Throughout this book we have engaged with legacies of violent and difficult pasts. Listening to stories of pain and spending time at sites of memory, we have been driven by a growing awareness that an analysis of memory politics enhances our understanding of the quality of peace. This process of analysis has allowed us to appreciate how the social fabric is moulded by competing and convergent understandings of the past, as well as what these memory dynamics tell about the social and political relations underpinning peace.

The investigation of five cases of mnemonic formations, considered as diagnostic sites, has demonstrated the strength with which memories of violence affect the quality of peace in the present. This has been in evidence with respect to the continuing division of Cyprus along nationalist lines, the lingering legacies of colonialism in South Africa, contestations around the use of human remains in Cambodia, the lasting mnemonic effects of the siege of Sarajevo as a key contestation in the Bosnian memoryscape and on-going controversies around the role of internationals in the Rwandan genocide. In this concluding chapter we draw comparatively on the insights gained from each of the preceding chapters and present our main findings regarding the impact of memory politics on the quality of peace. The findings lead us to suggest that the way memory entangles is key to the quality of peace. Across all five cases we find that three factors in how these memories are entangled are of particular importance in determining the quality of peace: plurality, the restoration of dignity to the victims of past violence and inclusivity. A just peace is possible if memory is entangled in a way that is plural, while also embracing dignity and inclusivity. The meaning of these three central factors will be further explicated later in the chapter. In contrast, if memory is entangled in a way that allows narratives to run parallel without interconnecting, a way that is divisive and leaves some victims’ sufferings unacknowledged, the peace is most likely shallow.

The value of the analytical framework

Let us first note that the SANE framework has enabled us to carry out a systematic analysis through a focus on sites, agents, narratives, events and the interactions between them. It is through the emphasis on sites of memory such as memorials, monuments or museums that we have been able to capture the spatial and material dimensions of memory politics. Further, we have noted that it is crucial to acknowledge the role of agents who seek to exercise power and agency at various levels and settings. Given the centrality of language and discourse for constructing memory, we have also focused on narratives. Lastly, events have been analysed as a way of accessing the performativity of memory in its perhaps more temporal and shifting expressions. Importantly, it is the interaction of sites, agents, narratives and events that has constituted our analytical inroad.

Indeed, each empirical chapter brings out a richness and detail about these interactions in unique ways. In each mnemonic formation it is clear that sites such as memorials and museums are invested with particular meaning by being tied to social practices of place-making such as commemorative events, as memory agents make particular sites meaningful while others are ignored. The empirical chapters further demonstrate how any given mnemonic formation encompasses an array of memory agents, which may be formal or informal, local, national, international or transnational, collective or individual. Memory agency thus emerges as relational and reconstituted in social interactions, exercised through formal, public actions with political objectives, or sometimes through fleeting action in the margins of the mundane. Such events may be ritualistic or organic as people come together for political action; they may serve to maintain existing memories or on the contrary to assist in transformations of the post-war order. From these activities narratives emerge as meaning-making articulations that both shape and are shaped by sites, agents and events. As such they are constitutive of individual and collective identities.

The four conceptual entry points in the SANE framework have thus provided what Niewöhner and Scheffer (2010b: 3) refer to as ‘analytical, cross-contextual framings that are meant to facilitate comparison’. As a next step, the analysis is taken one step further into a ‘soft comparison’ (Prus, 2010: 502), letting the richly contextual cases speak to each other. We synthesise the findings and return to our central puzzle: can the memory politics unpacked in these cases possibly tell us something beyond each case about how memory politics impacts on the quality of peace?

We find that that while the mnemonic formations that we have studied are each configured in unique and different ways, certain intriguing patterns emerge. Below, some key observations that hold true for all the cases will be synthesised. While we will not reiterate all the specific findings of each individual chapter, together they form the basis for the core conceptual developments regarding the quality of peace that we present here. Key to the analysis is the understanding of memory as entanglement – a concept that we define in the next section.

Key dimensions of entangled memories: plurality, dignity and inclusivity

In essence, we propose that the quality of peace can be assessed by the way memory is entangled in and through mnemonic formations. This entanglement is a result of the memory politics of various groups in society and reflects various interpretations of the violent past. As demonstrated in the empirical chapters, in societies emerging from violence – and societies more generally – there is not one hegemonic memory that dominates all interpretations of the past. It is of central importance how and whether competing views on the past and the present are accepted in a society, the extent to which they are integrated in the wider public sphere, and also the extent to which they manage to restore the dignity of victims, survivors and, broadly speaking, those who live with the long-term implications of systemic forms of violence. In each of the five cases that we have studied in this book, we can observe various entangled strands that sometimes conflict and collide, and at other times run parallel with no point of contact or mutually reinforce each other. Even in dictatorships or under totalitarianism, there are always groups who remember differently depending on their experience of the past, their situation in the present and their understanding of other groups in society. As Feindt et al. (2014: 31) suggest, ‘acts of remembering are heterogeneous, dynamic, and therefore genuinely entangled’; they interact, interlace, connect, depart and break away, or develop together. Friction and fluidity are always elements of entanglement, too.

Entanglement is a concept that aids our understanding of different views of the past and their mutual interactions (Delanty, 2017; Heuman, 2014). The concept of entangled memories relates to the production of memories as a means to cast light on ‘complex impulses in the present’ (Conrad, 2003: 86). The notion of entanglement is very fruitful for understanding mnemonic formations since these complexities are highly significant for the constitution of peace in a conflict-affected society.

Collective identities are key to such entanglements. As Laanes (2020: 452) suggests, ‘The view of cultural memory as intrinsically entangled cuts the ties between memory and group identity … and introduces a new, comparative way of thinking about and studying the cultural memories of different groups, the interaction of those memories, and flows of influence’. In other words, identifying memory as entangled allows us to unpack it so that we can understand various groups and their interpretations of the past. This, in turn, offers insights into how these interpretations inform how groups see themselves, the other parties to the conflict and the prospects for peace in their society. In Cyprus, we see how the diverging versions of the island’s past represented in the two museums refer back and inform the two different identities of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot, respectively. In Rwanda, ethnic identity is core to politics today, but is also shaped by, and in turn shapes, memory of the violent past, with Hutu and Tutsi interpretations of the past diverging.

From the five cases, we have been able to distil three primary facets of entanglement that we see as key for the quality of peace, namely: the extent to which memory-making is plural (in terms of encompassing diverse memories and commemoration practices); the extent to which it contributes to embracing dignity (in terms of acknowledging the injustices committed); and finally the extent to which it is inclusive (in terms of ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, age and gender, among other things). This definition incorporates the inherent fluidity and friction of memory politics and allows us to assess the impact that memory politics has on peace itself.

The focus on entangled memories allows us to conceptualise the relationship between the politics of memory and the quality of peace. If we investigate the entanglements and nodes of connection between competing views of the past within a mnemonic formation, we can grasp the quality of peace that emerges from such entanglements. Indeed, as our case studies highlight, where the respective mnemonic formation consists of multiple, intersectional entanglements and overlaps, there is more room for the negotiation of a plural and inclusive peace, and one that confers dignity on all victims. In contrast, where a mnemonic formation allows for very limited entanglements and cultivates views of the past as separate and isolated from one another, a variety of parallel peace(s) may emerge.

Plurality versus homogeneity

Plurality is a basic precondition of entangled memories. Often, where there is only one dominant way of remembering, there is a risk that it is obscuring more silent or marginalised voices in a society. This is the case in societies where commemoration is heavily dominated by a hegemonic actor, such as the state. Homogenised memories are mobilised to generate higher degrees of legitimacy for different forms of government and governance, with sometimes questionable ethics. We have, for instance, pointed to the control that the Rwandan and Cambodian governments exercise over the country’s memory politics, and in Cyprus, as also in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we can see leadership structures dominated by the conflict’s lines of division now driving the ways in which memory is mobilised and enacted. A lack of plurality of memory sites, agents, narratives and events in conflict-affected societies that are struggling with conflicting memories indicates a fairly closed political space, and one in which conflict lines are deeply entrenched and difficult to challenge. Efforts at promoting a just peace in such contexts will therefore struggle to make space for a plurality of voices and will find themselves confronted with a multitude of silences. In Rwanda, the state enforces the official narrative about the past with exceptional vigour, although there is a highly diverse memory of the 1994 genocide, and various social and political groups hold diverging understandings as to causes, consequences and responsibility for the violence. These frictions are, however, stifled by a highly hegemonic government narrative about the nature of the atrocity and its memory – to the point that dissenting accounts are forbidden by law on the grounds that they might promote divisions or genocide denial. As a consequence, there is much resentment on the part of groups who oppose the government narrative, as their position is not accepted. This leads to anger against the government and against ruling elites more generally, which stands in the way of a just peace being consolidated in the future.

It is the moment of conflict or contestation itself that generates the types of memorialisation that matter for the articulation of relevant conflict identities. The extent to which the memoryscape allows for a plurality of memories to co-exist (or not) tells us much about the quality of peace and the potential for a just peace. A just peace presupposes the existence of several threads that can be woven together, that is, a plurality of interpretations of the past. The diversity of practices of remembering and forgetting provides the raw material, so to speak, for this process through which competing sites, agents, narratives and events can be accommodated in any given society.

Our empirical analysis illustrates how the degree to which a mnemonic formation allows a plurality of sites, agents, narratives and events to co-exist has an important effect on the quality of peace. Where there is a strong degree of homogeneity, peace processes are at risk of excluding, silencing or marginalising divergent voices. In Cyprus, for instance, the high degree of bifurcation in the memory landscape has meant that largely separate versions of peace have been developed in the north and the south of the divided island. There is much internal homogeneity within those two separate spaces and little plurality in deviating from their dominant scripts. The bi-communal movement has to some extent challenged this rigidity and homogeneity, but – not unlike the frozen peace process on the island – has struggled to bring more pluralism to the very deep political fault lines that continue to divide the two communities. The highly scripted, nationalistic museums we have investigated operate on either side of these fault lines, which continue to undermine efforts towards cross-community engagement and the dismantling of enduring, engrained narratives about the past. At the same time there are other spaces that at times engage with and destabilise these mnemonic formations – in contemporary arts projects, for example. One such space is the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre, which exhibits work from both sides of the Green Line. In this cultural space, memories emerge that reveal cracks in the hegemonic mnemonic formations of competing nationalisms.

In South Africa, we have identified somewhat similar tendencies of internally homogeneous, opposing memory camps, often (though not exclusively) defined by the colonial and apartheid legacies of racial divisions. Those opposing camps in turn are conditioned by their associated historical structures of inequality, which persist into the present day; they are often far apart from one another. The memories predominantly hosted by, for instance, Afrikaner communities nostalgic for colonial structures could barely be further from the calls for decolonisation voiced by recent student movements calling not only for the decolonisation of educational systems but also for reparative action (such as land return) and wider political transformation. At the same time, we can observe internal tensions within what seem like homogeneous camps, with solidarities and inclusive memory sites emerging (such as Freedom Park) – which are, as we have shown, not free from criticism due to the risk of their toning down calls for justice in the aftermath of colonial violence.

While Bosnia and Herzegovina is rigidly divided into three separate memory camps, our case study of the mnemonic formation of the siege of Sarajevo reveals a plurality of mnemonic agents that provide potentially transformative narratives. The hegemonic, top-down ethno-nationalist narrative, with its focus on military heroism is, in fact, repeatedly challenged by other narratives that highlight a shared urban identity as well as the everyday resilience and civic values upheld by ordinary citizens during the siege.

Feindt et al. (2014: 32) suggest that a more plural memoryscape allows for spaces of contestation, which take on significance at particularly crucial moments in time. Those moments can be moments of crisis and conflict, where certain memories are re-evoked while others are silenced. Changes in deeply embedded structures can be slow and gradual, as the bi-communal movement in Cyprus suggests; where it happens faster, such changes may be foregrounded against longer-term preparations that had been taking place under the radar. The #RhodesMustFall movement is illustrative of a situation where long-prepared battles have finally found a moment to emerge onto the surface to be met with stronger public sympathy and mobilisation. In Cambodia, memory politics regarding how to deal with the dead has shifted over time, although two fundamentally different approaches remain pitted against each other. One narrative advocates for the cremation of bones allowing the spirits to be set free for rebirth and the other one argues for the bones to be kept on public display as evidence highlighting the horrors of the Khmer Rouge for generations to come.

Against this backdrop, a number of academic contributions have argued for the benefits of plural and entangled memories (see Delanty, 2017; Feindt et al., 2014). Our case studies highlight that attention also needs to be paid to the complexity of social interactions beyond a mere plurality. The fact that competing views of the past are present does not tell us enough about how they relate to each other, nor what this actually means for the ways in which a contested past is dealt with, especially in relation to how it engages with its victims, survivors and notions of reparation. For the plurality of memories to enhance the quality of peace, therefore, plurality needs to embrace inclusivity and dignity, as we shall see in the next sections.

Dignity versus lack of acknowledgement

The second factor for the quality of peace derived from our analysis of memory politics is the extent to which dignity is restored to the victims and survivors of violence, most frequently through their sufferings being acknowledged and the full extent of wrongdoings and violence they have undergone being openly recognised. We understand dignity as relational (Clark Miller, 2017; Ríos Oyola, 2019: 10), and entangled memories reflect the dignity of survivors of violence when coupled with an acknowledgement, by those responsible for it, of the harms this violence has done. Dignity is therefore an important factor in how memories are processed and eventually channelled into the ways in which a peace relationally deals with victims and perpetrators. In cases where no acknowledgement is given, the peace will remain brittle and vulnerable to breakdown.

The mnemonic formations analysed here vary significantly in this respect: some do indeed provide considerable space for telling narratives about the multiple ways in which violence has been experienced by its survivors, thus affording dignity to the victims. In Sarajevo, for example, several museums bring a close focus to bear on the everyday experiences of the city’s residents during the siege. Their displays let the visitors create their own interactions and interpretations, promoted through the focus on ordinary objects as the carriers of meaning and emotions – a plastic water canister, a sign warning of snipers or a torn diary. The stories of the individual and social losses that war and violence entail, as well as of human resilience in the face of such challenges, are told through these things. For survivors, the focus on the fabric of everyday life is an acknowledgement of both the tangible and intangible losses they have experienced during the siege, and recognises their suffering on a local, national and international stage.

Commemorative events can have the power to demonstrate publicly the need for victims to be seen and heard. Across several of the cases, artistic interventions emerge as a practice that can address this need and speak to, and with, victims, beyond polarising narratives. The power of art in this context is aptly demonstrated by the artwork Sarajevo Red Line that consisted of more than 11,500 red chairs placed in rows that stretched for several hundred metres along the main street through the city centre. Each chair represented a killed person during the siege, shockingly communicating the ever-present loss from the urbanscape of neighbours, friends, relatives and familiar strangers. Such an art project brings back to centre-stage the impact of the siege on the citizens of Sarajevo and thus deems their grievances worthy of attention. This can be an integral part of their dignity, at the same time countering the dangers of denial and forgetting.

In contrast, other sites and events are predominantly perpetrator oriented and provide only limited room to commemorate the suffering of those who were at the receiving end of violence. Here, Cyprus stands as an important case in point, as the suffering of the victims of the other side is not acknowledged in either of the museums we studied, one from each community, and the resultant lack of dignity feeds into the parallel peace(s) that exist in both parts of the island. In Cambodia, meanwhile, the mnemonic formation of the contestations around human remains illustrates particularly well the importance of restoring dignity, in terms of how peace is experienced and negotiated in survivors’ everyday lives: for many, treating the bones of the deceased with spiritual respect is an indispensable part of a just peace, despite the considerable political opposition to such demands.

One aspect of dignity that poses a challenge for many societies transitioning from violence to peace is that the victims who died, as well as those who survived, should recover from dehumanisation and violation (Rosoux and Anstey, 2017). It is this that King Sihanouk is referring to in Cambodia when he called for the cremation of bones of those killed under Khmer Rouge rule. Their lingering on as spirits unable to be reborn is seen as a form of further dehumanisation; setting them free would be the only way for them to regain dignity. At the same time, for survivors the quality of peace is eroded in the post-conflict context as survivors are haunted by spirits and are beset with worries over their lost loved ones’ spiritual well-being.

Dignity as a result of productive memory entanglement has the potential to create links of solidarity between communities across time and space (Laanes, 2020: 452), as is exemplified in the bi-communal movement in Cyprus, where interaction between the two sides promotes an awareness of alternative perspectives and an acknowledgement of the suffering experienced in both communities. Dignity can strengthen ties between groups by highlighting a joint understanding of suffering in the past even if groups differ in many aspects other than the experience of violence, so that memory becomes multidirectional (Rothberg, 2009). Equally, an absence of acknowledgement will make cross-community relations more difficult.

Often, where acknowledgement and dignity are given, they come from inside one’s own survivor group. This has been the case in all the mnemonic formations we have analysed, albeit to varying degrees. It is key to our understanding of the respective peace processes, though. In Sarajevo for instance, the difficulty of achieving a cross-ethnic acknowledgement of atrocities committed during the siege remains one of the main obstacles to meaningful peace. Those issues are partly addressed at the micro-level but struggle to translate into a national politics where members of each ethnic group might be able to recognise the different forms of suffering inflicted by their own group. Phenomena such as genocide denial regarding the genocide that took place in Srebrenica are part of this same problem.

When it is part of an entangled mnemonic process, on the other hand, dignity can resonate beyond the confines of one’s own group and can contribute to the emergence of alliances, solidarities and expressions of justice (see Laanes, 2020: 452). This also means that on-going expressions of denial, through a refusal to commemorate and acknowledge, can undermine social connections and thus the emergence of a peace that would be just and sustainable, and indeed bearable, for the victims of violence. As such, acknowledgement and the restoration of dignity is often not something volunteered, but must be hard fought for. The South African case study aptly illustrates the long-term struggles that survivors of colonial violence have had to go through to obtain at least a degree of acknowledgement, not only of the sufferings of their ancestors, but also of the continuing impacts that colonial structures have on their lives. Community museums, political alliances and solidarity movements have been key in this respect, but it has taken a considerable investment of time, resources and energy on the part of many vulnerable groups in society. This is certainly not dissimilar to our Rwandan case study, where international states and organisations have only engaged in limited ways with the violence they contributed to, and primarily as a response to growing national and international pressure. Their engagement has been further inhibited by what the current government has considered acceptable, leaving little room for those primarily affected by the genocidal violence to have their voices heard and acknowledged.

The acknowledgement of memories of violence and suffering is an important tool in the restoration of dignity to victims and communities in post-conflict societies, particularly when they may otherwise be faced with manifestations of denial (Zubrzycki and Woźny, 2020: 185); in this context, we can also refer to this form of dignity as an element of ‘memory-justice’ (Booth, 2001). The Bosnian activist group ‘Because it concerns me’ makes interventions in the memoryscape by mounting temporary plaques that highlight war crimes and commemorate victims who otherwise are silenced and ignored. While their interventions do not make a lasting material mark, their demands for justice across ethnic boundaries resonate widely.

Dignity also functions as an umbrella term used by disenfranchised groups and communities who formulate their demands in mnemonic terms (Ríos Oyola, 2019: 10). Part of this formulation may also be references to how dignity is undermined as a result of material and non-material loss, stipulating that the restitution of dignity needs to push memory work beyond a simple acknowledgement of suffering, understanding it only as a first step towards compensation, reparation and apology. As such, it is a key element of memory politics, both immaterially and potentially with material implications. In South Africa, for instance, calls for reparations coming from the victims of colonialism and apartheid, and their descendants, are deeply connected to the quality of peace (see Walters, 2009). Groups, such as the Khulumani Support Group are dedicated to achieving compensation for survivors of violence from foreign companies that supported the apartheid regime and have taken legal action to that end. Certainly, such battles are long-winded and often have to face considerable political pressure and resistance, as the loss of the Khulumani court case in 2013 unfortunately demonstrates all too well.

Either way, the quest for dignity may take place in ways that are superficial and forced, or it can be accommodated in a dialogical, supportive way. This is why we propose that dignity needs to be inclusive to be meaningful (Clark Miller, 2017: 110) – inclusivity being the third dimension connecting memory politics and peace, as we shall now discuss.

Inclusivity versus exclusion

Memory politics can be either exclusive or inclusive in terms of how flexible it is in allowing for divergence among the various competing memories of the past; sometimes it can combine a mixture of exclusive and inclusive elements. Exclusion here means a lack of recognition that alternative interpretations of the past exist in parallel to each other and a choice not to engage with them, that is, to exclude them from one’s own memory politics and to situate one’s own group in opposition to it. By contrast, an entanglement that is inclusive sees actors entering into a dialogue with alternative memories that are based both on alternative experiences during the violence and alternative experiences in the present. Including them does not, however, suggest that they are being altered and homogenised; rather, it contributes to the formation of a wider, denser type of commemoration.

In Sarajevo, we see inclusivity happen at sites that are not primarily ethnically defined or oriented, such as in the urban spaces where members of the public mingle. It is also expressed at several museums and memorials, but those initiatives struggle to translate into the macro-politics of peace at state and international levels; there memory work is sharply divided between the two ethnically defined entities of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Republika Srpska. Urban areas seem to lend themselves more easily to such structures than do rural areas – which since the war have often remained ethnically homogenous.

As is evident in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as others in this book, the inclusivity or exclusivity of memories affect the collective identities of the parties to the conflict, that is, how they see and understand themselves, as well as how they see and understand the other parties to the conflict (Buckley-Zistel, 2006b; Strömbom, 2017; Wielenga, 2012). It is through narratives about the past that the parties to the conflict produce and reproduce their collective identities, either in antagonism to each other or in a more reconciliatory manner – or somewhere between these two poles. The necessary social transformation, which changes the way that the parties to the conflict relate to each other, depends on how the past is referred to in memory politics (Buckley-Zistel, 2006c: 3). In an extreme way, this dynamic is captured in Vakim Volkan’s (1991: 5) concept of ‘chosen trauma’. The memory of a traumatic event constructs the respective group’s identity in opposition to the identity of the opponent who caused the trauma. It produces an us-feeling under the guise of victimhood. The same can of course be argued about victors, too, and indeed about many other actor groups in a post-conflict context.

In Rwanda, for example, the only publicly acceptable memory of the past is embedded in the official narrative advanced by the RPF government, which positions the Tutsi population as victims of Hutu violence. This suggests a very exclusive form of memory-making, one that not only fails to recognise, but also systematically marginalises, alternative perspectives. And yet, with regard to the mnemonic formation in focus here, that is, the role of internationals, there are moments in which the entanglement of memories can become somewhat more inclusive. The government’s narratives regarding how the colonial past rendered the ethnic categories of Tutsi and Hutu politically salient, regarding the failure of the international community to intervene and stop the genocide, and also the allegations made against the French as having supported génocidaires, together produce a strong us-group of all Rwandans versus a them-group of the internationals – even if this is overall dwarfed by the otherwise exclusionary forms of memory-making.

Likewise, the bifurcated mnemonic formations of nationalism in Cyprus hide the fact that neither communities are ethnically homogenous. Acknowledging collective memories of the past held by minority communities such as the Armenian community in Cyprus would reveal cracks in the hegemonic mnemonic formations of nationalism. Yet these memories are rarely represented in official, public spaces, and they tend instead to be expressed in cultural spaces outside the curated official institutions of memory and history. Such spaces, although rare and often only momentarily available, may contribute to an opening up for voices and memories not currently acknowledged within the dominant mnemonic formations.

Somewhat differently, in Cambodia there are moments of friction and exclusivity in the mnemonic formation of the dead, with government dominance about the meaning of bones marginalising perspectives that are more preoccupied with the spiritual afterlife of the dead. And yet, for the most part, memories of the violent past rest on an inclusive form of entanglement that allows individuals to remember the Khmer Rouge period from a variety of perspectives, while at the same time all Cambodians can understand themselves as having been victims of that totalitarian regime.

As a consequence, an understanding of how identities are informed by memories of the past represents an important input into the constitution of peace in any given society. Inclusive memory will not lead to the creation of mutually exclusive identities in this context, but may encourage and foster a collaborative effort at identity-building, whether this be at community or state level. Memory is therefore an important building block in the formation of collective identities and feeds into the ways in which this process impacts on efforts at building a just peace. Densely entangled memories may thus provide multiple nodes of connection, which can be used to create bridges from one strand to another. In other words, where different memories engage with each other rather than drawing a sharp line, there is the potential for mutual acknowledgement and respect.

Our case studies are revealing in the degree to which mnemonic formations allow for the inclusion of a variety of perspectives expressed by multiple actors, through the sharing of narratives in mnemonic spaces and events. Tellingly, as the strict geographical separation of the island of Cyprus already suggests, the mainstream discourses held by the two sides there are largely separate and exclusive. The more inclusive sector represented by the bi-communal movement, which does try to integrate various views and perspectives, risks being sidelined from those powerful political currents that have high stakes in consolidating a bipolar status quo. In South Africa, too, the racial segregation established by colonial rule and further institutionalised by apartheid continues to shape the memory landscape and thus the quality of the peace that we (fail to) see emerging. There are smaller spaces in which different perspectives may meet – something that some of the government-funded projects seek to promote – but they are limited in terms of their popular appeal among a population that is hungry for a just peace rather than a form of reconciliation that is essentially an empty shell, without any deep engagement with the injustices committed in the past and the present. The increasing levels of critique of the notion of the rainbow nation – which celebrates diversity yet has failed to address persistent structural inequalities – is illustrative here.

Indeed, commemorative practices always suffer from such inequalities and marginalisations. Importantly, when it comes to the question of gender, all the case studies reveal a marginalisation of women’s experiences, and gendered aspects of war are in general little noted or discussed at sites of commemoration. An exception is the museums in Sarajevo, which through their focus on objects of everyday experiences bring attention to gendered dimensions of the mundane aspects of life under siege. For example, they highlight cooking recipes shared among women who had to feed families on next to nothing. More typically, in Cyprus the narrative obliteration of certain women who were part of the historical struggles is evident on both sides of the conflict. The marginalisations of women’s experiences of conflict tend to translate into gendered marginalisations in the post-conflict realm, so the lack of attention to women’s memories, and memories of women, indicates a peace lacking in gender justice.

Inclusive memory politics is thus an important factor for the quality of peace. Through inclusivity (which, it should be noted, we do not understand as the value-free equalisation of different historical claims) various parts of a population can be reintegrated into society, providing them with a political voice, economic security and a stake in the collective identity. Inclusive peace entails a process that ‘simultaneously addresses surface issues and changes underlying social structures and relationship patterns’ (Lederach, 2003: 16). While such inclusion can entail frictions between former adversaries, a non-inclusive peace will not be sustainable in reforming inter-group relations and may even lay the groundwork for a resumption of hostilities.

Conclusions

To summarise, in this chapter we argued that in societies transitioning from violence there are diverse and conflicting interpretations of the past, and that these are reflected in mnemonic formations that can be studied through analysing sites, agents, narratives and events. The quality of peace can be determined by how memories are entangled. Our empirical analysis shows that a just peace is observed when memory is entangled in a plural, inclusive and dignified way. Conversely, a shallow peace persists when memory is entangled in a parallel or divisive way, or one that leaves the experiences of certain groups unrecognised. We will continue in the concluding chapter with reflections on what a just peace entails.