Creolizing Memory: Transnational Remembrance of Trauma and Violence
Since the 1980s, a great deal of research has been devoted to “collective memory” and “cultural memory.” Early work in memory studies focused on the ways in which memories are shared within particular communities and constitute or reinforce group identity. Very often, the nation-state has been taken as paradigmatic of such “mnemonic communities.” In recent years, however, the transnational and even global dissemination of memory has moved to the center of attention.
Arguments about the transposition of the concept of collective memory from its formerly national context to a broader transnational or global one frequently reference the Holocaust, still the primary, archetypal topic in memory studies. According to Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, the global spread of Holocaust discourse has generated a new form of memory, “cosmopolitan memory.” In their view, the Holocaust has escaped its spatial and temporal particularism to emerge as a common moral touchstone in the wake of the Cold War, and can thus provide the basis for an emergent universal human-rights regime. However, despite their focus on globalization, Levy and Sznaider’s approach risks remaining within a Eurocentric framework.
In this seminar we would like to bring together critics familiar with debates in memory studies who are interested in developing new frameworks for the comparative study of collective remembrance. While we welcome papers that put Holocaust memory into dialogue with remembrance of other histories (what Michael Rothberg has called “multidirectional memory”), we are also interested in hearing from scholars working in other comparative and transnational contexts.