| Kommentar |
This years’s summer school for IOCM students will take place 8-12 July in Jena, about eight hours a day. Please plan your schedule accordingly.
Sungjin Park, my South Korean PhD who is writing his PhD on memory politics, will join me in organizing this school.
The thematic focus is on post-conflict societies and how they remember past conflict. Such historical memory is constructed by politicians, media, NGOs, veteran groups, academics and others, both top-down by ruling elites and bottom-up by various societal groups. Memories diverge strongly after conflict, in particular among victims, perpetrators and bystanders. Memory is also selective, privileging some features of the past while silencing others. Most mnemonic actors can be assumed to pursue parochial goals, which are not only backward-, but also forward-looking, aiming to advance their own post-war interests. The result is often a fierce struggle for discursive hegemony about whose version of history should prevail, especially after intra-state conflicts when the conflict parties remain within one country and narratives rival and clash. Thus, politics creeps into memory, or what is called memory politics. Of course, ruling elites try to monopolize post-conflict memory, not least to legitimize their own rule by constructing a collective identity serving their purposes. They institutionalize their own narratives in museums, monuments, school books and curricula, street names, and maps, which is, however, contested by other societal actors. The success of post-conflict recovery and reconciliation is strongly impacted by memory politics.
During our summer school, we will in the first two days try to grasp and discuss post-conflict memory and memory politics based on the publications students read beforehand. On the third day we will split up into two groups, each of them investigating one case: Rwanda and Bosnia and their aftermath. Groups will work hands-on with primary documents of institutionalized memory. The last two days will focus each on one of the cases, including student presentations, discussions with external experts and case comparison.
A meeting at the beginning of the semester serves to introduce the basic idea, distribute a bibliography with literature to be read before the summer school and establish a group consisting of the instructors and 2-3 interested students to prepare the summer school both content-wise and logistically. Another meeting is envisioned shortly before the semester ends in order to bring everyone up to date ahead of the summer school. |
| Literatur |
- Assmann, J. (1988), Kollektives Gedächtnis und kulturelle Identität, in: Assman, Jan & Hölscher, T. (eds.), Kultur und Identität, Frankfurt a.M., 9-19.
- Gillis, J. R. (2018), Commemorations. Memory and identity: the history of a relationship, Princeton University Press (esp. the introduction).
- Hobsbawm, E., & Ranger, T. (eds., 2012), The invention of tradition, Cambridge University Press (esp. introduction).
- Jelin, E. (2007), Public Memorialization in Perspective: Truth, Justice and Memory of Past Repression in the Southern Cone of South America, International Journal of Transitional Justice, 1(1), 138–156.
- Kubik, J., & Bernhard, M. (2014), Twenty Years after Communism: The Politics of Memory and Commemoration. Oxford University Press (esp. chapter 1).
- Subotic, J. (2018). Political memory, ontological security, and Holocaust remembrance in post-communist Europe, European Security, 27:3, 296-313
- Biermann, Rafael (2020), Reconciliation in Former Yugoslavia. Assessing Progress across the Region, in: Rehrmann, Carolina / Biermann, Rafael / Tolliday, Phillip (eds.), Societies in Transition. Reconciliation in the Balkans and the Caucasus (Research in Peace and Reconciliation Series, Vol. 5), Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 69-102.
- Krawatzek, F., & Soroka, G. (2022), Circulation, conditions, claims: examining the politics of historical memory in Eastern Europe, East European Politics and Societies, 36(1), 198–224.
- Kelso, M., & Eglitis, D. S. (2014). Holocaust commemoration in Romania: Roma and the contested politics of memory and memorialization, Journal of Genocide Research, 16(4), 487–511.
- Obradovic-Wochnik, J. (2013), The ‘Silent Dilemma’ of Transitional Justice: Silencing and Coming to Terms with the Past in Serbia, The International Journal of Transitional Justice, 7, pp. 328-347.
- Subotic, Jelena (2009), Hijacked Justice. Dealing with the past in the Balkans, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
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