European memory

The European Union is widely credited for consolidating a democratic ‘security community’ in Europe, and bringing about a definitive break with war-torn and authoritarian/totalitarian pasts in many European countries. Drawing on recent discussions in ontological security studies, this article points out that these radical breaks may have come at the expense of ontological insecurity at the societal and individual levels in Europe. While conventional teleological narratives often treat reconciliation and breaking with the past as automatic by-products of European integration, ontological security theory calls for greater attention to the societal tensions and anxieties triggered by these transformations and how they are being managed –more or less successfully- through reconciliation dynamics and memory politics in different societal settings. Illustrating the variation in a number of cases, this article claims that a systematic comparative analysis of the different dynamics of reconciliation and memory politics in different European societies is central to analyzing European integration from an ontological security perspective.

This paper takes Swiss theater director Milo Rau’s Europa-Trilogie as a prism through which to examine recent transcultural dynamics in European memory. The Civil Wars (2014), The Dark Ages (2015), and Empire (2016) explore the foundations of European identity and memory against the backdrop of war and genocide, religious fundamentalism, exile and displacement, but also reconstruction and reconciliation. The plays gather an international cast from all over Europe and are structured around the points of intersection between the actors’ own lives and key events in recent European history, thereby troubling the distinction between reality and artifice, representation and reportage. Furthermore, they integrate diverse audio-visual media, both “live” and pre-recorded, and thus enact and reflect on the processes of mediation and remediation that inform the transmission and reception of history and memory, and, hence, the construction of identity. The Europa-Trilogie deconstructs the single narrative of European memory by multiplying voices and stories, and at the same time it undermines nationalist and essentialist anti-European rhetoric. Beyond that, it also addresses pressing questions about the premises for political engagement today, reflecting on the potential of theater as a medium; not only for political and social critique, but also for presenting an alternative model of community and European imaginary.

This paper explores the tension between endorsements of relativism and antirelativisms in the European historical culture between 2000 and 2020. Relativism, defined as the idea that the authority of a claim is always and only dependent on the context in which it is made, has historically been controversial. In the EU's historical culture, relativism is sometimes endorsed, and sometimes not. This paper finds that in the EU historical culture, anti-relativism should analytically be distinguished from anti-relativizing-even though the terminology of "relativism" and "relativizing" is often used interchangeably. This insight helps to understand what is at stake in EU debates around memory and history and replaces the question of whether (not) to be relativist, with that of when (not) to relativize.

This paper is soon to
Despite playing for Northern-Ireland, a small national team which prevented him from appearing in a world-stage event (World Cup or Olympics), George Best is possibly one of the most famous & best remembered all-time football players. Best was first a foremost a local & national ‘hero’ or ‘symbol’: he was among the first 22 football players to enter the English Football Hall of Fame in 2002; & he made quite a mark on the geography of Belfast, whose City Airport is now names after him. He was also an international star: for example, Pelé included him in his list of the 125 best living footballers in the world in 2004, he ranked in 16th position in the 1999 International Federation of Football History & Statistics election of the world’s player of the Century, & in 2004, shortly before his death, the public voted him 19th in the European UEFA Golden Jubilee Poll.
It may be argued that European football has contributed to the construction of a collective European memory, one that transcends nations & that is shared by football enthusiasts across the whole continent: east & west, north & south. If this shared memory exists, it is likely to revolve around ‘Realms of memory’ (Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire): specific events, places, or even people who are remembered in similar manners in different nations. George Best might be one of these realms of memory.
Benedict Anderson has stressed the central place of the Press in the definition of Imagined Communities & a shared communication space. This paper will investigate the place that George Best occupied in European collective memory, as expressed in the print media, at the time of his death. It will adopt a new approach by using obituaries in the media as the main source. In Europe, obituaries occupy a different space in the press, depending on the country: for example, they are a main feature of British papers & inexistent in France, where a death is typically dealt with in the specialised section of the paper (deaths of sportsmen would appear in the sports section). However, when a public figure dies, there is likely to be enough similarities in the structure of the reporting to enable a comparison. Preliminary research will focus on the number of articles dedicated to George Best in the ten days following his death, within the Press of the 27 member states of the European Union plus Turkey; potentially some benchmarking with the US & Australia (both countries where George Best once played) as well as Brazil & Argentina, will be done at the same time to gauge his international fame. In the second stage, research will focus on material in selected daily titles published in French & English within the following countries (or sporting ‘nations’): the UK, including Northern Ireland; the Republic of Ireland; France; Belgium; Switzerland. The study will identify themes in the media discourse of each newspaper & country, which will then be analysed in terms of commonalities & divergences. What episodes of George Best’s long & tormented life come to the front? His skills as a football player? His success with Manchester United? The excess of his later life, summarised in the infamous quote ‘I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.’ George Best life was certainly ‘exceptional’, even by the standards of a football player, & may have contributed to his ‘legend’ & his ‘hero’ (symbolic) status. In a third stage, these themes will be researched in translated articles from countries in the Northern and Southern halves of Europe & on both sides of the former Iron Curtain: (Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain).
It is expected that the main sources studied will be:
-          The Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Sun, The Mirror plus a local Mancunian newspaper in the UK The Manchester Evening News;
-          The Belfast Telegraph in Northern-Ireland, The Irish Independent & The Irish Times in the Republic;
-          Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro as well as specialised sports journal L’Équipe in France;
-          Le Soir & La Libre Belgique in Belgium;
-          Le Matin, 24 Heures, La Tribune de Genève & Le Temps en Suisse

This report gives an account of the first two sessions of ‘Mediated Memories of Responsibility’, a cycle of four seminars hosted at the IMLR Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory throughout the 2020-2021 academic year. Curated by Guido Bartolini (University College Cork) and co-organised by Joseph Ford (IMLR) and Selena Daly (Royal Holloway), the seminar series explores the roles that cultural products play in addressing past atrocities and injustices, giving particular focus to the memories of wrongdoings committed by European societies during the twentieth century.

Recently, the role of personal memories in the exhibition space has evolved synergistically with the creation of digital exhibits that provide opportunities for encounter between visitors and ordinary others remembering their difficult histories. The article contextualises the use of dialogic museum displays in relation to the concept of mediated witnessing by focusing on the use of digital interactivity. Grounded on the analysis of three case studies from museums in Poland, UK and Italy, the article illustrates how dialogic features supported by digital technology frame processes of partaking other peoples’ memories, enriching and reworking the idea of dialogic remembering. Our key findings concern the role of dialogue in enhancing the liveness and the experiential dimension of mediated witnessing. Further, the article notes a shift in the use of the testimony in museums from evidencing past events to a stronger emphasis in supporting listening attitudes and reflective processes during the museum visit. The article observes an expanded use of digital interactivity, to contributes, through dialogicality, to the framing of affective and performative approaches to both knowledge and identity production in museums.

Depuis l’ouverture des frontières en Europe dans les années 1990, l’horizon du paysage est mis à l’épreuve dans la culture visuelle (photographie, cinéma, installation). Trois micro-histoires permettent d’interroger les limites de leur horizon (les Pays-Bas, l’Espagne, l’ex-Yougoslavie). Le paysage devient un écran-mémoire, témoignant du bouleversement des visions européennes et de leurs horizons multiples.



The Photographic Memory of Landscapes testify to European issues (the Netherlands, Spain, former-Yugoslavia)
Since the opening of European borders in the 1990s, horizon landscapes have been challenged. Three European countries allow us to examine the limits of their horizons : landscapes in film become a memory-screen testifying to important European changes and numerous interpretations of their national horizons

The  essay  investigates  the  process  of  transnationalization  of  memory among young people in a European perspective. Since the 1990s,  the  EU  has  tried  to  promote  a  European  identity,  through  the  promotion  of  its  founding  ideas  and  values.  Many  studies  have  addressed  the  importance  of  a  shared  memory  among  the  peoples of Europe, but there is still little empirical evidence on the dynamics  of  the  transnationalization  of  memory  at  the  European  level, particularly in relation to young people as a target group. Our research  involved  young  Italian  students,  aged  between  16  and  19,  and was conducted between November 2019 and January 2020 using the focus group technique. The results show two opposing trends in young  people’s  attitudes  towards  memory:  on  one  hand,  a  closure  and opposition to all that is alien to local and/or national memories; on  the  other  hand,  a  cosmopolitanization  of  memory  which  push  young people towards the maturation of a shared European identity. It is mainly transnational practices and school education that foster the cosmopolitization of memory among young people.

Die Versuche, eine gemeinsame europäische Erinnerung aus dem Setzkasten des Nationalstaates zu stiften – durch gemeinsame Narrative und gemeinsame Feindbilder –, ist kein tragfähiges Modell für eine liberale pluralistische Zukunft. Zwischen den Wünschen an die Erinnerung und dem, was Europa ausmacht, besteht eine Aporie.

Gerade in einer Zeit, in der die letzten Zeugen des Krieges noch am Leben sind, ist die Diskussion um den Krieg durch zwischenstaatliche Reibereien und populistische Provokationen geprägt. Mit Empathie für die Opfer des Krieges hat das wenig zu tun, eher mit einer Identitätspolitik auf Kosten der Toten. Die alten Modelle – Vergessen überwinden, Versöhnung stiften, Vernetzung und gegenseitiges Anerkennen des Leids – waren zukunftsfähiger.