Dealing with the Past & Memory Cultures

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Right to memory

Media Development, volume 57, issue 2 (2010), pp. 3-59

"How reliable are the mass media’s stories and images of yesterday let alone of the more remote past? Only by rigorously cross-checking different sources of public or cultural memory might one reach a point that is reasonably balanced and accurate – an exercise in triangulating memory’s ever ... shifting terrain. This, of course, is the essence of positive revisionist history (rather than its negative counterpart, in which one must beware the hidden agendas of politics, ideology, class, gender, and religion.) The notion of a right to memory is, therefore, fraught with difficulty. Whose memories are being sought? How are they to be (re)constructed? How can their veracity, integrity, and credibility be guaranteed? And, in today’s information-sharing societies, what are the relationships between the right to memory, the right to information, and the right to communication? In Cambodia, a cultural unwillingness not to speak ill of the past is confronted by the extreme discomfort of survivors of the Pol Pot regime that killed 1.7 million (one sixth of the population). While the Cambodian government pursues reconciliation based on the political expediency of amnesty, the people’s right to communicate their stories stands precariously on their inability to recover the truth of what happened. In Uruguay a freedom of information law passed in 2008 provides the legal framework for public access to a vast quantity of secret state information pertaining to the country’s military dictatorships. The law clearly stipulates that there can be no restrictions when it comes to investigating violations of human rights. In South Africa, after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had completed its work, the essential question was how to generate the will to form restorative relationships that could tackle resentment, bring economic restitution, and forge new political structures that were just and equitable. Restorative relationships require coming to terms with memories that others might wish to forget. In this respect, a litmus test for a right to memory is how it might be used to transcend traumatic events in ways that overcome hatred, fear, guilt, and revenge. How might a right to memory contribute to a more peaceful and sustainable future? And a litmus test for political, social and cultural responses to the questions at the heart of public memory is how critical and balanced they are when issues of power, privilege, and impunity haunt the present. As Paul Ricoeur has pointed out, ‘The duty of memory is the duty to do justice, through memories, to an other than the self.’" (Editorial, page 2) more

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Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation

Alexander Laban Hinton, Kevin Lewis O'Neill (eds.)

Durham: Duke University Press (2009), 349 pp.

"What happens to people and the societies in which they live after genocide? How are the devastating events remembered on the individual and collective levels, and how do these memories intersect and diverge as the rulers of postgenocidal states attempt to produce a monolithic "truth" about the past ... more

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Dealing with the Past, Reaching the Future: Historical Memory and Social Transformation in (South) Africa and Germany after 1989. International Conference, 29. – 31.10.2009

Berlin: Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2009), 4 pp.

"The role of historical memory and of cultural remembrance in societies dealing with dramatic transformations and, at times, traumatic pasts are numerous. In this conference, we will look at post-apartheid South Africa and reunified German society, how each country views itself, as well as the diffe ... more

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Dealing with the Past in Israel-Palestine and in the Western Balkans. Story-telling in Conflict: Developing Practice and Research

Veronique Dudouet, Martina Fischer, Beatrix Schmelzle

Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflicts Management (2008), 20 pp.

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The Theatre of Violence: Narratives of Protagonists in the South African Conflict

Don Foster, Paul Haupt, Marésa De Beer

Capetwon; Oxford: Institute of Justice and Reconciliation; HSRC Press; James Currey (2005), xii, 364 pp.

"If the dominant media stereotype portrays perpetrators as monsters, as ‘Prime Evil’, then the dominant academic image is the opposite. It paints them as ordinary people (gender ignored, but assumed as male) diligently under sway of modern bureaucratic compartmentalisation (the banality of evil ... thesis), or as obedient to authority and conforming to social pressures (the situationist thesis). No monsters here, just ordinary people under rather extraordinary circumstances. The moral message: we co uld all potentially become perpetrators, depending on the situation. There is a competing view: the perpetrator as a willing, even eager, executioner driven by strong negative emotions against the ‘other’. The scholarly world presents us with antagonistic perspectives. What picture do we get from narrative approaches, from stories told by those actually responsible for politically-related violence? First, there are only a few narrative studies. Second, they also paint competing pictures. On the one hand, is a picture of the perpetrator as a victim – of organisational routines, hierarchies, pressures and secrecy, and of dominant ideologies, as well as brutal initiation rites which instil the practice of obedience to authority. These narrative studies support the situationist and ordinary person line of explanation. They also correct the erstwhile neglect of gender issues by placing emphasis on masculinity as an important ingredient. On the other hand, the South African storytelling studies by Marks (2001), Straker (1992) and Campbell (1992) throw up a different picture. While victims in one sense – of Bantu education, poverty and violence at the hands of both state security agents and older vigilante groups – they are also action-oriented moral crusaders in defence of their communities and in politically-minded offensive against the apartheid state and its allies. Once again, we have contrasting and competing pictures of those responsible for political violence. In these particular storytelling perspectives, differences are partly due to the different positions of protagonists across the dividing line of power: state security personnel on the one hand and resistance activists on the other. Apart from the conflicting images from varying epistemological perspectives and different theoretical angles, the very label or category of a ‘perpetrator’ is more muddied, contested and problematic than a first glance would suggest. We described seven grey areas which challenge or disrupt the dominant binaries of victim-perpetrator and the triangular view of dramatis personae: perpetrator – ‘victim’ – bystander/observer. Moreover, in Chapter 4, we raise a number of moral quandaries or dilemmas in the study of those responsible for violence, which again dislodge the simple and tidy categories. Therefore a central component of the present study aims to problematise and disrupt the complacency of the very label and category of ‘perpetrator’. What should be done? In the face of these competing images and explanations we carve out a ‘third space’ beyond, or perhaps better, between the theoretical antagonisms of situationism versus agency (willing killers); among the grey areas between category labels of victim/perpetrator/bystander. Rather than this being seen as an alternative position, it should be read as an attempt at synthesis. Instead of the oppositional pairing of ‘either-or’, it should be seen in terms of the inclusive pairing ‘both-and’ (Foster, 1999).We argue that those responsible for violence should be regarded as potentially both victim and perpetrator, as well as both subject to circumstances/influences and active initiators." (Conclusion, page 321-322) more

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War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century

Emmanuel Sivan, Jay Winter (eds.)

Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press (1999), vii, 260 pp.

"No scholarly consensus exists about how the terms 'memory' and 'collective memory' may most fruitfully inform historical study. Hence there is still much room for reflection and clarification in this branch of cultural history. How war has been remembered collectively is the central question in thi ... more

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Erinnerungsarbeit: Der Nationalsozialismus in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur von 1945 bis heute. Katalog zur Ausstellung

Wilma Aden-Grossmann (ed.)

Kassel: Universität Gesamthochschule Kassel (1998), 116 pp.

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Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Lateinamerika

Detlef Nolte (ed.)

Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert (1996), 226 pp.