Paper short abstract:

The aim is to deal with the topic of fear in social memory related to violent past events and in current social reactions linked to the negation of otherness and to the resurgence of nationalism in Europe fighting amongst other things cultural and historical diversity. The intention is also to question the fear related to modes of projection in the future.

Paper long abstract:

Starting from ethnographic works conducted in several European countries, the paper proposes to consider the topic of the fear in the context of the current culture of memory in which social treatments related to violent past events like genocide, wars, colonization are pre-eminent, while a resurgence of nationalism occurs at the same time in Europe. The social actions dealing with these past times and also with xenophobe and/or racist current social situations confront us to the treatment of otherness and with several modes of fears. The aim is to question various form of fears involved in these socio-memorial actions based on processes of historization and that are oriented to the projection in the future starting from the present situations. Which are the fears feeding today's social memory phenomena at inter-individual and collective levels? Which are their effects in the current life inside the groups like the family, and largely inside the society and its institutions? Which are also their incidence(s) at supranational levels in the increasing of international modes of socio-memorial "governorship" in the framework for example of the UNO, Council of Europe, European Union, Unesco, Holocaust Task force, etc. ?