Politics Of Collective Memory Research Articles

The Real and the Ideal: The Field of the Asia Minor Expedition as Memoryscape and the Politics of Collective Memory

Abstract: In the summer of 1921, the Greek armies had succeeded in occupying part of Greece's claimed territories in Asia Minor. Although the outcome of the Greco-Turkish war had yet to be decided, the Greek minister of military affairs proposed that a public war memorial park be constructed in Athens, a park-monument where the Asia Minor locations under Greek control would be presented metonymically. The project, visualized on a detailed map, foresaw the transport of ancient Greek antiquities from Asia Minor and their selective positioning in the park so as to create a spatio-temporal miscellany. In the proposed memorial park, space, time, and Greek antiquity were to produce a new locus, a memoryscape, that went beyond existing frontiers and outside experienced time. The plan to create a cultural mnemonic marker monumentalizing the Asia Minor Campaign sought not only to shape the national identity but also to proclaim and promote Greece's demand for annexation of the Asia Minor territories.

The politics of collective memory and intergenerational transmission: Victory Day in Ural Newspaper coverage

The politics of collective memory and intergenerational transmission: Victory Day in Ural Newspaper coverage

Frontier in the Far East: George H. Kerr’s historical narrative of the Ryukyu Islands

George H. Kerr (1911–1992) is an American historian who authored Ryukyu: Kingdom and Province before 1945 (Kerr 1953a), the sole general history of theislands in English; he was also a Taiwan specialist in the military and government whose book won him the reputation as the ‘father of Taiwanese independence’ (Lu 2006). He rearranged fragmented memory and recorded it in such a way as to justify a separate people, the Ryukyuans or the Taiwanese, from the nation-state to which they may belong—Japan or China—so that the United States could strategically exploit their home islands. While mainly focusing on Kerr in the Ryukyus and unveiling the process of his writing, this paper offers a bridge to Kerr in Taiwan and addresses the question of a common interpretive framework underneath his historical narratives.
 
 Keywords: Cold War, historiography, politics of collective memory, Ryukyu (Okinawa), Taiwan (Formosa)

Восприятие Чемпионата мира по футболу 2022 г. в Катаре в арабской либеральной аналитике как форма политики памяти

Introduction. The author analyzes the informa- tional discourse of the World Cup in Qatar through the prism of collective historical memory. It is assumed that the Qatari Championship turned out to be both a sporting and political event. The article highlights the main problems that formed the information agenda, as well as the vectors and trajectories of the interpretation and perception of the Championship by liberal analysts and experts. Goal. The purpose of the article is to analyze the main directions of the liberal perception of the World Cup in Qatar in the information discourse of “Al-Araby Al-Jadeed” through the prism of the historical politics of memory. Methods. The author uses the methods proposed within the memorial turn in modern interdiscipli- nary historiography, which make it possible to iden- tify and systematize the features of the transfor- mation of the collective historical memory of Arab societies through the prism of sports, actualised by the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Scientific novelty. The article is one of the few at- tempts to interpret the historical politics of memory in modern society in the context of the perception of sports as an element of the memorial culture and historical experience of the Arab societies of the Middle East. Results. The article analyzes the main vectors and trajectories of the use of sports for the politiciza- tion and ideologization of historical memory. It is assumed that the Championship stimulated political and ideological contradictions between Arab experts on the issues of collective historical and political experience, as well as its reflection in memorial cultures. The author believes that Arab analysts formally used sports events to update the political, social and economic problems and contradictions of the Middle East through the prism of historical memory, visualizing the trauma of the colonial and orientalist heritage. Conclusions. It is shown that the Championship ac- tualized political contradictions in the perception of current historical experience, visualizing the lines of ideological demarcation between Arab intellectuals who actively used sports as an information occa- sion for discussing the problems of historical poli- tics and the politics of collective memory, including the perception of the place and role of authoritari- anism, democracy and human rights in contempo- rary memorial cultures. The author believes that the reaction of the elites to the attempts of the liberal media to turn sport into a space for memo- rial conflicts and wars of memory was minimal, as the elites were focused on maintaining control and receiving economic dividends from the World Cup. It is shown that the politicization of sports has become the contribution of modern liberal media to the aggravation of wars of memory as a form of memorial conflicts in the Arab world.

Историческая политика и мемориальная культура современного румынского общества

The aim of the research is to analyze the contemporary politics of memory in Romania in the early 2020s. The author examines the role and place of intellectual communities as key spaces of memory genesis and the functioning of memorial culture and collective historical memory in the contemporary social and political thought of Romania. The novelty of the study lies in exploring the current stage in the development of the historical politics of Roma­nian society in the context of an objective deficit of interdisciplinary research focused on the analysis of memorial cultures. The article demonstrates that: 1) the intellectual community, as one of the systemic segments of modern Romanian society, significantly contributes to the development and transformation of memorial culture; 2) the spectrum of memorial practices of Romanian intellectuals, as agents of historical memory politics and shapers of various ver­sions of memorial culture, varies from historical revisionism to attempts to form a liberal me­morial canon; 3) the memorial practices of the contemporary intellectual community are in­terconnected with the development of civil and ethnic nationalist discourse; 4) the participa­tion of intellectuals in memory politics actualizes the political and ideological heterogeneity of modern society, contributing to the simultaneous coexistence and competition of different forms of historical memory. It is assumed that the role of Romanian civil society in the histor­ical politics of contemporary Romania will increase, and the intellectual community will re­main one of the active participants in the politics of collective memory.

Memorials and the Mine Disaster in Monongah, West Virginia: From Trauma to an Italian Global Memoryscape

Memorials and the Mine Disaster in Monongah, West Virginia: From Trauma to an Italian Global Memoryscape

Politics of Collective Memory: Insight from the Nordic Historiography on the Ukrainian famine in 1932-33

The article analyses the intellectual origins of integrating the study of memory within the humanities. The author highlights the intertextuality** (de Saussure [12], J. Kristeva [29]) and socially embedded character (J. Olick, R. Joyce, D. Levy [36]) of memory studies. Inspired by a theory of securitization (B. Buzan, O. Waevel, J. de Wilde [7] and other scholars from Copenhagen school), a somewhat new term of “genocidation” is introduced by the author in order to describe a re-invention of the Ukrainian post-Soviet identity narrative. Apart from theoretical approaches to interdisciplinary studies of memory politics in the post-globalized world, the article presents an attempt to investigate the presence of the Ukrainian famine in Nordic historiography, pointing at the existing gap in academic research on this topic in the Nordic countries. A suggestion for further research is being made, conditioned upon the access to Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish archives. The article is a part of the joint project on the Soviet famine, carried out with the support from the ReNEW Excellency Hub of research at Copenhagen Business School and Banska Bystrica University, Slovakia.

Textbooks and Culture Wars: An essay review of Charles Eagles, Civil rights culture wars: The fight over a Mississippi textbook. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. 298. ISBN 9781469631158.

The politics of collective memory, over what counts as “official knowledge,” is crucial in education. With its primary focus on the politics of memory and how this works in the politics of school knowledge as its primary focus, Civil Rights Culture Wars gives us a rich historical picture of this process as it played out in a significant battle over a specific textbook in Mississippi. As some readers may already know, there have been a large number of interesting case studies of textbook controversies over the years, as well as a long history of studies that critically focus on the political and educational issues surrounding textbooks. As Eagles documents in great detail, this book became a center of ideological conflict and many conservative groups were clear that they would seek to block its approval. The conflict over the book in the courts, in the press, and in government agencies took years. There were defeats, partial victories, and then ultimately a vindication. Even though the implications of his analysis to more general issues of political and cultural theory are always there, Eagles’s account is not about the abstraction called the “state.” It reads more like an anguished drama, filled with real characters, biographies, and movements, from the authors of the textbook themselves, to state legislators, to educational administrators and state textbook adoption commission members, to judges, to members of the public who held varied political positions on the battle over inclusion and exclusion, over the epistemological fog, amnesia and memory, and so much more.

Gettysburg Inc.: The use and abuse of an historical icon

Abstract A combination of image, text, historical reflection and political commentary, this graphic research article explores the use and abuse of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address within the US public sphere. In 155 years since Lincoln gave this speech, his words have been subsumed into all manner of heated debates on issues such as race, class, international relations and the Civil War’s legacy. Indeed, as Barry Schwartz argues, the Address’s figurative power lies not in a single interpretation, but in the way in which successive generations reinterpret it ‘in light of new situations and challenges’. From Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon to Donald Trump, it has continually served as a rhetorical battleground upon which arbiters of various political persuasions wage war over the meaning of American democracy – past, present and future. When soon-to-be President Trump delivered his ‘Contract with the American Voter’ at Gettysburg in October 2016, he was but the latest in a long line of politicians to put the Address’s symbolic power in the service of his own ideological ends. ‘Every salesman needs a pitch’ writes the historian Jared Peatman. ‘And over time, increasing numbers of Americans came to see the Gettysburg Address as the most effective way to sell the ideals of this country, both internally and externally’. A collaboration between a graphic designer and visual culture historian, Gettysburg Inc. is a satirical rendering of the Gettysburg Address for the contemporary era. Taking the form of a sleek corporate brochure, this article explores the disconnect between words and deeds, truth and fiction, democratic ideals and the political process. Visually, we draw on the ‘hand of Lincoln’ motif, central to the president’s visual mediation in historical paintings, sketches, political campaign posters, advertisements and sculptures. Appropriating and reframing words, images and events from the recent past, we engage with ideas on the politics of collective memory, and the symbiotic relationship between memory and ‘forgetting’. A piece of critical design, Gettysburg Inc. is a reflection on the unstable nature of collective memory, and an exploration of the ways in which graphic design can engage with, and offer new perspectives on, history and politics.

Book Review: General Politics: The Holocaust, Religion and the Politics of Collective Memory: Beyond Sociology

Book Review: General Politics: The Holocaust, Religion and the Politics of Collective Memory: Beyond Sociology

Cultural heritage and the politics of collective memory

The representation of cultural heritage as determining the authenticity of identities, associated with the ideology of collective memory, restricts cultural liberties and assists identity politics. Th e Faro Convention, especially through its emphasis on the participation of everyone to the interpretation of cultural heritage, is an important moment in the reconsideration of the role of the knowledge about the past in a democratic world.

Book Review: The Holocaust, Religion, and the Politics of Collective Memory: Beyond Sociology

Book Review: The Holocaust, Religion, and the Politics of Collective Memory: Beyond Sociology

Berger, Ronald J., The Holocaust, Religion, and the Politics of Collective Memory: Beyond Sociology.

Berger, Ronald J., The Holocaust, Religion, and the Politics of Collective Memory: Beyond Sociology.

‘He is Armenian but he was born that way; there isn't much he can do about it’: exploring identity and cultural assumptions in Turkey

ABSTRACTIf Armenians have a core belief, it is that they are an endangered people. They live as if under constant threat. After the annihilation of the Armenian population living in their historical lands—the Armenian heartlands were in eastern Turkey—by the Young Turk government during 1915–16, a new Turkish republic emerged from the old Ottoman-Turkish state in 1923, including an oppressive nationalistic hegemony. The resulting identity politics only fuelled the sense of being Other among Armenians and other minorities. By assessing the consequences and social impact of anxiety on this minority population defined as the Other, Anahit's paper aims to explore identity and cultural assumptions in Turkey through the Armenian experience. Leaving behind conceptualizations of the shifting modes of cultural representation, it seeks to go beyond the existing sociopolitical constraints that have persisted since 1915. Based on field research conducted between 2005 and 2011, Anahit examines the ever-changing set of norms of cultural identity by exploring the politics of collective memory. She asks whether a dominant culture is dependant on counter-cultural movements to remain all-powerful.

Representations of German-Polish Border Regions in Contemporary Polish Fiction: Space, Memory, Identity

This article examines post 1989 Polish literary production that addresses German-Polish history and border relations in the aftermath of World War II and participates in the German-Polish dialogue of reconciliation. I consider the methodological implications of border space and spatial memory for the analysis of mass displacements in the German-Polish border region with particular attention to spatiocultural interstitiality, deterritorialization, unhomeliness, and border identity. Focusing on two representative novels, Stefan Chwin's Death in Danzig and Olga Tokarczuk's House of Day, House of Night, I argue that these authors' attention to geospatiality, border space, and displacement forms a distinct characteristic of Polish border narratives. Chwin's and Tokarczuk's construction of interstitial border spaces reflects a complex dynamic between place, historical memory, and self-identification while disrupting and challenging the unitary mythologies of the nation. With their fictional re-imagining of wartime and postwar German-Polish border region, these writers participate in the politics of collective memory of the border region and the construction and articulation of the Polish perspective that shapes the discourse of memory east of the border.

The Holocaust, Religion, and the Politics of Collective Memory: Beyond Sociology

The Holocaust, Religion, and the Politics of Collective Memory: Beyond Sociology

Renaming Men: the politics of memory and the commemoration of war at the Baltic–Russian Crossroads

The aim of this article is to discuss the role of war commemorations in the politics of collective memory and the ways in which rites and practices of commemoration contributed to the production of normative ideals of masculinity in specific post-Soviet contexts. The analysis draws upon some examples of present-day commemorations concerning the cult of the fallen soldier in the Baltic countries and in Russia. The author explores the different post-Soviet—Baltic and Russian—discourses and ways of reconstructing the value of military masculinity through commemorations, and argues that combat masculinity as a particular form of military masculinity is dominant in commemorative rituals, practices and sites. The image of the fallen soldier has become a common source of inspiration for the discourse of reciprocity between the body of the soldier and the body of the (trans)nation. It sustains nationalist politics in different post-Soviet contexts and is a central component in the construction of masculinity.

The presence of the past: Negotiating the politics of collective memory

What are the political implications of a complex image of time, where time does not unfold progressively in a neat linear structure, but where the past is always present and the future impinges on the now? If the past is inescapably present, how do societies that live with grievously injured pasts come to terms with them in the present for the sake of the future? How do they try to address the collective memories of their people, when such memories are marked by violence and conflict, without resorting to vengeance? Drawing from the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, this article examines the way in which two countries have recently attempted to negotiate the politics of memory – Algeria and Rwanda. It poses such questions as how much should be forgotten and how much should be remembered? It also asks the difficult question of how such pasts can be overcome and transfigured in the present for the sake of the politics of an affirmative politics of the future.

Memorial landscapes: analytic questions and metaphors

Over the past two decades, geographers have probed the intersection of collective memory and urban space. Their sustained interest in the subject reflects an understanding of the social condition of commemoration and the important role that space plays in the process and politics of collective memory. Along with other critical social scientists, geographers envision these public symbols as part of larger cultural landscapes that reflect and legitimate the normative social order. A review of the extant literature indicates that geographers scrutinize memorial landscapes through three conceptual lenses that may be understood via the metaphors of ‘text,’ ‘arena,’ and ‘performance.’ These metaphors are in turn mobilized through a series of analytic questions that serve to identify the interests served and denied by landscape ‘texts,’ the ‘arenas’ in which they are produced, and the ways in which they are enacted via ‘performance.’ This article’s synopsis of the subfield’s predominant metaphors and its attendant questions contributes to the ongoing cultural geographic project of articulating and implementing methods for interpreting landscapes as open-ended symbolic systems.

Requiem for a lost Palast. ‘Revanchist urban planning’ and ‘burdened landscapes’ of the German Democratic Republic in the new Berlin

This paper discusses on the fate of the public buildings and public spaces inherited from the socialist era in contemporary Berlin, with a particular focus on one of the ‘burdened landscapes’ of the German Democratic Republic, the Spree Island (Spreeinsel). This site, due to its symbolic significance in the history of the city, has been the focus of complex architectural, political and cultural debates shaped by tensions between different collective memories and conflicting visions of what the new urban landscapes of reunified Berlin should be. The paper documents the fifteen‐year debate on the future of the Spreeinsel, in particular the controversies surrounding the demolition of the Palast der Republik and the proposed reconstruction of the Berliner Stadtschloss (Royal Castle). It is argued that the conflicts surrounding the site are at the intersection of two intermingled processes: on the one hand, the politics of collective memory and identity (re)construction through architecture and planning, on the other, the renegotiation of the social uses and public nature of a strategic inner‐city site in a market economy. The latter has become more prominent in recent years. Analyses of post‐socialist urban landscapes should consequently be embedded within a wide political economy approach casting light on the complex relationships between material processes of urban restructuring, the symbolic economy of the post‐Fordist city and the real and symbolic ownership of strategic inner‐city space.