Introduction: Memory and the Future: Why a Change of Focus is Necessary

Challenging the meaning of the past from below: A typology for comparative research on memory activists

“…For scholars of memory activism, the question of temporality arises in several significant ways, yet what we are interested in here is a specific dimension: how temporality figures in activists’ model for change—how activists themselves frame temporality with respect to the past that they are referencing, and particularly how their perception of temporal distance shapes their aims and practices. While the present and future are always the focal point from which the past is addressed (Gutman et al, 2010; Halbwachs, 1992), the stakes of changing memory from below in the face of ongoing violence and polarization are much higher than when the events have long ended. Between these two poles of temporal distance from the events remembered lie dissimilar risks that shape memory activist efforts in a significant manner.…”

Promnesic futures: Technology, climate, déjà vu

“…“No expectation without experience, no experience without expectation,” as Koselleck (2004: 257) puts it. As such there has been a push to reorient the study of collective and cultural memory toward the future (Bond et al, 2016; Gutman et al, 2010; Szpunar and Szpunar, 2016). The entanglement of memory and future is complex.…”

Memory ecologies

“…Yet, there is a growing body of work that calls for a refocusing of memory studies to rebalance its past-oriented modus operandi to more fully account for the influence of the future as imagined, desired and feared by individuals and groups, on how the past is remembered, interpreted and managed and vice versa (Gutman et al, 2010: 1; Szpunar and Szpunar, 2015). And contributors to this issue on memory and connection demonstrate that thinking about the future employs certain kinds of memory in particular ways.…”