Memory politics worldwide is often shaped by the dynamics of relations and tensions between hegemonic narratives, counter-memories and silent communities at the global, national and local levels. Transnational advocacy movements, international agents and organisations influence the application of terminologies and frameworks in which global hegemonic narratives operate. State actors influence and shape hegemonic narratives, silence others or deny their existence in order to legitimise their incumbency and state/nation-building efforts. Local actors – from civil society groups to individuals – often counter top-down efforts of hegemonic narratives by the creation of their own narratives, memories or by silence. In post-conflict and conflict societies the relations between different groups and actors advocating hegemonic narratives becomes all the more acute and tense as the social and political fabric is eroded and in flux by the conflict-generated transformative changes. How do we understand hegemonic narratives in post-war societies? What do we know about them? How can we conceptualise hegemonic narratives in research inquiry? What constitutes such narratives in societies emerging from conflicts or in the midst of conflict? What is their role in relation to other mnemonic practices such as silencing, forgetting, neglecting, amnesia, or denial? And if they are, in what way do they differ? This symposium seeks to discuss these and other questions using a large number of case studies that can speak to some aspects of memory politics and hegemonic narratives. The key aims of the symposium are to: a) Discuss the dynamics of hegemonic narratives at local, national and global level with a special reference to post-conflict situations; b) Examine the various roles of actors, agents and institutions in shaping, organising, influencing, challenging and transforming memories and key narratives in (post-)conflict societies; c) Facilitate an interdisciplinarity discussion in memory and a cross-disciplinary debates about the roles of memory in post-war societies; d) Theorise and conceptualise different types, approaches to studies of memory, silence, forgetting and remembering; e) Discuss the various roles of victims, perpetrators and new conflict-engendered communities.This postdoctoral research was tailored to produce a monograph about the differences between victim categories and their compensation in post-1995 Bosnia, linked to my doctoral project. As part of the project, I have also organised a conference/symposium on wider memory politics.
Symposium recordings of scholars and academics: Johana Wyss is a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute and research fellow at the Czech Academy of Sciences. She is a Social and Cultural Anthropologist, focusing on the dynamic relationship between collective identity and cultural collective memory especially in Central Europe. Professor Diego Sánchez-Ancochea is the Head of the Oxford Department of International Development and Fellow at St Antony’s College with a distinguished academic career in studying equality, social policies and industrial policy especially in the Global South and Latin America. Sujatha Fernandes is Professor of Political Economy and Sociology at the University of Sydney. She taught at the City University of New York for a decade and holds a visiting position at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her academic, activist, and literary work explores social and labour movements, black popular culture, and migrant workers, with a focus on the Americas. Her book Cuba Represent! looks at the forms of cultural expression that arose in post-Soviet Cuban society. Who Can Stop the Drums? explores the spaces for political agency opened up for barrio-based social movements under radical left wing leader Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Finally, in her book Curated Stories: The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling - about which she will tell us herself shortly - Sujatha looks at the uses of storytelling in a range of global movements, including campaigns by migrant domestic workers and undocumented youth in the United States, and Venezuelan barrio organizations. The book demonstrates how the restructuring of personal stories toward narrow goals may limit social change. Jasna Dragovic-Soso is Professor of International Politics and History at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is currently working on transitional justice and processes of memory construction of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Her published work so far has considered the notion of ‘coming to terms with the past’ in comparative perspective, as well as Serbian politics of acknowledging Srebrenica, public debates about wartime responsibility and denial and various attempts to create truth commissions in the post-Yugoslav region. She is the author of ‘Saviours of the Nation’: Serbia’s Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism in 2002 and the co-editor of State Collapse in South-Eastern Europe: New Perspectives on Yugoslavia’s Dissolution with Lenard J. Cohen in 2008 , among many other publications. She will present on Memory and Justice in the Aftermath of War and Mass Crime: Contemporary Serbia and the West German ‘model Lord Alderdice (University of Oxford) is a psychiatrist by profession, but as Leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, he played a significant role in the Talks on Northern Ireland including the negotiation of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. He was the first Speaker of the new Northern Ireland Assembly and has held many international positions including as President of Liberal International, the global network of more than 100 liberal political parties. Since 1996 he has sat as a Liberal Democrat life member of the House of Lords, and is currently Director of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, Chairman of the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building in Belfast, and Presidente d’Honneur of Liberal International. He will present on Casting some light on the long, dark shadow of the past; Rachel Ibreck is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research interests include human rights activism, political violence, humanitarian and transitional justice interventions, and the politics of memory and justice in Eastern Africa, especially in Rwanda and South Sudan. She is a research associate at the Conflict Research Programme, LSE. She has published in academic journals including African Affairs, the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Stability: International Journal of Security and Development and the Journal of Contemporary African Studies and is author of South Sudan’s Injustice System: Law and Activism on the Frontline from 2019. The title of her presentation is We should have learned from Rwanda’: the regional political opportunities and constraints of a hegemonic narrative of genocide memory and justice in Eastern Africa. Barbara Törnquist-Plewa is Professor of European Studies and the Dean of Research for the Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology at Lund University, Sweden. She is a prominent scholar in the nascent field of memory studies and a prolific author, with four monographs and 25 edited volumes. Her research focuses on difficult heritage and contested identities of in-between places, such as Central, Eastern and North European borderlands. Presently, she is working her a research project entitled 'Lessons from Communist and Nazi History. A Genealogical Approach'. Kateřina Králová is Associate Professor in Contemporary History and the Head of Department of Russian and East European Studies, Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic. She is the co-founder and a committee member of the Herzl Centre of Israel Studies and 4EU+ Alliance Program Committee Member. Her research in contemporary European history focuses on conflict-related migration, reconciliation with the Nazi past, post-conflict societies and memory in regard to the Holocaust, civil war and post-war reconstruction particularly in Greece. She is the author of several book, the newest one being Jewish Life in Southeast Europe. Diverse Perspectives on the Holocaust and Beyond from 2019. Craig Larkin is a Senior lecturer in Middle Eastern Politics and Deputy co-director of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies, King's College London. His current research focuses on divided cities as key sites in territorial conflicts over state and national identities, cultures and borders. His publications include Memory and Conflict in Lebanon: Remembering and Forgetting the Past (Routledge 2012), The Struggle for Jerusalem’s Holy Places (co-authored Routledge, 2013) and The Alawis of Syria: War, faith and Politics in the Levant (co-authored Oxford Scholarship Online, 2015) Jelena Subotic is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Georgia State University. She writes broadly about international relations theory, memory politics, human rights, transitional justice, international ethics, state identity, and the politics of the Western Balkans. Her first book, Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans from 2009 examined the contested way in which international norms of transitional justice were appropriated by domestic political elites in the Western Balkans in the aftermath of the Yugoslav wars. She is a recipient of a number of research grants, including from the National Science Foundation and USAID. She is also a frequent commentator on war crimes and the politics of the Balkans for CNN, BBC, and other international outlets. Her new book, Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism was published by Cornell University Press in 2019 and was recently awarded the Joseph Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies. He presentation will be a reflection on the book but with a title “The Hegemonic Narratives of Holocaust Remembrance in post-communist Eastern Europe” Kathrin Bachleitner is the IKEA Foundation Research Fellow in International Relations at Lady Margaret Hall. Her research focuses on collective identity, memory and values within International Relations.
