Memory StudiesPub Date : 2023-06-30DOI: 10.1177/17506980231184560
Fannie Valois-Nadeau
{"title":"A creativity-focused anniversary: Montreal’s 375th anniversary celebrations at the heart of a cultural economy of the past","authors":"Fannie Valois-Nadeau","doi":"10.1177/17506980231184560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231184560","url":null,"abstract":"In 2017, the City of Montreal commemorated its 375th anniversary. Because it celebrated the city’s “creative” spirit more than its past, this 375th anniversary stands as an opportunity to explore reconfigurations of public anniversaries, which often take the shape of cultural mega-events. This article presents the different logics behind these celebrations, largely shaped by the communications and entertainment industries, and examines how they partake in developing of a cultural economy that benefits from the past. The purpose is thus not only to identify the presence of a commercial relationship but to explore how celebrations develop in light of the paradigm of creativity, which is currently a pillar of cities’ economic development policies. This article draws on interviews with people involved in the event organization, individuals sidelined by the process, and media and archives analysis.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46879332","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}
Memory StudiesPub Date : 2023-06-05DOI: 10.1177/17506980231176040
Zoltán Kékesi, Máté Zombory
{"title":"Beyond multidirectional memory: Opening pathways to politics and solidarity","authors":"Zoltán Kékesi, Máté Zombory","doi":"10.1177/17506980231176040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231176040","url":null,"abstract":"Our article responds to the ongoing crisis of memory politics that has brought the problem of de-politicization of memory studies scholarship to the forefront. This reflexivity is manifested in the demand for theories that explicitly address the problems of politics and solidarity. A representative theory in this regard is Michael Rothberg’s multidirectional memory that examines “the Holocaust in the age of decolonization” and offers a non-exclusive model of public remembering and reconciliation. While we acknowledge Rothberg’s attempt to overcome the “competition paradigm” of contemporary memory, we argue that the model of multidirectional memory as a politico-ethical framework of solidarity ultimately fails because of its underlying social ontology and presentist-ahistorical method of interpretation. We give a critical analysis of his model while applying the same historical and empirical focus. By doing so, we show that the direct theoretical link between memory and solidarity is the outcome of a de-politicization of the historical record. Ultimately, we make a case for Leftist-antifascist internationalism, a paradigm he misidentified as multidirectional Holocaust memory.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49584989","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}
{"title":"Narrating political participation: How do lifetime activists remember their political experiences?","authors":"Rodrigo Serrat, Feliciano Villar, Karima Chacur-Kiss","doi":"10.1177/17506980231176042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231176042","url":null,"abstract":"Narrative approaches have gained popularity as a way to understand the construction and development of political identities over a person’s life span. However, little is known about how lifetime activists remember and make sense of different types of political experiences. To overcome this gap, this study aims to explore thematic and structural features of the narratives of lifetime activists about political experiences (O1), as well as examining differences in these features according to the type of experience described and the life stage at which the event narrated occurred (O2). Forty political activists aged 65 years or older were invited to explain a positive event, a negative event and a turning point in their political participation. The motivational themes, affective themes, themes of integrative meaning and structural elements of the narratives were analysed. Results show significant variations in these narrative features according to the type of political experience described and the life stage at which the event narrated occurred. Our study adds to the previous literature on political identities showing that, far from being monolithic, lifelong activists’ narratives about political experiences show significant variations according to these two features. Overall, the structural variations that we found in lifetime activists’ narratives about political experiences largely mirrored previous literature on general autobiographical narratives. This means that, regardless of whether life stories are general or domain-specific, their structural characteristics and the variations they show by life stage and type of narrated events are largely similar.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45436432","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}
Memory StudiesPub Date : 2023-06-02DOI: 10.1177/17506980231176038
Kristal Bivona
{"title":"Mnemonic interventions: Memory and transitional justice at a Uruguayan prison-mall","authors":"Kristal Bivona","doi":"10.1177/17506980231176038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231176038","url":null,"abstract":"In 1986, Uruguay’s maximum security Punta Carretas Prison closed following a riot in the context of Uruguay’s transition from authoritarian civic-military dictatorship (1973-1985) to constitutional democracy. In 1994, the building reopened as Punta Carretas Shopping, one of Uruguay’s most luxurious shopping malls. In this article, I show how two site-specific installations at the prison-mall—the temporary photography exhibition, Brava: Memoria fotográfica de Punta de las Carretas (2019) and the permanent memorial installation, Memorial Ex Penal de Punta Carretas (2020)—put forth distinct versions of the past to shape the memory of Punta Carretas. I call these mnemonic interventions because they interrupt the shopping trip and divert attention away from leisure and consumption toward remembrance, provoking the shopper to engage with the space of the former prison and its history. I demonstrate how different stakeholders struggle over memory in Uruguay in a context in which impunity undermines efforts toward truth and justice. Mnemonic interventions at Punta Carretas Shopping reveal the ongoing struggle over how the past should be remembered in Uruguay decades after the transition to democracy, showing the impact of recent transitional justice policies to demarcate sites of memory and resistance.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44028245","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}
Memory StudiesPub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/17506980231162321
James E Young
{"title":"Remembering the victims of COVID-19: From personal to civic to reparative memory.","authors":"James E Young","doi":"10.1177/17506980231162321","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231162321","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic had exploded in New York City, across the country, and around the world. At its height, thousands of people were dying every day in quarantined intensive care units and Covid wards, their families forbidden from attending their loved ones' last living moments, even to say good-bye. The victims were dying in isolation, consigned to make-shift morgues, and buried or cremated-without ceremony, without grieving loved ones present. To commemorate the victims of Covid communally in real time would also be to turn the mourners themselves into new Covid victims. Commemorative and collective grieving processes would have to be deferred until it was safe to gather together again. But memory deferred is also memory transformed with new and devastating meaning. In this short reflection on how the meanings engendered by memory of those lost to Covid-19 morph over time, I explore the differences between the memory of personal loss, civic memory, and reparative memory.</p>","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":"16 3","pages":"646-650"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10225787/pdf/10.1177_17506980231162321.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9578378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Memory StudiesPub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/17506980231162325
Natasha Zaretsky
{"title":"Near and far: Tracing memory and reframing presence in pandemic-era Argentina.","authors":"Natasha Zaretsky","doi":"10.1177/17506980231162325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231162325","url":null,"abstract":"Memory has been a central foundation of democracy and civil society in Argentina since the first years of the military dictatorship (1976–1983) when groups occupied public spaces to protest systematic disappearances and state repression that left 30,000 victims. It has taken decades to achieve some form of justice for state terror and repression, much of that shaped by the culture of memory and accountability that hinged on embodied forms of public protest. But what happens to cultural memory when a pandemic precludes traditional forms of gathering? And what does this reveal about how Argentines renegotiate the significance of shared remembering and presence? Building on ethnographic fieldwork in Buenos Aires, this visual essay examines the significance of shared embodied practices of remembering through the lens of pandemic restrictions that invite new insights into the relationship between presence and political belonging. Rather than simply reacting to specific instances of injustice, this essay argues for the significance of cultural memory practices as fundamentally constitutive of democratic culture and civil society in Argentina as it faces new challenges.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":"16 3","pages":"576-592"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10225789/pdf/10.1177_17506980231162325.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9578375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Memory StudiesPub Date : 2023-05-26DOI: 10.1177/17506980231162328
Emilia Yang
{"title":"Collectivizing justice: Participatory witnessing, sense memory, and emotional communities","authors":"Emilia Yang","doi":"10.1177/17506980231162328","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231162328","url":null,"abstract":"This article describes and analyzes the practices made possible by the temporary exhibition of AMA y No Olvida, Museum of Memory Against Impunity, a community and transmedia museum project in Nicaragua, in tandem with the embodied performances of the families of the victims of state violence and visitors during repression and a state of exception. I theorize how the witnessing performed by the audience surpasses the framework of memory museums for human rights with a participatory framework that uses activist and performative expressions. Participatory witnessing is made possible by expanding the exhibition into a performative and political space in which society at large can participate and witness the victims’ struggle for justice through sharing intimate experiences of embodied pain and grief and demands for justice and reparations. Such witnessing then creates an emotional community with solidarity and a moral and political commitment that recognizes and centers the victims as active survivors, activists, and protagonists.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":"16 1","pages":"621 - 635"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48414491","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}
Memory StudiesPub Date : 2023-05-26DOI: 10.1177/17506980231162334
Elena Lesley
{"title":"Therapeutic improvisation in Cambodia: Moderated exposure, the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crimes, and the quest to weave the “world’s longest krama”","authors":"Elena Lesley","doi":"10.1177/17506980231162334","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231162334","url":null,"abstract":"This piece examines efforts by Cambodian mental health workers to incorporate two sites of cultural significance into narrative psychotherapy among Khmer Rouge survivors. As part of the “exposure” element of an imported form of Testimonial Therapy (TT)—in which patients retrieve traumatic memories from the past—a subset of patients was taken to the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crimes. While embodied engagement with the memorial site served as an effective mnemonic device for participants, it also proved more emotionally overwhelming than counselors initially anticipated. As an antidote, counselors then decided to add another site to the patients’ therapeutic itinerary—an exposition where they could participate in efforts to weave the world’s longest krama. In examining this case of “therapeutic improvisation,” I explore the dynamic social life of memory sites and how they may assist people in renegotiating cultural memory (and identity) in the wake of traumatic social rupture.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":"16 1","pages":"593 - 610"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42671267","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}
Memory StudiesPub Date : 2023-05-26DOI: 10.1177/17506980231162313
Jennie E. Burnet, N. Zaretsky
{"title":"Introduction: Sites of reckoning special issue","authors":"Jennie E. Burnet, N. Zaretsky","doi":"10.1177/17506980231162313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980231162313","url":null,"abstract":"This introduction explores the theories and themes presented in the articles of this special issue. It considers embodiment, temporality, and coherence as they relate to healing and survival at memory sites dedicated to reckoning with difficult or contentious pasts. This special issue deliberately decenters traditional approaches in memory studies by carving out spaces for the Global South and by considering activist–scholar or activist–artist–scholar interventions. This special issue includes articles on Argentina, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Namibia, Rwanda, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and the United States.","PeriodicalId":47104,"journal":{"name":"Memory Studies","volume":"16 1","pages":"513 - 518"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46459285","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}