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The dreams of the future move in the temporal dimension of past life, fed by memory … out of which all wishes and hopes are deduced. Reinhart Koselleck, Terror and Dream (2004) Critical theory and collective memory 1 Over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, collective memory has become a central concept in the humanities and the social sciences. 2 Its surge in scholarly importance coincides with a number of broader social movements, most notably the student revolts of 1968, when the first generation that came of age in the
4 National history and collective memory The nationalisation of culture In 1815, following the second, definitive defeat of Napoleon, the most urgent requirement was the rebuilding of the political fabric of Europe, which had been torn asunder by the revolutionary and Bonapartist whirlwinds that had swept through it. In the fond belief that the turmoil of the previous twenty-five years had been no more than a passing madness, Tsar Alexander I and the Austrian Chancellor Metternich presided over a coalition of absolute monarchs that aimed to restore the ancien
: On such occasions, when collective memory condemns communities to feel the pain of their historical wounds and the bitterness of their historical grievances – and all communities have such wounds, whether at a given point in history they are oppressors or the oppressed – it is not the duty to remember but a duty to forget that should be honored. (Rieff, 2016b : 121) Although controversial, there is much to agree with here in Rieff's interpretation of historical memory
Between 2012 and 2017, at the Ł-section of Warsaw’s Powązki Military Cemetery, or ‘Łączka’, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance exhumed a mass grave containing the remains of post-war anti-communist resistance fighters. Being referred to as the ‘cursed soldiers’, these fighters have become key figures in post-2015 Polish memory politics. In this article we focus on the role of the volunteers at these exhumations in the production of the ‘cursed soldiers’ memory. Following the idea of community archaeology as a civil society-building practice, the observed processes of sacralisation and militarisation show how the exhumations create a community of memory that promotes the core values of the currently governing national-conservative PiS party. We found that tropes related to forensic research and typically identified with cosmopolitan memory paradigms are used within a generally nationalist and antagonistic memory framework.
During the 1980s the spectre of the Vietnam War haunted the sites of cinema and popular culture in various forms. Whereas a rich body of scholarly research exists on cinematic iterations of the Vietnam war as trauma, the discursive dynamics between memory, ideology and genre in relation to enemy image construction are somewhat underdeveloped. This article utilises genre studies, conflict studies and trauma theory in analysing how the representations of film villains interact with the construction of cultural trauma and national identity. Considering the American action thriller to be an important site for processes of commemoration and memorialisation, the discursive construction and formal articulation of national trauma are theorised within the genre. Additionally, a thematic and textual analysis was conducted of a sample of forty American action thriller films. The analysis illustrates how the genre operates through a structure of violent traumatisation and heroic vindication, offering a logic built on the necessity and legitimacy of revenge against a series of enemy-others.
This article considers how the reburial and commemoration of the human remains of the Republican defeated during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) is affected by the social, scientific and political context in which the exhumations occur. Focusing on a particular case in the southwestern region of Extremadura, it considers how civil society groups administer reburial acts when a positive identification through DNA typing cannot be attained. In so doing, the article examines how disparate desires and memories come together in collective reburial of partially individuated human remains.
The development of the European Union as a community-based project of integration with decision-making powers outside the constitutional architecture of the nation-state is the most significant innovation in twentieth-century political organisation. It raises fundamental questions about our understanding of the state, sovereignty, citizenship, democracy, and the relationship between political power and economic forces. Despite its achievements, events at the start of the twenty-first century – including the political, economic, and financial crisis of the Eurozone, as well as Brexit and the rise of populism – pose an existential threat to the EU.
Memory and the future of Europe addresses the crisis of the EU by treating integration as a response to the rupture created by the continent’s experience of total war. It traces Europe’s existing pathologies to the project’s loss of its moral foundations rooted in collective memories of total war. As the generations with personal memories of the two world wars pass away, economic gain has become the EU’s sole raison d’être. If it is to survive its future challenges, the EU will have to create a new historical imaginary that relies not only on the lessons of the past, but also builds on Europe’s ability to protect its citizens by serving as a counterweight against the forces of globalisation. By framing its argument through the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, Memory and the future of Europe will attract readers interested in political and social philosophy, collective memory studies, European studies, international relations, and contemporary politics.
This book is an edited collection that examines various aspects of the role and nature of collective memory and remembrance of the conflict in Northern Ireland. It sets out to examine diverse constructions, articulations and re-articulations of (often competing) collective memories and their relevance for the process of identity formation, political struggles, ‘culture wars’, the formation of politics and debates on dealing with the past in Northern Ireland today. It also makes a wider contribution to debates on the conceptualisation of social memory, its impact on social change and policy-making in Northern Ireland and other transitional societies. It further considers issues surrounding methodological approaches to the study of collective memory. The book focuses on how, what and why people recall particular events and the impact this has on the present and the future. Memory is active and continually fashioned. How these memories are constructed and reconstructed, interpreted and reinterpreted to become part of now acts as a determinant for what is ahead. Unlike historical analysis memory offers a way to discuss the future and, in turn, how we might live better.
I reflect on the place of If Beale Street Could Talk in the corpus of Baldwin’s writings, and its relationship to Barry Jenkins’s movie released at the beginning of 2019. I consider also what the arrival of the movie can tell us about how Baldwin is located in contemporary collective memories.
Mercenaries are fighters who operate under special conditions. Their presence, as shadow combatants, often tends to exacerbate the violence of their enemies. That’s why the analysis focuses on the singularity of the relationship to death and ‘procedures’ concerning the corpses of their fallen comrades. As a fighter identified and engaged in landlocked areas, the mercenary’s corpse is treated according to material constraints pertaining in the 1960s. After violence on their body, and evolution towards the secret war, mercenaries favour the repatriation of the body or its disappearance. These new, painful conditions for comrades and families give birth to a collective memory fostered by commemorations.