Politics of memory

Politics of memory is the organisation of collective memory by political agents; the political means by which events are remembered and recorded, or discarded. Eventually, politics of memory may determine the way history is written and passed on, hence the terms history politics or politics of history. The politics of history is the effects of political influence on the representation or study of historical topics, commonly associated with the totalitarian state which use propaganda and other means to impose a specific version of history with the goal of eliminating competing perspectives about the past.[1] In order to achieve this goal, memory regimes resort to different means such as narrating (the construction of a seemingly coherent narrative), strategic silencing (the masking-out of historical facts that contradict one's own interpretation), performing (ritualized forms of reifying the narrative) or renaming/remapping (inscribing the narrative into the monumental and toponymic landscape).[2]

Nevertheless, the term is contested and there is no common agreement on its meaning which is often a matter of contextual use.[3][4] Some authors have suggested that memory debates can be ordered by an Ethics of Political Commemoration, a framework similar to Just War theory.[5]

Memories are also influenced by cultural forces, e.g. popular culture, as well as social norms. It has also been connected with the construction of identity.[6]

  1. ^ Rafał Stobiecki (2008). "Historians Facing Politics of History: The Case of Poland". In Michael Kopeček (ed.). Past in the Making: Historical Revisionism in Central Europe After 1989. CEUP collection. Central European University Press. pp. 179–192. ISBN 9786155211423. commonly associated with the totalitarian state, where the authorities use mass propaganda and various forms of repression and pressure to try to impose their own version of history on society, with the aim of eliminating any competitive discourse about the past
  2. ^ Leupold, David (2020). Embattled dreamlands : the politics of contesting Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish memory. New York. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-429-34415-2. OCLC 1130319782.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  3. ^ Michael Goebel (2011). "Introduction". Argentina's Partisan Past Nationalism and the Politics of History. Liverpool University Press. p. 1. ISBN 9781846312380.
  4. ^ Erkki Tuomioja (2017-07-25). "History and conflict: How can historians contribute to conflict resolution and conflict prevention". historianswithoutborders.fi. Retrieved October 25, 2020.
  5. ^ Gutbrod, Hans; Wood, David (2023). Ethics of Political Commemoration. London: Palgrave MacMillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-31594-7. ISBN 978-3-031-31594-7. S2CID 260889390. Retrieved 31 August 2023.
  6. ^ Nasrallah, Laura (Autumn 2005). "The Politics of Memory". Harvard Divinity Bulletin. 33 (2). Retrieved 17 September 2021.