INTRODUCTION. Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship

Gillis, John R.

doi:10.1515/9780691186658-003

Cited by 228 publications

(86 citation statements)

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“…He argues that 'They are bound together as much by forgetting as by remembering, for modern memory was born at a moment when Americans and Europeans launched a massive effort to reject the past and construct a radically new future.' 90 This concept of forgetting in the Western construct of 'modern memory' has become an integral tool in the re-imagining of nations undergoing periods of political transition worldwide. In the period surrounding Kenya's independence, it was a tool used by both the coloniser and the colonised as Nairobi's urban landscape became a site in which changing public memories were negotiated.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-placing imperial landscapes: colonial monuments and the transition to independence in Kenya

Larsen

2012

Journal of Historical Geography

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-placing imperial landscapes: colonial monuments and the transition to independence in Kenya

Larsen

2012

Journal of Historical Geography

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“…In a frequently quoted line, Gillis (1994) suggests that ''all the major combatant nations eventually resorted to erecting the so-called tombs of unknown soldiers, thereby remembering everyone by remembering no one in particular'' (p. 11). But this seems to miss precisely the point, given the first argument that we label the hypothetical enthymeme of relationality.…”

Section: The Hypothetical Enthymeme Of Relationalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Arguments of the Tombs of the Unknown: Relationality and National Legitimation

2011

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In the wake of the First World War, a new form of commemoration emerged internationally, but in each case focused upon a new kind of national ''hero''-the unknown soldier or warrior. The first instances appeared in France and Britain in 1920, followed by the United States in 1921, and Belgium in 1922. Other nations followed suit over the years, with the most recent WWI Unknown Soldier monument dedicated in 2004, in New Zealand. The motivational calculus of these national tombs was, of course, the massive number of combatant dead whose remains could not be identified. This paper takes up the two very different arguments composed by these commemorative sites. The first argument was directed to surviving family members and was articulated most explicitly by the French as a hypothetical enthymeme ''this could be your husband, your father, your brother,'' etc. The second argument has been directed to national and international collectives as a constitutive proclamation of legitimated nation-state or Empire Although this argument is particularly explicit in postcolonial gestures of independence on the part of former dominions of old empires, it was evident in even the earliest cases of the tombs of the unknown.

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“…Gillis (1995) maintains that commemorations orchestrate individual and group memories in the appearance of consent, whereas in actuality they are the result of intense conflict, struggle, and in some instances annihilation. Connerton (1989) argues that memories make sense and are rearticulated through public commemorative rituals and performative bodily practices.…”

Section: Amazing Apec/spectacular Octobermentioning

confidence: 99%

Mourning State Celebrations: Amnesic Iterations of Political Violence in Thailand

Musikawong

2010

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At the height of the United States wars in Southeast Asia in the 1970s, while political violence wrecked the provinces, Bangkok became one of the most visible sites of violence in Thailand against leftist social movements. Drawing from an ethnography of commemoration and the military archive, I suggest that after thirty years of silence, current commemorations speak to how emotional engagements are maneuvered in the public arena into a politics of forgetting. At the same time, relatives of those killed by state violence and activists enact mourning practices to insist on loss and to challenge the state-sponsored celebrations of fallen heroes. Ultimately, Thai pasts are worked through these commemorations as "spectacular-time." As spectacle, the commemorations reenact the marches of the student movement as part of national history, to witness recreated scenes of violence, to relive particular landmarks as infused with meaning, and to identify with the alterity of 1970s leftist radicalism or the centrality of state manufactured democracy in Thailand.

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INTRODUCTION. Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship

Cited by 228 publications

References 0 publications

Re-placing imperial landscapes: colonial monuments and the transition to independence in Kenya

Re-placing imperial landscapes: colonial monuments and the transition to independence in Kenya

The Arguments of the Tombs of the Unknown: Relationality and National Legitimation

Mourning State Celebrations: Amnesic Iterations of Political Violence in Thailand

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