Texts,Bodies, and the Memory of Bloody Sunday

We examine here recent arguments that embodied experience is an important site of collective memory, and related challenges to the standard emphasis on discourse and symbols in collective memory research. We argue that although theories of embodied memory offer new insights, they are limited by (1) an overdrawn distinction between embodied memory and textual memory that neglects the complex relations between the two, (2) an overemphasis on ritual performance at the expense of collective conversation, (3) an oversimplified view of performativity, and (4) an underestimation of the ambiguity in embodied performance. Theories of embodied collective memory should be narrowed and specified with focused comparisons examining the influence of embodied experience in the formation of collective identities, in conflicts over collective memories, and in the persistence and malleability of memories across generations. We illustrate our argument throughout with examples drawn from the collective memory of Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland in 1972.     

Turbulent Times: Bloody Sunday and the Civil Rights Movement

On 30 January 1972 in Derry Northern Ireland 13 men were shot dead by British soldiers. Bloody Sunday has come to be seen to be one of the key events in the recent history of the conflict in Northern Ireland. This article is an analysis of that event and its context through a range of theoretical ideas that seek to address the processes at work through the notion of movement or flow. Mobilizing a range of concepts from theorists such as Bakhtin, Deleuze and Guattari, Delanda, Serres and Virilio, the period is understood as one characterised by disruptive turbulence in the social field. As part of this reading use is made of a number of formulations from Complexity theory to address the open and dynamic nature of the forces involved. By considering the civil rights movement and the emergence of Free Derry as moments in an ongoing attempt to de‐code and de‐territorialize the founding terms of the Unionist statelet, the article argues that the potential for radical social change was drastically halted by Bloody Sunday.     

The Sunday Times Heritage Project: heritage,the media and the formation of national consciousness

Since the advent of democracy in 1994, the landscape of memory in South Africa has undergone significant changes. While most new monuments, memorials and heritage sites have emerged under the aegis of the government, this article focuses on a private sector initiative, the Sunday Times Heritage Project (STHP), sponsored by the Sunday Times newspaper in celebration of its centenary in 2006. The project involved the installation of 30 small-scale memorials commemorating key moments in the history of South Africa, with each memorial being accompanied by a website entry. The article focuses on the role of the media in shaping a new national consciousness in South Africa and specifically investigates how a new, supposedly shared history emerges through the work of the Sunday Times journalists in selecting stories and negotiating with stakeholders. With reference to specific examples, significant differences are highlighted between the newspaper’s heritage initiative and the state-initiated memory projects, but ultimately, it is argued, the STHP reveals a calculated or unconscious acceptance of the state-endorsed historical discourse structured around resistance narratives, which has become hegemonic since 1994.     

The rhythms of social movement memories: the mobilization of Silvio Meier’s activist remembrance across platforms

ABSTRACT

This article presents a temporal analysis of the activist remembrance of Silvio Meier, a prominent member of Berlin’s radical left scene, who was stabbed to death in 1992. It asks: when has Meier’s activist remembrance occurred and been remediated, with what rhythms, and how has it been influenced by different platforms? To answer these questions, the article draws on the literature dedicated to the interface between social movements and collective and connective memory, and applies Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis approach. Within this approach a diverse set of material is used to visualise the timing of the digital and non-digital remediation and mobilisation of Meier’s remembrance across different platforms of memory including commemorative events, newspapers, websites and social media. Thereafter the various temporalities of use associated with these platforms and how they can influence the mobilisation of remembrance by social movements is discussed using Lefebvre’s concepts of polyrhythmia, arrhythmia, isorhythmia, eurhythmia and with respect to, firstly, a fifteen-year period between 2002 and 2017 and secondly, a fifteen-day period between 15 November and 30 November 2012 around the twentieth anniversary of Meier’s death. The article concludes by introducing another Lefebvrian concept – dressage – in order to consider which rhythms of activist remembrance might most benefit social movements and their goals. Overall, by demonstrating the importance of attending to the when and not only the what, who, where and how of social movement memories and by highlighting the need to consider the temporal influence of the different digital and non-digital platforms that activists use, as well as, by indicating the broader potential of applying rhythmanalysis approaches to instances of activism, the article has broader relevance for the further study of social movements, their use of different media and their mobilization of memory.     

Shot at Dawn: Late photography and the anti-war memorial

The military executions of World War One are the subject of Chloe Dewe Mathews’s 2014 photographic series Shot at Dawn. These events—in which hundreds of soldiers were court-martialled and executed for cowardice and desertion—remain controversial, without consensus or established collective narrative. This article charts historic negotiations with the subject but also considers more recent efforts to integrate these proceedings within memorial practice. World War One remembrance activities, whilst diverse, have often emphasised sacrifice, heroism and community. Correspondingly, participation and engagement were core values in the major British World War One centenary arts project, titled 14-18 NOW, from which Shot at Dawn was commissioned. Chloe Dewe Mathews’s contribution to the programme, however, presents a photographic aesthetic of resistance to the principles of inclusivity and remembrance elsewhere embraced by the project. As such, the work challenges the consensual politics of commemoration and—through the practices of late photography, land art and performance pilgrimage—substitutes trauma and forgetfulness for reconciliation and memory.     

Sites of Terror and the Role of Memory in Shaping Identity Among First Generation Descendants of the Holocaust

This research explores the ways in which the transmission of memory at Nazi sites of terror influences the construction of Holocaust descendant identity. Based on a qualitative study of 50 children of Holocaust survivors who visited Nazi sites of terror in Eastern and Western Europe, the study examines the interactive nature of Holocaust memorialization and the impact of site-specific memory on Holocaust identification among children of survivors. The findings of the study reveal that, as interactive frames of social remembrance, sites of terror serve as objects of memory in which Holocaust narratives are recalled and re-experienced through an emotional engagement with the traumas of the past. The interaction at Holocaust sites thus strengthens descendant identity formation through the arousal of anxiety and fear, the evocation of feelings of sorrow and loss, and the deepening of empathic ties between children and their survivor parents. As a study of the social inheritance of traumatic memory, the research offers new insights on the relationship between memorial culture and the role of memory in shaping survivor identities     

It's more than just news: Print media,the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and Collective Memory among African Americans

This study examines how media can influence and shape collective memory through cultural objects such as magazines. Examination of Jet and Ebony magazines' coverage of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, as well as, changes in the narrative over time, reveal potential mechanisms that might have influenced African Americas' collective memory surrounding this event. Data for this study come from news articles about The Tuskegee Syphilis Study in Jet and Ebony magazines from 1972–2016 (N = 49). Content analysis was used to analyze and discover themes in each of the 49 news stories. Findings show that the journalistic coverage of The Tuskegee Syphilis study by these magazines centered around themes of exploitation of uneducated victims, racism and blame, genocide, medical mistrust and deliberate injection with syphilis, reflecting past and current beliefs of African Americans' remembrance of the study.     

The Holocaust: Commemorated but not remembered? Post-colonial and post-traumatic perspectives on the reception of the Holocaust memory discourse in Poland

The argument focuses on the reception of the globalized narrative of the Holocaust in the regional memories of East-Central Europe, in particular Poland. It is argued that this narrative has not been successfully integrated into the regional memory, partly because of the narrative's own deficiencies and partly due to the specific nature of the way in which regional memories have been produced. Instead, it has contributed to the split of collective and social memories in the region as well as to further fragmentation of each of these two kinds of memory. In result we may say that in post-communist Poland the Holocaust has been commemorated on the level of official institutions, rituals of memory, and elitist discourses, but not necessarily remembered on the level of social memory. It is claimed that to understand this phenomenon we should put the remembrance and commemoration of the Holocaust in the context of the post-communist transformation, in which the memory of the Holocaust has been constructed rather than retrieved in the process of re-composition of identities that faced existential insecurity. The non-Jewish Poles, who in the 1990s experienced the structural trauma of transformation, turned to the past not to learn the truth but to strengthen the group's sense of continuity in time. In this process many of them perceived the cosmopolitan Holocaust narrative as an instrument of the economic/cultural colonization of Eastern Europe in which the historical suffering of the non-Jewish East Europeans is not properly recognized. Thus the elitist efforts to reconnect with the European discourse and to critically examine one's own identity has clashed with the mainstream's politics of mnemonic security as part of the strategy of collective immortalization that contributed to the development of antagonistic memories and deepened social cleavage.     

Salat-al-Juma: organizing the public in Tahrir Square

What were the sources of solidarity that bound anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square? This article complicates Judith Butler’s claim that this solidarity originated in shared vulnerability to police violence and the practices of mutual care that were necessary to sustain bodies in the square. I draw on existing scholarship that suggests that passive knowledge of this shared vulnerability was already present among Egyptians, especially those working in the informal economy and living more of their lives – eating, chatting, praying, selling, etc. – on the streets of Egypt’s cities and thereby drawn into increasing contact with state police forces. Given that aggressive policing and intimidation had generated a sense of passive solidarity among Egyptians, I ask how this solidarity was transformed into animated opposition to the regime. My answer is that the Islamic congregational prayers as well as the Sunday Masses held during the revolution were spectacles of interfaith cooperation that inspired courage and trust across sectarian and religious/secular communities. These prayers were rational rituals that generated trust among diverse Egyptians that Mubarak had sown suspicion among and played against one another to stay in power. These were embodied rituals that lent moral support to more the mundane aspects of occupying Tahrir Square, which was symbolically and strategically important in bringing down the regime.     

The Holodomor law and national trauma construction in Ukraine

This article proposes to conceptualize the remembrance of the 1932–33 famine, known as the Holodomor, as cultural trauma construction in Ukraine. This entails the study of how the memory of this devastating historical event became the national collective symbol of suffering with which Ukrainians identify today. Based on Jeffrey Alexander’s concept of cultural trauma, the analysis focuses on the role of political elites and their claim-making regarding the meaning of the famine. Focusing specifically on the 2006 Holodomor law as the main claim of the Ukrainian policy-makers, the article investigates their definition of the historical event, their naming of victims and perpetrators, and their social mediation of famine representations. The article reveals how, through their definition of the Holodomor as genocide, the political elites promoted the understanding that Ukrainians experienced the years of 1932–33 differently from other Soviet nations. The Holodomor law should therefore be seen in the context of Ukrainian nation-building policy, which aims to forge a distinct Ukrainian collective identity.     

Social memories: Steps to a sociology of the past

This article is an attempt to develop a comprehensive framework to examine memory from a sociological perspective with a particular emphasis on the impersonal, conventional, collective, and normative aspects of the process of remembering. After discussing the social context of remembering as well as various traditions andrules of remembrance, the article examines the process ofmnemonic socialization. It then moves on to identify variousmnemonic communities (the family, the workplace, the ethnic group, the nation) as well as various social sites of memory(documents, stories, photograph albums, archaeological ruins, the calendar). Following a discussion of the way in which holidays allow mnemonic synchronization,the article ends by examining the politics of remembrance as manifested in various mnemonic battlesover the social legacy of the past.     

Inside the Museum: Nothing is going to change? Adaptation of the Jewish Pre-Burial House in Gliwice

This article discusses the architectural conversion of the historical Gliwice Pre-Burial House into the Museum of Upper Silesian Jews. It describes the former function of the building in the context of the specific history of Upper Silesian Jews, the Haskalah movement, and funeral rites in Judaism. The main part of the paper is devoted to the presentation of the architectural design and the functional division of the planned museum as proposed by the architectural collective that the author is part of. Special attention is given to a discussion of the conceptual framework of the design which tries to reveal the continuity of unformatted architectural memory. The features of proposed design, such as the central installation of The Cloud, merge commemorative aspects with new functions related to hosting public events and historical display. In this way, the design negotiates between remembrance of the Jewish community and the needs of the new inhabitants and users of the space. Thus, the paper contributes to the larger discussion about the adaptation of former Jewish facilities for new public functions.     

Doing research in a ‘conflict zone’: history writing and archival (im) possibilities in Jammu and Kashmir

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that in conflict zones like Jammu and Kashmir, the embodied stories of Kashmiris punctuate the past, often silenced by dominant Indian narratives. Narratives about certain key political events in the region's past co-exist with other forms of memory. Kashmiris weave these stories to make sense of the present, build connections to the past, and stake claims for the future. They build and nourish an archive based on lived experience, keeping a record of past wrongs. Novels, anecdotes and underground literature form part of this embodied archive, and provide a resource for recovering stories that remain silent in institutional archives which serve the interests of power. These interests are visible through restrictions on access to institutional archives, and demonstrate the effects of power and the overall politics of archives.     

Forgotten Domestic Objects

Abstract

This article presents an experimental anthropological method for researching memories about the communist past in Bucharest, Romania. Focusing on collections of ordinary objects in individual households, it examines how domestic spaces function not solely as repositories for artifacts of remembrance, but as containers for things that have been forgotten. Viewing these items as triggers of Proustian/Benjaminian ‘involuntary’ or inadvertent memories, rather than intentionally commemorative souvenirs, I explore how these new encounters offer alternative insights into perceptions of Romania’s past, present, and future. Such an approach reveals forms and contents of remembrance work that counter dominant academic and popular discourses about how Romanians are currently reflecting upon their communist past.     

Discussion of Hughes’ “There’s No Such Thing as a Whole Story”

The discussion of Elizabeth Hughes’ essay “There’s No Such Thing as the Whole Story” seeks to argue that a biopsychosocial perspective can flesh out understanding of what occurs at the level of discourse by adoptees. Underpinning such discourses, it is argued, is an experience-dependent view of the embodied mind. From this perspective understanding of the unconscious is situated biopsychosocially and includes aspects of how an autobiographical sense of self (Damasio, 2011) is embedded in memory.     

The effects of option generation on post-decisional regret in everyday life decision-making: A field experiment

While previous studies on post-decisional regret have exclusively focused on externally provided options, the present study is the first to examine post-decisional regret in situations with self-generated options. Applying a metacognitive perspective, we predicted that a large option set-size leads to less post-decisional regret than a small option set-size. This hypothesis is in contrast to the classic choice overload effect which has been reported for externally provided options. Furthermore, we hypothesized that explicitly generating options results in less post-decisional regret than not doing so. We used a field experimental design to test our two hypotheses. On a Sunday morning, participants were asked to generate either three or six options for what they could do during the afternoon and to select one of these options. In a control condition, participants were not instructed to generate options. On Sunday evening, participants indicated how much they regretted not having done something else. Our results provide support for both hypotheses.     

Reclaiming the aesthetic of women: de-colonizing land ownership

ABSTRACT

This paper engages with the study of the aesthetic as an embodied form and offers a critique of the study of value and commodification that emerges in the global spatial imagination. I explore the neglected interrelationship between cultural-spatial reconstruction and land ownership as a sign of livelihood by way of a critique of development and through an investigation of the multiple traces of colonialism in Indonesia in contemporary times, after the massacres. First, land is taken from communities to be used for state and corporate industrialization, and then aesthetic acts of resistance and remembrance by members of these communities, via artistic productions and protest, are commoditized as touristic attractions by the state as a form of nationalism and fetishism of the indigenous, and by corporations as a form of corporate cultural responsibility. This new method of capitalist inclusion of the survivor in a globalized project of aestheticizing space is a neoliberal tactic in which the commoditized reappearance of the aesthetic creations of the marginalized is not, in fact, a sign of inclusion but rather of further displacement. My study follows the focus of this special issue to analyse cultural production within the complexity of multiple and converging colonial forms in historical and contemporary contexts considering the relationality, contradictions and incommensurabilities generated within converging structures of colonial and racialized violence. I locate the ways in which artistic projects within this schema may be used as acts of resistance but also possibly co-optation/ domination. Aesthetic creations intended as means of archiving may also bring insurrections into the paradigm of globalization and to its attention. This paper is an attempt to look at how the creative urge negates and also creates the possibility of resistance, inviting us to urgently rethink aesthetic projects and their representation through a genealogy of global participation.     

Circulation,Internationalization, Globalization of the Question of Memory

The connotations linked to the notion of memory – when it is defined as collective or social– have only recently emerged. “Memory” is a mostly polysemic concept in social sciences. It also represents a social phenomenon. If the discourse surrounding memory seems to be largely internationalised, it has come at the cost of discrepancies in temporalities, theoretical traditions and objects of history. A general synthesis would be improbable. Today it appears that three big problematical concepts co-exist, from French literature but largely exported: the “realms of memory” (Pierre Nora), the “work of recollection” (Paul Ricoeur), the “frameworks of memory” (Maurice Halbwachs).     

Breasted experiences in pregnancy: an examination through photographs

Drawing on qualitative data from a sample of pregnant women in Hobart, Australia this article uses ‘feminist’ ‘memory work’ and the ‘photovoice’ method as frames for discussing the ways in which interviews and participant-produced photographs may be used to trace and understand pregnant embodiment. I argue that digital photographs taken by women during pregnancy can reveal important information about how they negotiate their own experiences of breastedness and wearing maternity underwear over time. Here, the concept of ‘breastedness’ itself is expanded as women’s individual embodied experiences of pregnancy are reflected in the production and viewing of their own photographic images.