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History and Memory
History and Memory
Is reconciliation achieved through historical
amnesia? Or, is remembrance, the acknowledgement of past error,
and forgiveness the answer to conflict? If reconciliation
is the object, is ‘the truth’ at all germane to
the goal? The focus of our deliberations is conceived as the
exploration of collective memories the world over.
Who remembers what what is selected,
highlighted, even amplified or modified from the reservoir
of memory? Is the project of raising memory
fitted to the conceptions, ideology, and relations of power
in the present and promoted in one’s own context? Who
carries what and to where in a network of
global encounters is not only factual based, upon
a closed concept of historical truth, but also imaginatively
represents the desires of the present.
In the context of historical encounters between
peoples, cultures and nation-states, the dynamics of cross-cultural
contact need examination. Critical to our purpose is the question:
Are the protagonists of the encounters open to cross-cultural
dialogue and multiple ways of seeing the past? It is historically
significant and contemporaneously crucial that we study the
ways in which they are represented today drawing upon often
contradictory and contentious ‘memories’. As Kerwin
Lee Klein puts it, “The memory industry ranges from
the museum trade to the legal battles over repressed memory
and on to the market for academic books that invoke memory
as a key word.
Memory thus, ranges freely over
unrestrained time - from centuries ago to just some
years past. The role of memory in the life of people, and
entire societies, can at times be cohesive and at other times
disruptive. In the latter case, the past (often imagined
and constructed) is dredged up for the production of memory
that challenges social cohesion and secular institutional
norms.
Social capital is generated by connections
among individuals – social networks and the norms of
reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. If social
cohesion is challenged social capital nose dives since boundaries
of the Other become demarcated and norms of mutual
respect and tolerance get challenged. Objects, events and
histories get re-presented to rationalize suspicion and distrust.
We need to ask what political and institutional moves may
help in the augmentation of social capital and creation of
mature democracies. We would also like to express greater
interest not in the origins of memory but more in
its effects today. The troubling vista the spectre of memory
opens up undercuts the vocabulary of a secular, critical discourse.
Thus, we cannot appropriate words such as trauma, healing,
catharsis, testimony and so on without careful discussion.
The conference is planned to engage with some of the following
issues:
Themes for sessions:
1. Memories of pain held by social groups.
2. Responses to the memory by states and social groups.
3. Memory and group identities.
4. Memory and Time
5. Memory and Truth.
6. Memory and resistance.
7. Memory and accommodation.
8. Politics of Memory.
9. Memory and contemporary relevance.
Kerwin Lee Klein (2000) On The Emergence
of Memory in Historical Discourse, Representations, 69,
Winter:329.
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