Is there to be a public duty or a public imperative to remember? What is remembered, what is forgotten? Who remembers and who forgets?
The expression “memory boom” has been often used to refer to the apparent obsession present within western societies (and perhaps also beyond) in the past three to four decades. Memory seems indeed to be everywhere. The memory of the past is desired and consumed, memory stands or is supposed to stand as a warning for the present and the future (“Never again!”), memory is being legislated. The past is clearly not only the object of history and of historical research. Museums, monuments, movies, literature, computer games, public architecture – all engage with the recent and less recent past, ascribe it with meaning, bring it into the present. Furthermore, memory and the past are also challenged, contested, legitimized or used to legitimize in the political realm, by political actors, with political goals.
By engaging with a variety of sources, this seminar will address the entanglements between history, memory, and politics, and their relationship with the past, the present, and the future, and will thus enable students to better understand the multifaceted aspects of these entanglements and of the presence of the past into the present.
- Kursleiter/in: Cristian Alexandru Cercel