The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa

The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa PDF Author: Cassandra Mark-Thiesen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110655497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Essays in Memory of Jan-Georg Deutsch The volume observes some of the principles that drove Prof. Jan-Georg Deutsch's research: highlighting present-day politics for the way they shape historical remembrance, learning from people on the ground through fieldwork and oral history, and bringing various parts of the African continent into discussion with one another. From Cape Town to Charlottesville, many societies are grappling with historical consciousness and the production of public memory. In particular, how and why societies remember and forget, what should serve as symbols of collective memory, and whether there exists space for multiple memory cultures are questions being vigorously debated once again. These discussions present particular challenges not only to official memory bound to ideological constructions of nationhood but also to the teaching of history and its links to social justice movements. The volume re-centres Africa and African history in memory studies, with each chapter drawing parallels to comparable cases in Africa and the world. An underlying assumption is that what can be learned from the politics of historical memory in Africa will have relevance for contemporary politics globally and for understanding how memories can be mobilised for political ends.

The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa

The Politics of Historical Memory and Commemoration in Africa PDF Author: Cassandra Mark-Thiesen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110655497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
Essays in Memory of Jan-Georg Deutsch The volume observes some of the principles that drove Prof. Jan-Georg Deutsch's research: highlighting present-day politics for the way they shape historical remembrance, learning from people on the ground through fieldwork and oral history, and bringing various parts of the African continent into discussion with one another. From Cape Town to Charlottesville, many societies are grappling with historical consciousness and the production of public memory. In particular, how and why societies remember and forget, what should serve as symbols of collective memory, and whether there exists space for multiple memory cultures are questions being vigorously debated once again. These discussions present particular challenges not only to official memory bound to ideological constructions of nationhood but also to the teaching of history and its links to social justice movements. The volume re-centres Africa and African history in memory studies, with each chapter drawing parallels to comparable cases in Africa and the world. An underlying assumption is that what can be learned from the politics of historical memory in Africa will have relevance for contemporary politics globally and for understanding how memories can be mobilised for political ends.

Historical Memory in Africa

Historical Memory in Africa PDF Author: Mamadou Diawara
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845456528
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This volume explores the inner dynamics of memory in all its variations, from its most destructive and divisive impact to its remarkable potential to heal and reconcile. It addresses issues on both the conceptual and the pragmatic level and its theoretical observations and reflections are informed by first-hand experiences ...

History Making and Present Day Politics

History Making and Present Day Politics PDF Author: Hans Erik Stolten
Publisher: Nordic Africa Institute
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
In this collection, some of South Africa's most distinguished historians and social scientists present their views on the importance of history and heritage for the transformation of the South African society. Although popular use of history helped remove apartheid, the study of history lost status during the transition process. Some of the reasons for this, like the nature of the negotiated revolution, social demobilization, and individualization, are analyzed in this book. The combination of scholarly work with an active role in changing society has been a central concern in South African history writing. This book warns against the danger of history being caught between reconciliation, commercialization, and political correctness. Some of the articles critically examine the role of historians in ideological debates on gender, African agency, Afrikaner anti-communism, early South African socialism, and the role of the business world during late apartheid. Other contributions explore continuing controversies on the politics of public history in post-apartheid South Africa, describe the implementation of new policies for history education, or investigate the use of applied history in the land restitution process and in the TRC. The authors also examine a range of new government and private initiatives in the practical use of history, including the establishment of new historical entertainment parks and the conversion of museums and heritage sites. For readers interested in nation building processes and identity politics, this book provides valuable insight.

Talking Stones

Talking Stones PDF Author: Elisabetta Viggiani
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782384081
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
If memory was simply about past events, public authorities would never put their ever-shrinking budgets at its service. Rather, memory is actually about the present moment, as Pierre Nora puts it: “Through the past, we venerate above all ourselves.” This book examines how collective memory and material culture are used to support present political and ideological needs in contemporary society. Using the memorialization of the Troubles in contemporary Northern Ireland as a case study, this book investigates how non-state, often proscribed, organizations have filled a societal vacuum in the creation of public memorials. In particular, these groups have sifted through the past to propose “official” collective narratives of national identification, historical legitimation, and moral justifications for violence.

Contested Heritage in Europe and Africa

Contested Heritage in Europe and Africa PDF Author: Marco Zoppi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040157602
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
This book investigates Euro-African cultural relations, considering their connected histories through material and immaterial forms of representation, commemoration, and memorialization. Recent waves of protest around the world have called for restitution of looted African art, and toppled statues and vandalized monuments which are connected to white suprematism, colonialism, and imperialism. These events have highlighted an urgent need to debate the management and preservation of Europe and Africa’s shared heritage. Drawing on a range of varied, trans-continental case studies, this book considers the key question of whether such monuments should be removed as forms of unacceptable celebration of an evil past, or preserved precisely because of what they recount about that past of oppression and domination. The book encourages readers to consider how diverse and pervasive the notions of shared heritage and common past are, encompassing discussions of statues, exhibitions, graffiti, tapestries, and commemorations. Providing a timely analysis of the developing cultural relations between Africa and Europe, this book will be an important resource for researchers across the fields of global history, heritage studies, memory studies, and international relations.

Remembering Mass Atrocities: Perspectives on Memory Struggles and Cultural Representations in Africa

Remembering Mass Atrocities: Perspectives on Memory Struggles and Cultural Representations in Africa PDF Author: Mphathisi Ndlovu
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031398920
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
This book explores how popular cultural artifacts, literary texts, commemorative practices and other forms of remembrances are used to convey, transmit and contest memories of mass atrocities in the Global South. Some of these historical atrocities took place during the Cold war. As such, this book unpacks the influence or role of the global powers in conflict in the Global South. Contributors are grappling with a number of issues such as the politics of memorialization, memory conflicts, exhumations, reburials, historical dialogue, peacebuilding and social healing, memory activism, visual representation, transgenerational transmission of memories, and identity politics.

Commemorating and Forgetting

Commemorating and Forgetting PDF Author: Martin J. Murray
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452939578
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
When the past is painful, as riddled with violence and injustice as it is in postapartheid South Africa, remembrance presents a problem at once practical and ethical: how much of the past to preserve and recollect and how much to erase and forget if the new nation is to ever unify and move forward? The new South Africa’s confrontation of this dilemma is Martin J. Murray’s subject in Commemorating and Forgetting. More broadly, this book explores how collective memory works—how framing events, persons, and places worthy of recognition and honor entails a selective appropriation of the past, not a mastery of history. How is the historical past made to appear in the present? In addressing these questions, Murray reveals how collective memory is stored and disseminated in architecture, statuary, monuments and memorials, literature, and art—“landscapes of remembrance” that selectively recall and even fabricate history in the service of nation-building. He examines such vehicles of memory in postapartheid South Africa and parses the stories they tell—stories by turn sanitized, distorted, embellished, and compressed. In this analysis, Commemorating and Forgetting marks a critical move toward recognizing how the legacies and impositions of white minority rule, far from being truly past, remain embedded in, intertwined with, and imprinted on the new nation’s here and now.

Handbook on the Politics of Memory

Handbook on the Politics of Memory PDF Author: Maria Mälksoo
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1800372531
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
Providing a novel multi-disciplinary theorization of memory politics, this insightful Handbook brings varied literatures into a focused dialogue on the ways in which the past is remembered and how these influence transnational, interstate, and global politics in the present.

Agency in Transnational Memory Politics

Agency in Transnational Memory Politics PDF Author: Jenny Wüstenberg
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789206952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
The dynamics of transnational memory play a central role in modern politics, from postsocialist efforts at transitional justice to the global legacies of colonialism. Yet, the relatively young subfield of transnational memory studies remains underdeveloped and fractured across numerous disciplines, even as nascent, boundary-crossing theories on topics such as multi-vocal, traveling, or entangled remembrance suggest new ways of negotiating difficult political questions. This volume brings together theoretical and practical considerations to provide transnational memory scholars with an interdisciplinary investigation into agency—the “who” and the “how” of cross-border commemoration that motivates activists and fascinates observers.

War Memory and Commemoration

War Memory and Commemoration PDF Author: Brad West
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317163931
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
In a period characterised by an unprecedented cultural engagement with the past, individuals, groups and nations are debating and experimenting with commemoration in order to find culturally relevant ways of remembering warfare, genocide and terrorism. This book examines such remembrances and the political consequences of these rites. In particular, the volume focuses on the ways in which recent social and technological forces, including digital archiving, transnational flows of historical knowledge, shifts in academic practice, changes in commemorative forms and consumerist engagements with history affect the shaping of new collective memories and our understanding of the social world. Presenting studies of commemorative practices from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Middle East, War Memory and Commemoration illustrates the power of new commemorative forms to shape the world, and highlights the ways in which social actors use them in promoting a range of understandings of the past. The volume will appeal to scholars of sociology, history, cultural studies and journalism with an interest in commemoration, heritage and/or collective memory.