Editorial: Cultural memorial forms

Laanes, Eneken; Meretoja, Hanna

doi:10.1177/1750698020976455

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 20 publications

(11 reference statements)

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“…As instances of what Eneken Laanes and Hanna Meretoja (2021) have called ‘cultural memorial forms’ (p. 3), 3 the relation of terms in my title – figured, for example, in the juxtaposition of the two epigraphs that interweave the familial and the national, as also the (auto-) biographical and the historiographic – refer to contested sites for addressing civic values. Between politicians and artists (not to mention historians and lawyers), the proverbial appeal to the ‘conscience of the nation’ involves a sense not only of ‘memorial forms’ but ‘counter-memorial forms’, where the past appears ‘through the generation of stories that can refigure, and not just express, the identities of the actors who encounter and appropriate them’ (Rigney, 2012: 610).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Refracting implication: The question of silence in (A)pollonia

Twitchin

2022

Memory Studies

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Addressing the work (or, indeed, the lessons) of Memory Studies, Ann Rigney has suggested that the creative arts play a particular role as ‘catalysts’ in the cultural understanding of the past. Contrasting an example of contemporary theatre repertoire with an officially legislated ‘theatre’ of remembrance, this essay reflects on differences between the cultural politics of a creative performance produced by Warsaw’s Nowy Teatr – (A)pollonia – and those of commemorative ‘performance’ mandated by the state concerning specifically the citation of ‘Righteous among the nations’. In a context where memory wars over ‘the good name’ of Poland include recourse to the law intervening in both scholarly and artistic research, how might this theatre production offer a form of counter-memorability to claims about national ‘tradition’, especially with respect to remembering the Shoah?

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Refracting implication: The question of silence in (A)pollonia

Twitchin

2022

Memory Studies

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“…Underpinning this development is a recognition that memory and remembering are as much social as individual practices. As Laanes and Meretoja [2] (p. 3) argue, memory "is not merely an individual, psychological process that takes place in our 'heads' but is always already mediated by culturally and socially shaped memory forms". Much recent research takes Maurice Halbwachs' concept of "collective memory" [3] as its starting point and has explored the various ways in which social remembrance takes place.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Museums and Transitional Justice: Assessing the Impact of a Memorial Museum on Young People in Post-Communist Romania

2021

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Memorial museums are frequently established within transitional justice projects intended to reckon with recent political violence. They play an important role in enabling young people to understand and remember a period of human rights abuses of which they have no direct experience. This paper examines the impact of a memorial museum in Romania which interprets the human rights abuses of the communist period (1947–1989). It uses focus groups with 61 young adults and compares the responses of visitors and non-visitors to assess the impact of the museum on views about the communist past, as well as the role of the museum within post-communist transitional justice. The museum had a limited impact on changing overall perceptions of the communist era but visiting did stimulate reflection on the differences between past and present, and the importance of long-term remembrance; however, these young people were largely skeptical about the museum’s role within broader processes of transitional justice. The paper concludes that it is important to recognize the limits of what memorial museums can achieve, since young people form a range of intergenerational memories about the recent past which a museum is not always able to change.

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“…Memory studies is an academic discipline that is particularly affiliated with the interplay of the individual scale and higher-level scales in processes of identity formation and change. The defining premise of memory studies is that individual remembering occurs in 'social frameworks of memory' of what has come to be called social, cultural or collective memory (Laanes and Meretoja 2021). 1 Memory becomes collective through artefacts with symbolic value that mediate between individuals.…”

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confidence: 99%

Memory in energy transitions: individual agency through historical narratives in the energy transition to gas and electricity in the Dutch household

ten Berge

2023

Sustain Sci

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Authors adopting socio-technical frameworks to study energy transitions argue that individual behavioural change and the uptake of social and technological innovations on higher-level scales are both imperative for sustainability transitions to come about. However, the way individuals are embedded in the larger system has remained largely unclear. To better understand individual embedment in energy transitions, this paper enriches sustainability transition research with the insights of memory studies. During energy transitions, social actors that enact these transitions change their identity. A core premise of memory studies is that individual and collective remembering cannot do without each other in the constitution of identity. To illustrate the role of memory in energy transitions, this paper conducts a historical case study of the role of housewives in the energy transition to gas and electricity in the Dutch household. By adopting a narrative approach, the historical narratives across the Monthly Magazine of the Dutch Association for Housewives (NVvH), published between 1913 and 1942, are explored. The results show how the master narrative prescribed the guiding principles of the historical narratives that emerged in the energy discourse. However, as part of the flexible nature of memory, a varied ‘menu of stories’ came forward that enabled individuals to identify with different historical narratives, incorporating differing energy sources and drawing on the transformative nature of memory by imagining different energy futures. It is concluded that individual agency in energy transitions moves beyond choices of use and consumption. It rests in the individuals’ ability to identify with a historical narrative that adheres to the way the individual makes sense of the world.

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Editorial: Cultural memorial forms

Cited by 10 publications

References 20 publications

Refracting implication: The question of silence in (A)pollonia

Refracting implication: The question of silence in (A)pollonia

Museums and Transitional Justice: Assessing the Impact of a Memorial Museum on Young People in Post-Communist Romania

Memory in energy transitions: individual agency through historical narratives in the energy transition to gas and electricity in the Dutch household

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