Memory and memorialization

Each year less and less survivors arrive in Auschwitz to commemorate the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In 2005, almost 1500 survivors attended the anniversary; in 2015, only 300 survivors came to Auschwitz. Therefore, as the memory of the Holocaust increasingly depends on commemoration and re-telling of the story for the sake of the new generations, various Holocaust-related educational institutions come up with innovative ways of bridging the past with the present. This fact motivates the main question of this paper: what happens when all the survivors are gone?

By focusing on a case study of the USC Shoah Foundation’s holographic testimony-based project developed with the USC Institute for Creative Technologies: New Dimensions in Testimony, this paper centers on the relationship between new technologies, visual studies, and Holocaust memory.  By technology, I mean the study of interactivity in contemporary Holocaust memory, representation, and education, as well as developments in digital media, digital humanities, and computer science. On a more abstract level, this research discusses how technology informs the way we relate to our past. The second question, therefore, that motivates this paper is: what is the future of Holocaust memory?

"Representations", N. 129, Winter 2015.

The essay analyzes the project of maintaining the body of V. I. Lenin in the Mausoleum in Moscow for the past ninety years, focusing on the unique biological science that developed around this project, and the unexpected political role this body has performed.

Over the past two decades, geographers have probed the intersection of collective memory and urban space. Their sustained interest in the subject reflects an understanding of the social condition of commemoration and the important role that space plays in the process and politics of collective memory. Along with other critical social scientists, geographers envision these public symbols as part of larger cultural landscapes that reflect and legitimate the normative social order. A review of the extant literature indicates that geographers scrutinize memorial landscapes through three conceptual lenses that may be understood via the metaphors of ‘text,’ ‘arena,’ and ‘performance.’ These metaphors are in turn mobilized through a series of analytic questions that serve to identify the interests served and denied by landscape ‘texts,’ the ‘arenas’ in which they are produced, and the ways in which they are enacted via ‘performance.’ This article’s synopsis of the subfield’s predominant metaphors and its attendant questions contributes to the ongoing cultural geographic project of articulating and implementing methods for interpreting landscapes as open-ended symbolic systems.

example. The UCII then took a pro-active role, seeking and identifying a non-Jewish historian to produce a history of the persecutions that the Committee would underwrite and disseminate. This, then, is the origin ofRenzoDeFelice’s Storia degli ebrei in Italia sotto il fascismo, researched and written in just over one year and first published in 1961. Schwarz sees De Felice’s book as, inevitably, reaffirming the vision of Italy as the ‘victim itself of a racial delirium considered decidedly foreign to its own sensibility and history’ (p. 163); he is more severe regarding De Felice’s defence of this view years later, in subsequent editions. Schwarz devotes the final chapter and conclusion to a discussion of Italian-Jewish selfrepresentation, evaluating the causes that led to a ‘repression’ and ‘concealment of the trauma’ (p. 175) in the first decades after the war. Among these was the need, shared with all Italians, for a ‘reconciliatory memory’. Even more significant in the case of the Jews, according to Schwarz, was their adherence to the pact of emancipation that idealized Italy and reinforced the perspective that Jews should show gratitude and prove worthy of their promotion into society. Only since the 1980s, he contends, have new ways of conceiving citizenship, and the consequences of Israeli politics, worked to dislodge the emancipation paradigm. Schwarz concludes with a reflection on the fragility of a modern Jewish identity grounded too firmly in the Shoah. This is an extremely thoughtful and well-documented work, a must-read for those interested in Italian Jewish history, certainly, but also contemporary Italian history and historiography in general. The English edition is a somewhat modified and expanded version of the original Italian version that appeared in 2004. The translation by Giovanni Noor Mazhar reads extremely well, suffering from only very occasional infelicities of tense or word choice. The book does not present itself in a particularly neat package: a major shift in perspective and sources occurs between Parts 1 and 2; chapters range in length from five to thirty-three pages; and the time period announced in the preface (1943–61) proves misleading by the end, when the concluding discussion extends to the 1980s–1990s and beyond. Because the revision of historiographical and popular perspectives on the Fascist anti-Jewish campaign and the discrediting of the idea of Italian exceptionalism are a crucial endpoint of this story, it would have been helpful if the author had not limited himself to brief references to the recent scholarship in these areas. These remain minor points, however, and what should be emphasized is that Schwarz’s ambitious, probing study substantially advances our understanding of Jewish experience, self-representation and self-understanding after Mussolini.

Memorials and monuments are of increasing interest to geographers, growing out of recognition of the social nature of commemoration and the important role that space and place play in the process and politics of remembering. Geographers envision these public symbols as part of larger cultural landscapes that not only reflect certain perspectives on the past but work to legitimate them as part of the normative social order. Geographers analyze memorials and monuments through three conceptual lenses. The ‘text’ metaphor emphasizes a critical reading of the histories and ideologies given voice (and silenced) in the content and form of memorials and monuments, as well as the dynamic nature of (re)inscribing memory into space. The ‘arena’ metaphor focuses on the capacity of memorials and monuments to serve as sites for social groups to actively debate the meaning of history and compete for control over the commemorative process as part of larger struggles over identity. The ‘performance’ metaphor recognizes the important role that bodily enactments, commemorative rituals, and cultural displays occupy in constituting and bringing meaning to memorials and monuments, suggesting that the body itself constitutes a place of memory.

Investiga as abordagens teorico-conceituais da tematica do esquecimento a partir do conceito de memoria identificado em publicacoes da area da Ciencia da Informacao. Fundamenta-se no uso social da informacao, compreendendo o ciberespaco como um ambiente no qual se desenvolve uma nova relacao entre a memoria e o esquecimento na perspectiva da cibercultura. Realizou-se uma pesquisa documental e revisao bibliografica, e adotaram-se procedimentos de analise de conteudo em artigos de periodicos, focado na producao cientifica brasileira e em lingua portuguesa no campo da Ciencia da Informacao, no periodo compreendido entre os anos de 1972 a 2010. Enfatiza-se a necessidade de exploracao do tema do esquecimento, atualmente emergente no campo da Ciencia da Informacao, construindo uma relacao de interdisciplinaridade com outros campos do conhecimento. Os resultados evidenciam que a tematica esquecimento insurge timidamente, enquanto o tema memoria demonstra-se consolidado no campo da Ciencia ...

Memorials and monuments are of increasing interest to geographers, growing out of recognition of the social nature of commemoration and the important role that space and place play in the process and politics of remembering. Geographers envision these public symbols as part of larger cultural landscapes that not only reflect certain perspectives on the past but work to legitimate them as part of the normative social order. Geographers analyze memorials and monuments through three conceptual lenses. The ‘text’ metaphor emphasizes a critical reading of the histories and ideologies given voice (and silenced) in the content and form of memorials and monuments, as well as the dynamic nature of (re)inscribing memory into space. The ‘arena’ metaphor focuses on the capacity of memorials and monuments to serve as sites for social groups to actively debate the meaning of history and compete for control over the commemorative process as part of larger struggles over identity. The ‘performance’ metaphor recognizes the important role that bodily enactments, commemorative rituals, and cultural displays occupy in constituting and bringing meaning to memorials and monuments, suggesting that the body itself constitutes a place of memory.

example. The UCII then took a pro-active role, seeking and identifying a non-Jewish historian to produce a history of the persecutions that the Committee would underwrite and disseminate. This, then, is the origin ofRenzoDeFelice’s Storia degli ebrei in Italia sotto il fascismo, researched and written in just over one year and first published in 1961. Schwarz sees De Felice’s book as, inevitably, reaffirming the vision of Italy as the ‘victim itself of a racial delirium considered decidedly foreign to its own sensibility and history’ (p. 163); he is more severe regarding De Felice’s defence of this view years later, in subsequent editions. Schwarz devotes the final chapter and conclusion to a discussion of Italian-Jewish selfrepresentation, evaluating the causes that led to a ‘repression’ and ‘concealment of the trauma’ (p. 175) in the first decades after the war. Among these was the need, shared with all Italians, for a ‘reconciliatory memory’. Even more significant in the case of the Jews, according to Schwarz, was their adherence to the pact of emancipation that idealized Italy and reinforced the perspective that Jews should show gratitude and prove worthy of their promotion into society. Only since the 1980s, he contends, have new ways of conceiving citizenship, and the consequences of Israeli politics, worked to dislodge the emancipation paradigm. Schwarz concludes with a reflection on the fragility of a modern Jewish identity grounded too firmly in the Shoah. This is an extremely thoughtful and well-documented work, a must-read for those interested in Italian Jewish history, certainly, but also contemporary Italian history and historiography in general. The English edition is a somewhat modified and expanded version of the original Italian version that appeared in 2004. The translation by Giovanni Noor Mazhar reads extremely well, suffering from only very occasional infelicities of tense or word choice. The book does not present itself in a particularly neat package: a major shift in perspective and sources occurs between Parts 1 and 2; chapters range in length from five to thirty-three pages; and the time period announced in the preface (1943–61) proves misleading by the end, when the concluding discussion extends to the 1980s–1990s and beyond. Because the revision of historiographical and popular perspectives on the Fascist anti-Jewish campaign and the discrediting of the idea of Italian exceptionalism are a crucial endpoint of this story, it would have been helpful if the author had not limited himself to brief references to the recent scholarship in these areas. These remain minor points, however, and what should be emphasized is that Schwarz’s ambitious, probing study substantially advances our understanding of Jewish experience, self-representation and self-understanding after Mussolini.

... My gratitude extends to the contributions of those graduate students as well: Juan De Villa, Alexandra Duncan, Michelle Hannah, Sarah Hewitt, Genevieve Kang, Jeremy Mathers, Brendan Mcgeagh, Jonathan Montes, Kayla Ramlochand, Brigid Tierney, Barry Wallace and ...

This study examines the physical and digital existence of the National 9/11 Memorial located at Ground Zero inNew York Cityas it stood on September 12, 2011. Through a rhetorical analysis of the interplay between the physical memorial and its digital smartphone applications (apps), we argue that the digital apps create a contradictory, paradoxical experience of the physical memorial. Whereas the memorial invites public reflection moving toward a sense of renewal, the digital apps privatize the experience through archives of information and images that suspend the events of 9/11 as a perpetual trauma. Such convergent technologies challenge the memorializing process, providing information in place of imagination.