Mnemonic Solidarity: Global Interventions (Entangled Memories in the Global South)

This open access book provides a concise introduction to a critical development in memory studies. A global memory formation has emerged since the 1990s, in which memories of traumatic histories in different parts of the world, often articulated in the terms established by Holocaust memory, have become entangled, reconciled, contested, conflicted and negotiated across borders. As historical actors and events across time and space become connected in new ways, new grounds for contest and competition arise; claims to the past that appeared de-territorialized in the global memory formation become re-territorialized - deployed in the service of nationalist projects. This poses challenges to scholarship but also to practice: How can we ensure that shared or comparable memories of past injustice continue to be grounds for solidarity between different memory communities? In chapters focusing on Europe, East Asia and Africa, five scholars respond to these challenges from a range of disciplinary perspectives in the humanities.-- Provided by publisher Acknowledgments......Page 6 Contents......Page 7 Notes on Contributors......Page 8 List of Figures......Page 10 Chapter 1: Introduction: Mnemonic Solidarity—Global Interventions......Page 11 Chapter 2: Postcolonial Reflections on the Mnemonic Confluence of the Holocaust, Stalinist Crimes, and Colonialism......Page 25 Victimhood Claims at the Thaw of Cold War Memory......Page 26 (Post)Colonial and Holocaust Identities: Alibis and Alliances......Page 29 Nagasaki and Auschwitz......Page 36 Comfort Women, American-Armenians, and Performative Nationalism......Page 44 Critical Relativization in Postcolonial Perspective......Page 50 Chapter 3: Europe’s Melancholias: Diasporas in Contention and the Unravelings of the Postwar Settlement......Page 55 Black Holocaust Fictions and Conversations in the Diaspora......Page 58 Antisemitism Wars: Challenging the Authority of Holocaust Memory......Page 65 Populations in Motion and the Unraveling of the Postwar Settlement: Defending “White Christian Europe”......Page 74 Conclusion: Memory Matters......Page 78 Chapter 4: What the World Owes the Comfort Women......Page 83 Law: Changes in Judicial Process......Page 86 Testimony: Changes in the Way We Know the Past......Page 91 Rights: Changes in the Realm of Rights......Page 97 Politics: Change in Practices of Public Memory......Page 100 Responsibility: Changes in Accountability for the Past......Page 107 Global Memory Culture in an Age of Rising Nationalisms......Page 110 Chapter 5: Eddies and Entanglements: Africa and the Global Mnemoscape......Page 115 Resisting the Knot: Memories and Their Allegiances......Page 116 Ethiopia: Eddying Genocide and Terror......Page 118 Listening and Hearing: Of Modes......Page 125 South Africa: Total War and the Time of War......Page 130 Conclusion......Page 137 Index......Page 140