Handbook on the Politics of Memory

Dados Bibliográficos

ID19933262
EditoresMaria Mälksoo (0000-0002-7110-2050)
Ano2023
Data de publicação2023-04-25
Open AccessNão
TipoBOOK
PeriódicoHandbook on the Politics of Memory (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditoraEdward Elgar Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4337/9781800372535
OpenAlexW4366817222
ISBN9781800372535
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas17

Memory matters, for people and polities alike.Long considered a "soft" subject in the study of international relations, memory appears increasingly consequential in contemporary world politics.Vladimir Putin's rationale for Russia's full-on invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 drew on a rich brew of twisted "lessons of history", denying Ukraine's tradition of statehood, and calling for its "denazification" and "decommunization" in the same breath (Putin 2022b, 2022a).Russia's kinetic war against Ukraine was preceded by, and has run in parallel to, an intense "memory war", probing Ukraine's political subjectivity and sovereignty at various critical juncture points in the twentieth-century past (Fedor et al. 2017).In the meantime, statues and plaques commemorating historical figures complicit in colonialism and racism are being torn down in the former Western colonial metropoles, together with contesting the rose-tinted stories of empires that are sought to be decolonized along with their symbolic and material representations in the contemporary world.The COVID-19 pandemic, which has raged through the world during the period this book has been in preparation, has created its own politically charged practices of commemoration, (mis)recognition and veneration.These range from the ritual applauding of the medics at pre-agreed evening hours across Europe in the spring of 2020 to the use of the Star of David in the anti-vaxxer demonstrations as the pandemic evolved, attempting to draw parallels between the alleged contemporary and historical state violence towards the people.What does "memory" do, who "does" memory -and what is being done by politically utilizing memory -are the central concerns for the study of memory politics.This handbook tackles the multifaceted and polyphonic politics of memory head-on.It proceeds from the basic observation that collective memory -that is, the active remembering together as a political collective, as well as a reference to a set of collective representations and interpretations of the past -is a deeply political phenomenon.Collective or social memory is politically embedded, reflecting political visions, and enacting social and political worlds.Collective memory is constructed and constructive: it is socially shaped and politically productive.Dynamic and plural by nature, social memory is standardly subject to contestation, and thus prone to instrumentalization, institutionalization, securitization and, at times, outright weaponization by the state or particular groups of interest therein.Memory is an important political resource for its emotive power to mobilize due to its pertaining to the part of the past kept alive (Suboti and Steele 2020)

Political science · Politics · Politics of memory · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law