Postnational memory: Narrating the Holocaust and the Nakba

Khoury, Nadim

doi:10.1177/0191453719839448

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 57 publications

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“…For Sikhs, the transnational fight for the independent state of Khalistan defined by a violent history of displacement has framed diaspora existence for generations (Axel, 2001). The annual commemoration of Naqba marks the period in 1948, when Palestinians were forcibly displaced due to Jewish paramilitary insurgency and British colonial policies, followed by Israeli statehood (Khoury, 2019; Rabinowitz, 2000). For Croatians, the ‘1000-year-old dream of independence’ professed by president Franjo Tuđman (1989), highlighting centuries of suffering under different imperial, wartime and communist regimes, has nourished the imaginations and memories of diaspora Croats invested in a powerful, redemptive national origin story.…”

Section: Victimhood’s Temporal and Transnational Reachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Victimhood and the transnationalization of Croatian memory politics

Winland

2022

Memory Studies

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The biblical entreaty zakhor – Hebrew for ‘remember’ – has been central to the efforts of diaspora Jewish scholars, religious leaders, politicians and others to suture the suffering past to the present. The imperative to not only remember but also commemorate histories of suffering is ubiquitous among conflict-generated diasporas as well. For diaspora Croats, victim-centred themes regularly surface in identity narratives, focusing on memories of trauma and suffering after the establishment of the Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia in 1945. While the manipulation of victimhood narratives and the rehabilitation of controversial histories by Croatian political elites have been examined extensively, the persistence of memories focused on suffering among diaspora Croats has received less scholarly attention. In this article, I ask why, 30 years after the end of the Homeland War and the establishment of the Croatian state, do victimhood narratives continue to resonate for diaspora Croats particularly from the Herzegovinian region of the former Yugoslavia who arrived in Canada between 1945 and 1990. What role do memory activists in Canada originating mainly from Herzegovina play in lubricating and mobilizing memories that reinforce victimhood? Finally, how does the desire for validation and legitimacy beyond diaspora communities factor into commemorations and initiatives focused on collective suffering? The focus here is on research conducted between 2019 and 2020 in Toronto when diaspora commemorations and the memory narratives that have sustained them came under increased critical scrutiny, challenging the veracity of Croatian victimhood claims.

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Section: Victimhood’s Temporal and Transnational Reachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Victimhood and the transnationalization of Croatian memory politics

Winland

2022

Memory Studies

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The Far-Right’s Mnemonic Alliance with Putin’s Russia: L’SNS’s Mastering of a Disruptive Past

Paulovicova

Gyárfášová

2023

Nationalities Papers

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This study identifies the mnemonic strategies of the Slovak extreme-right Ľudová Strana Naše Slovensko (ĽSNS) / People’s Party Our Slovakia as a means of establishing a mnemonic alliance with Putin’s Russia. ĽSNS’s construction of mnemonic culture surrounding two critical events in Slovak history – the 1944 Slovak National Uprising and the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet army and its allies – is marked by an effort to overcome the ideological divide between its extreme-right ideology and Russia’s identity and memory politics rooted in its anti-fascist heritage. Those two events represent an uneasy terrain for building political and mnemonic alliances between ĽSNS and Putin’s Russia. Even though these two historical milestones represent a seemingly unmasterable past and an obstacle in an ĽSNS-Russia alliance, the party implemented several mnemonic strategies to reconfigure the place of these two key historical events in national memory and clear the path for a closer alliance with Putin’s Russia. We argue that ĽSNS’s memory construction is multidirectional rather than competitive or discordant. We unpack ĽSNS’s memory construction and identify multidirectional effects and trajectories as vectors for building a mnemonic alliance with Putin’s Russia.

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Marginal(ized) plurality: An empirical conceptualization of Michael Rothberg’s “multidirectional memory” in German educational settings

Arnold

Bischoff

2023

Memory Studies

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In this article, we apply Michael Rothberg’s concept of “multidirectional memory” to an empirical setting, by analyzing qualitative interviews with 124 educators in the field of memory work, such as museum and memorial site employees, teachers, volunteers of non-governmental organizations, and civil society initiatives. We analyzed where they come across memory conflicts and commonality, and what the respective “enabling conditions” were, that is, the influencing factors that promoted or prevented developments toward multidirectionality in the sense of a “differentiated solidarity.” We found only a few examples of this kind of multidirectional memory in educational settings. It was fostered by four factors: personal autobiographical experiences, political positions, structural/institutional aspects, and certain pedagogical principles. By contrast, different forms of competitive memory were dominant: first, “Conflicting Memory” characterized by differing politics; second, “Divided Memory” characterized by a perception of resource competition; and third, “Fragmented Memory,” consisting of a form of sympathetic ignorance by which memories of other groups or events are tolerated, but not actively interlinked. Central topics that emerge within memory conflicts and entanglements are the history of National Socialism, World War II and the Shoah, the history of the state of Israel and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the Armenian Genocide, the history of the Ottoman Empire and—to a lesser extent—the history of colonialism. We argue that much can be gained by applying Rothberg’s concept to contemporary empirical settings, both in order to understand its current implications but also to help flesh out its underlying theoretical notions. These are regarding possible “negative” forms of multidirectional memory, as well as the implications and ethics of historical comparisons.

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Postnational memory: Narrating the Holocaust and the Nakba

Cited by 3 publications

References 57 publications

Victimhood and the transnationalization of Croatian memory politics

Victimhood and the transnationalization of Croatian memory politics

The Far-Right’s Mnemonic Alliance with Putin’s Russia: L’SNS’s Mastering of a Disruptive Past

Marginal(ized) plurality: An empirical conceptualization of Michael Rothberg’s “multidirectional memory” in German educational settings

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