Places of Amnesia [2014-2015]

About

Places of Amnesia examines where memory and its counterpart amnesia are located. In this series of seminars we aim to develop a dialogue between subject experts, established scholars and young researchers on how historical events, people, places and cultural texts are forgotten. We seek to establish whether specific sites can be viewed as the loci of forgetting or, recalling and critiquing Pierre Nora's lieux de mémoire, be studied as lieux de amnésie.  We propose, then, to attend to the ways in which knowledge is forgotten, ignored, silenced or expunged. 

Our research questions aim to illuminate how and why social groups choose not to store memories, and how and when they choose not to retrieve them from their collective memory depository. Some of the questions we want to address through film and documentary screenings, seminars, readings, discussion sessions and case studies will look at the connections between personal and social memories and amnesias. How do the intersections of personal biography with historical events influence the way in which social groups remember and forget? What happens to knowledge of events when there are no witnesses left? Other questions will interrogate collective memory is understood as a social discursive practice, rather than as an extension of personal and individual memory work. How do shared narrations about the past contribute to or even engender amnesia? How do ceremonies and public events filter memory and amnesia? Can literature be an amnesic instrument too?

While falling under the general theme of amnesia, each session will revolve around one of the three main topics of ignoring, silencing and damnatio memoriae. Our geographical focus will span several continents and explore lesser-known areas and socio-political contexts. As a result, our theoretical perspective will extend both to western and non-western perspectives. We hope this will encourage new and creative insights and contribution to memory studies, and indeed pave the way for a new focus on amnesia studies.