarly interest for its linguistic and socio-historical value, but many aspects of its devotional orientation remain less systematically explored. This article examines the poems’ devotional discourse by focusing on the intersections of martyrdom and memory in Blathmac’s composition. Taking as a starting point the text’s intended use as a prayer, the discussion considers how the text’s overarching interest in exemplary acts of self-sacrifice relates to the practices of ritual commemoration, and how these strategies of collective memory work to convey and sustain a shared understanding of Christian identity.

Recognizing Ecosocialization in Childhood Memories

Western modernity has shaped people’s thought patterns and value hierarchies, relegating humans to the position of supremacy. This anthropocentric worldview has disconnected humans from the rest of nature and eventually led to the social and ecological catastrophe. This paper shows that collective memory work can help us recognize how we are always socialized within and by human communities and also already ecosocialized within and by the rest of nature. The motivation to use the ecosocialization framework to analyze childhood memories comes from our wish to problematize the anthropocentric view of life further and resituate childhood and growing up beyond exclusively social and human contexts. We draw on the memories collected in the Re-Connect / Re-Collect: Crossing the Divides through Memories of Cold War Childhoods project (2019–2021). We “think with theory” to reveal traces of ecosocialization present in childhood memories. On this basis, we suggest that including multisensory awareness practices in memory workshops to recognize our bodily belonging—as participants create their memory stories bringing into focus relations with more-than-humans—could potentialize collective biography as a form of transformative ecosocial education.

Recreational cannabis use and identity formation: a collective memory work study

ABSTRACT Until quite recently, cannabis was the most widely used illicit drug globally. Using collective memory work, this study focuses on experiences of cannabis use as part of young persons’ deviant leisure repertoire and explores its role in identity formation processes. The study included a group process of analyzing our own memories of early experience of cannabis use, as well as analysis of the group research meetings themselves. Three themes emerged from the analysis: 1. The construction of cannabis as both cool and dangerous; 2. Smoking cannabis for the first time as a rite of passage; 3. Cannabis smoking as an extraterritorial space that allows exploration and identity formation in adolescence/early adulthood. A fourth theme that emerged from the analysis of the group meetings is cannabis use as part of identity work in adulthood. The study demonstrates that the label “cannabis user” has had an important role in our identity formation.

Blurring the distinction between the researcher and the researched: Doing Collective Memory-Work online in Covid times

Collective-Memory Work (CMW) is a method of research and learning that relies on a group working together on a topic of shared interest. It aligns with other qualitative approaches such as participatory and feminist research methods, collaborative auto-ethnography, narrative inquiry, and emancipatory adult learning. In CMW participants write short stories from their own memory on a theme agreed in advance. The stories are subsequently scrutinized by the group via detailed textual analysis and recursive discussion. Due to COVID restrictions in 2020, a planned CMW workshop at an Irish higher education institution had to be delivered online. The purpose of this case study is two-fold: first it provides an overview of the CMW approach and how it is implemented in practice, detailing the concrete activities carried out in the workshop. Second, the case study provides insight into running a workshop of this kind online, and the perceived benefits identified by participants of adopting such an approach. We argue that CMW generates an egalitarian group dynamic, encourages active listening, and enables the co-creation of textual analysis in a spirit of collectivity and mutual respect. We suggest that CMW is a versatile method that can be usefully deployed within and beyond academic settings.

Collective memory-work: Origins, theoretical considerations, and practice

The subject of this paper is social-scientific methodology collective memory-work and its relevance for psychological inquiry. The aim is to present it through elaboration of its historical and theoretical foundations and assumptions, as well as practical guidance for research. From the original idea until current literature, chosen aspects of this methodology are considered within certain theoretical frameworks and debates, with accompanying dilemmas, which is why the paper has polemic character. Introduction outlines the relevance of this methodology, as well as the relevance of the paper, as the first elaborated review of this subject in regional languages. Next follows the historical look at the pioneering project of collective memory-work, its feminist-Marxist background, as well as consideration of several theoretical aspects (subjectification, memories, experience and theory, collective deconstruction, person). Basic assumptions of the memory-work are derived from previous discussion and presented separately. The next section contains main directions of development and applications of the methodology, considerations relevant for psychological topics, and comparison with similar methodologies. Subsequent is the practical part of the paper, where the basic guidance for research is offered through progressive sequencing of the research phases. Finally, dilemmas regarding evaluation criteria for collective memory-work are discussed. In the conclusion, the place and relevance of this methodology for social-scientific and psychological research are summarized.

Re-Assembling Anti-Oppressive Practice (1): The Personal, the Political, the Professional

This essay offers a broken narrative concerning the early history of anti-oppressive practice as an approach in the U.K. to youth and community work and the struggles over this in the context of UK higher education between the 1960′s and the early 2000’s. Educating informal educators as youth and community workers in the UK has been a site of contestation. Aspects of a genealogy of that struggle are presented in ways which link publicly available histories with personal memories and narratives, through the use of a personal archive developed through collective memory work. These are chosen to illuminate the links between theory and practice: on the one hand, the conceptual field which has framed the education of youth and community workers, whose sources lie in the academic disciplines of education and sociology, and, on the other hand, the social movements which have formed the practice of informal educators. Six have been chosen: (1) The long 1968: challenging approaches to authority; (2) the group as a source of learning; (3) The personal and political: experiential learning from discontent; (4) Paolo Freire and Critical Praxis; (5) A critical break in social education and the reality of youth work spaces as defensive spaces; (6) New managerialism: ethics vs. paper trails. The approach taken, of linking memory work with present struggles, is argued to be a generative form for current critical and enlivening practice.

Land, Settler identity, and tourism memories

This paper draws on theoretical insights associated with settler colonial studies and a collective memory work methodology to illuminate the multiple and contested meanings of land conveyed in tourism memory narratives of Settler Canadians. As part of a multi-day nature-based tourism experience in June 2019, 16 Settler co-participants wrote, and collectively analyzed, memory texts associated with travel experiences that they felt expressed genuinely Canadian and Indigenous qualities. Thematic analysis of memory narratives and co-participant discussions show how land meanings—specifically, land as organizer, educator, connector, and sustainer—relate to the dynamics of Settler identity. The paper thus builds upon emerging scholarship on tourism and settler colonialism and contributes pathways for decolonizing Settler-Indigenous relations in tourism and tourism research.

Methods in the Third Sector: Collective Memory-Work in a Complexity Framework

Methods in the Third Sector: Collective Memory-Work in a Complexity Framework

“We’re all in an abusive relationship with the health-care system”: Collective memories of transgender health care

Collective memory work allows participants to recall, examine, and analyze their memories and experiences within a broader cultural context to see how their individual experiences link to collective, shared experiences of similar and/or different groups. This study utilized collective memory work to engage six trans participants in an examination of their individual experiences with health care. During a four-hour focus group, participants engaged in this process of discourse analysis and came to collective agreements about the meaning of their stories, the intentions of the author, and the intentions of others in their shared lived experience. In this paper, we will provide a thorough and rich description of the participants’ memories and their collective analysis, which highlights the interconnection between perceptions of oneself and their experiences with the health-care system. Our analysis revealed participants felt they had a toxic relationship with the health-care system. In particular, they discussed how health-care professionals left trans people tremulously asking for services, uncertain if they would receive care, what the quality of the care would be, and whether they would be treated respectfully. When discussing positive health-care experiences, participants highlighted when fears and anxieties were not realized, but all instances reflected some inappropriate actions. The results from this study will contribute to research on trans health care by providing a nuanced understanding of how health-care experiences impact trans communities collectively, as well as the ways in which health practices can be improved.

Collective Memory Work: A Method for Turning Adult Learners’ Work-Life Experiences Into a Rich Collective Knowledge Resource in Higher Education

The aim of this article is to examine collective memory work (CMW) as a method for turning the work-life experiences of adult learners in a part-time master’s program into a collective knowledge resource, thereby strengthening the interplay between theory and practice in the students’ learning processes. CMW is a well-known qualitative research method, but only a limited amount of research has been done on its use in the context of higher education. This article is based on a case study of five CMW workshops executed between 2015 and 2019 as part of the program ‘Master’s in ICT and Learning’ provided by four collaborating Danish universities. The data consist of an educational design, in-class observations, and 103 memories written by students. This study shows how CMW enables students to share and analyze their work-life experiences as a relevant and rich collective knowledge resource, which allows them to discover shared structures between their work-life experiences and strengthen the interplay between theory and practice in their learning. The conclusion is that even though CMW is not designed to be used in an educational setting, the method can be applied with great results to turn students’ work-life experiences into a collective knowledge resource.

Teaching Ethnography/ically: Entanglements of Knowing/Being/Doing in a Doctoral Research Course

Since the 1970s and 1980s numerous books and articles on the processes and procedures of qualitative research are published each year, ranging from accounts of different traditions, methodologies, and methods to comprehensive treatments of single approaches or specialized research practices. A small corpus of literature exists on the teaching of qualitative inquiry with the teaching of ethnography rarely considered. The primary focus in these research literatures on methodology and how to do research promotes a divide between epistemology and methodology (Eisenhart & Jurow, 2011). Drawing on feminist poststructuralist and posthumanist theoretical tools this article examines the pedagogical practices and the entanglements they produce in a research course on ethnography in education for doctoral students. Through collective memory work among five faculty members and one graduate teaching assistant, we offer a historical overview and design of the yearlong course within a doctoral program in language, literacy, and culture and, through writing and diffractive reading as analysis, offer commentary on the entanglements of hanging out and hanging loose, going through thick and thin, and disturbing knowledge/power dynamics. This collective remembering and analytical work demonstrates that students’ understanding of ethnographic research as epistemological-methodological-ontological practice as the entanglements produce new knowing/doing/being.

Recasting ethical dilemmas in participatory research as a collective matter of ‘response-ability’

This article investigates ethical dilemmas in a research practice of collective memory-work that experiments with articulating personal experiences of how the human gut and psyche connect. Memory-work is a group-based participatory research method, in which participants and researcher write down a personal memory in the third person, read the memory aloud and analyze it collectively. Based on memory-work with a group of women living with autoimmune diseases, I analyze how ethical dilemmas arose around new self-realizations in our articulations of ‘gut’ and ‘psyche’, and how the dilemmas brought up issues about the ‘therapeutics’ and ‘matters of care’ of memory-work. I discuss how the dilemmas were configured through objectifying our personal experiences by writing them down, creating unfamiliar care positions in relation to each other and our past and present selves. In dialogue with Donna Haraway’s concept of response-ability and Svend Brinkmann and Steinar Kvale’s notion of ethical fields of uncertainty, I argue that ethical dilemmas demand ongoing attention, rather than a solution. The analysis shows that ethical dilemmas, when discussed among research participants and researcher, can become useful tools for developing capabilities to attune and respond to ethically important moments in experimental practices. Thus, this article empirically recasts ethical dilemmas as a collective concern, and seeks to contribute to the fields of STS and Psychology by discussing researcher and participant positions, our responses and capabilities to act when facing ethical dilemmas, and the place ethics and response-ability have in participatory research practices.