Memory Studies current issue

Looking beyond memory studies: Comparisons and integrations

Sutton, J. — 2009-09-01

Mapping and excavating spectral traces in post-apartheid Cape Town

Jonker, J., Till, K. E. — 2009-09-01

This article explores how spectral traces at places marked by acts of violence and injustice allow residents to come into contact with past and future inhabitants of the postcolonial city. We examine controversies surrounding Prestwich Place, Cape Town, an informal burial ground for colonial underclasses that was unearthed when construction began for an upscale ‘New York-style’ apartment and office complex. The human remains that emerged embodied a past that exceeded national narrations of public memory and presented this past as an object of concern for private capital and activists. Rather than offer a biography of the site, we develop two concepts, memorial cartographies and haunted archaeologies, that represent terrains not visible on Cartesian mappings. We understand these narrative strategies as creative acts that honour those who have gone before; both practices encourage us to listen as witnesses to geographies of loss that continue to structure contemporary urbanisms.

Redrawing cognitive maps of conflict: Lost spaces and forgetting in the centre of Belfast

Switzer, C., Mcdowell, S. — 2009-09-01

Northern Ireland is currently emerging from three decades of conflict. Belfast, its largest city, experienced some of the worst levels of violence. During these ‘Troubles’ it became a highly segregated city in which its citizens understandings of the urban fabric were mediated through their ethno-religious backgrounds. Yet as the region moves into a post-conflict situation, Belfast has been undergoing rapid physical change. One result of this has been an effort to remove evidence of the conflict from the ‘new’ city centre, despite more than 70 conflict-related deaths having occurred there. The article uses the example of Belfast city centre to explore: (1) how ‘normalization’ strategies employed after conflict seek to reshape cognitive understandings of violent spaces through reconstruction; and (2) how individual memory retains the potential to disrupt these efforts. We argue that the highly regimented spatial patterns of Troubles commemoration in Belfast may influence how the city deals with the challenges of its violent past.

The burden of memory: Victims, storytelling and resistance in Northern Ireland

Hackett, C., Rolston, B. — 2009-09-01

The article examines the potential and limitations of storytelling for victims of political violence. It rejects the view that storytelling is unproblematic, a way for victims to ‘get things off their chest’. It examines a wide range of literature on storytelling and testimony, from the Holocaust through to contemporary transitional societies. In particular, attention is focused on the experience of victims and survivors telling their stories in formal settings such as truth commissions and trials in South Africa and the former Yugoslavia, as well as at unofficial storytelling processes in Northern Ireland. The authors look at the potential of storytelling as resistance to injustice and conclude that while unofficial processes of storytelling present opportunities for collective solidarity, the stories often go unacknowledged by the wider society. Conversely, they also conclude that, while official mechanisms of truth recovery can ensure wide legitimacy for the stories of victims, this is often at the cost of marginalizing the storyteller and the story.

Spinning the past: Russian and Georgian accounts of the war of August 2008

Wertsch, J. V., Karumidze, Z. — 2009-09-01

Efforts by national media and political leaders to ‘spin’, or shape the public interpretation of events, are examined from the perspective of collective memory. It is argued that top-down analyses of such efforts overlook essential aspects of how shared national narratives shape collective interpretation and memory. Political leaders’ efforts to manage public discourse about important events provide insight into the existence and structure of ‘deep memory’ and the ‘narrative template’ that mediates it for a mnemonic community. Using the Russian-Georgian war of August 2008 as an illustration, two different national narrative templates are outlined and used to account for radically different views of the war and its causes.

Lampiao, Luiz and Padim Cico: Three icons of the Brazilian Northeast

Greenfield, G. — 2009-09-01

This article focuses on the collective memory within the Brazilian Northeast of three iconic figures, a renowned bandit, a miracle-working priest and a famous singer, identifying and analyzing the attributes that account for their status as regional heroes. It suggests that these attributes form a counter-narrative that casts them as champions of the powerless and victims of injustice, themes that resonate among and reflect the lived experience of the northeast’s masses. This element of resistance later served as a regional counter-narrative to a dominant national history that derogated the Northeast.

Book Review: Memory and Material Culture: Andrew Jones Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 272 pp. US$25.99. ISBN 978--0521545518

Donald, M. — 2009-09-01

Book Review: Jewish Identity in Early Modern Germany: Memory, Power and Community: Dean Phillip Bell Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007. 200pp. 55. ISBN 075465897X

Carlebach, E. — 2009-09-01