Changing Temporalities and the Internationalization of Memory Cultures

Abstract

Collective memory is all over the space. This misappropriation of an idiom that recasts the conventional spatial dimension revolving around place is deliberate. It speaks simultaneously to the proliferation of memory talk during the last two decades and the (largely but not exclusively) disciplinary diversity that continues to surround the concept of memory. Differences notwithstanding, what most definitions of memory have in common, at least in the social sciences and humanities, is a realignment of temporalities (Olick et al. 2010). George Orwell’s observation, by now a cliché, that ‘whoever controls the present controls the past’ has long been a central theme in the memory literature. Most conceptual statements, let alone empirical undertakings, seem to revolve around this kind of instrumentalist approach to memory. According to this perspective present political concerns and dominant (nation state) interests are projected onto the past (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). This venerable research tradition is in line with Orwell’s perception of a controlling hegemonic party. Challenging this state-centric view, another popular research strand draws on Michel Foucault’s notion of counter-memory, paying attention to sub-national units of analysis such as ethnic minorities, gender and other subaltern groups with counter-memorial agendas (Foucault 1975). Despite their different vantage points, both orientations essentially consider political expediencies in the present as leading to the invention or construction of the past.