Memory in Post-Conflict Societies: From Contention to Integration?

Abstract

Collective memory, broadly conceived, has long been held to be an essential component within ethno-national belonging. For example, as Anthony Smith explains, a sense of historical continuity and common heritage is essential to some form of group cohesion and identification (1991). The idea that memory is intrinsic to processes of binding, bonding and 'othering' has been the subject of research across a number of disciplines. Often this work focuses, implicitly or explicitly, on the conflictual and divisive processes that memory mobilization triggers. Abdelal et. al. (2006), for instance, describe how identity consists of content and contestationmeanings are broadly shared about identity, what it does, what it looks like and why it is important within groups; but those meanings can often be subject to differences of emphasis and interpretation. Given this fluidity, particular aspects of group belonging and identification become salient when they are triggered by changing circumstances (Chandra, 2006). As John Gillis points out, 'we are constantly revising our memories to suit our current identities'. As such, memory and national identity are congruent and symbiotic: 'Memories help us make sense of the world we live in', he goes on to argue, '"memory work" is, like any other kind of physical or mental labour, embedded in complex class, gender and power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten), by whom, and for what end (1994, p. 3).2 Yet, in each instance of the politicization or mobilization of identity an act of depoliticization occurs -other elements, other memories, other experiences are muted, displaced or deferred. In each instance of contestation, an act of what Michael Freeden (1996) (in specific relation to ideology) calls decontestation can be glimpsed -in other words, the very meanings that attach to identities (for example, the interpretations given to purportedly critical historical events) are overwritten and overdetermined so as to elide difference and distinction in such a way as to offset or pivot away from conflictual readings. As Graff-McRae points out in her article in this Special Section, often, this glimpse takes place at oblique angles because the act of depoliticization or decontestation depends on silencing or 'ghosting'. The countermemories of non-dominant groups (in Graff-McRae's paper, for instance, gendered experiences of the Northern Irish Troubles) may be forgotten, ignored or pushed aside when they are not easily assimilated into the overarching group-understanding. This special section draws together papers by Rebecca Graff-McRae and Adrian Littleand Mark Macmillan that seek to problematize critical and under-studied aspects of these notions; the overarching idea is to explore the roles that memory may play in overcoming division. It is also the case, however, that memory work has the potential, particularly in societies attempting to grapple with long-standing and deep-rooted ethno-national identities, to be used by protagonists to perpetuate or accentuate such ...

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