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Paper short abstract:

This paper presents the counter-archive I am involved in creating in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. It discusses the importance of preserving visual testimonies to constitute inter-generational understandings of trauma. The paper also reflects on the archive’s ethical and political dimensions.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents my project called “Preserving Memories, Bridging Gaps: The Kurdish War and Memory Archive”. This project revolves around the constitution of an archive meant to preserve memories of war and genocide in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). I will not only reflect on these memories, but also on the process of constituting the archive.

The archive is rooted in the observation, made during my fieldwork in the region (2014-2022), that many young people in today’s Kurdistan glorify Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime. They perceive the era of Saddam’s reign as a period of stability and prosperity and are drawn to his self-portrayal as a national hero who could bring “his” people and “his” nation together. This glorification goes hand in hand with a historical “forgetting” or trivializing of Saddam’s genocidal campaign, Anfal, which targeted Kurdish civilians. For my current project, I collaborate with young people in the KRI, establishing a dialogue about the area’s traumatic past with older generations who themselves experienced genocidal violence.

My paper will specifically emphasize the ways in which the archive addresses human rights violations through recordings of testimonies of survivors and their children and grandchildren. I will discuss ethical and political dimensions of representing the past, with a particular focus on the role of visual testimonies in (re)creating historical knowledge of trauma. The influential notion of ‘postmemory’ will play a crucial role in this discussion, and the archive will be characterized as a counter-archive that destabilizes hegemonic narratives about the region’s past.