The Politics of Trauma and Memory Activism

Abstract

The last two decades of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of a novel idea the belief that an explicit confrontation with past injustices forms an essential component of commitment to constitutional democracy and the rule of law. This has had a widespread impact in transitional contexts across regions. It has also assumed a variety of political and cultural forms. The Memory Politics and Transitional Justice series publishes innovative new scholarship that confronts critical questions at the intersection of memory politics and transitional justice. The editors welcome submissions from a variety of disciplines. including political science and political theory, law, sociology, and cultural studies.

Memory activism in the Republic of Moldova: Last address and Stolpersteine projects

“…Memory activism is, therefore, public advocacy for change in recalling and representing the past (Holc, 2018). It is usually a non-state initiative of a group or an individual that strives to influence public debate, reshape the collective memory and question the official historical narrative (Górska, 2016).…”

Challenging the meaning of the past from below: A typology for comparative research on memory activists

“…Given her focus on the positive role of remembering protest actions as moments of hope, which inform the present struggle for a better life, the civic nature of memory or activism in Rigney's understanding makes sense. However, this would be too narrow of an assumption for the "memory activist," in general (see also Holc, 2018;Kovras, 2017: 6;Szczepanka, 2014: 2). Indeed, memory activism can be "agnostic" in its politics, proving an amplifier of pre-existing motivations.…”

“…Catholic-Poles who publicly commemorate the Jewish past of their country since 1990s mark a past that has ended. "The Jewish Revival" includes hundreds of local initiatives to restore former Jewish sites, to organize tours, exhibits, and cultural festivals, to collect testimonies and to engage the young generation in learning about their local Jewish history (Gutman, 2018;Holc, 2018;Zubrzycki, 2012). Although they mourn the loss of the large Jewish community in the Holocaust and acknowledge the role of Poles in the fate of Jews, their aim is to restore a multicultural past, a past in which Poles host different minorities, including Jews (Gutman, 2018).…”

Duality of Decolonizing: Artists’ Memory Activism in Warsaw

“…Memory activism is a key emerging concept in contemporary memory studies (Gutman 2017;Holc 2017;Wüstenberg 2017). It is currently applied to activist groups that address the past to make moral and political claims about the need for social change.…”