Between Past and Present: The Politics of Memory

Memory - to paraphrase Jan Assmann - is knowledge of the past with an identity index. Remembrance gives meaning to the past in the present. A central component of collective identities, memory is necessarily entangled with politics. Remembering and forgetting have shaped the afterlives of slavery and revolution, colonialism and resistance, genocide and war. Understanding the hardships of yesterday in the urgencies of today is a labor of debate, erasure, contention, and promise.

In Germany, memory culture is a site of acrimonious debate. In other places, memory and its infrastructures, such as libraries, memorials, and archives, are targets of annihilation and erasure. Putting these contexts into conversation, we explore memory as a site of abundance and lack. How do remembering and forgetting shape historical narration? How do we understand memory across spaces of past and ongoing conflict? Can memories of past and ongoing traumas provide resources for solidarity and hope?

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