Memory Conflicts Research Articles

Индивидуальная и коллективная память: старые проблемы и новые вызовы

The author analyzes memory as a constituting factor of individual and collective identities. Current threats to individual and collective memories is investigated in the context of new information and communication technologies. It is shown that the extension of the part of memory (mobile telephone, Internet) can be used for controlling human behavior and interfering in the content of individual me­mory. The interference in collective memory is made both with destruction of its storages (monuments, museums, texts, arts, “memory places” etc.) and changing its sense. The change of individual and collective memory means the change of individual and collective identities. The author studies relations between dif­ferent collective memories, as well as the relation between collective memory as an experienced tradition and historical knowledge (historical memory) as a result of the works of professional historians, trying to get objective knowledge about the past. It is shown that the work of an historian is influenced by values and ideo­logies which results in different understanding of the same events by different scholars. It is shown how this problem can be solved. The thesis about urgency of dialogues between an individual and collective memories, between different collective memories, between collective and historical memories, between dif­ferent historical memories is defended. The experience of the past determines the future. The memory conflicts lead to collision between people, countries, cultures

Europe’s Europes: mapping the conflicts of European memory

ABSTRACTDebates about ‘European memory’ are frequent in public and political discourse. With the fundamental challenges the European project now faces, such debates exemplify changes in what Europe means and implies politically. Drawing on a large corpus of press articles from six EU member states and employing qualitative and quantitative methods of discourse analysis, the article examines the fields and logics of conflict about the meaning of Europe between 2004 and 2016. Intimately linked to national and post-national senses of identity, these conflicts take four different forms across different national public spheres: (1) perspectives from which ‘European memory’ underpins seemingly consensual conceptions of Europe; (2) conflictive conceptions of Europe along an East-West divide that present different attempts of setting rules; (3) memory conflicts establishing peripheries and boundaries of Europe; (4) a global framing of ‘Europe’ that understands Europe as a space of competition that mobilizes triadic patterns of conflict. The fits and misfits, and the degrees of entanglement on conflicts about ‘European memory’ help to understand the persistent and continuous struggles over the mental maps of Europe beyond the simplistic opposition of particularism and cosmopolitanism.

El “diálogo” como discurso emergente

Artículo evaluado por pares
 Este trabajo indaga en la articulación de posiciones y discursos centrados en la noción de “diálogo” como un emergente modo de tramitar los conflictos por la memoria del pasado reciente. Se trata de un espacio heterogéneo, con lazos más o menos fuertes, en el que confluyen gestores culturales, políticos, periodistas, intelectuales y académicos, y que reconoce a la actividad de Pablo Avelluto, editor y responsable del área de Cultura de la Nación (2015-2019), como uno de sus principales puntos de referencia para la articulación de estos espacios y actores. La promoción de debates, iniciativas y propuestas alternativas a las políticas de memoria del kirchnerismo constituye una dimensión escasamente abordada por la literatura reciente, más enfocada en las miradas reconciliatorias que promueve la prensa liberal-conservadora, que en la importancia asignada por el gobierno de Cambiemos al plano cultural para intervenir en el campo de las memorias.
 Recibido el 28/05/2019Aceptado el 15/08/2019

Historycy piszą o współczesności. Rok niebezpiecznego zwrotu (2010) w ujęciu Georges’a Minka i Timothy’ego Snydera

The author analyses the ways of depicting contemporary times in two monographs written by renown scholars: La Pologne au coeur de l’Europe. De 1914 à aujourd’hui, histoire politique et conflits de mémoire (Poland at the heart of Europe. From 1914 to the present day. Political history and conflicts of memory) and The Road to Unfreedom. Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder. A particularly important date here is 2010, the year of the Smolensk air disaster, which in Poland gave rise to many false myths and manipulations of facts (described by both authors). Snyder chooses this year as a symbolic turning point within the global process of shifting from the mindset of “inevitability” towards the mindset of “eternity”. The second main characteristic of this way of thinking and acting is that truth and facts are replaced in the public discourse with fake news, fabrications, creating social divisions and stirring hostile emotions.

A Novel Address Scheme for Continuous-Flow Parallel Memory-Based Real-Valued FFT Processor

In this article, we present a modified constant-geometry based signal flow graph for memory-based real-valued fast Fourier transform architecture. Without an extra permutation, the corresponding address scheme solves the memory conflict and achieves continuous-flow operation with the minimal memory and computation cycles requirement when compared to the state-of-the-art designs. Besides, the address scheme meets the constraint of in-place operation, concurrent I/O, normal-order I/O, variable size, and parallel processing. The experimental results demonstrate the resource and frequency efficiency of the proposed address scheme.

Colonialidade do saber e conflitos de memórias no espaço público

A colonialidade do poder e do saber pode transcender a relação da Europa com os países colonizados, passando a se constituir como um padrão de relações reproduzido em diversos sistemas políticos. O eurocentrismo é uma perspectiva cognitiva-epistêmica não exclusiva dos europeus e nem do período colonial, pertencendo também aos que tenham sido educados pela sua hegemonia. Este relato de pesquisa tem por objetivo abordar a concepção e organização de um Memorial em uma comunidade quilombola, observando-se o processo de construção da memória coletiva em torno de um mito fundacional de origem. Na metodologia seguiu-se a abordagem qualitativa utilizando o método da história oral. Os dados foram analisados por meio da análise de conteúdo temática valendo-se do software Atlas Ti na codificação, categorização e monitoração da produção de sentidos. Observa-se que durante a construção do Memorial determinados grupos sociais dominantes utilizam o poder simbólico, social e político para fazer prevalecer sua representação de passado numa perspectiva epistemológica eurocêntrica, evitando a polissemia de vozes. O guiamento do Memorial provoca, porém, um conflito de memórias a partir de relatos testemunhais que subvertem a temporalidade histórica da escravidão, imputando novas formas identitárias ao processo de construção da memória.

A novel application of breadth first algorithm for achieving collision free memory mapping.

We are living in the world of handheld smart devices including smart phones, mini computers, tablets, net-books and others communication devices. The telecommunication standards used in these devices includes error correction codes which are integral part of current and future communication systems. To achieve the higher data rate applications, the turbo and Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes are decoded on parallel architecture which in turn raises the memory conflict issue. In order to get the good performance, the simultaneous access to the entire memory bank should be performed without any conflict. In this article we present breadth first technique applied on transportation modeling of the problem for solving the collision issue of Turbo decoders in order to get optimized architecture solution.

Hidden in plain sight: post-holocaust mnemonic objects and material traces in Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat (הדירה)

ABSTRACT In his autobiographical documentary film The Flat (2011; הדירה), Arnon Goldfinger retraces his German Jewish grandparents’ relationship with Leopold von Mildenstein (1902–1968), a former SS officer and Judenreferent, through mnemonic objects and testimonial artefacts. Both as a filmmaker and on-screen subject, Goldfinger approaches his grandparents’ keepsakes and mementos with a keen eye for minute details and lost traces – not unlike a crime investigator who collects, analyzes, and interprets forensic evidence. As memory and materiality become interdependent co-producers of memory work, Goldfinger reminds us that although ‘matters’ or objects are full of memories, they do not speak for themselves; they can only ‘illuminate their human and social context’ through our interactions with them. It is precisely for this reason that Goldfinger’s memory archive – Gerda and Kurt Tuchler’s flat in Tel Aviv – seems devoid of history. Whereas every nook and cranny is filled with heirlooms, the entire apartment is replete with an ever-present void of a silenced familial past. Ultimately, the process of gathering facts, examining records, and visiting eyewitnesses proves difficult yet transformative for Goldfinger who is forced to grapple with intergenerational memory conflicts that continue to reverberate in present-day German and Israeli society.

Priming Emotional Salience Reveals the Role of Episodic Memory and Task Conflict in the Non-color Word Stroop Task.

Previous research attempted to account for the emotional Stroop effect based on connectionist models of the Stroop task that implicate conflict in the output layer as the underlying mechanism (e.g., Williams et al., 1996). Based on Kalanthroff et al.’s (2015) proactive-control/task-conflict (PC-TC) model, our study argues that the interference from non-color words (neutral and negative words) is due to task conflict. Using a study-test procedure 120 participants (59 high and 61 low trait anxiety) studied negative and neutral control words prior to being tested on a color responding task that included studied and unstudied words. The results for the low anxiety group show no emotional Stroop effect, but do demonstrate the slowdown in response latencies to a block of studied and unstudied words compared to a block of unstudied words. In contrast, the high anxiety group shows (a) an emotional Stroop effect but only for studied negative words and (b) a reversed sequential modulation in which studied negative words slowed down the color-responding of studied negative words on the next trial. We consider how these findings can be incorporated into the PC-TC model and suggest the interacting role of trait anxiety, episodic memory, and emotional salience driving attention that is based on task conflict.

Remembering genocide in the diaspora: Place and materiality in the commemoration of atrocities in Rwanda and Sri Lanka

ABSTRACTThe pain of war and genocide is often very physical and place-based. At the same time, displacement compels many of those who lost their loved ones to remember them and their homeland’s violent past from afar. This article explores the territoriality and materiality of diaspora remembrance by looking at diaspora initiatives to remember victims of genocide and war in Rwanda and Sri Lanka. In Brussels, a memory conflict between supporters and critics of the Rwandan government is played out around a small monument. In rural United Kingdom, an envisioned memorial park to Tamils martyred in the struggle for independence illustrates how memorial spaces in the diaspora challenge official homeland state narratives of the past and carry meaning as a symbolic land for Tamils. Initiatives to plant trees, name streets and throw flowers on a river provide additional examples of how diaspora actors strive to anchor memory of atrocities physically and territorially. The article suggests that materiality and spatiality of memorialization takes on different meanings in a diasporic context, as initially ‘meaningless’ places are turned into self-referential sites for remembrance, and the establishment of more permanent memorial structures can form part of home-making processes in the country of settlement.

Bukovynian Jews during the Holocaust: The problem of preserving historical memory

In the article, based on archival materials, published memoirs, a retrospective analysis of events and contemporary reflections of the Holocaust on the territory of Bukovina during the Second World War is carried out. During the Soviet, German-Romanian occupation of the region, the Bukovinian Jewish community suffered severe suffering and trials, huge human and material losses, which greatly undermined the social, economic and cultural positions of the Jewish population in Bukovina. In fact, the socio-cultural face of Chernivtsi and the region changed, entire generations of Bukovinian Jews were erased from historical memory, forever disappeared into the darkness of history.
 From the late 80’s – early 90’s XX century. in the conditions of the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of an independent Ukraine, it became possible to study the events of the Holocaust in the Chernivtsi region, to study the fate of Bukovynian Jews during the Second World War. Despite the mass emigration, in 1990-1995 the Jewish community of Chernivtsi published five collections of memories of Holocaust survivors of the Holocaust in Bukovina, erected a memorial sign at the scene of the shootings in the summer of 1941 and a memorial plaque on the Chernivtsi ghetto (in 2016 the efforts of the Jewish community of Chernivtsi to create a full memorial in the territory of the former ghetto).
 Since 2010, the Museum of Jewish History and Culture of Bukovina has been established in Chernivtsi, and at the Chernivtsi National University there is a Center of Jewish studies, which is actively engaged in the study and promotion of Bukovina Jewish history, including the topic of the Holocaust.
 Since 2017, work has begun on the creation of the Holocaust Museum in Chernivtsi in the building of the former memorial synagogue «Beit Kadish» on the territory of a Jewish cemetery, which aims to commemorate the memory of Bukovinian Jews who died during the Second World War.
 Over the past 30 years, more than 65 monuments (memorials, plaques) have appeared in the Chernivtsi region to commemorate those killed in the Holocaust. However, around the Holocaust events in Bukovina, a memory conflict has arisen – it is about different interpretations of events (Ukrainian, Romanian, Jewish, post-Soviet narratives) and commemorative practices related to it. An example of the post-Soviet memory of the Holocaust is the recently opened memorial in one of the districts of Chernivtsi (Sadgora), on the so-called “Kozak Hill”, in memory of the executed Jews in the summer of 1941. The Soviet term “Great Patriotic War” is used in the inscription on the monument.
 Keywords: Holocaust, Transnistria, ghetto, «autorization», deportation, primar

Tourism and the dynamics of transnational mnemonic encounters

The turn towards transnational memory has largely focused on particular sites and modes of remembering, focusing on the creation of memories between and beyond nation-states in institutional politics, the media, migration and to a lesser degree social movements. Despite its significance for encountering other people’s past, international tourism remains under-examined in the scholarship due to a focus on macro-developments, a polarisation along a binary of cosmopolitan versus conflictive memories and a discounting of memories shaped by commercialised logics. Drawing on a case study of Russian tourism in Tallinn, Estonia, this article makes the case for a closer examination of tourist encounters as part of research on transnational memory. It examines how tourism works as an arena for the production and circulation of memories through direct transnational encounters, refracting and modifying macro-political memories within a commercialised service environment. We analyse the role of tour guides as mnemonic intermediaries and show how in their work with Russian tourists they navigate pasts that form the subject of on-going memory conflicts at the level of international politics. Their representational strategies deemphasise contested pasts and avoid conflicts through neutrality and compromise. At the same time, tourist encounters can also be used to create spaces for dialogue and the formation of positive relations. Overall, the article demonstrates both the productivity and frictions of tourist settings for transnational remembering and makes the case for considering more ambiguous cases in transnational memory research.

Mental stress causes vasoconstriction in subjects with sickle cell disease and in normal controls.

Vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) is a hallmark of sickle cell disease (SCD) and occurs when deoxygenated sickled red blood cells occlude the microvasculature. Any stimulus, such as mental stress, which decreases microvascular blood flow will increase the likelihood of red cell entrapment resulting in local vaso-occlusion and progression to VOC. Neurally mediated vasoconstriction might be the physiological link between crisis triggers and vaso-occlusion. In this study, we determined the effect of mental stress on microvascular blood flow and autonomic nervous system reactivity. Sickle cell patients and controls performed mentally stressful tasks, including a memory task, conflict test and pain anticipation test. Blood flow was measured using photoplethysmography, autonomic reactivity was derived from electrocardiography and perceived stress was measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory questionnaire. Stress tasks induced a significant decrease in microvascular blood flow, parasympathetic withdrawal and sympathetic activation in all subjects. Of the various tests, pain anticipation caused the highest degree of vasoconstriction. The magnitude of vasoconstriction, sympathetic activation and perceived stress was greater during the Stroop conflict test than during the N-back memory test, indicating the relationship between magnitude of experimental stress and degree of regional vasoconstriction. Baseline anxiety had a significant effect on the vasoconstrictive response in sickle cell subjects but not in controls. In conclusion, mental stress caused vasoconstriction and autonomic nervous system reactivity in all subjects. Although the pattern of responses was not significantly different between the two groups, the consequences of vasoconstriction can be quite significant in SCD because of the resultant entrapment of sickle cells in the microvasculature. This suggests that mental stress can precipitate a VOC in SCD by causing neural-mediated vasoconstriction.

La política de la historia y la ley de memoria en Rusia

El artículo de Nikolay Koposov analiza específicamente un proyecto de ley sobre memoria, puesto en discusión por el Parlamento ruso en 2009. El proyecto se remonta al conflicto ruso-estonio de 2007 con motivo del traslado del monumento de bronce “al soldado desconocido soviético” del centro de Tallin a un cementerio militar: uno de los tantos conflictos de memoria abiertos en el curso de los últimos años entre Rusia y algunos de sus vecinos (Ucrania, Polonia, Países Bálticos). Rusia se ha mostrado particularmente sensible a cualquier crítica relativa al papel de la Unión Soviética en la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Después del fin de la URSS, la memoria de la guerra se ha transformado en el principal basamento de la identidad nacional rusa, la que a su vez sirve para eclipsar otra memoria: la del terror estalinista, con la que, ni los sucesivos gobiernos postsoviéticos ni la mayoría de la población han querido, hasta ahora, hacerse cargo. Otra de sus funciones consiste en el interés de convencer al pueblo ruso del papel positivo del Estado en la historia nacional, núcleo ideológico central el poder ruso actual. Si al inicio de los años noventa la concepción neoestalinista de la historia parecía por completo superada, posteriormente ha cobrado fuerza e incluso se ha asistido a una cierta rehabilitación del difunto dictador tanto como vencedor de la guerra mundial como modernizador de la sociedad rusa. El mito del pueblo inocente y heroico y la glorificación del Estado aparecen en el centro de las representaciones colectivas. En este contexto de avivamiento de un nacionalismo ruso es donde se ha situado éste proyecto de ley sobre la memoria, del cual Koposov describe sus itinerarios y conclusiones.

The ebbs and flows of the Holocaust and the Gulag memory in EU-rope. Memory dynamics in national and transnational contexts

THE EBBS AND FLOWS OF THE HOLOCAUST AND THE GULAG MEMORY IN EU-ROPE. MEMORY DYNAMICS IN THE NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL CONTEXTSIn spring 2017 the long-awaited House of European History in Brussels was opened. Its exhibition tries to tackle not only the tumultuous history of 20th-century Europe, but also the diverse cultures of memory that surround this topic. The article touches upon the problem of co-existence and mutual relationship of the two important, if not the most crucial, topics on the European mnemonic map: that of the Holocaust and that of the Gulag. The uneven and changeable development of these memory cultures has been presented in the historical perspective and analysed through the way they have functioned at the national with Poland and Germany as examples and transnational EU levels. The concluding statement encapsulates the thesis that the EU-ropean memory confl ict in its original phase, centred around Brussels, achieved its climax some years ago. Nowadays the problems of history and memory are administered mostly within the regional and, even more, national public spheres. As the focal point of European dispute, on the other hand, new — seemingly beyond historical — topics emerged. Among them is the cultural problem sparked by the mass infl ux of immigrants to Europe.

Dopamine guides competition for cognitive control: Common effects of haloperidol on working memory and response conflict

Several lines of evidence suggest that dopamine modulates working memory (the ability to faithfully maintain and efficiently manipulate information over time) but its specific role has not been fully defined. Nor is it clear whether any effects of dopamine are specific to memory processes or whether they reflect more general cognitive mechanisms that extend beyond the working memory domain. Here, we examine the effect of haloperidol, principally a dopamine D2 receptor antagonist, on the ability of humans to ignore distracting information or update working memory contents. We compare these effects to performance on an independent measure of cognitive control (response conflict) which has minimal memory requirements. Haloperidol did not selectively affect the ability to ignore or update, but instead reduced the overall quality of recall. In addition, it impaired the ability to overcome response conflict. The deleterious effect of haloperidol on response conflict was selectively associated with the negative effect of the drug on ignoring – but not updating – suggesting that dopamine affects protection of working memory contents and inhibition in response conflict through a common mechanism. These findings provide new insights into the role of dopamine D2 receptors on human cognition. They suggest that D2 receptor effects on protecting the memory contents from distraction might be related to a more general process that supports inhibitory control in contexts that do not require working memory.

Embracing the Culture of Resilience and Remembrance in Teaching Contested Historical Narratives

Abstract The article focuses on a discourse of resilience and remembering and its interconnectedness in teaching contested historical narratives. History mainly consists of events, remembrance, narratives, rituals, discourses, and stereotypes which can facilitate or prevent resilience. Since such purposes are part of religious and values education, a multidimensional approach is needed, which combines historical, psychological, religious, sociological, educational and literary aspects in a kind of ‘grammar of remembrance’, in order to motivate and facilitate autonomous and supervised research with discussions and sharing of experiences in different projects. The aim of this conceptual study is to facilitate interdisciplinary research and educational projects concerning memory cultures and conflict management.

FMRI evidence supporting the role of memory conflict in the déjà vu experience

ABSTRACT Attempts to generate déjà vu experimentally have largely focused on engineering partial familiarity for stimuli, relying on an ensuing, but unprompted evaluation of conflict to generate the experience. Without verification that experimentally-generated familiarity is accompanied by the awareness of stimulus novelty, these experimental procedures potentially provide an incomplete déjà vu analogue. We used a modified version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false memory procedure to generate both familiarity and novelty within a déjà vu analogue – we coupled experimentally-generated familiarity with cues indicating that the familiarity was erroneous, using this additional source of mnemonic information to generate cognitive conflict in our participants. We collected fMRI and behavioural data from 21 participants, 16 of whom reported déjà vu. Using univariate contrasts we identified brain regions associated with mnemonic conflict, including the anterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex and parietal cortex. This is the first experiment to image an analogue of the déjà vu experience in healthy volunteers. The increased likelihood of déjà vu reports to DRM critical lures correctly identified as “new”, and the activation of neural substrates supporting the experience of cognitive conflict during déjà vu, suggest that the resolution of memory conflict may play an integral role in déjà vu.

The Stalin plaque in Vienna: hiding and showing history

ABSTRACTThe Stalin plaque in Vienna is one of the last memorials dedicated to the Soviet dictator in Europe to endure until today. It was unveiled upon the initiative of the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) on 21 December 1949. Numerous petitions to remove it remain unheeded, but a second, explanatory plaque was added in 2012. This paper looks back at the early post-war years in order to understand the origins of this memorial. It discusses how the complex relationship between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the KPÖ and the Austrian Socialist Party (SPÖ) in the early post-war years influenced the history of the Stalin plaque. Austria’s defiance of complete de-stalinization is the result of local and national politics of memory and diverting interpretations of foreign policy developments. In political debates and in press reports about the non-removal of the plaque different reasons are offered. Arguments pointing to the peculiarities of Austrian politics of memory regarding controversial issues and also local (Viennese) priorities are dissected in this article. Another often quoted explanation for the memorial’s longevity is the alleged indifference of Viennese locals towards Stalin. These propositions are explored and contextualized in the political conflicts of memory in Austria.

Polyhedral-Based Dynamic Loop Pipelining for High-Level Synthesis

Loop pipelining is one of the most important optimization methods in high-level synthesis (HLS) for increasing loop parallelism. There has been considerable work on improving loop pipelining, which mainly focuses on optimizing static operation scheduling and parallel memory accesses. Nonetheless, when loops contain complex memory dependencies, current techniques cannot generate high performance pipelines. In this paper, we extend the capability of loop pipelining in HLS to handle loops with uncertain dependencies (i.e., parameterized by an undetermined variable) and/or nonuniform dependencies (i.e., varying between loop iterations). Our optimization allows a pipeline to be statically scheduled without the aforementioned memory dependencies, but an associated controller will change the execution speed of loop iterations at runtime. This allows the augmented pipeline to process each loop iteration as fast as possible without violating memory dependencies. We use a parametric polyhedral analysis to generate the control logic for when to safely run all loop iterations in the pipeline and when to break the pipeline execution to resolve memory conflicts. Our techniques have been prototyped in an automated source-to-source code transformation framework, with Xilinx Vivado HLS, a leading HLS tool, as the RTL generation backend. Over a suite of benchmarks, experiments show that our optimization can implement optimized pipelines at almost the same clock speed as without our transformations, running approximately 3.7– $10{\times }$ faster, with a reasonable resource overhead.