Website of memory: The War of the Pacific (1879–84) in the global age of YouTube

Abstract

This article is an examination of the comments attached to a video upload on YouTube of a Chilean television mini-series on the War of the Pacific (1879-84), one of Latin America's rare international wars, which pitted Chile against Peru and Bolivia, and which in many ways remains an open historical wound. Posted by anonymous commentators whose national subject positions as Chileans, Peruvians, Bolivians and Argentines are nevertheless discernable, the comments offer a compelling perspective on the ways in which digital artefacts such as YouTube enable the circulation and reproduction of collective memories in de-territorialized and transnational ways. However, the analysis of these comments suggests that the operation of memory in global virtual spaces does not guarantee or even necessarily enable the unmooring of memory from the national. In fact, the evidence presented here suggests that global spaces such as YouTube may contribute to the strengthening of national, and indeed, nationalist memories.

Remediating the past: YouTube and Second World War memory in Ukraine and Russia

“…The co-existence of contradictory narratives on the same platform, however, does not necessarily lead to the formation of a new cosmopolitan and pluralist view on the contentious past. In contrast, my findings suggest that, as in the case of other historical wounds (Drinot, 2011), digital clips dedicated to the Battle of Kyiv tend to promote national as well as nationalistic interpretations of this episode of the Second World War. Consequently, instead of viewing YouTube as the source of new digital forms of transnational remembrance, it seems more reasonable to consider it as a prism, which facilitates comparison of how the past is viewed in Ukraine and Russia.…”

An Exploration of Memory‐making in the Digital Era: Remembering the FEPOW Story Online

“…Web-memorials are rapidly becoming commonplace in the digital age, where acts of remembering can take place on and through cyberspace, as evidenced today by the plethora of web pages tied to physical memory locations (Reading 2003), Facebook tribute pages (Carroll & Landry 2010), web-cemeteries (Roberts 1999), historical documentaries on YouTube (Drinot 2011), and e-communities honouring the memory of an incident, place or person in history (Jones 2012). Yet, these forms of memorialisation have tended to elude geographical analysis despite interest in cyberspace as it relates other social and economic phenom-ena (Crang et al 2007; yet see Maddrell 2012).…”

Rethinking heritage, but ‘from below’

“…. [given how it] is often itself oppositional and is often best expressed in the illusive, ephemeral and everyday', but also something that can invite dissent among non-elites with respect to physical heritagescapes and in the virtual world (Drinot 2011).…”

“…Yet, the Internet has also translated into a portal through which ordinary men and women may voice their views, thus allowing for a certain 'democratization' of memory and heritage-making, even if these may go against official heritage discourses and practices, such as in the form of e-memorials or social media (see, for sampling, Drinot 2011;Blackburn 2013;Muzaini and Yeoh 2015). For others, the Internet has also been a means through which heritage formally excised may find sanctuary, and also where otherwise alienated individuals may be brought together and united in the reproduction of HFB.…”