Decolonizing Memory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Demographic Data ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Assia Djebar ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
Legal Violence

The magnitude of the legal violence exercised by the French to colonize and occupy Algeria (1830–1962) is such that only aesthetic works have been able to register its enduring effects. In Decolonizing Memory Jill Jarvis examines the power of literature to provide what demographic data, historical facts, and legal trials have not in terms of attesting to and accounting for this destruction. Taking up the unfinished work of decolonization since 1962, Algerian writers have played a crucial role in forging historical memory and nurturing political resistance—their work helps to make possible what state violence has rendered almost unthinkable. Drawing together readings of multilingual texts by Yamina Mechakra, Waciny Laredj, Zahia Rahmani, Fadhma Aïth Mansour Amrouche, Assia Djebar, and Samira Negrouche alongside theoretical, juridical, visual, and activist texts from both Algeria’s national liberation war (1954–1962) and war on civilians (1988–1999), this book challenges temporal and geographical frameworks that have implicitly organized studies of cultural memory around Euro-American reference points. Jarvis shows how this literature rewrites history, disputes state authority to arbitrate justice, and cultivates a multilingual archive for imagining decolonized futures.

How to Scale Factional Divisions in Conflict Situations

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonius C.G.M. Robben
Keyword(s):  
Broad Spectrum ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Methodological Problem ◽  
State Violence ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
Research Population ◽  
Formal Power ◽  
Gain Access

In conducting fieldwork among perpetrators of state violence, it is a major methodological problem to gain access to competing factions within the research population. Ethnographers often succeed in finding access to at least one faction but this successful rapport might then immediately close off other factions that mistrust the ethnographer’s politics, intentions, or alleged sympathies. The ethnographic challenge is to find intermediaries or switchboard operators, as they are called in this article, who have established informal channels of communication between hostile factions. Switchboard operators have the following characteristics: discretion, neutrality, lack of formal power, disinterestedness, trustworthiness, and they act as a conduit of communication. This article describes how switchboard operators were located in Argentina, and how they played a crucial role in my fieldwork among a broad spectrum of military perpetrators who had terrorized the Argentine people between 1976 and 1983 with enforced disappearances and state repression.

“We are not ignorant”: Transnational migrants’ experiences of racialized securitization

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Ybarra
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Central American ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Legal Violence ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
The Us ◽  
Transnational Migrants

This paper examines the dynamics of racialized securitization for transnational migrants across multiple borders—from Central America toward Mexico and the United States. Rather than a singular process where US policies, funding, and attitudes toward border security direct Mexican immigration enforcement, I argue that Mexican state collaboration redirects US xenophobia away from Mexican migrants and toward Central American migrants. Migrants’ testimonies point to the ways that US and Mexican discourses are mobilized in different—but complementary—ways that shape them as racialized subjects with differential life chances. This is clearest through a crude mapping of people onto nationalities for deportation based on hair, language, and tattoos. Beyond legal violence, deported migrants describe their vulnerability as constructed within tacit networks of collaboration between actors in the US and Mexico, both licit and illicit, in an effort to extort migrants and their families. While race is a key signifier in border securitization, the differences between these racial states have material consequences in the differential state violence in immigration enforcement.

scholarly journals Een pasgeboren staat, of een recentelijk ontwaakte natie?

1970 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 5-22
Author(s):  
Nele Bemong
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
International Community ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
The Creation

Between 1830 and 1850, practically out of nowhere there came into beinga truly 'Belgian' literature, written boch in Flemish and in French, but aimedat a single goal: the creation of a Belgian past and the conscruction of aBelgian national identity. The historical novel played a crucial role in thisconscruction and representation of a collective memory for the Belgian statejust out of the cradle. The prefaces to these historical novels are characterizedboth by the central role granted to the representacion of Flanders as the cradleof nineteenth-century Belgium, and by the organically and religiously inspiredimagery. Attempts were made to create an intimate genealogical relationshipwith the forefathers, in order to make the Belgian citizens feel closer to theirrich heritage. Through the activation of specific recollections from theimmense archive of the collective cultural memory, Belgian independencefound its legitimization both towards the international community andtowards the Belgian people.

From National Liberation War to Self-defense: A Historical Glance at Öcalan’s Perspective on Violence

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 464-482
Author(s):  
H. Bahadır Türk
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
The Road ◽  
Road Map ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Kurdistan Workers Party

The leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party ( Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan or PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, has played a crucial role in shaping the road map of the PKK since the founding of the organization in 1978. His ideas have substantially influenced the structure of the PKK. This article analyzes whether Abdullah Öcalan’s perspective on violence changed over the period between the founding of the PKK and the present. Using an interpretive–textual method, the study examines Öcalan’s approach to the question of violence before and after his imprisonment on the island of İmralı in 1999. The study attempts to make sense of how his perspective on violence was constructed and developed during these two periods. To achieve this goal, the study demonstrates the differences and similarities in Öcalan’s approach to the concept of violence during these two periods. Accordingly, it is argued that Öcalan’s perspective on violence is marked by continuity rather than a rupture.

Boarding Orphans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessie B. Ramey
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Abuse And Neglect

This chapter focuses on how the United Presbyterian Orphan's Home (UPOH) proudly reflected on the thousands of children they had helped and pictured them in a long procession next to a line of dedicated orphanage managers. Parents are not only missing from this imagined scene but are literally portrayed as absent from their children's lives. In their self-representations, the Home for Colored Children (HCC) often painted an even more dismal picture of parents, pointing to not only their absence but their alleged abuse and neglect of children. However, beneath the surface of orphanage rhetoric and managers' historical memory, parents were very much present and played a crucial role in the institutions. Parents viewed their children's institutionalization as a temporary necessity, a deliberate parenting choice and not an abandonment of their parenting responsibilities.

scholarly journals Pál Prónay: Paramilitary Violence and Anti-Semitism in Hungary, 1919–1921

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Béla Bodó
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Role Expectations ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The First World War ◽  
White Terror ◽  
First World

This essay examines the life, political career and the moral and intellectual universe of Deputy Colonel Baron Pál Prónay, the most important paramilitary leader in Hungary after the First World War. In historical memory and public imagination, Prónay’s name is associated with militia, mob and state violence often described by contemporary liberals and socialists as the “White Terror,” namely the harassment, arbitrary arrest, torture and execution of both political opponents and apolitical Jews after the collapse of the Soviet Republic in early August of 1919. The essay is based on hitherto unused or underused primary sources, such as Prónay’s unpublished two-volume diary; trial documents; police reports; memorandums; internal communications between government agencies, civilian and military authorities; and private letters culled from fi ve major archives, as well as contemporary newspapers, political pamphlets and novels and short stories written by well and lesser known writers. It seeks to unearth the details of Prónay’s life and explain his behavior, in particular his cruelty and sadism, in the context of role expectations, behavior patterns and political and cultural values associated with the nobility, the minor aristocracy, the offi cer corps and gentlemen in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in the early twentieth century. The essay looks at the techniques that Prónay used in his diary to project a favorable image while simultaneously destroying the reputation of his opponents as the fi rst step towards political rehabilitation. Why he failed to achieve this goal, the mistakes that he made both as a writer and politician during his belated and desperate attempt in the early 1940s to regain favor with the political elite and the memory of the “White Terror” and Prónay’s role in the Hungarian civil war are the subjects of this essay.

VIRTUAL MUSEUM AS THE NEWEST MECHANISM FOR PRESERVING HISTORICAL MEMORY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE

InterConf ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 307-318
Author(s):  
Tetiana Ilchuk
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Virtual Museum ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
Online Technology ◽  
Online Technologies ◽  
Interdisciplinary Nature

The development of information technology has entailed an active rethinking of the concept of cultural memory, the transposition of the actual formats, methods of interpretation and presentation to the audience, in particular through online technologies and museum activities. Museums, which are formed exclusively on the basis of online technology, become a qualitatively new cultural form of activity, which terms and conceptual nomenclature were built spontaneously, empirically in the process of practical activity. The purpose of this research is to analyze the concept and peculiar features of an online (virtual) museum as a multidimensional phenomenon of an interdisciplinary nature, and to propose their classification based on best practices of Ukrainian and international museums.

Historical Memory at El Salvador’s Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 8-26
Author(s):  
Diana Carolina Sierra Becerra
Keyword(s):  
El Salvador ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Popular Education ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
San Salvador ◽  
Engagement Strategies ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Class Hegemony

The civil war in El Salvador (1980–1992) resulted in the death of approximately 75,000 people, the vast majority killed by state and paramilitary forces. In the postwar era, the Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen in San Salvador promotes historical memory in order to denounce state violence and advance social justice. It departs from the historic role of museums in upholding ruling-class hegemony and offers a progressive model for disseminating and critically engaging with historical memory. This museum makes history relevant to younger generations through the use of oral history, popular pedagogy, and innovative engagement strategies. However, its impact is limited by neoliberal atomization and relatively low levels of grassroots mobilization—common obstacles faced by popular education initiatives around the world. La guerra civil en el El Salvador (1980–1992) causó la muerte de aproximadamente 75,000 personas, la mayoría asesinadas por el Estado y las fuerzas paramilitares. En la posguerra, el Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen en San Salvador promueve la memoria histórica para denunciar la violencia del Estado e impulsar la justicia social. Se aparta, entonces, del papel histórico de los museos como defensores de la hegemonía de la clase dominante al usar un modelo progresista para diseminar y examinar de forma crítica la memoria histórica. Por medio del uso de la historia oral, la pedagogía popular y varias estrategias de participación innovadoras, el museo trata de que la historia sea algo relevante para las generaciones más jóvenes. Sin embargo, su impacto es limitado debido a la atomización neoliberal y a los niveles relativamente bajos de movilización popular –obstáculos que comparte con otras iniciativas de educación popular alrededor del mundo.

scholarly journals FORGING A NEW TYPE OF FEMINIST IDENTITY: CHICANA FEMINISM, FEMININITY, AND THE INSTITUTION OF MEMORY

SYNERGY ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Got Monica ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Minority ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Symbolic Violence ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
Chicana Feminism ◽  
Chicana Literature ◽  
New Type ◽  
Biological Component

Drawing on Jan Assmann’s interpretation of cultural memory as devoid of any racial/biological component, as well as James Clifford’s repudiation of the notion of cultural purity, the paper redefines memory as a mentally configured cultural institution, claiming that any reconfiguration of group identity is an act of symbolic violence. By emphasizing the crucial role that identity plays in understanding the fundamental themes tackled by Chicana literature—patriarchal oppression, racial terror, domestic abuse, sexism, homophobia—, the paper illustrates the extent to which the ethnic-gender binomial, i.e. belonging to a group that faces bias on various levels (femininity, Mexican American genealogy and, sporadically, sexual minority status), stands at the very core of the desire to redefine identity that largely fuels contemporary Chicana prose.

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