12 articles tagged with memory politics were found.
In most post-communist countries after the breakdown of the USSR, memory legislation often aimed at constructing an identity of suffering under Nazism and the totalitarian Soviet regime, which relativized itself according to a cosmopolitan understanding of victimhood centered on the Holocaust memory. Regulations of memory, in this sense, were considered an indicator of democratic transition and an entry ticket to the European Union.
Essay by
Cagla Demirel
June 22, 2022
Cultural Heritage and the Future, Cornelius Holtorf & Anders Högberg, eds., (London & New York: Routledge, 2021), 256 pages.
By
Johan Hegardt
January 24, 2022
CBEES Annual Report 2020: Constructions and Instrumentalization of the Past. A Comparative Study on Memory Management in the Region, Eds. Ninna Mörner et al., (Södertörn University: Stockholm, 2021). 186 pages
By
Per-Arne Bodin
January 24, 2022
The month of December began with three days of a much-awaited Symposium on the 30th Anniversary of the USSR’s Fall with the presence of film director Sergei Loznitsa in Stockholm. The Symposium, organized and realized by Professor Irina Sandormirsakaja, took place at Södertörn University and at the Swedish Film Institute between December 1-3, 2021.
By
Cecilia Sá Cavalcante Schuback
December 14, 2021
Discussions about the assessment of historic events have always had their place in the public discourse in democratic societies, whereas totalitarian regimes such as the Communist one preferred an official version of history that is not up for debate. This is why a conflict-prone memory boom in the CEE was to be expected after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The only recently intensified trend is to fight memory wars with the means of memory laws, i.e. by using laws prescribing and proscribing certain representations of historic events as a weapon to protect one’s national collective memory from divergent interpretation by others. Such approach to governing memory wars are detrimental to the neighborly relations, i.e. turning them into un-neighborly ones.
By
Anna Grinberg
October 25, 2021
This essay examines Swedish heritage politics from the 1920s up to the present by studying official inquiries during this period. Through a critical, historical and empirical discussion, it reveals how the meaning of the word kulturarv (heritage) has been adjusted to correspond to wider changes in Swedish politics. It shows how a relatively neutral understanding of the word kulturarv has been turned into an ambiguity. In this essay I suggest from the material at hand that this trajectory of change results from the development of global capitalism, which turned identity into a commodity. This essay concludes that in a post-heritage future we therefore need a new understanding of identity, an open identity, and that we need to take existential responsibility for our lives.
Essay by
Johan Hegardt
April 21, 2021
The photo albums from German soldiers during WW II have, 75 years after the war’s ending, increasingly been auctioned off at internet auctions. Several photo albums contain traces of Eastern Europe’s Jewish life and how this is suddenly set against the rapidly emerging terror. Throughout many of the images, the photographer’s gaze is on something that is seen as inferior, laughable, exotic, war tourists’ motives worth documenting to show them at home: Eastern European Jews.
By
Peter Handberg
April 21, 2021
The author has analyzed the coverage of the 30th anniversary of the Roundtable Agreement and June elections in Polish newspapers of all political hues. Additionally several official speeches held in connection with the commemorations have been scrutinized. The goal has been to examine the uses of memory of 1989 in Polish politics of 2019 and highlight the strategic choices and constraints faced by mnemonic actors in this context. Thus, the study presented may be seen as a follow-up to Bernhard’s and Kubik’s investigation conducted ten years ago. However, this analysis expands the focus of Bernhard’s and Kubik’s work by paying special attention to cultural constraints on politics of memory. Thus, the aim is both to give insight into contemporary politics of memory in Poland in relation to the recent past and contribute to the more general understanding of how culture works in politics of memory.
By
Barbara Törnquist-Plewa
April 21, 2021
This article addresses the problem of the underrepresentation of the traumatic past in the example of the official commemoration of the Holocaust in Belarus. The silenced memories hinder the process of reconciliation and have real consequences for urban planning and cultural life. Thus, in order to address the tragedy that has been excluded from the official commemoration in Belarus, artists and journalists have created projects to fill the void in remembrance. The article describes how art and media projects have resolved the problem of the underrepresentation of certain events in the official culture and make vernacular memory available to many people.
By
Elisabeth Kovtiak
February 15, 2021
Memory can be retained and archived. You can, however, also manipulate it, obliterate its fragments and sometimes whole segments, using its stores as a tool in a political fight with minorities. Historical memory is only seemingly a domain of objective knowledge.
The point of departure for my artivistic practice is always work with archival material. With time, my experiences led me to outline a specific understanding of historical memory as a process in which the most important role is played by the migration of ideas, a peculiar kind of nomadism.
Essay by
Zuzanna Hertzberg
February 12, 2021
Special Issue 2023, 3 Youth and authoritarian
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.