Dangerous Memory Research Articles

Remembering the Ruins of the Urakami Cathedral

When Urakami Cathedral was rebuilt in 1959, many citizens experienced the loss of the ruins as a silencing of Nagasaki’s experience. This paper explores Catholic survivors’ attitudes towards the Cathedral and loss of an important atomic relic, and shows that while they regret the ruins’ disappearance, they also recognise the rebuilt Cathedral as a symbol of survival. In addition, by examining individual and collective narrative and photographic images, it is demonstrated that Urakami Christian (kirishitan キリシタン) narratives on the Cathedral bond the trauma of the bomb to older memories of persecution, which in turn intensifies the justification for rebuilding the church. By placing such communal memory in the context of theologian Johann Baptist Metz’s conception of the ‘dangerous memory’ of suffering, the author evaluates narratives such as Nagai Takashi’s providence (go-setsuri ご摂理) and interpretation of the bombing as the Urakami ‘Fifth Persecution’ (go-ban kuzure 五番崩れ).

Rural education: Reimagining the role of the church in transforming poverty in South Africa

The desire to remember the plight of the poor in South Africa has reduced in the last 20 years after the transition from apartheid to freedom. To a large extent, Faith Based Organizations (FBOs) and the religious society at large have lost their ‘dangerous memory’ which keeps us mindful of those who suffered and whose plight is usually forgotten or suppressed. In this contribution the conditions of poor farm school children in multigrade rural education will be scrutinised by unpacking the contextual factors that cause us to forget their plight. This article will seek to reimagine the role of the church in poverty-stricken South Africa by engaging with the work of Talcott Parsons, the practical theologian Johannes A. Van der Ven, as well as the work of the political theologian Johann Baptist Metz in order to affirm the focus of Practical Theology to transform society and to contribute to the quest for justice and liberation for the poor in rural education. This reimagining discourse has a fundamental responsibility to challenge the social, political and economic realities that shape the lives of human beings within rural education, remembering the plight of the poor, and participating on their journey towards liberation and healing. It is proposed that if the church can activate its ‘dangerous memory’ it will be able to reimagine its role by transforming our poverty-stricken South African society, open new avenues for breaking the cycle of poverty and contribute to rural education.

Report on the Tenth European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies Conference: History as a Challenge to Buddhism and Christianity

Report on the Tenth European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies Conference:History as a Challenge to Buddhism and Christianity John O’Grady, Elizabeth J. Harris, and Jonathan A. Seitz The Tenth Conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies (ENBCS) brought together between sixty and seventy people at the Oude Abdij, Drongen, Belgium, between 27 June and 1 July 2013, to examine the theme “History as a Challenge to Buddhism and Christianity.” It was a collaborative effort between the ENBCS and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The 2011 ENBCS conference had focused on whether hope was a relevant concept for Buddhists and Christians. The choice of history as a theme complemented this. It also resonated with a research concern of both KU Leuven and the Network. Five key themes were chosen for examination: the traditional Christian and Buddhist conceptions of history; Jesus and the Buddha: fact and fiction; Buddhist and Christian historiography; dangerous memory in Christianity and Buddhism; and permitting historical consciousness in Buddhism and Christianity. Each was approached from a Buddhist and a Christian perspective. An opening lecture addressed the theme “Modern Historical Consciousness and the Challenge to Religion.” In addition, eighteen research papers on Buddhist-Christian relations were given in parallel sessions on Friday evening and Saturday morning. These covered topics as various as the writings of Edmund Pezet (Pierre Gillet), Paul Knitter’s understanding of Buddhist-Christian double belonging (Achim Riggert), Keiji Nishitani and the death of God (Jonatan Navarro Estrada), the encounter of Zen Buddhism and Christianity in the works of D. T. Suzuki (Mariusz Rucki), Buddhist-Christian encounters by Han Yong Woon (Seung Chul Kim), and “Liberating the Conflict from ‘History’ in Sri Lanka” (Jude Lal Fernando). Perry Schmidt-Leukel (Münster, Germany), in the opening lecture, discussed [End Page 189] seven challenges that modern historical consciousness was posing to religion: the challenge of falsification (when historical evidence, for example, showed some doctrines cherished by believers were not taught by the founder), the challenge of uncertainty or methodological doubt, the challenge of methodological naturalism (should a natural explanation be considered more probable than a supernatural one?), the challenge of the distance between past and present, the challenge of change (religions are not static), the challenge of demystification, and the challenge of relativity (the writing of history is perspectival, conditioned by context). He stressed that it would be a blessing to religion if these challenges were faced and, throughout the conference, encouraged other speakers to face them. The first theme was tackled by Mark Blum (Berkeley, USA) from a Buddhist perspective and Jan-Olav Henriksen (Norwegian School of Theology) from a Christian perspective. In a magisterial historical and geographical survey of the Buddhist tradition, Blum first noted that no one had unearthed a traditional notion of Buddhist history in the early texts. The theme of decline and reformation had been taken from Indian cosmology, but with a Buddhist twist and the conviction that it was pointless to talk about beginnings. And in the growth of the Mahāyāna tradition, a dehistoricization of the Buddha had occurred in the belief that the Buddha’s dharma-body was his only “real” body. Henriksen argued that Christian salvation history had its origin in the narrative of the Fall, an event for which there was no historical evidence, and developed into a history of God’s call (election) to all people that they should be brought together in community. It was a history that was linked with the divine logos, a force that Christian theology has seen as deeply interwoven into creation from the beginning of time and that was made human in Jesus. Terrence Merrigan (KU Leuven, Belgium), giving a Christian perspective on the second theme, distinguished three quests or attempts to reach the historical Jesus. The first, from 1774 to 1906, sought to uncover the Jesus that had been obscured by dogma. It imploded with the realization that separating “core” from “myth” was impossible, and conditioned a reactive “no-quest” in the first half of the twentieth century. A “new quest” arose in the 1950s, initiated by Käsemann’s reaction to the theologies of Barth and Bultmann. A further quest that appealed to archaeology and the...

Wounds that can't be seen: Implicit Trauma Associations predict posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms

Background and objectivesProminent theories suggest that explicit and implicit cognitive biases are critical in the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, studies evaluating implicit PTSD-related cognitive biases are rare, and findings are mixed. We developed two adaptions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), the “traumatized self” IAT (evaluations of the self as traumatized vs. healthy) and the “dangerous memory” IAT (evaluations of remembering as dangerous vs. safe), and investigated their psychometric properties and relations to PTSD symptoms and trauma exposure. MethodsParticipants were visitors to the Project Implicit research website (Study 1: N = 347, Study 2: N = 501). They completed the IATs (Study 1: both IATs; Study 2: traumatized self IAT only), a trauma exposure measure, a PTSD symptom inventory, and explicit cognitive bias measures (Study 2 only). ResultsBoth IATs had good internal consistency, but only the traumatized self IAT was correlated with PSTD symptoms and identified participants meeting clinical cutoffs for PTSD symptoms. Study 2 focused on the traumatized self IAT and included explicit cognitive bias measures. The IAT correlated with PTSD symptoms and explicit cognitions, and predicted variance in PSTD symptoms above and beyond trauma exposure and explicit cognitions. LimitationsStudy designs were cross-sectional; samples were unselected; and PTSD symptoms were self-reported. ConclusionsDespite these limitations, these studies provide preliminary validation of an implicit measure of PTSD-related cognitive bias – the traumatized self IAT – that is consistent with PTSD theories and may ultimately improve the identification and treatment of individuals with PTSD.

Remembering the Massacre at El Mozote: A Case for the Dangerous Memory of Suffering as Christian Formation in Hope

This essay posits that theological reflection on a particular practice of remembering suffering – namely, the memory of the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador – reveals that hope in the memory of suffering is an integral component of Christian formation. There is something about the memory of suffering, in and of itself , which produces hope and can thus form Christians as a people of hope even in the face of tragedy. The practical theological argument for the memory of suffering as Christian formation in hope proceeds in three parts. First, it provides background on the El Mozote massacre and a thick description of the annual anniversary celebration which commemorates it. Second, it provides a practical theological proposal for why the memory of suffering in general and of El Mozote in particular is productive of hope and formative of Christians as a people of hope. Finally, it both proposes some lessons that Christians in the context of the Global North might learn from the memory of El Mozote, and suggests some possible directions for practices of Christian formation to take in order to more fully incorporate the memory of suffering into the lives and consciousness of the faithful. Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel postuliert, dass theologische Reflexion über eine bestimmte Praxis der Erinnerung an Leiden – die Erinnerung an das Massaker von El Mozote in El Salvador – zeigt, dass Hoffnung in der Erinnerung an Leiden ein wesentlicher Teil christlicher Erziehung ist. Erinnerung an Leiden an und für sich bringt Hoffnung und kann deshalb sogar im Angesicht von Unglück Christen als hoffnungsvolle Menschen bilden. Das praktisch-theologische Argument für Erinnerung an Leiden als christliche Erziehung in Hoffnung vollzieht sich in drei Schritten. Zum ersten wird der Hintergrund des Massakers von El Mozote aufgezeichnet und eine dichte Beschreibung der jährlichen Gedächtnisfeier geboten. Zum zweiten wird ein praktisch-theologischer Vorschlag gemacht, warum Erinnerung an Leiden allgemein und an El Mozote im Besonderen Hoffnung hervorbringt und Christen als hoffnungsvolle Menschen bildet. Abschliessend werden sowohl Einsichten aufgezeigt für Christen im Globalen Norden als auch mögliche Anregungen für christliche Erziehung erläutert, um Erinnerung an Leiden stärker in das Leben und Bewusstsein der Gläubigen einzubinden.

A Monument to Suffering: 1 Thessalonians 2: 14–6, Dangerous Memory, and Christian Identity

ABSTRACTThis article examines 1 Thessalonians 2: 14–6 as a site of collective Christian memory. Rather than approaching the text as a repository of Paul's memories and theology, the author approaches the text as monument and juxtaposes the text to three monuments (two ancient and one modern) in order to explore how the text organizes the reality of those who recognize it as somehow historically and/or affectively meaningful. Given that this text has proven dangerous as a site of the highly durable and widely legible “fact” that “the Jews killed Jesus,” the article draws on studies of public monuments to trace out how the (re)invention and contestation of public memories are rhetorical-political practices that animate partisan versions of the past to (re)orientate communities in the present and thus shape their possible futures.

Dangerous Memory of Hope

Dangerous Memory of Hope Martin Beck Matuštík What if Voltaire has been right and we live in the worst of all possible worlds? Voltaire's "amen" would nail the theodicy coffin of Leibnitz's "amen." But what if both "amens" get absorbed by an objectless hope in possible worlds? You and I live with hopes for something. If G-d is not an object in the world, G-d must be impossible. This speculatively militant deduction inverts Schelling's inverted or "reversed god" (2006, 54) against his spiritualized intensity of radical evil. Schelling's "in order that there be no evil, there would have to be no God" (2006, 66) intones "amen" to a preferred post-evil condition. Naming something as morally evil should become impossible if we have always already lived in a postgod condition. In our one and only world, nobody and nothing would need forgiveness for concrete hopes. Grammars of Hope If we conjugate all our verbs with sufficient hopes and so complete the "death of God" and the regicides of sovereignty in our grammars, would not our activist faith create an economy of exchange in which all wounds of history could be healed in time and with effort? Is not "amen" to this [End Page 350] world for which we are responsible a better meeting ground for an honest meditation? These questions address postsecular meditations on radical evil as a scarcity of hope. That evil does not exist was one of the three strategic claims of classical theodicy; the other two strategies would undermine either divine omnipotence (hence the weakness of divinities) or benevolence (hence the Manichaean or other moral fragility of divine goodness). I wish to set aside theoretical debates about the problem of evil as a problem about or for God, but please not out of neglect or irreverence for their classical and contemporary analytic importance. I want to begin with activists, fieldworkers, and critical theorists who in raising transient aims presuppose practical beginnings as possible. Many report how in the killing fields social theory stumbles over these very presuppositions. After humanitarians and warring peacekeepers intervene, how are the villagers to move back where they raped and killed each other's kin? The Difficulty of Beginnings Here are some examples of the difficulty of beginnings: Kaing Guek Eav, the chief torturer in the Tuol Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge, pleaded for forgiveness during his U.N. trial on Cambodia, yet who is to respond to his supralegal and moral plea after the just sentence is handed down (Mydans 2009)?1 Nagase Takashi, a translator for Japanese torturers of the British POWs in Singapore was confronted with a torture victim, Eric Lomax (1995, in Griswold 2007, 95ff.). This took place many years after the 1940s ordeal. What now should be the sufficient hope for Takashi once even his hard-won, lifelong struggle for postwar self-forgiveness breaks down when he is suddenly faced with Lomax and his memory of unhealed wounds awakes? Jankélévitch (1967, in Derrida 2001, 27) concluded that forgiveness died in the Nazi death camps, but for Derrida (2001, 31), the unforgivable nature of the deeds and of the person who is their agent, rather than the legally imprescriptible crime, is precisely the type of event that calls for forgiveness. Wiesenthal (1998), a Jewish prisoner in a World War II concentration camp, was confronted by a dying SS soldier's request to forgive him on behalf of all Jews. How should one help Wiesenthal in his lifelong struggle with this young SS's deathbed request that no degree of success in hunting down the Nazi [End Page 351] criminals managed to answer? Are there no implications, no lessons for politics or social theory, in the cries of those who suffered, made others suffer, stood by suffering of the innocent? Can such cries be settled by economic accounting, moral reparations, legal punishment, public rituals of pardon, or generational forgiveness? Must not an honest activist admit not to own beginnings? Useless Activists Intransitive, useless activity abounds in our world: Prayers of great religions, not just Zen meditations, have no object, as the now-time is not rooted in the metaphysics...

Sites of Resistance: Responding to Sotires as an Exercise in Dangerous Memory

Sites of Resistance: Responding to Sotires as an Exercise in Dangerous Memory

Anamnesis as dangerous memory: political and liturgical theology in dialogue

Anamnesis as dangerous memory: political and liturgical theology in dialogue

The Hope of a Critical Ethics: Teachers and Learners

The basic question of this essay is what motivates a person to act on behalf of the “ethical good”? Critical theorists (such as Max Horkheimer, Paulo Freire, and Sharon Welch) have proposed the educational development of critical rationality as the answer to this question, with Freire adding the notion of love and Welch adding the notion of “dangerous memory.” These positions are both critiqued and used as a starting place for proposing a critical ethics with three bases: (1) Emmanuel Levinas's notion of ethical infinity (that is, a person is more than any category can reveal and categories entrap and harm the person), (2) the notion of creating a community based on “relational authority,” and (3) the development of moral imagination. Descriptions of specific classroom situations ground the discussion in education.

Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue By Bruce T. Morrill Collegeville, Liturgical, 2000. 224 pp. $27.95

Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory: Political and Liturgical Theology in Dialogue <i>By Bruce T. Morrill</i> Collegeville, Liturgical, 2000. 224 pp. $27.95

Liberation Theology and the Bearers of Dangerous Memory

Liberation theologians, from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and even from North America and Europe, are actively engaged in responding to massive human rights violations in countries where revolution has either been a success or a tragic failure. The inspiration for this commitment is the Church's ‘Option for the poor’, originating in the historic Conferences of the Latin American Bishops at Medellin and Pueblo. But twenty years on, in a changed global context, there is a need for Liberation Theology to develop more than a praxis-oriented focus: there needs to be a further development of that epistemic shift on which Liberation Theology was originally constructed, as well as a new sensitivity as to how knowledge itself is attained. This new sensibility must extend to those who have withstood and suffered the violation of human rights, and include reflection on who has the right to know, and the de-humanisation process on both individual and communal levels. I will briefly explain what I mean by this epistemic shift before exploring the whole notion of ‘dangerous memory* and its bearers.I consider this to be a theo-political task: theology has always been concerned perhaps over possessively with the location of truth and its formulations. But since the work of Michel Foucault, philosopher and social historian, and his call for the ‘insurrection of the subjugated knowledges’, it is no longer possible to ignore the power factor in theological expressions. The call to listen to oppressed peoples as the ‘bearers of theological truth’ must be woven into the struggle against the dominant ideology.

Communicating a Dangerous Memory: Soundings in Political Theology. Fred Lawrence

<i>Communicating a Dangerous Memory: Soundings in Political Theology</i>. Fred Lawrence

Dangerous Memory and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Dangerous Memory and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Theology for a Nomad Church by Hugo Assmann

BOOK REVIEWS 447 Theology for a Nomad Church. By Huao AssMANN. Trans. Paul Bums. Maryknoll: 1976. Assmann begins by calling the reader to a deeper understanding of the political dimensions of the Christian faith and to the task of developing a political theology. The call for a political theology, however, is subject to all sorts of misunderstandings. It could be interpreted as a call to return to the theocratic society of the middle ages-a society of a Constantinian or Byzantine sort. It could also be interpreted as a call to develop a 'leftwing Constantinianism," as Assmann calls it (p. 100). According to such a political philosophy, the Church would simply switch its loyalties from right to left, but would once again exert the same sort of heteronomous authority which she exercised in the middle ages. Assmann is not interested in this type of political theology or in the restoration of " Christendom," to which it leads. In that respect, in spite of his severe criticism of the theology of the secular (p. 57) , he nevertheless affirms the attempt of the theologians of the secular to redefine the relationship between the Church and the world. In an attempt to clarify his understanding of political theology, Assmann refers to the " new European political theology " of Metz and Moltmann. He is in essential agreement with several of the main theses of this new theology, particularly Metz's attempt to break free of the privatized understanding of Christian faith, his quest to recover the "dangerous memory, the subversive contents ... in the Christian message" (p. 81), and his understanding of the Church as an institution of social criticism. Assmann also utilizes Moltmann in later sections as he continues to develop his understanding of political theology. He is particularly appreciative of Moltmann's distinction between religions of promise, with their focus on the future, and epiphany religions, which are essentially the pagan religions so severely attacked in the Biblical writings and which function to legitimate the status quo. Assmann begins the development of his own political theology where Moltmann and Metz end theirs. Although he sees their work as a positive contribution which moves theology away from identification with the status quo, he is critical of both theologians at several points. He accuses Metz of retrenchment in the face of the attacks by reactionary theologians. Metz's distinction between political theology (theory) and political ethics (practice) comes in for particularly heavy criticism by Assmann who sees it as a retrenchment with regard to his position on the relationship of theory and practice. He also criticizes European political theology for its failure to relate itself to any systematic social analysis and for its fear of any and all ideological commitments. Although he himself is aware of the excesses to which an ideological approach can lead, Assmann believes 448 BOOK REVIEWS that ideological insights, properly used, can serve a positive function (p. 93) . He is of the opinion that the Europeans' avoidance of sociological analyses and their excessive fear of ideology have resulted in sociological vagueness on the one hand and an inability to name the agents of oppression on the other. This vagueness and this inability in turn have done much to weaken the revolutionary impact of their writings and thus to diminish their practical relevance. Expanding on the efforts of Moltmann and Metz, Assmann continues his own attempt to develop a Latin American political theology. He first addresses himself to the problem of a redefinition of the terms " politics " and " political." These words, according to Assmann, must be understood in such a way as to enclose within their meaning both those acts which are ordinarily thought of as private and those which are understood as public or political in the strict sense. Assmann is concerned to point out that in this new and broader definition of politics, the intention is not to repress or deny the importance of intimacy or of personal and interpersonal relalations in human existence or even to lessen the intensity with which this dimension of life is experienced. Rather the intention is to call attention to the fact that all so-called personal relationships also have a political side. As an example...