Pub Date : 2023-05-25DOI: 10.1177/17506980231176041
Tracy Adams
This research develops a new framework through which to understand vernacular de-commemoration, as one aspect of bottom-up reckoning with the past through material commemoration. The productivity of breaking with the past distances us away from monumentality and toward action. Vernacular de-commemoration is part of a broad bottom-up process that goes beyond the mere withdrawal of uncomfortable reminders of the past from the public space, or even the recontextualization of public markers. Analyzing and comparing two case studies in the United States, and the United Kingdom, this research examines how vernacular de-commemoration is performed. In some instances, following the destruction of the now-contested memory site, new and alternative sites are installed (i.e. “re-memorialization”); other times, there may be a considerable delay, and sometimes nothing new is installed. Seen in this way, re-memorialization is always preceded by de-commemoration, and, in turn, de-commemoration is not always the final word in the constant negotiation about the meaning of the past in the present.
{"title":"Vernacular de-commemoration: How collectives reckon with the past in the present","authors":"Tracy Adams","doi":"10.1177/17506980231176041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231176041","url":null,"abstract":"This research develops a new framework through which to understand vernacular de-commemoration, as one aspect of bottom-up reckoning with the past through material commemoration. The productivity of breaking with the past distances us away from monumentality and toward action. Vernacular de-commemoration is part of a broad bottom-up process that goes beyond the mere withdrawal of uncomfortable reminders of the past from the public space, or even the recontextualization of public markers. Analyzing and comparing two case studies in the United States, and the United Kingdom, this research examines how vernacular de-commemoration is performed. In some instances, following the destruction of the now-contested memory site, new and alternative sites are installed (i.e. “re-memorialization”); other times, there may be a considerable delay, and sometimes nothing new is installed. Seen in this way, re-memorialization is always preceded by de-commemoration, and, in turn, de-commemoration is not always the final word in the constant negotiation about the meaning of the past in the present.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47609623","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-25DOI: 10.1177/17506980231176039
V. Nourkova, A. Gofman
While it is commonly accepted that forgetting may serve to accomplish worthwhile goals, relevant social technologies require detailed analysis. We examined the literature on the social practices of the collective inhibition of unwanted memories. Complimenting the term ‘sites of memory’ introduced by Nora, we applied the term ‘sites of oblivion’ to the areas intentionally designed to protect visitors from specific unwanted memories associated with the disturbing affect. This study proposed a preliminary classification of the ‘sites of oblivion’. This analysis identified four qualitatively distinct social politics aimed at evoking the transformation of existing sites of memory into memory-inhibiting areas. Each of these politics employs a specific psychological mechanism of memory inhibition and varies with concrete strategies to achieve the goal of not remembering. These basic high-level forgetting politics include: exploiting the natural fragility of human activity traces or destroying memorial sites, including various forms of ignoring (the ‘no traces’ politic); retracting attention from memory triggers to other intense stimuli (the ‘switching memory to’ politic); recasting ‘sites of memory’ into ‘sites of oblivion’ through functional replacement or reconceptualisation, including renaming (the ‘recasting’ politic); and the politic of ‘hyper-evocation’, that is, decreasing the probability of recall outside of memorial sites by rising the threshold of mnemonic response to those reminders that are weaker than hyper-reminders. The psychological mechanisms underlying the inhibitory mnemonic effect of ‘sites of oblivion’ are as follows: Pavlovian extinction, attention deployment, Pavlovian re-conditioning and Pavlovian discrimination, respectively.
{"title":"The ‘sites of oblivion’: How not to remember in a world of reminders","authors":"V. Nourkova, A. Gofman","doi":"10.1177/17506980231176039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231176039","url":null,"abstract":"While it is commonly accepted that forgetting may serve to accomplish worthwhile goals, relevant social technologies require detailed analysis. We examined the literature on the social practices of the collective inhibition of unwanted memories. Complimenting the term ‘sites of memory’ introduced by Nora, we applied the term ‘sites of oblivion’ to the areas intentionally designed to protect visitors from specific unwanted memories associated with the disturbing affect. This study proposed a preliminary classification of the ‘sites of oblivion’. This analysis identified four qualitatively distinct social politics aimed at evoking the transformation of existing sites of memory into memory-inhibiting areas. Each of these politics employs a specific psychological mechanism of memory inhibition and varies with concrete strategies to achieve the goal of not remembering. These basic high-level forgetting politics include: exploiting the natural fragility of human activity traces or destroying memorial sites, including various forms of ignoring (the ‘no traces’ politic); retracting attention from memory triggers to other intense stimuli (the ‘switching memory to’ politic); recasting ‘sites of memory’ into ‘sites of oblivion’ through functional replacement or reconceptualisation, including renaming (the ‘recasting’ politic); and the politic of ‘hyper-evocation’, that is, decreasing the probability of recall outside of memorial sites by rising the threshold of mnemonic response to those reminders that are weaker than hyper-reminders. The psychological mechanisms underlying the inhibitory mnemonic effect of ‘sites of oblivion’ are as follows: Pavlovian extinction, attention deployment, Pavlovian re-conditioning and Pavlovian discrimination, respectively.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45669560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-19DOI: 10.1177/17506980231170348
H. Kaur
British colonization in India had devastating social, psychological, and political consequences for Sikhs in nineteenth-century Punjab. Still, much of the diasporic community remains nostalgic for this era of the Sikh “martial race”—a British-crafted racial category through which Sikhs were constructed as biologically and culturally suited for imperial service and consequently received privileged status within the colonial hierarchy. Today, this nostalgia emerges as a commemorative mechanism in US Sikh advocacy projects to incorporate the Sikh turban and unshorn hair into US military and police uniform. Through an analysis of community narratives around publicized Sikh deaths, this article explores the impact of martial race commemoration on Sikh subjectivity formation. Delineating when and how private grief is transformed into public remembrance, I argue such commemorative frameworks in US Sikh advocacy projects inform which Sikh bodies are worthy of collective mourning by suturing Sikh bodies’ value to their service to US imperialism.
{"title":"Legacies of a martial race: Sikh investment and implication in the US police state","authors":"H. Kaur","doi":"10.1177/17506980231170348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231170348","url":null,"abstract":"British colonization in India had devastating social, psychological, and political consequences for Sikhs in nineteenth-century Punjab. Still, much of the diasporic community remains nostalgic for this era of the Sikh “martial race”—a British-crafted racial category through which Sikhs were constructed as biologically and culturally suited for imperial service and consequently received privileged status within the colonial hierarchy. Today, this nostalgia emerges as a commemorative mechanism in US Sikh advocacy projects to incorporate the Sikh turban and unshorn hair into US military and police uniform. Through an analysis of community narratives around publicized Sikh deaths, this article explores the impact of martial race commemoration on Sikh subjectivity formation. Delineating when and how private grief is transformed into public remembrance, I argue such commemorative frameworks in US Sikh advocacy projects inform which Sikh bodies are worthy of collective mourning by suturing Sikh bodies’ value to their service to US imperialism.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44035523","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-18DOI: 10.1177/17506980231170349
S. Giergiel, Katarzyna Taczyńska
This article demonstrates the post-World War II conflict of memory in Serbia, as manifested in the transformation of urban space in the post-war decades. The authors focus foremost on Zemun, a district of Belgrade which, between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, was home to a significant German population. The term ‘memoryscape’ (Sławomir Kapralski) is used to discuss changes in the urban fabric. Post-war manipulations of space, based on the ideological foundation of brotherhood and unity, and treating members of the German nation as collectively responsible for the war, resulted in the erasure of all traces of German presence in Zemun. The article describes the Zemun conflict of memory using the example of a German cemetery that was liquidated by the authorities after World War II. In the 1950s, a hospital was erected on the site of the former necropolis, and the area functions nowadays as a difficult-to-access ‘non-site of memory’ (Roma Sendyka). The tombstones from the destroyed cemetery were used to build the stairs leading to Kalwarija Park. For decades, this fact was treated as an urban legend, but its authenticity was confirmed when fragments of grave inscriptions were discovered on the slabs used in the stairs during renovation. Kalwarija Park itself constitutes a remnant of the German Catholic heritage of this area, now dominated by Orthodox residents.
{"title":"A non-existent cemetery: The memory of Germans in today’s Belgrade","authors":"S. Giergiel, Katarzyna Taczyńska","doi":"10.1177/17506980231170349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231170349","url":null,"abstract":"This article demonstrates the post-World War II conflict of memory in Serbia, as manifested in the transformation of urban space in the post-war decades. The authors focus foremost on Zemun, a district of Belgrade which, between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, was home to a significant German population. The term ‘memoryscape’ (Sławomir Kapralski) is used to discuss changes in the urban fabric. Post-war manipulations of space, based on the ideological foundation of brotherhood and unity, and treating members of the German nation as collectively responsible for the war, resulted in the erasure of all traces of German presence in Zemun. The article describes the Zemun conflict of memory using the example of a German cemetery that was liquidated by the authorities after World War II. In the 1950s, a hospital was erected on the site of the former necropolis, and the area functions nowadays as a difficult-to-access ‘non-site of memory’ (Roma Sendyka). The tombstones from the destroyed cemetery were used to build the stairs leading to Kalwarija Park. For decades, this fact was treated as an urban legend, but its authenticity was confirmed when fragments of grave inscriptions were discovered on the slabs used in the stairs during renovation. Kalwarija Park itself constitutes a remnant of the German Catholic heritage of this area, now dominated by Orthodox residents.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48258122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-09DOI: 10.1177/17506980231170352
Esteban Córdoba-Arroyo
In recent decades, the field of memory studies has shown increasing interest in the reconstruction of the past through the lens of cinema. The ongoing “war for memory” or “history problem,” as it is otherwise known, in East Asia vis-à-vis the memory of World War II provides plentiful opportunities for exploration of the role films play in shaping collective remembering. This study was designed to answer the question of how World War II has been remembered in Japanese cinema by detecting patterns and fluctuations of memory in a sample of 59 movies released between 1980 and 2020. The results suggest that World War II has most frequently been depicted as a natural disaster (beginning in 1942) that evolved into a conflict between Japan and the United States alone—other Asian countries having been cast as mere spectators. Finally, after a heroic fight to the death in which only the Japanese suffered, the disaster ended in 1945 as mysteriously as it began.
{"title":"From disenchantment to glory: Fluctuations in the memory of World War II in Japanese Cinema (1980–2020)","authors":"Esteban Córdoba-Arroyo","doi":"10.1177/17506980231170352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231170352","url":null,"abstract":"In recent decades, the field of memory studies has shown increasing interest in the reconstruction of the past through the lens of cinema. The ongoing “war for memory” or “history problem,” as it is otherwise known, in East Asia vis-à-vis the memory of World War II provides plentiful opportunities for exploration of the role films play in shaping collective remembering. This study was designed to answer the question of how World War II has been remembered in Japanese cinema by detecting patterns and fluctuations of memory in a sample of 59 movies released between 1980 and 2020. The results suggest that World War II has most frequently been depicted as a natural disaster (beginning in 1942) that evolved into a conflict between Japan and the United States alone—other Asian countries having been cast as mere spectators. Finally, after a heroic fight to the death in which only the Japanese suffered, the disaster ended in 1945 as mysteriously as it began.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41694666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-06DOI: 10.1177/17506980231170354
Mira Philips, J. Savelsberg
Conflictual processes unfolding in legal and political social fields as well as commemorative events differentially shape social memories, including memories about genocides, in line with their rules of the game and institutional logics. News media subsequently process mnemonic struggles—carried out in law, politics, and commemorations—submitting them to the rules and norms of journalism before their messages reach the public. This article explores these processes for struggles pertaining to memories of the Armenian genocide. It is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 259 English language newspaper articles published in the United States that report about a court case, a legislative process, and commemorative events. Our analysis identifies distinct patterns of representations. Differences are in line with the institutional logics of the legal and political fields and the epistemic potential of commemorative rituals, even as they interact with the logic of the journalistic field that mediates those accounts.
{"title":"Social fields, journalism, and collective memory: Reporting on the Armenian genocide in legal, political, and commemorative field events","authors":"Mira Philips, J. Savelsberg","doi":"10.1177/17506980231170354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231170354","url":null,"abstract":"Conflictual processes unfolding in legal and political social fields as well as commemorative events differentially shape social memories, including memories about genocides, in line with their rules of the game and institutional logics. News media subsequently process mnemonic struggles—carried out in law, politics, and commemorations—submitting them to the rules and norms of journalism before their messages reach the public. This article explores these processes for struggles pertaining to memories of the Armenian genocide. It is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 259 English language newspaper articles published in the United States that report about a court case, a legislative process, and commemorative events. Our analysis identifies distinct patterns of representations. Differences are in line with the institutional logics of the legal and political fields and the epistemic potential of commemorative rituals, even as they interact with the logic of the journalistic field that mediates those accounts.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49415517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-02DOI: 10.1177/17506980231170355
Valerie Fryer-Davis
Many scholars have recently observed how the Rwandan State, led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, relies on public memory after the 1994 Rwandan Genocide to categorize individuals based on gender and ethnicity. But the scholarship predominately constructs individual narratives in opposition to the State narrative, either supporting or resisting it. This article approaches the political memorialization in Rwanda through literature in order to explore how individuals simultaneously support and renegotiate State narrative tropes by fictionalizing a diverse set of emotions. Through a case study of Scholastique Mukasonga’s novels and memoires, the article examines how literary form and language allow an individual writer to dialogically situate their own memories within prescriptive State and international narratives, allowing readers to simultaneously relate to a multitude of contradictory narratives through their attendant emotions. The article reveals that the degree to which a writer can nuance these narratives from above depends on the writer’s identity, their geographical location, the languages they write in, literary form, and which aspects of the State narrative they choose to critique. The study concludes that literature might be crucial to encourage deeper reconciliation in Rwanda.
{"title":"Memory dialogics: Scholastique Mukasonga’s literary renegotiation of Rwandan Genocide narratives","authors":"Valerie Fryer-Davis","doi":"10.1177/17506980231170355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231170355","url":null,"abstract":"Many scholars have recently observed how the Rwandan State, led by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, relies on public memory after the 1994 Rwandan Genocide to categorize individuals based on gender and ethnicity. But the scholarship predominately constructs individual narratives in opposition to the State narrative, either supporting or resisting it. This article approaches the political memorialization in Rwanda through literature in order to explore how individuals simultaneously support and renegotiate State narrative tropes by fictionalizing a diverse set of emotions. Through a case study of Scholastique Mukasonga’s novels and memoires, the article examines how literary form and language allow an individual writer to dialogically situate their own memories within prescriptive State and international narratives, allowing readers to simultaneously relate to a multitude of contradictory narratives through their attendant emotions. The article reveals that the degree to which a writer can nuance these narratives from above depends on the writer’s identity, their geographical location, the languages they write in, literary form, and which aspects of the State narrative they choose to critique. The study concludes that literature might be crucial to encourage deeper reconciliation in Rwanda.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41745970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-02DOI: 10.1177/17506980231170351
Pascal Moliner, I. Bovina
This research presents three archival studies conducted on three different databases, on the location of memorials. Study 1 compares French monuments dedicated to the Wars of 1870–1871 (defeat) and 1914–1918 (victory). We note a proportionally greater presence in public spaces of monuments dedicated to the 1914–1918 War. Study 2 concerns the memorials to political repression in the Russian Federation, erected before and after 1991 (date of promulgation of a victim rehabilitation law). Results show an increase of presence of monuments in the public space starting from 1991. Study 3 concerns the location of monuments dedicated to the Second World War in the Russian Federation. No significant variation in the locations of these monuments is observed between 1951 and 2010. The results of these studies suggest that the location of monuments could be a relevant indicator to assess the way a society views a commemorated event at a given moment.
{"title":"Public spaces and circumscribed spaces of the collective memory: A research on the location of commemorative monuments","authors":"Pascal Moliner, I. Bovina","doi":"10.1177/17506980231170351","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231170351","url":null,"abstract":"This research presents three archival studies conducted on three different databases, on the location of memorials. Study 1 compares French monuments dedicated to the Wars of 1870–1871 (defeat) and 1914–1918 (victory). We note a proportionally greater presence in public spaces of monuments dedicated to the 1914–1918 War. Study 2 concerns the memorials to political repression in the Russian Federation, erected before and after 1991 (date of promulgation of a victim rehabilitation law). Results show an increase of presence of monuments in the public space starting from 1991. Study 3 concerns the location of monuments dedicated to the Second World War in the Russian Federation. No significant variation in the locations of these monuments is observed between 1951 and 2010. The results of these studies suggest that the location of monuments could be a relevant indicator to assess the way a society views a commemorated event at a given moment.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43899563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-02DOI: 10.1177/17506980231170350
Claire Taylor
This article analyses the memory practices of Corporación Zoscua, a small, grassroots activist group in Colombia representing victims of the armed conflict within the region of Boyacá. After an initial grounding within the broader context of transitional justice and historical memory debates within Colombia, the article focuses on how Zoscua’s practices constitute a form of tactical, vernacular memory-making from below that involves temporary alliances and negotiations in order to make interventions into the mnemonic spaces of the city. Based on a mixed-methods approach that includes semi-structured interviews with participants, as well as textual and paratextual analysis, the article provides an analysis of the conception and construction of their memory wall in the city of Tunja. It highlights first how the choice of location of the wall constitutes a tactical take-over of public space, with grassroots memory being inserted into a conventionally top-down locale that conveys official, state-sponsored national values. Second, the article considers the practices and negotiations involved in designing and building the wall, and, subsequently, focuses on the content of the wall, with particular attention to the collective and collaborative nature of the artwork that, through its imagery, composition and focus on emotions, and contests the high-art values normally associated with monumental practices. The article concludes by suggesting that the distinction between top-down and bottom-up memory initiatives is complicated when examining the mnemonic practices of grassroots memory actors, who make tactical use of alliances to further their aims. As the analysis in this article reveals, bottom-up strategies undertaken by community groups and top-down initiatives promoted by authorities often become entangled or coalesce, evidenced both in the practices and negotiations involved in creating grassroots memorials, and in the resulting materiality of the memorial wall under discussion.
{"title":"Memory practices ‘from below’: Mnemonic solidarity, intimacy and counter-monuments in the practices of Zoscua, Colombia","authors":"Claire Taylor","doi":"10.1177/17506980231170350","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231170350","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the memory practices of Corporación Zoscua, a small, grassroots activist group in Colombia representing victims of the armed conflict within the region of Boyacá. After an initial grounding within the broader context of transitional justice and historical memory debates within Colombia, the article focuses on how Zoscua’s practices constitute a form of tactical, vernacular memory-making from below that involves temporary alliances and negotiations in order to make interventions into the mnemonic spaces of the city. Based on a mixed-methods approach that includes semi-structured interviews with participants, as well as textual and paratextual analysis, the article provides an analysis of the conception and construction of their memory wall in the city of Tunja. It highlights first how the choice of location of the wall constitutes a tactical take-over of public space, with grassroots memory being inserted into a conventionally top-down locale that conveys official, state-sponsored national values. Second, the article considers the practices and negotiations involved in designing and building the wall, and, subsequently, focuses on the content of the wall, with particular attention to the collective and collaborative nature of the artwork that, through its imagery, composition and focus on emotions, and contests the high-art values normally associated with monumental practices. The article concludes by suggesting that the distinction between top-down and bottom-up memory initiatives is complicated when examining the mnemonic practices of grassroots memory actors, who make tactical use of alliances to further their aims. As the analysis in this article reveals, bottom-up strategies undertaken by community groups and top-down initiatives promoted by authorities often become entangled or coalesce, evidenced both in the practices and negotiations involved in creating grassroots memorials, and in the resulting materiality of the memorial wall under discussion.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47836457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-05-02DOI: 10.1177/17506980231170353
Heather Burke, Lynley A. Wallis, Nicholas Hadnutt, I. Davidson, Galiina Ellwood, Lance Sullivan
The colonial history of nineteenth-century Queensland was arguably dominated by the actions of the Native Mounted Police, Australia’s most punitive native policing force. The centrality of the Native Mounted Police to the sustained economic success of Queensland for over half a century, and their widespread, devastating effects on Aboriginal societies across the colony, have left a complex legacy. For non-Indigenous Queenslanders, a process of obscuring the Native Mounted Police began perhaps as soon as a detachment was removed from an area, reflected today in the minimisation of the Native Mounted Police in official histories and their omission from non-Indigenous heritage lists. In contrast, the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Database preserves several elements of frontier conflict and Native Mounted Police presence, giving rise to parallel state-level narratives, neither of which map directly onto local and regional memory. This highlights potential issues for formal processes of truth-telling relating to frontier conflict that have recently been initiated by the Queensland and Federal Governments. Of particular concern is the form that such a process might adopt. Drawing on a 4-year project to document the workings of the Queensland Native Mounted Police through archival, archaeological and oral historical sources, we suggest that this conflicted and conflictual heritage can best be bridged through empathetic truth-telling, using Rothberg’s notion of the implicated subject to consider contemporary contexts of responsibility and connect present-day Queenslanders with this difficult, divisive and disruptive past.
{"title":"The difficult, divisive and disruptive heritage of the Queensland Native Mounted Police","authors":"Heather Burke, Lynley A. Wallis, Nicholas Hadnutt, I. Davidson, Galiina Ellwood, Lance Sullivan","doi":"10.1177/17506980231170353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231170353","url":null,"abstract":"The colonial history of nineteenth-century Queensland was arguably dominated by the actions of the Native Mounted Police, Australia’s most punitive native policing force. The centrality of the Native Mounted Police to the sustained economic success of Queensland for over half a century, and their widespread, devastating effects on Aboriginal societies across the colony, have left a complex legacy. For non-Indigenous Queenslanders, a process of obscuring the Native Mounted Police began perhaps as soon as a detachment was removed from an area, reflected today in the minimisation of the Native Mounted Police in official histories and their omission from non-Indigenous heritage lists. In contrast, the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Database preserves several elements of frontier conflict and Native Mounted Police presence, giving rise to parallel state-level narratives, neither of which map directly onto local and regional memory. This highlights potential issues for formal processes of truth-telling relating to frontier conflict that have recently been initiated by the Queensland and Federal Governments. Of particular concern is the form that such a process might adopt. Drawing on a 4-year project to document the workings of the Queensland Native Mounted Police through archival, archaeological and oral historical sources, we suggest that this conflicted and conflictual heritage can best be bridged through empathetic truth-telling, using Rothberg’s notion of the implicated subject to consider contemporary contexts of responsibility and connect present-day Queenslanders with this difficult, divisive and disruptive past.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48682075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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