Frictions: Europe, America and global Transformations - Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Creator: Joel, Blaze
Title: Commemorating National Martyrdom through Re-Creating the Past
Subtitle: Vukovar, Prijedor, Derry/Londonderry, and Gernika/Guernica
DOI: 10.15457/frictions/0020
Description:
In this discussion piece, Berkeley doctoral researcher Blaze Joel offers insight into four European post-conflict societies across the continent. He finds commonalities in commemorative cultures for all the efforts of civil society actors to form reconciliatory encounters still manage through memorial re-creation to produce antagonistic memories that strengthen identities while reproducing for subsequent generations a sense of polarization. He argues that the struggle against the forgetting of suffering ultimately also keeps alive antagonistic, us-versus-them narratives. The performative aspect of commemorative practices involving recreation and processions, reflecting their ability to appropriate public space, also demonstrates how the narratives and identities they are indicative of retain appeal.
Date of publication
2022-08-18
Subjects: Basque Country, Berkeley, Bosnia, Croatia, Derry, Doctoral Research, Gernika, Guernica, Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Prijedor, Spain, Vukovar, Yugoslavia, antagonistic memory, commemoration, conflict, memory, politics of memory, post-conflict, public history, reconciliation
Section: Research Notes
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