“Leave a Message of Hope or Tribute”: Digital Memorializing as Public Deliberation

The Politics of a Memory Wound: Norwegian Exceptionalism and the Trauma of July 22, 2011

“…A community's "overwhelming experience of sudden or catastrophic events" (Caruth, 1996, p. 11) is rendered a cultural construct through a social interpretive process that relies on various "technologies of memory" (Sturken, 1997). These include monuments and "counter monuments" (Young, 1993), memorials and memorial museums (Biesecker, 2002;Blair et al, 1991;Blair & Michel, 2007;Dickinson et al, 2010;Doss, 2010;Sodaro, 2018) and public culture projects (Hartelius, 2010;Haskins, 2003Haskins, , 2007. Jeffrey Alexander (2004) argues that cultural trauma occurs "when members of a collective feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental ways" (p. 1).…”

Memories, stories and deliberation: Digital sisterhood on feminist websites in Turkey

“…Moreover, it also shows how personal memories are never solely personal. According to Hartelius (2010: 69), a dialectic relationship exists between memory and online authorship. In online authorship the assertion of personal experience leads to the subversion or subordination of individuality to collective experience as particular experiences unfold into universal narratives.…”

“…Authentication of private memories demands a public, and the internet offers anonymous people such a virtual stage. When revealed, private memories get validated but also become resources for public deliberation (Hartelius, 2010: 69). In fact, Betul told me, in reference to the series of posts regarding hook-up culture they translated from English, at first they never expected that it would attract so much attention, but they realized how feminists actually felt the need to talk about sexuality, monogamy and relationships, just like Handan told me, in light of the incoming essays, that the most mentioned pressure for Muslim women are intimate relationships with mothers, fathers, brothers or fellow activists.…”

“…5Harfliler, Catlak Zemin and Recel-blog also constitute important projects in feminist memory work, which refers to a set of ‘intentional and unintentional narrative and material practices upholding representations of feminist pasts, presents and futures in grassroots feminist media’ (Chidgey, 2013). Recently, web-based memorializing has emerged as a ‘set of social practices mediated by computer networks, through which digital objects, structures, and spaces of commemoration are produced’ and a virtual public sphere is established where collective memory and public deliberation meet (Hartelius, 2010: 68). Although the specific functions or the purposes of these three websites are not intended as digital memorializing, they can be interpreted as carrying out feminist memory work in two ways: (1) explicitly, by commemorating women in history, the gains of the women’s movement in Turkey, and by archiving misogynist policies and gender unequal legislation; and (2) implicitly, in the essays written by anonymous women whose personal memories of feminist activism, as well as oppression and patriarchy experienced in everyday life, become sources for discussion of feminist politics and ‘vernacular interventions in historiographical writing’ (Hartelius, 2010: 82).…”

“…Recently, web-based memorializing has emerged as a ‘set of social practices mediated by computer networks, through which digital objects, structures, and spaces of commemoration are produced’ and a virtual public sphere is established where collective memory and public deliberation meet (Hartelius, 2010: 68). Although the specific functions or the purposes of these three websites are not intended as digital memorializing, they can be interpreted as carrying out feminist memory work in two ways: (1) explicitly, by commemorating women in history, the gains of the women’s movement in Turkey, and by archiving misogynist policies and gender unequal legislation; and (2) implicitly, in the essays written by anonymous women whose personal memories of feminist activism, as well as oppression and patriarchy experienced in everyday life, become sources for discussion of feminist politics and ‘vernacular interventions in historiographical writing’ (Hartelius, 2010: 82). Furthermore, they function as counter-publics for the debate and exchange of ideas by those who are marginalized within mainstream political debate (Harris, 2012) and help foster constructive dialogue at a time when formal and civil societal political outlets are constricted for women and LGBTI individuals.…”