The Past Can't Heal Us

Abstract

Since the late eighteenth century, national memory has been largely regarded as an internal matter for nation-states. However, in the course of the past several decades, we have witnessed a growing global trend that promotes the idea that societies, just like individuals, inevitably need to face and deal with their troubled past to prevent a recurrence of violence and to promote democratic and human rights values. This notion argues that memorialisation has become 'a critical element in current struggles for human rights and democracy' (Brett et. al. 2007: 1). The term 'memorialisation' covers a range of initiatives that aim 'to preserve the memory of past abuses for present and future generations, by such means as monuments, museums, commemorative ceremonies, and rituals' (Blustein 2012: 19). Attempts, at the world polity level, to find and implement proper policies and modes of memorialisation for societies involved in massive human rights abuses, starting from World War II onwards, gave birth to myriad approaches and methods that promise to secure a sustainable peace and a gradual transition to democracy. The global memorialisation agenda, promoted through various institutions, polices, discourses and practices, is closely connected with, and gains its

The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme and claims for recognition of atrocities: The nominations of Documents of Nanjing Massacre and Voices of the ‘Comfort Women’

“…However, although the notion of recognition is now commonly assigned a role in recovery processes (whether for individuals or groups) and peacemaking, it is less clear whether these forms of recognition are indeed helpful (David, 2020;Sørensen et al, 2019). For instance, the oft-repeated calls for state apologies are not supported by well-documented insights into how such apologies 'help' victims, what they help with, or who specifically they help.…”

“…the case of Gernika, discussed in Viejo-Rose, 2011). David (2020: 2) has even argued that the standardisation of memorialisation (and especially moral remembrance) means they are 'generally ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst'.…”

Explosive aftermaths: Reassembling transnational memory- and policyscapes of victims and terrorism in the United Kingdom

“…Building again from Appadurai’s (1990) work on *scapes, Phillips and Reyes (2011) have developed the concept Global Memoryscapes as a complex landscape upon which memories and memory practices move, come into contact, are contested by, and contest other forms of remembrance and older ways of conceptualizing the past (Phillips and Reyes, 2011: 13–14). The idea of the global memoryscape is one of a series of interventions in memory studies that aim to transcend ideas of the nation as the primary framework, motor and container of collective memories to conceptualize processes of ‘transnational memory’ (Assmann, 2014; David, 2020; De Cesari and Rigney, 2014; McQuaid and Gensburger, 2019; Wüstenberg, 2019). In this case, there are two key points to keep in mind: first, in ethno-national conflicts, the frameworks for collective memory are already transnational, both beyond and below the level of the nation-state.…”

“…At the same time, the visibility and voice of victims and survivors are made central in processes of reconciliation and transformation, where ‘a human rights based approach to teaching and memorialization processes’ has become pivotal (United Nations General Assembly, 2014). However, what has been called the cosmopolitan mode of remembrance is challenged theoretically, where it is criticized for de-contextualizing and idealizing otherwise contingent and nuanced positions (Bull and Hansen, 2016; David, 2020), as well as resisted in local vernaculars and practices. There are a number of frustrated examples from Northern Ireland where memorials insist on naming perpetrators, as we saw in the Enniskillen example above.…”

Memory wars in postimperial settings: The challenges of transnationalism and the risks of new totalizing mnemonics

“…The idea of challenging the existing international order and its mnemonic regime transformed the way in which the ‘remembrance mandate’ operates in the world. Victim-centred memory culture began to expand, thus becoming an emblematic reflection of cumulative ‘rights culture’ (David, 2020), with victimhood narratives replacing triumphalist stories of victors or resisters. Global reverberations of this process could be seen in the series of seemingly disconnected bids to revisit the history of violence and to bring the justice to the victims of past abuses from slavery, colonial violence, cultural genocide of indigenous people and many more across all continents (Akhavan, 2016; Kingston, 2015; MacDonald and Hudson, 2012).…”