Sites Of Memory Research Articles

On Theological Promise

This was the public address in the Alte Aula of Heidelberg University on the occasion of the reception of the 2022 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Awards for Theological Promise. The essay reflects on the theme for which these awards are given, namely “God and Spirituality – widely conceived.” The argument employs the methodology of “sites of memory,” made famous by French historian Pierre Nora. It the form of a walking tour of such sites in Heidelberg, it reflects on different ways of understanding “God and Spirituality,” represented by several public intellectuals from the academic history of Heidelberg. In the process, it constructs an approach to the notion of “theological promise” which is then briefly spelled out as conclusion at the end of the argument.

Memory and Reconstruction of Identity in Arthur Miller's The Price

Memory is an area of study in many academic domains, including sociology, cultural studies, psychiatry, psychology, and literature. It is a significant subject of discussion regarding the human dynamism of identity. As Miller thinks that the past is a misty spot and mirrors it consequently in his drama, he merges the past with the present. He shows how the past is embedded in the presence of his characters. Therefore, for Miller, past experiences constitute the present crises of his characters. Considering these experiences, this paper examines the themes of traumatic memory and identity within the scope of post-memory theory on the familial and social level in Arthur Miller's play The Price (1968). The play demonstrates a unique issue on family, memory, and identity, particularly picturing family as a site for memory, and a fundamental mechanism of transgenerational trauma transmission. It reveals the interweaving of traumatic family memory in the production of individual identity.

Myth, memory and Maison close: representing sex work on screen

ABSTRACT The maison close [brothel] in French history and culture, particularly during the nineteenth century because of its representation in art and literature, could be argued to be a lieu de mémoire [site of memory]. In light of the gaps in material that gives direct voice to women in sex work, especially during this period, the maison close could equally be termed a lieu d’oubli [site of forgetting]. In contemporary popular culture, the brothel has become a popular setting for fiction, as with the Canal+ series Maison close (2010, 2013), set in 1870s Paris. The series reflects a fascination with sex work in popular culture, as well as offering a commentary on the legal standing of sex work between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. This paper interrogates the extent to which Maison close attempts to offer alternative or more nuanced visions of history than simply categorising sex workers as victim/criminal/femme fatale, informed by abolitionist debates during its production and emerging critiques of the Nordic Model of sex work. It also analyses how the series provides an alternative vision for sex workers, and workers more generally, that moves from exploitation to collective action and attempts to increase their agency.

Memory of War. Remembering Hollywood’s Vietnam War in Call of Duty: Black Ops

The Call of Duty franchise is well-known for its setting in historical warfare and is frequently discussed under the themes of realism or its treatment of history. Whilst this is helpful to address historical inconsistencies and the often-resulting lack of critical perspective on warfare in general, it is perhaps more accurate to refer to Call of Duty as a site of memory. Call of Duty is not interested in an accurate historical retelling of war, rather, it is to evoke cultural memories usually produced by (popular) media related to specific events, repurposing them for entertainment. By analysing Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War through its Vietnam War missions, I explore the formal and narrative qualities of the game to examine what the game chooses to remember. Two key aspects can be found in its gameplay: the game takes on an exclusive U.S.-American perspective on the Vietnam War. Second, Vietnamese characters are largely absent or only exist as enemies. I will then discuss the game’s use of the Vietnam War as a catharsis for its storytelling and how it fails to live up to any subversive potential it has concerning its treatment of memory. This essay will then conclude with final thoughts on how the Vietnam War is remembered in international politics and how its remembrance is also related to intergenerational divides within the Vietnamese diaspora.

Nationalist Memory Narratives and the Politics of History in Ukraine since the 1990s

Abstract This essay focuses on analyzing the history of the evolution of the nationalist memory narrative in recent memory politics in Ukraine. It observes the political rehabilitation of the radical nationalist movement and its leaders and organizations, followed by public recognition and glorification, and the evolution of this memory narrative since the beginning of the 1990s from local memory to the centerpiece of the state politics of memory. This article examines the memorialization and commemoration of the nationalist movement at regional and national levels (sites of memory, memorial dates, renaming of topographical objects, movies, TV series, etc.), policies aimed at the promotion of the nationalist historical myth, political controversies, roles of major actors, public debates on these issues, societal responses, and international disputes.

Sites of Book Memory: Czech Home Libraries under the Communist Regime (1948–1989)

ABSTRACT The study explores the social and political role of Czech home libraries during the communist era (1948–1989). Analyses of qualitative data from existing oral history reading projects and methodological impulses of memory studies serve as grounds for multiple interpretations of this specific role. Home libraries can be considered as a counterreaction to the official propaganda and to regular purges of politically unsuitable books from public libraries; a reflection of building up alternatives to the centrally controlled public sphere; and perhaps even as a form of book consumers’ need for hoarding as a reaction to the shortage of desirable volumes on the state-operated book market. However, we argue that the persistent position of Czech home libraries as the depository of social and cultural capital can be traced in the enduring, nearly cultic veneration of the book and reading in the Czech book owners’ book memory.

Urupa Tautaiao: Young Maori explore ancient burial practices towards sustanable approaches

The turn to indigenous epistemologies is one of the most exciting and revolutionary shifts to happen in the university within the last three decades and is nowadays accelerating in influence in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is bringing with it dynamic new ways of thinking about research and new methodologies for conducting it, a raised awareness of the different kinds of knowledge that indigenous practice can convey and an illuminating body of information about the creative process. Indigenous practice provide access into other ways of knowing, and alternative approaches to conducting and presenting knowledge. This article discusses one Māori project in this context, that is intended to challenge indigenous people to (re) evaluate post-colonial environmentally harmful practices in the death space. The project explores the concept of rangatahi (Māori youth) attitudes to revitalising ancient Māori death practices to inform the development of design intervention aimed to challenge mortuary colonial practices. As such, it is part of a larger research that is supported by Marsden Fund from Royal Society of New Zealand. The project outcome includes the design of modern urupā tautaiao (natural burial) commemoration site, applying technology such as tribal social media platforms regarding death, and GPS mapping of wāhi tapu (sacred sites). Death is highly tapu (sacred) to Māori and requires strict observations of rituals to ensure spiritual safety. The revitalisation of tribal knowledge is not just the prerogative of the elders, the voices of indigenous youth must be heard as they are the future, of the planet and the people. This project contributes to the understanding of research that navigates across philosophical, inter-generational, territorial and community boundaries, evidencing theories and methodologies that inform to culture studies and creative practice.

Environmental remediation as social archaeology: Excavating sites contaminated by early nuclear weapons activities in New York City, both literally and hermeneutically

AbstractNew York City, where the Manhattan Project began, has some of the world's oldest nuclear weapons production sites, exposing New Yorkers to ongoing risks of ionising radiation. This article considers six sites of particular environmental concern. Assessment, monitoring and clean‐up of these locations have taken place over three different periods: private remediation before 1992; federal government remediation in the early 1990s followed by two decades of neglect; and a long‐standing campaign to deal with risks at two remaining sites. Addressing radioactive legacies has involved a feedback loop between literal excavation of contaminated locations and a more hermeneutical process of meaning‐making. Journalists, activists and politicians have transformed some places into sites of memory, cultivating connections to concerns about environmental justice, radiation protection and nuclear disarmament. The 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) established new obligations to remediate environments contaminated by nuclear weapons activities. While the USA refuses to join the TPNW, in‐depth, historical study of remediation at these sites can provide useful insight for states parties establishing policy to implement TPNW obligations. Recent passage of nuclear disarmament legislation by the NY City Council shows the ongoing policy relevance of nuclear weapons issues in local policymaking.

Who Are the Memory Owners of Memorial Sites? The Question of Memorial Ownership and the Case of Babyn Yar

Article Who Are the Memory Owners of Memorial Sites? The Question of Memorial Ownership and the Case of Babyn Yar was published on March 10, 2023 in the journal Eastern European Holocaust Studies (volume 0, issue 0).

Public Histories in South Africa: Between Contest and Reconciliation

Public history has long been practiced in South Africa, yet its content and purpose have always been deeply contested. In a deliberate, state-driven process, it has undergone extensive change since 1994, helping to redefine the nation in the post-apartheid era. There have been two principal means of achieving this goal: the first has been to commission a large number of new memory sites and the second has been to insist on a renovation of older sites, whose previous incarnation served the narrow interests of a small white minority. While clear new narratives have emerged, the process has witnessed continuing contests over representation and competing claims to the heritage estate.

Review of ‘Palimpsest’ by Doris Salcedo.

My eyes hurt with the shining bright lights. Malika, Ahmad, Mahmoud. The sand shifts as the water trickles, shaping letters. Noman, Safi, Tamira, Ghulam. A shiver goes down my spine. Kataf. Selam. Shadi. Ghulam, Nabi, Sidi, Sissoko. I am immersed in the art installation from the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, currently on show at the Fondation Beyeler, a contemporary art museum in Basel, Switzerland. The installation, called Palimpsest, is dedicated to all refugees and migrants who have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean in the search of a better, safer life in Europe. The title of the exhibition project, Palimpsest, comes from an ancient Greek word, referring to manuscript scrolls that are reused over time, where some of the original text can still be visible underneath new layers of writing. Such manuscripts offer insights and information on older texts, a form of knowledge gaining. The exhibition weaves an overlapping of names together on 66 stone slabs: some are engraved in the stone slabs in fine sand. These are names of persons who have died prior to 2010. On top of these names, drops of water appear to form letters of additional names of refugees and migrants who died between 2011 and 2017, which dissolve again, described by the museum as a ‘constant cycle of inscription and erasure’.1 The artist herself describes the water drops as ‘tears’, the moment of disappearance signifying the last breath of a dying person, and the (re)-appearance as birth (Salcedo 2022). The sign at the entrance to the door warns that the installation is a site of mourning, memory and commemoration and very fragile. It is possible to walk around, but not on the names, so as not to disturb the water and sand as the cycle of names continues. So I step over names. Over lives lost. Malak. Bakr. Behzad. Azizi. More names emerge. Yosef. Semret. Only to be replaced as the sands shift. Elaha. Another Azizi. Tesfe. Aman. Muntaha. Halilin. Asma. It mesmerises like it shocks.

Khadi Marigolds for the Martyrs of Jallianwala Bagh (India)

Folklorists have long studied the nature of ephemeralities in a range of vernacular responses to tragic events. This paper extends the scope of ephemeralities by arguing that the tangible representations, such as buildings and objects, are important anchors for socially reconstructing historical events. Focusing on the site of a cold-blooded genocide in India—Jallianwala Bagh—the present analysis transcends a predominant western frame of reference to highlight the imperativeness of preserving the trauma site, as it happened. The analysis reveals that a critical esthetic aspect of the site is the tangible absence of bodily ephemerality—an aspect that is intricately tied to martyrdom as opposed to victimhood. With the rise of transgressions that potentially rupture esthetics of memorial sites, it becomes essential to look for alternate tangible representations that transcend the spatial confines of the trauma sites. The quest ends with Khadi Marigolds that embody the essence of Jallianwala Bagh massacre and holds the key for perpetuating the memories of the martyrs for years to come in the service of “never again”.

Soldier Saints, Missionaries and the Mountains

Abstract This paper intends to contextualise the life of Christianity in British India through the developments in military theology in the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth century that put forth the image of the ‘soldier saint’- a true Christian soldier, British in blood and in faith. This discourse intensified after the military turned civilian Indian rebellion of 1857 which was immediately coloured in Christian vs heathen terms, and following which, the spiritual needs of Christian soldiers came into focus with the East India Company. The deaths, rituals and continued traditions of burial of the Christian soldiers, officers, and civilians have been marked through some prominent cemeteries and war memorials in India. While studies of these sites of memory have focused on the graves, tombs, and memorials in parts of north, west and south India, the frontier region of northeast India has remained outside the focus of most studies. This paper has chosen the eastern Himalayan territories comprising Sikkim and Kalimpong that fall on or near the Silk route to bring attention to the history of territorial aggression and the resulting material memory of lesser-known cemeteries and memorials Further. This paper analyses lesser discussed fiction to bring into focus the region’s human geography. This paper recognises the need to study inter-religious relations through materiality and afterlives of Christianity in India that was shaped to a large extent by the soldiers-both British and native, and the chaplains, gravediggers, priests and nurses and caregivers whose lives are recorded in the memory of death. By doing so, this study hopes to bring new dimensions to the study of Christianity in India with the inclusion of the materiality of religion, the postcolonial gothic imaginary and military theology.

Narrating Tales of Displacement: Fragmented Memory and Partition Stories

For the children of families that have experienced partition, relating to roots and a place of belonging is never without complications. They tend to relocate themselves multiple times in physical places as well as mental spaces. Unfortunately, the final settling never takes place for them, neither in the new place, where the family relocates to, nor in the mind that is a storehouse of experiences of migration. They remain ‘in-between’ and continue negotiating between the past and the present through fragmented as well as tormented memories. This paper attempts to study the complexity of belongingness for those who have lived the experiences of the Partition and how this complexity continues across generations. This will be done through a methodology of writing personal narrative and reviewing testimonies of those who experienced the Partition, along with the members of their families. The primary sources for this paper are personal testimonies of the family members, community magazine Pothohar, the short story ‘Bhenji Parmeshri’ based on the oral tales narrated by the researcher’s grandmother, films Sardar Mohammad (2017) and Eh Janam Tumahare Lekhe (2015) and a testimony of Mohinder Kaur in the newspaper. The paper will evaluate the experience of those who suffered owing to Partition by connecting the contact points, like experience of migration, displacement of families, killing of daughters by their fathers etc. as depicted in the texts and testimonies taken for the study. Personally, the researcher’s grandfather, Harbans Singh lived for 102 years witnessing and participating in events around the Freedom Movement, the Partition of India, the 1971 war with Pakistan, the Emergency, the 1984 anti-Sikh massacres, and finally the recent pandemic (COVI-19). At all major incidences he suffered personal losses. While throughout his life, he kept narrating his experiences of the Partition and the eventual victims’ migration to India, but towards the end of his life, he refused to talk about it anymore. He became very selective in his choice of subject for a conversation. Nevertheless, his village and place of birth, never skipped him. Even in his dementia, any reference to his birthplace would attract his attention. The paper is an attempt to study how physical places become permanent fixatures and sites of memory that surface at a slightest trigger. These incidences are the deepest traumatic sites that never recover.

Marginal(ized) plurality: An empirical conceptualization of Michael Rothberg’s “multidirectional memory” in German educational settings

In this article, we apply Michael Rothberg’s concept of “multidirectional memory” to an empirical setting, by analyzing qualitative interviews with 124 educators in the field of memory work, such as museum and memorial site employees, teachers, volunteers of non-governmental organizations, and civil society initiatives. We analyzed where they come across memory conflicts and commonality, and what the respective “enabling conditions” were, that is, the influencing factors that promoted or prevented developments toward multidirectionality in the sense of a “differentiated solidarity.” We found only a few examples of this kind of multidirectional memory in educational settings. It was fostered by four factors: personal autobiographical experiences, political positions, structural/institutional aspects, and certain pedagogical principles. By contrast, different forms of competitive memory were dominant: first, “Conflicting Memory” characterized by differing politics; second, “Divided Memory” characterized by a perception of resource competition; and third, “Fragmented Memory,” consisting of a form of sympathetic ignorance by which memories of other groups or events are tolerated, but not actively interlinked. Central topics that emerge within memory conflicts and entanglements are the history of National Socialism, World War II and the Shoah, the history of the state of Israel and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the Armenian Genocide, the history of the Ottoman Empire and—to a lesser extent—the history of colonialism. We argue that much can be gained by applying Rothberg’s concept to contemporary empirical settings, both in order to understand its current implications but also to help flesh out its underlying theoretical notions. These are regarding possible “negative” forms of multidirectional memory, as well as the implications and ethics of historical comparisons.

Earthquake-induced deformation at archaeological sites in southeastern Gorny Altai (Siberia, Russia)

Archaeoseismic studies in the Kurai Fault Zone in southeastern Gorny Altai (Siberia, Russia) reveal signatures of deformation caused by paleoearthquakes to burial and memorial sites (mound, khereksur, stone heap, stone enclosures), megaliths (steles), and irrigation ditch (suvak), which were located at the front of fault scarps or in their vicinity. The seismic motions left numerous traces of deformation: displaced of cairns of mound and khereksur; bending, displacement and rotation of parts of the khereksur's walls; bending stone structures at scarp crests; tilted and rotated enclosure's stone slabs; offset irrigation ditch; the displacement is most often directed. Dating of the archaeological site provides lower age bounds to the earthquakes. They all occurred for the past 3000 years, while the youngest events, ∼1.2 ka BP and no older than 1000 CE, were located in the northern Kurai and Kokorya basins, respectively. The deformation features in the mounds have bearing on the coseismic slip geometry.

“Life After Death” Remembering the “Tamil Tigers” in North-East Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were defeated militarily by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces in 2009. The LTTE had established its own governance structures for considerable periods of time in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka. This article shows how the LTTE’s governance and leader Prabhakaran are remembered in those areas and how this creates new symbolic and performative realities through commemorations and reclaimed sites of memory. In addition, it demonstrates that the internet and social media function as important emerging sites of memory.

Social work as memory of conflicts? Reflections on a historiographical figure of thought

The article revisits an idea developed and explicated by the author in the early 2000s: that social work can be understood as a (site of) memory concerning societal conflicts and, at the same time, as an open archive or storage that holds very different answers to social questions across time and space. The genesis of this figure of thought is reconstructed and contextualised theoretically, historically and politically. Thus, the idea of social work as memory of conflicts or open archive itself can be characterised as one specific answer to the dispute over history and memory (not only related to social work), while, at the same time, providing new approaches to understanding social work’s present(s) and future(s). Therefore, the article ends with reflections on ‘appropriate’ representations of social work’s history in social work education.

Je me souviens, j’imagine: essais historiques et littéraires sur la culture québécoise. Sous la direction d’Anne Caumartin, Julien Goyette, Karine Hébert et Martine-Emmanuelle Lapointe

‘Je me souviens’ is the motto of Quebec province, and it is inscribed on the coat of arms on the Parliament Building in Quebec City (inaugurated in 1884). In this context it urged the Québécois to remember their history, embodied in the statues of key historical figures (founders, explorers, military, religious and political figures, and anonymous representatives of the indigenous population) which decorate the building. But in its more familiar context today — on the province’s car licence plates — the motto has lost its context and the population no longer makes the automatic connection between it and the collective identity it once invoked. The sense of historical continuity, which had been integral to the ideology of ‘survivance’ in Quebec from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, no longer holds. The break with the traditionalist, Catholic past, which culminated in the Révolution tranquille in the 1960s, coincided with a questioning of the reliability of history and of collective memory. Across twenty-two essays by historians and literary and cultural scholars, the current volume addresses this rupture between a people and its history. Inspired by Pierre Nora’s concept of the lieu de mémoire, it offers analyses of key topoi of Quebec history and culture as they have been represented within the collective imaginary. Some contributions focus on a significant historical moment or emblematic location (for example, La Conquête, or Le Forum de Montréal, home of the Canadiens ice-hockey team, 1926–96), but more frequently the chapters take up commonplace figures such as the porteur d’eau or the coureur de bois, or choose a broader topic (the myth of Quebec as a matriarchal society; the high birth rate in francophone Canada; the shifting meanings of the term ‘colonisation’; attitudes towards the French language in Quebec), in order to revisit them, undermining stereotypes and analysing their transformations, and, in some cases, their relevance in Quebec today. The chosen sites of memory relate mostly to francophone (rather than anglophone or allophone) experience in Quebec, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Essays dealing with various figures of the Other study images, clichés, and stereotypes as they function and shift within the collective (francophone) memory. These include contributions devoted to: the place of the indigenous voice, focusing on the earliest contact under French colonization; les maudits Français and the ambivalence of their presence in the Québécois sense of identity; and the place of l’Anglais in the imagination of (francophone) Quebec. The essay on the migrant Other focuses on one of the most problematic objects of memorialization. Migration (inward and outward, forced or voluntary) is central to what it is to become or to have been Québécois. But to attempt to memorialize the passage of migrants within or beyond Quebec is to attempt to capture a process of flight, of transition, of adaptation or exclusion. Accordingly, the essays in this wide-ranging volume engage the reader in what is both a reconfiguration but also a fundamental questioning of what its authors term ‘les contours d’un Québec évanescent’ (p. 18).

Considering the Revolution

Considering the Revolution