Locating Transnational Memory

The Creation of Transnational Memory Spaces: Professionalization and Commercialization Abstract In the age of globalization, local memories of past violence are often dislocated from their material places as remembrance is transpiring in transnational memory spaces. Historical events and commemorative memory practices increasingly transcend national boundaries and change the way memories of historical violence, atrocity, and genocide are represented in the transnational memoryscape. This article explores how the professionalization and commercialization of museums and memorials of genocide and crimes against humanity are modes of “making the past present” and “the local global”. Furthermore, professionalization and commercialization are processes through which local memories are translated into global discourses that are comprehensible to and recognizable by a global audience. In this article, we disentangle local memory places (understood as material, physical sites) from transnational memory spaces (understood as immaterial, ideational spaces) in order to investigate the transformation of local places of memory into transnational spaces of memory. At the same time, we show that, while these processes are often understood interchangeably, professionalization and commercialization are separate mechanisms and tend to be used strategically to translate memory discourses to specific audiences. These two processes can be seen as producing a standardized memorial site and a homogenization of memory in the transnational memory space. The article illustrates this theoretical reasoning with empirical findings from fieldwork in South Africa, where we zoom in on Robben Island outside Cape Town, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where we focus on the Galerija 11/07/95 in Sarajevo, which commemorates the atrocities committed in Srebrenica in 1995.

Local and National Memories of WWII in a Transnational Age: the Case of Norway Abstract This article discusses how the “unbound” and “multidirectional” memory of the Holocaust has contested, challenged, and reformed existing frames of memorialization of WWII in Norway. Through an analysis of the discussion on restitution, on Norwegian collaboration, on the establishment of Holocaust memorials and memorial sites, as well as an analysis of commemorative speeches, I show how the transnational memory of the Holocaust has transformed existing remembrance practices, however, without erasing or lifting national memory frames. For more than 50 years, Norway suffered from a “national consensus syndrome” in which the memory of the heroic Norwegian resistance during the 5 years of German occupation played a hegemonic role in Norwegian memory politics. The “global memory” of the Holocaust and the establishment of transnational memory networks such as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), however, have contested national memory practices, pushed to uncover Norwegian participation in the crimes of the past and for the incorporation of Holocaust remembrance into a wider concept of fighting for democracy and human rights. The site of the Akershus harbor and nearby fortress in Oslo is a striking example of that, as this article demonstrates. Moreover, adopting the transnational memory of the Holocaust and the universalistic perspectives of human rights and democratic values was not only a matter of memory politics. Adopting Holocaust memory and transforming existing remembrance practices became an essential part of Norwegian foreign policy and a legitimation of Norway’s moral integrity as an international actor.

R.I.P., Rest in Pieces: Mnemonic Transnationality, Travel, and Translation of the Marcos Burial in the Heroes’ Cemetery Abstract On 18 November 2016, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte allowed the interment of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani or Heroes’ Cemetery. This essay interrogates the discrepancy between two mnemonic signifiers that lay claim to patriotism and nationhood: the Libingan and Marcos’ body. Close reading the burial process via the frameworks of memory, ideology, cultural studies, and translation studies allows a focus, not only on the cemetery as a site but also on the mnemonic discursive interventions of the Marcos family. As hegemonic memory agents fueled by money, myth, and exilic privileges linked to the USA, the Marcoses exploit the political translated body of the patriarch. As such, dictatorial exile is partly divested of its admonishing power. While the translation (as mobility and “survival”) of the corpse attempts to absorb the heroic signification of the cemetery, in turn, the honorable signification of the lieu de mémoire is also discursively challenged. Hence, while Marcos now rests among the heroes, most of his desaparecidos still want entombment. Notions of the nation are also therefore challenged. The paper thus demonstrates how a “fixed” mnemonic signifier, such as a cemetery exemplifying patriotism, can be modified through “memory entrepreneurs.” Understanding memory-as-process, and not only memory-as-site, allows us to discern the hegemonic meaning-making in memory politics by revealing the means and not only the ends. This perspective questions the malleability of space and takes us towards the horizon of what Ricœur calls a “just allotment of memory.”

From the Transnational to the Intimate: Multidirectional Memory, the Holocaust and Colonial Violence in Australia and Beyond Abstract In Australia, public remembrance, particularly relating to national identity and colonial violence, has been contentious. In this article, we take Australia’s recent bid to join the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) as an opportunity to identify national, local and multidirectional dynamics shaping public remembrance of the Holocaust and colonial violence in Australia. Joining IHRA signifies a belated national commitment to Holocaust remembrance, which has traditionally been fostered in Australia by survivor communities. Significantly, the Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM) has recently ventured beyond survivor memory, positioning Holocaust remembrance as a platform to identify ongoing human rights violations against Indigenous Australians and other marginalized groups. While this multidirectional framework promotes an inclusive practice of remembrance, we argue that it may inadvertently flatten complex histories into instances of “human rights violations” and decentre the foundational issue of settler colonial violence in Australia. To explore the personal and affective work of remembering settler violence from an Indigenous perspective, we turn to two multiscalar artworks by Judy Watson that exemplify a mnemonic politics of location. the names of places contributes to a local and national public remembrance of settler violence by identifying and mapping colonial massacre sites. In experimental beds, Watson links her matrilineal family history of racial exclusion with that of Thomas Jefferson’s slave, Sally Hemings. This transnational decolonial feminist work takes the gendered and racialized body and intimate sexual appropriation as a ground for a multidirectional colonial memory, thereby providing an alternative to the dominant Holocaust paradigm and its idiom of human rights.

Transnational Memory Spaces in the Making: World War II and Holocaust Remembrance in Vienna Abstract The authors examine three recent large-scale mnemonic projects and transformation processes in Austrias’ capital, Vienna: The staging of celebrations of May 8 as a “day of joy” at Heldenplatz in the city center, the subsequent reshaping of Heldenplatz, and the placing of pavement memorials dedicated to victims of the Shoah throughout the cityscape. The article is based on the sociological concepts of “synthesizing” and “spacing” as well as a recently conducted survey of all signs of remembrance referring to political violence during National Socialism in Vienna. In order to identify differences and similarities, the authors examine mnemonic actors that drive transnationalization, specific practices of producing spaces of remembrance that reach beyond national and municipal borders, as well as the effects of transnationality, normative frameworks, and esthetic means developed and used by agents of transnationalization. One of the key findings is that “transnationality” is rarely an explicitly intended objective of actors. Rather, it emerges through specific practices applied by actors located at diverse political scales in an attempt to achieve their objectives in a particular local political and spatial setting.

A Response to Johanne Kübler’s A Review of Zeynep Tufekci – Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (2017, New Haven: Yale University Press)

Sociological Research and Modernity: the Rise and Fall of the Survey Subject Abstract This article examines the relationship between sociology and modern society by exploring the methodological implications of a modern ontology of society. Focusing on one of the signature methods of sociological research, the survey, we discuss how modern society has given rise to the survey subject who is able to participate in survey research. We finally consider recent developments that foreshadow the fall of the survey subject.

A Review of Zeynep Tufekci—Twitter and Tear Gas: the Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (2017, New Haven: Yale University Press)

The Backlash Against Israeli Human Rights NGOs: Grounds, Players, and Implications Abstract This article examines the recent backlash against Israeli human rights and advocacy NGOs led jointly by right-wing organizations, by mainstream media, and by the government. Contrarily to what was theorized in the literature dedicated to movement/countermovement dynamics, it suggests that the birth and rise of ultra-nationalist movements created in reaction to domestic NGOs dealing with the consequences of the occupation cannot be explained by the achievements of the latter or by the threats they pose locally to segments of the Israeli population. Rather, this article shows they are an indirect consequence of recent global developments mainly stemming from the Palestinian internationalization strategy. Yet, these developments have strong effects not only at the international level but also at the local level. One of them lies in the fact that NGOs are now presented as “foreign agents” for obliquely nurturing voices that speak up worldwide against Israeli policy.