Commemorative Practices Research Articles

When the queen of transvestites revealed it all? Performative politics of queer life writing in Turkey’s era of confession

ABSTRACT After the coup d’état of 1980, as a neoliberal regime was gradually established in Turkey, confession gained unprecedented power as a disciplinary technology. Several queer subjects created auto/biographical texts and performances as they negotiated the gendered and sexualised politics of confessional citizenship. Ümit Oğuztan’s documentary novel Kraliçe Sisi [Queen Sisi] (1991) was of exceptional significance. Oğuztan claimed to narrate the high-end trans sex worker Seyhan Soylu’s life and her sexual experiences with Turkey’s elite. The author employed archival and ethnographic research methods and performative writing techniques to create a truth effect while preventing trouble with the law. By queering iconic figures, Kraliçe Sisi proposed an alternative perspective on the past and explored the possibility of a different future. This example of liberal pornography queered its readers by providing an opportunity for identification and empathy, and by producing non-normative sexual desires in and through their bodies. The accounts of the book’s trans readers show how this notorious text performed a work of activism and changed lives. Rather than an unconditional investment in liberatory politics, however, Kraliçe Sisi harbours strong ambivalences and discriminatory discourses, revealing the diverse, at times unsettling forms queer literature and memory practices can take.

Tree burials as undefined spatial alternatives for graves in France: stakes and constraints of nature-based concessions within French funerary regulations

ABSTRACT In line with green and natural death movements, new burial practices have been emerging in France since the turn of the twenty-first century, leading to alternative cemetery typologies, such as wooded cinerary sites dedicated to interring or scattering cremated remains at the foot of trees. Using an architectural perspective, this paper will explore several types of tree burial sites according to their formal spatial characteristics (typomorphologies), linked to the level of design and maintenance of nature, and their specific conditions for the allocation of funerary concessions (plot leasing for grave establishment). As this paper will show, these tree burial grounds reveal tensions within French funerary regulations, providing inconsistent conditions for nature-based practices, whether in terms of their implementation (location, layout, equipment, etc.) or their operation (granting concessions, management, and tree patrimony status for graves, regulations on commemorative practices, etc.). In an inadequate legal framework, innovative tree burial spaces and practices in France highlight contradictions between the environment and mourning culture.

La producción bibliográfica sobre educación para nunca más en Brasil

This article was presented as part of Axis II: Memory, Truth, Justice, and Reparation during the 10th Latin American and Caribbean Colloquium of Latin American and Caribbean Network of Human Rights Education and the Colombian Network of Human Rights Education (REDLACEDH), which took place at the National Pedagogical University of Bogotá, Colombia, from October 11 to 13, 2023. The event was organized by the REDLACEDH. These are the findings of a study on the production of literature regarding memory, truth, and justice; this production was born from experiences of education for “Never Again” in Brazil. The bibliographical research on social production related to the period 1964-1985 in Brazil originated from social organizations such as Movimiento de Mujeres por la Amnistía (Women’s Movement for Amnesty), Comités Brasileños de Amnistía (Brazilian Amnesty Committees), Comisión de Justicia y Paz (Justice and Peace Commission), Grupos Tortura Nunca Más (Torture Never Again Groups), Movimiento de Familiares de Muertos y Desaparecidos (Movement of Relatives of the Dead and Disappeared). The review encompasses political issues such as dossiers and reports on serious violations of human rights, the memory of hunger strikes inside political prisons, the historiography of resistance movements against the dictatorship, biographies, audiovisual productions, and educational practices of knowledge and memory originated from actions of resistance and defense. In this process, the significant roles played by former political prisoners, family members, lawyers, religious leaders, and human rights defenders are particularly noteworthy. The establishment of the Comisión Nacional de la Verdad (National Truth Commission) led to the emergence of productions stemming from human rights policy, including Truth Commission reports, academic studies, and research on transitional justice. At this stage, the centrality of political persecution by the authoritarian state returns, allowing space for silenced discourse.

(Не)забытая Кавказская война: некоторые аспекты конструирования исторической памяти

The article endeavors to examine certain factors involved in the construction of historical memory among Chechens regarding the events of the Caucasian War. For the first time, the author conducts a sociological analysis based on empirical data to explore the perception of Chechens concerning the tragedy of the Caucasian War and its demographic, material-economic, sociocultural, and other consequences, thereby affirming the scientific novelty of the research. Using both theoretical and empirical materials, the study substantiates the thesis that the genocide of Chechens during the Caucasian War occupies a central place in the structure of their historical memory. Furthermore, emphasis is placed on the significance of commemorative practices in shaping the historical memory of Chechens and the necessity of expanding the commemorative field. The research also highlights the problem of the emotional perception of historical events related to forced migrations by the respondents. This investigation contributes to a deeper understanding of how historical narratives are constructed and the role they play in the collective memory of affected communities.

Folk Paradigms of Justice in Commemoration and Heritage in the Postcolonial Netherlands: A Vignette Study among Opinion Leaders

ABSTRACT This study contributes to understanding how commemoration and heritage constitute part of a broader struggle for justice in the postcolonial Netherlands. By means of vignette-based interviews with opinion leaders, we investigated how folk paradigms of justice inform discussions about the role of statues in commemorative practices. Embedded in Nancy Frasers’ tripartite model of justice as redistribution, recognition, and representation, the study shows how opinion leaders of different political persuasion prioritize different conceptions of justice. Our findings indicate that resistance toward societal change coincides with a liberal understanding of justice, which is reflected in a tendency to disparage grievances and claims that relate to recognition and representation. However, critical theoretical conceptions of justice that highlight the importance of recognition and representation have an emancipatory potential, as they can validate the grievances of groups that are socially or economically marginalized.

"UNWORTHY LIFE" AND HISTORICAL MEMORY OF NAZI VICTIMS IN GERMANY AND UKRAINE: THEORY, HISTORIOGRAPHY, AND POLITICAL PRACTICES (PART II)

The aim of this study is to provide a historiographical and source-based review of research on Nazi regime crimes during World War II in Ukraine, specifically concerning the murder of psychiatric hospital patients. This group of citizens had been dehumanized by the Nazi regime even before the war and fell under the category of "unworthy life". The objectives of the study also include analyzing the features of the suppression / "forgetting" of these "uncomfortable" historical events over a prolonged post-war period, as well as the reasons for their "return" and representation in contemporary Ukrainian historiography. Methodology. The methodological approaches employed in the preparation of this article include historiographical-source analysis, memory studies methods, comparative research techniques, and the history of science. Scientific novelty. The scientific novelty lies in the comprehensive historiographical and source-based review of the issue of Nazi regime victims whose lives were deemed "unworthy" and the representation of this topic in historical memory and commemorative practices in modern Ukraine. Conclusions. The generalized historiographical and source-based review with martyrological elements presented in this article is undoubtedly not exhaustive in terms of the studies conducted on this topic or the determination of the number of victims. However, in our opinion, it demonstrates that this scientific problem is no longer marginalized within the field of domestic historical research. Such thematic studies contribute to reducing the gaps and discontinuities in the formation of historical memory within Ukrainian society.

Resounding 1923

The introduction provides an overview of the concepts and topics explored in this themed issue. It begins by reflecting on practices of commemoration and the significance of 1923 in modern Turkish history. It then discusses the concept of “modernities” in relation to the Ottoman Empire and post-Ottoman nation-states, both in terms of musical developments and broader political and cultural processes. It emphasizes continuities and interactions between Ottoman and post-Ottoman periods, as well as between Europe and Turkey, and highlights the global diversity of experiences of modernity as demonstrated by a range of scholarship in musicology and other fields. The final section summarizes the contributions to the themed issue.

Formal but Local Transitional Justice: Memorialization of the Missing by Local Government in Nepal

Abstract This article explores how the families of the disappeared in Nepal, in the absence of any substantive state-led transitional justice process, have mobilized to created victim groups to drive local political and social engagements with violations of the decade long internal conflict. Victims’ groups have informally memorialized their missing relatives and ultimately successfully advocated with local government to advance local memorialization through official processes. Victim-led memory practices have had an impact on local government policy, and these serve to enhance the role of victim groups as agents of social change. Using case studies from two local authorities as examples, we seek to highlight how localized memory practices empower and mobilize victims, advancing their role as political and social actors in processes of social change and blurring the conceptual division between state and community-led process. This article seeks to challenge the longstanding conflation of ‘local’ and ‘informal’ (meaning initiated and led by non-state actors) to describe the transitional justice process, by showing how when led by local authorities, this process can both empower victims and challenge impunity at the federal level.

“The streaming eyes of all the many men”: Revisiting male weeping in British commemoration of the First World War

Abstract This article argues that commemoration practices performed in the aftermath of the First World War, on occasion of the British Armistice Day, and during the two minutes’ silence in particular, served as incubators for a change in feeling rules for the British population. It will show how British society engaged with, challenged, and finally shifted what the “emotional regime” of the period – commonly referred to as the “stiff upper lip” – commanded them to feel. A very short lapse of time – two minutes – turned into a moment where a fundamental change in an important subset of feeling rules specifying this emotional regime became manifest: those applied to male weeping. The two minutes encapsulated a challenge to the harsh contempt for expressive mourning through the shedding of tears, a verdict that was inherited from the nineteenth century but increasingly seemed inappropriate, not the least in the wake of the emotional turmoil that Britons had faced during the “Great” War.

Voices from the African Diaspora in India

The Islamic devotional tradition of Sidis, Indians of East African ancestry, in Gujarat and Mumbai in western India involves the performance of devotional songs. These songs constitute an oral archive that the Sidi community has preserved over generations. This article examines the lyric poetry of the Sidi devotional song corpus, contextualizing the corpus with reference to genres of premodern and early modern Indian Sufi poetry composed in regional registers of the lingua franca, Hindavi. The article analyzes Sidi devotional songs and their ritual performance contexts to characterize the Sidi devotional tradition as Sufi. At the heart of this tradition is the Sufi practice of remembrance of God, the Prophet, and Sufi saints, especially the Sidi ancestor-saints. In Sidi ritual contexts, remembrance engenders ecstatic states through which devotees mediate the blessings of the ancestor-saints. Sidi women, as saints or ritual musicians, specialists and participants, play a critical role in this process.

Authenticity, absence, and pedagogy on a historical injustice bus tour

This article explores how memory practices at sites of historical injustice are shaped by authenticity and absence. It explores a case study of a weeklong bus tour which visited over 15 historic sites dedicated to memorializing the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Drawing on the concept of dark tourism, this article explores how the bus tour was simultaneously a planned pedagogical experience, and part of a larger and sustained set of memory practices dedicated to maintaining and cultivating the cultural memory of injustices faced by Japanese Canadians. The article illustrates how these memory practices helped establish a pedagogical authority for some attendees and facilitated certain ethical engagements with the difficult past while avoiding and excluding others. It also demonstrates how the practice of dark tourism is implicated in larger conversations about the erasure of settler colonialism at sites of memory in Canada.

Commemorative Practices of Great Britain and the Ukrainian Experience of War

Commemorative Practices of Great Britain and the Ukrainian Experience of War

Making space for grief: The impact of remembrance programs for pediatric healthcare providers.

While caring for seriously ill children is a rewarding experience, pediatric healthcare providers may experience sadness and emotional distress when their patient dies. These feelings, particularly when not addressed, can lead to negative health and occupational outcomes. Remembrance practices can provide a safe space for staff to process their grief. This study explored pediatric healthcare providers' perceptions of an annual Pediatric Remembrance Ceremony (PRC) and a quarterly program, Good Grief and Chocolate at Noon (GGCN), to learn what components of the programs were considered meaningful and the personal impact on those who attended. The programs pivoted to a virtual platform during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the study also assessed providers' perspectives of attending the programs virtually. A 19 multiple choice survey instrument was designed, reviewed, piloted, revised, and re-piloted by an interdisciplinary bereavement committee prior to administration. The survey included 2 open-ended questions, inviting additional insights into personal impact and future directions for remembrance programs. The survey was administered on an encrypted online platform. Components of the PRC respondents most valued included the opportunity for staff to choose a name of a patient they cared for and to light a candle for that patient as their name is read. Those who participated in GGCN found story sharing helpful, along with having a speaker address a topic around loss and grief during the second half of the session. Both programs provided reflection, solidarity, and memorialization. Most respondents prefer having both in-person and virtual options. Healthcare providers are affected by the death of the children they care for and value opportunities provided to join colleagues in remembering their patients. The findings underscore the value of remembrance programs in supporting bereaved staff.

How Long Does a Memory Last? Bayesian Chronological Modelling and the Temporal Scope of Commemorative Practices at Aeneolithic Monjukli Depe, Turkmenistan

In this paper the history of one house and a human burial in the prehistoric settlement of Monjukli Depe, Turkmenistan, serves as a case study for the use of Bayesian chronological modelling to approach the reach of past memories. The method combines relative and absolute chronological data and aims not only at a more precise and robust chronology of past events, but also allows estimations of duration of particular processes. However, chronological models must be constructed with care, since the prior archaeological information significantly affects the output. The comparison of three alternative models for the Aeneolithic settlement of Monjukli Depe shows that prior information in modelling has a considerable impact on duration estimates for periods of the settlement history. The modelling chronology for Monjukli Depe allows the tracing of commemorative practices at a generational scale—the memory of Monjukli Depe House 14 was transmitted over several generations of inhabitants long after the house destruction. It is clear that houses possessed a great value in the social life of the settlement since local building histories were remembered over a long time.

Latvian National Identity in the Post-heroic Era

Abstract In recent years, commemorative practices in Europe have changed, and the historiography uses the term “post-heroic” to describe the transformation in memory-making. Post-heroism signifies when public recognition is no longer attributed to heroic deeds but to the victims of conflicts and wars.. These recent transformations in European commemorative practices are a challenge to the idea of a united European identity because an identity based on a narrative of victimhood generates an identity for the group that has suffered, leading to a competition of victimhood: i.e., victimhood is exclusive and does not allow the ideal of a European identity to thrive. This article analyzes the ways the construction of Latvia’s collective memory after the country regained independence in 1990 exemplifies post-heroic identity and elucidates the consequences and challenges such a self-image produces in a society that has embraced it.

Yvonne Loriod and the Practice of Analytical Memory

Yvonne Loriod and the Practice of Analytical Memory

‘We Must Find a Way to Remember Them Too’: British Second World War Conscientious Objectors in Post-War Culture

This article examines the ways in which British Second World War conscientious objectors (COs) have been commemorated, memorialized, and represented since 1945. Despite comprising nearly 60 000 men, the CO is strikingly absent in both the popular narrative of the Second World War and official, institutional commemorations of the conflict. This is not true of their First World War counterpart. This is unsurprising: the Second World War CO is largely at odds with popular British conceptions of the war as a ‘just’ conflict. Nevertheless, a broad and diverse set of initiatives have been established to commemorate the CO. The CO also features in numerous forms of post-war popular culture, including fiction, films, television programmes, and plays. It is these disparate remembrance practices and representations that this article brings together to help us explore both the memory of wartime conscientious objection and the broader cultural legacies of the Second World War.

Коммеморативные практики Республики Таджикистан в 1991–1999 годы

The aspects of the formation and development of the historical policy of the Republic of Tajikistan in the 1990s are considered. Considerable attention was paid to the speeches of the President of the Republic of Tajikistan E.Sh. Rahmon, emphasizing the contribution of the Samanid dynasty to the foundation of Tajik statehood. The pre-Samanid and Samanid constructs of historical memory are analyzed as the main stages in the justification of historical memory in the state in the 1990s. Attention is drawn to the figure of I. Samani as the forefather of Tajik statehood. Regulatory legal acts indicating the formation of commemorative practices in the Republic of Tajikistan from 1991 to 1999 are considered.

The Postwar Fight Against Fascism: Auschwitz Memory in Leftist Activism

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the memory activism of three survivors of the Auschwitz resistance and explores the ways in which they linked fascism and genocide to economic exploitation. By doing so, our paper excavates a leftist-antifascist paradigm of postwar memory that waned with the advent of contemporary Holocaust culture. We analyse the memoirs of Oszkár Betlen, Bruno Baum, and Hermann Langbein, members of the international communist movement before, during, and after the Second World War. For these authors, calls to remember Auschwitz were inseparable from a struggle for social change in the present, and their memory practice was never restricted to writing. Therefore, our paper places their memoirs into the wider context of their political-organizational work, and shows that their efforts to commemorate Auschwitz responded to some pressing issues of their time, including the re-militarization and NATO-membership of the Federal Republic, reparations, amnesty and reintegration of former Nazis, and war crimes trials. Importantly, all these issues were intertwined with what they regarded as capitalist restoration and a looming resurgence of fascism. Our paper argues that the so-called economic case was central to their postwar campaigning because they believed that economic exploitation was central to fascism and had wide-ranging implications for postwar societies as well. Furthermore, we challenge the prevailing view on antifascism by demonstrating that for these authors the economic aspect of fascism did not eclipse the genocidal character of fascism and the specifically Jewish experience of it. In contrast to some Marxist historians, they did not see genocidal policies as merely derivative or secondary either. Rather, these leftist-antifascists commemorated Auschwitz in ways which regarded economic exploitation and genocide as interrelated and constitutive aspects of fascism.

Whatever happened to Hungarian freedom fighters? Collective memory, collective forgetting, and dissociative collective identity

As the war in Ukraine unfolds, the Hungarian government seems less enthusiastic about the idea of state sovereignty than one might have anticipated given Hungary’s historic past. Moreover, there is a surge of pro-Russian sentiment among government supporters. This is counterintuitive in light of prevailing mnemonic practices which put heavy emphasis on Hungary’s struggle for freedom and independence. The new developments suggest that the role of collective memory in collective identity formation needs to be reconsidered, especially concerning the apparent inhibition of otherwise persistent and widely shared memories. The article discusses the problem in the context of socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting and social identity complexity theory. It puts forward two complementary arguments: (1) this Janus-faced public behaviour might be accounted for by selective commemorative practices of the government and (2) how memories of historical events sustain a shared sense of belonging and continuity is not only contingent on group membership but also on the ever-changing group interest.