Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how, and whether, individual or local memories of past wars, specifically from WWII, are in some way linked with personal interpretations and understanding of the more recent political violence by analyzing interviews with respondents from seven different regions of Croatia.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how, and whether, memories of past wars, which had been acquired in families, schools, and/or local communities, contribute to personal interpretations and understanding of political violence that took place in the 1990s. While some scholars argued that in the regions of Croatia with history of extensive violence during WWII, residents were more likely to mobilize for violence because the memories of historical violence contributed to their heightened perception of threat, in the 1990s, some areas that experienced extensive violence in WWII did not have as extensive violence in the 1990s, as other regions. These empirical patterns indicate that there may not be direct relationship between the history of violence in WWII and the mobilization for violence in the 1990s in Croatia. In order to examine how individual interpretations contributed to their understanding of violence that occurred in both periods, this paper relies on the analysis 131 open-ended interviews conducted in the spring of 2014 with residents from seven regions of Croatia with varying levels of violence in both historical periods. Each interviewee was asked a question on whether they have any memories of events in WWII in their local community or family, and if they have how this knowledge informed their interpretations of the events in the 1990s in their own community. In addition, I complement my interviews that include life histories from WWII through the 1990s with 82 interviews conducted by Documenta, the Zagreb-based non-governmental organization documenting instances of violence against civilians.

Paper short abstract:

This case study examines the politics of collective amnesia in the city of Opava in Czech Silesia in response to an attempt commemorate pre-war German speaking populations.

Paper long abstract:

The very recent response of the city council of Opava, the historical capital of Czech Silesia, to cede to populist opinion within the region has led to the refusal to grant dedication of a commemorative plaque to formerly expelled German populations. Spearheaded by the Silesian German Association, the response of Opava's authorities and populous to the plaque was one of annoyance and disregard, relegating the prominently German character of pre-war Silesian language and culture once again to a silent memory. Drawing on a vast body of literature considering cultural trauma and collective amnesia, through this case study I examine the dynamics of identity formation and commemoration politics in Opava. The situation in the city demonstrates both how cultural trauma affects a group of people which had previously achieved some degree of cohesion and the role of group agency in overcoming the collectively traumatic experience. I argue the prevailing strategy emerging from this agency is a denial which I theorize in terms of Collective Amnesia which sharply contradicts the academic understanding of the vernacular memory of marginalized groups. Understanding of Collective Amnesia as a strategic response to collective trauma through this case study can aid both our understanding of the local context as well as how human groups adapt to the disintegration of their collective identities.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes the museum arranged by former revolutionarists about the Turkish military coup of 1980 and show how, although silenced, their memories are not only an opposition to official history, but are used to codify the present, establish alliances or identity boundaries and plan the future

Paper long abstract:

The coup occurred in Turkey in 1980 was a turning point in the history of the country that provoked conflicting interpretations. If in public discourse military are still often regarded as those who put an end to the political radicalism of the Seventies, the former leftist revolutionaries struggle to denounce the submitted violence and not being represented as terrorists. This paper, through the ethnographic analysis of the itinerant "museum-event" on the violence of the military coup arranged by former revolutionaries, shows how these memories, although marginal, cannot be reduced to memories opposing official history, but play a key-role in codifying the present establishing identity boundaries or new alliances and planning the future. The itinerant exposition, which exhibits personal belongings of murdered revolutionaries, provides the families a recomposing function of an often silenced memory. Moreover, its temporal narrative presents a chronology stretching into the present time and including events like Gezi park to denounce the no-end of the repression and to establish a sense of continuity with the current protests. It also includes other silenced memories to build a bond of solidarity between victims of episodes of violence distant in time but sharing the connivance of the state. At the same time the museum presents a discourse that marks an identity border. In fact, those organizing the museum still consider themselves as revolutionists and through the memory they stage a pattern of suffering and compassion as self-representation of the group and as an injunction to continue the revolution in the present.

Paper short abstract:

In a case study from urban middle class Colombia, I investigate transgenerational memories of the Bogotazo. Assuming that different memories predominate in the family realm compared to “official” history, I will develop a dialogical concept of the construction of historical.

Paper long abstract:

The paper I would like to present analyzes processes of transgenerational transmission of memories and their conversion into historical consciousness. In a case study from urban middle class Colombia, I investigate which stories of the past concerning a particular event called the Bogotazo, are transmitted through the generations. The Bogotazo stands out as an emblematic moment in the history of the Colombian past, when the liberal presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was killed april 9th, 1948. The date is often referred to as the decisive moment in which the still ongoing conflict reached the Colombian capital.

Assuming that different memories predominate in the family realm compared to "official" history, a dialogical concept of the construction of historical consciousness will be developed. Memories about the Bogotazo were obtained with the help of oral history testimony and ethnographic field work and are analyzed following a dialogical conception of historical consciousness. The dialogical character of transgenerational memory as well as historical consciousness are underlined with the example. Furthermore, the focus on continuity instead of progress in historical consciousness is highlighted.

Paper short abstract:

The process of heritagisation, commemorative activity, narratives of the past and selective memory of the pilgriming patriotic tourists taking place at a privileged point of the historical Hungarian border (Gyimesbükk/Ghimeş-Făget – Romania) in the past few years is presented in the paper.

Paper long abstract:

A wide process of heritagisation launched in 2008 in Gyimesbükk/Ghimeş-Făget, on the eastern edge of Szeklerland (Romania) inhabited mainly by Hungarian minority, connected to the historical Hungarian border in the initiative of local and external actors.

Since 2008 every year the pilgrim trains coming from Hungary arrive at the renovated building of the easternmost guard house of the "Royal Hungarian State Railways" on Pentecost Sunday. Thousands of Hungarians remember the former Great Hungary, mourn the fragmented country left after the Treaty of Trianon, yet the place is considered to be the symbol of national renewal, unity and solidarity.

Considering the motivations of the wide range of participants from Hungary and Transylvania it can be regarded as a secular pilgrimage, as the aim of the visitors is primarily to express national feelings, to demonstration solidarity with the Hungarian minority and ideological affinities.

The narratives anchored to the "thousand-year-old border" have intended to express and respect the formerly supressed historical facts and aim to raise awareness of and interiorize the experience of loss of Trianon, or claim symbolic re-territorialization. From the narratives of patriotic tourists an imaginary cartography unfolds ignoring ethnic and territorial/state legal realities and consciously resisting the history, presence and narratives other nations of proudly cited Transylvania. The pilgrimages to the "thousand-year-old border" may be considered as the institutionalization of amnesia, where historical Hungary, the Hungarian Gyimes is remembered exclusively, and the "Hungarian times" before 1918 and between 1940 and 1944 is (mis)represented in a one-sided, positive, nostalgic way.

Paper short abstract:

Industrial workers to whom we showed a dozen of old corporate films, as part of a research on work and cinema, strongly identified with them to reconstruct their own work memories, prompting a reflection on the complex relationship between corporate narratives and worker's memories and identities.

Paper long abstract:

This proposal stems from an ongoing collective, multidisciplinary research on the ways work was construed and displayed in a corpus of Portuguese institutional XXth century films. These were commissioned by diverse state agencies, by film cooperatives (after the fall of the dictatorship in 1974) or by businesses. As part of our research, and tackling the ways these films may (have) impact(ed) on social memories and identities of work, we selected a dozen of them, commissioned by one of the most powerful pre-1974 Portuguese economic and industrial groups (CUF), and scheduled their public screening in the former quasi company town where they had been shot (Barreiro).

Both during the screenings and when post-screening interviewed, former CUF workers strongly identified with those films to reconstruct their memories of work in the company. Not only did people develop a noticeable interest for the films, but they tended to see them as descriptions fitting their own memories. The films were took at face value, in spite of the social and ideological context that had shaped their production and use during the dictatorship period.

In a context of de-industrialization and unemployment, the narrative of work, employment and social progress carried by the films acquires a renewed appeal. Also, the widespread heritage‑ization of the local pasts may contribute to a re-framing of these films as common heritage rather than company propaganda. Overall, the relationship between the dominant narratives and the peoples' memories emerged as a quite interesting analytical domain in this research.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the renovation project of a mosque situated by the sea in the Israeli city of Herzliya, this paper will examine how Islamic symbols are appropriated by Muslim activists, citizens of Israel, in their struggle to construct a meaningful cultural identity within the complex Israeli context.

Paper long abstract:

Focusing on the renovation project of the Sidna Ali Mosque, which is situated by the sea in the Israeli city of Herzliya, this paper will examine how Islamic symbols are appropriated by Muslim activists, citizens of the State of Israel, in their struggle to construct a meaningful cultural identity within the complex Israeli context.

The paper will thus start with a brief description of how the project was conceived and conducted, how the volunteers were recruited and the resources gathered, discussing the concept of charisma in voluntary Islamic associations. The main part of the paper will be composed of an interpretation of the architectural, cultural, and political act of rebuilding the Sidna Ali Mosque, within the urban, historical, national, and theological interpretive frameworks.

The study of the social functions of the renovation campaign will focus on its role in unifying the people involved and on forging a collective identity based on the struggle to return the old site to Muslim hands. The spatial interpretation presented will explore the renovation as a form of Palestinian and Islamic resistance to explicit and implicit Zionist hegemony in public space. Furthermore, it will examine contesting Islamic approaches and sensitivities toward the memories embodied in the renovated Mosque.

Paper short abstract:

Through the analysis of published Jewish autobiographies and their comparison to other sources, I am focusing on different levels of construction of memory and history, with the emphasis on the period of 1948-1989. I see this as a process of negotiation among different discourses.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I am focusing on the construction of Jewish past in Czech Republic (former Czechoslovakia) as determined by and situated in historical, political, cultural and social context of the so called communist regime (1948-1989). This past was strongly determined by ideologies and practices of the regime which were, depending on the period, officially anti-Zionist and latently or directly anti-Semitic. In other words, Czech Jews became "others" in Czech society again. I understand the concept of memory as a process of negotiation which takes place between imposed ideology and alternative ways of understanding the lived experience. In this framework, I am interested in who were the actors, who took a part in the negotiation of Jewish past, how was it negotiated, how were the contrasting interpretations of different pasts managed, and what images of Jewish past were present in individual, academic, political, and public discourses? After 1989, there was an increase of interest in the Jewish minority and Jewish past, which includes several published Jewish autobiographies reflecting on the holocaust, but also referring to the period of communist regime. I understand these autobiographies as individual representations of the past that are also part of a collective and shared cultural memorization. My question here is how were these different discourses of Jewish past represented in the cultural memory of Jewish minority, especially in autobiographical literature.

Paper short abstract:

The paper will look at the ways memories linked with various Holocaust social experiences were and/or still are silenced in the collective memory of the genocide. The aim is to question the possible or utopian unification of different memories facing internal and external collective memories

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims at examining how several memories of Holocaust victims were silenced in many European countries between 1945 and the 2000s because these memories are not linked with social experiences of the genocide that were mainly retained in the global construction of the Holocaust memory carried outside social spaces of Jewish victims and their descendants. However, this phenomenon can be also observed sometimes inside some Jewish spaces. So, it raises in both cases the Halbwachsian question of the unification of various memories in a collective memory, at both internal and external level. It shows us clearly in the social work of the restitution, the problematic of the co-existence of different situations that were undergone inside a same ensemble (e.g., the Jewish victims), the tensions existing between internal and external collective memories, and also tensions inside social Jewish spaces between memories and heritages of Holocaust victims and those of Jews whose families lived formerly in colonized areas during the genocide and who returned for example in France after the decolonization. This approach is based on fieldwork carried out for more than twenty years in various countries in Western, Central and Baltic Europe. The theoretical aspects will be especially illustrated with the studied situations concerning the violence undergone by victims during persecution events related to the formation of ten deportation convoys from Bordeaux to Drancy (the transit camp in France to death camps), and it will be also illustrated with situations studied in other countries.

Paper short abstract:

The Slovenian minority in Italy mainly displays memory and heritage in forms of oral literature, collective history and traditional festivals, while the individual memory is almost absent. The aim of the paper is to understand how ideologies influenced the process of silenced memory and heritage.

Paper long abstract:

The Slovenian community in the province of Udine (Italy) is situated in a very challenging condition of linguistic, cultural and political relationships with the Italian-Friulian and central Slovenian world, moreover with a component of the society that does not identify with Slovenians. The fact that the territory constantly belonged to the Italian political systems produced on the one hand the deletion of important segments of the memory, on the other hand the conservation of linguistic and cultural features that allow the community to be recognized as national minority.

The current cultural attitudes emphasize the collective history, as well as the oral heritage, mostly the language, and folk traditions that indeed risk falling into oblivion. Nevertheless as a result of interesting visions of the future is to consider the opening of museums and collections.

The author assumes that the minority complex, as a consequence of the ideological oppression from the majority, has not allowed a real valorisation of life stories because of the wrong perception that do not belong to the larger systems of the European history. The individual memory of the lived, also from the perspective of the migratory experiences, represents indeed an immense potential of knowledge.

Taking into account the issue of diversity, which seems to play the most important role in the utopian project of reconcialiation, the aim of the paper is to understand how and to what extent the social and political context has influenced the process of silencing the memory and the intangible heritage.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ties and tensions between various remembrance practices of the Bosnian War (1992-1995) that travel across borders between Bosnia and Herzegovina and The Netherlands.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores various remembrance practices of the Bosnian War (1992-1995)

that travel across borders between The Netherlands and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It shows how certain transnational memories and solidarities enable people to counter methodological nationalism, while others perpetuate division within the nation. A considerable number of Bosnians live in The Netherlands; a country that has highly politicized and historically sensitive relations with Bosnia following the contested role of the UN Dutch Battalion in relation to the genocide in Srebrenica in 1995. This mutual, but contested heritage has led to different interpretations of how to remember the Bosnian War. Obstructed knowledge and an unwillingness to understand what happened during the Bosnian War in Dutch media, politics and education resulted in selective remembrance practices on the state-level and is overshadowing alternative memories. I argue that this form of "aphasia" (Stoler 2011) is shaped by both the memory narrative of active Bosnian-Dutch NGO's that borrow from Bosnia's remembrance practices, as well as the Dutch governmental involvement with Srebrenica's site of memory. There are, however, also travelling counter-narratives of Dutch with and without Bosnian roots, (online and on-site) that formulate alternative memories and show opportunities of moving beyond the current remembrance-stalemate related to the Bosnian War in The Netherlands. Based on participant observation and interviews with different actors in The Netherlands, this paper explores the ties and tensions between various remembrance practices of this contested past in Europe.

Paper short abstract:

Le Liban s’est reconstruit autour de la mythologie nationale de « la guerre des autres » à défaut de pouvoir énoncer collectivement une représentation unifiée de son passé. Une expérience civile fait émerger de multiples mémoires et, en les apposant, suggère une autre manière d’envisager l’histoire.

Paper long abstract:

Le Liban, à la fin de la guerre civile, s'est reconstruit autour d'une mythologie nationale de « la guerre des autres » à défaut de pouvoir énoncer collectivement une description des événements de son passé. Cette mémoire officielle a permis une réconciliation civile précaire aux prix de l'amnistie de chefs de guerre, de la persistance d'un tabou intergénérationnel et intercommunautaire sur les faits de guerre, et de l'impossibilité de la rédaction d'un manuel scolaire commun sur l'histoire contemporaine du Liban .

Sous la pointe de l'iceberg de cette représentation nationale, un travail de terrain propose de mettre en contact d'autres mémoires qui se partagent plus discrètement et suggère une autre manière d'envisager l'histoire.

Cette intervention se base sur une expérience de cinq ans d'acteurs associatifs au Liban travaillant avec des jeunes de différents territoires et contextes communautaires, qui a conduit à faire émerger une représentation de multi mémoires individuelles sur l'histoire des conflits libanais. La collecte de ces mémoires a été réalisée sous différentes formes, témoignages individuels, dialogues publics, cartographies collectives des conflits.

Apposer les mémoires d'habitants de différents âges, classes sociales, territoires et communautés permet de recréer ainsi par le biais de ces données qui s'échangent, un espace d'écoute et de partage. Le récit de cette expérience et l'analyse de ces données, présentés au cours d'une exposition en janvier 2015, est l'occasion de proposer une représentation collective de ces multi mémoires et de suggérer avec un réseau d'acteur libanais travaillant sur les mémoires des conflits la possibilité d'une multi histoire commune.