Paper short abstract:

Why are certain types of public memory not circulated? This work considers the ways that a physical presence does not necessarily provide a way to make meaningful connections with the past.

Paper long abstract:

What do we know about public memory? Scholars have considered the ways our past remains with us through stories, films, and histories, or through cultural institutions such as libraries, museums, and archives. Physically, we can account for the past with symbols such as designated spaces, monuments and other structures built to recall great events or places. With so many ways to account for our past, we assume there is a need to include such a presence of the past in the present. What happens when there is no such inclusion, when you have cultural artifacts but no links, connections, no meaning associated with them? In my ethnographic data collected in Thessaloniki, Greece in 2006, 2007, and 2008, I will be examining this question. My case study provides an example of a past that can be accounted for historically through archival sources and that has material and cultural artifacts in the present but this material presence does not carry symbolic presence.