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2 / florence vatan and marc silberman
individual initiatives: official commemorations, trials for war crimes or
crimes against humanity, monuments, museums, on-site memorials, literary,
photographic and cinematic representations, exhibitions, art installations,
and artistic performances.
These various case studies demonstrate how memory cultures evolve
over time and how they handle the competing demands between a nostalgic
turn toward the past and a utopian impulse geared toward the future.
They also testify to the forces of globalization and cosmopolitization,
while pointing to the importance of remaining attuned to the specificity
of geopolitical and local contexts. 2 If recurrent trends in commemorative
practices and common tropes in the display and staging of past violence
create a global “rhetoric” of memorialization, each particular memoryscape
brings its own specific set of challenges. For the commemoration of
the past remains a controversial and contested field whose dynamics are
fueled by competing memory paradigms, different and sometimes mutually
exclusive groups of victims, shifting present-day stakes, and divergent
representations of the future. Dissonances and dissident voices as well as
forms of “reactive” and “multidirectional” memory unsettle the hegemony
of master narratives and bring to the fore tensions and points of friction. 3
These dissonances reflect a fractured past and a divided present. They also
result from the democratization of memory and the pluralization of its
modes of production and channels of diffusion.
The commemoration of a difficult past raises challenges related to historical,
political, and sociocultural contexts. It also raises challenges inherent
to the process of memory making. Unlike heroic struggles, military
triumphs, and revolutionary victories—privileged hallmarks of national
celebrations and grandiose commemorations—traumatic or infamous
pasts do not lend themselves to smooth or self-aggrandizing narratives.
Nations are reluctant to exhume a past that is perceived as divisive and detrimental
to their official self-image or national mythology. In the postwar
years, France’s myth of the Résistance prevented a critical engagement with
Vichy France’s collaboration with Nazi Germany. During the Cold War
memorials in concentration camps located in Eastern Europe celebrated
the heroic socialist and Soviet struggle against fascism, thus downplaying
the plight of Holocaust victims. In democratic Spain a seemingly collective
decision to protect the postfascist transition led to a “model of impunity”
that prevented direct confrontation with Francoist repression. Similarly
in the wake of the call for national reconciliation memorials in postapartheid
Africa have toned down past racial divides in the name of a new,
projected multicultural and multiethnic country. Acknowledging histories
of violence and trauma, while also seeking reconciliation and inclusivity,
remains a daunting task. The desire to forget is not specific to governing
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