Reorientation of foreign memories in domestic political speech: Considerations and effects

Introduction

This research examines how political leaders discursively construct references to significant historical events from foreign countries within their domestic political speeches. Specifically, the focus is on the manner in which memories can “travel” (Erll, 2011) in and through political speech, an issue which has yet to be fully explored (see Karakaya and Baer, 2019; Adams, 2020). Situated within the third wave of collective memory studies (e.g. Feindt et al., 2014), analysis demonstrates the active role of political leaders as carriers (“carrier groups” in Weber's terms) and producers of memory, in the process revealing the considerations that guide the use of foreign memories in domestic political speeches.

Much research regarding the transculturality of memories focuses on how memories circulate and are exchanged in cultural products and media-related venues (e.g. Assmann, 2017; De Cesari and Rigney, 2014; Serpente, 2015). In so doing, scholars point to the social and mnemonical considerations and consequences of these transcultural and transnational processes (Bekus, 2021; Garde-Hansen et al., 2009; Hirsch, 1997; Preda, 2020). The political aspect of collective memory has been prominently noted (what is termed “the politics of memory,” e.g. Barahona de Brito et al., 2001; Hodgkin and Radstone, 2003; Huyssen, 2003), underlining various aspects of the utilization of memory (i.e. “the use and abuse” of memory), and how memories of others are oftentimes denied and minimized (e.g. Gur-Ze’ev and Pappé, 2003 in the Israeli/Palestinian case). This research builds on previous studies that used a discourse-historical method (Wodak, 2001) to unpack the discursive constructions of references to the past in domestic political speeches delivered by heads of government in Israel, Germany, England, and the United States, between 1945 and 2020 (Adams and Baden, 2020). It demonstrates how in the realm of political speech—one of the most significant and impactful platforms through which collective memory is negotiated (e.g. Olick, 2016; Sierp, 2014), traveling memories are used in a complex manner: on the one hand they are employed by political leaders to adhere to their own strategic objectives, yet, on the other, they enable a wider perspective through which to address present concerns. As such, iconic events of transnational memory narratives (Sonnevend, 2016) are instrumentalized so that they align with existing power relations, typically centered on enhancing national considerations, but nevertheless inherently widening the existing repertoire through which one can govern. Via this signification work, foreign past events become policy-related signifiers used in political mobilization.

In what follows I demonstrate how political leaders present and construct collective memories that are imported from experiences of foreign collectives. Analysis highlights the factors that need to be taken into consideration when evoking the past of others in domestic political speech, illuminating the discursive constructions used to transform memory to serve as a sense-making tool. Importantly, this practice of construction is not of the past per se; of the history, so to speak, or of the “truth-fulness” of past events, but rather of the process of their memorialization. Indeed, importation of memories serves politicians in their attempts to make sense of the present and attribute meaning to ongoing affairs, and so, when they use traveling memories in their speech, they have adapted and reoriented the foreign memories to accommodate present national objectives. Through this analysis and in line with symbolic interactionism, especially Goffman's (1959) theory of impression management, this study calls for a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of memory production in a globalized age, specifically the instrumentalization of transnational memory narratives at the national level.

How the past is politically employed in a globalized age

While only individuals can remember, collective memory is a social fact, and it matters: through public mediation, mnemonic practices, images; myths, traditions, and much more (see e.g. Olick and Robbins, 1998; Simko et al., 2020), collective memory plays an important part in contemporary social spaces. Indeed, the resources for collective memory can be found not only in museums and memorials dedicated to illuminating the past, but also in texts, speeches, discourse, and narratives (on the distinction between communicative and cultural memory, see Assmann, 2008). These locations are obviously man-made, produced by various actors in society with several objectives and aims. Consequently, collective memory is a selective practice (Schwartz, 1982; Zerubavel, 1995), constantly undergoing negotiation (Schwartz, 2000; Simko, 2021; Wagner-Pacifici, 1996), and constructed and reconstructed to achieve meaning relevant to present concerns and aspirations (Bekus, 2021; Steinweis, 2005).

Globalization processes and the significantly increasing fluidity of borders in terms of the transferability of ideas and notions (Appadurai, 1996), not to mention the flexibility of truth in a post-truth era (Lewandowsky et al., 2017), are key when contemplating practices of memorialization. Indeed, since the 1980s, the years of the “memory boom” (e.g. Huyssen, 2000; Olick et al., 2011), collective memory has been considered to be significantly transportable and interchangeable across borders. For instance, Landsberg (2004: 18) suggests memory has become “prosthetic,” emerging as the result of “living and being raised in particular social frameworks.” To this end, memories have ceased to belong exclusively to a particular collective, and, due to mass technologies and, specifically, science fiction novels and films, are transferable and susceptible to wide circulation, which in turn makes them available to anyone who wishes to engage with them (Rigney, 2004). Additional research has demonstrated the multidirectionality of memory (Rothberg, 2009), its cosmopolitan attributions (Levy and Sznaider, 2002), and its ability to cross national boundaries (Huyssen, 2000; Serpente, 2015). In what is termed “the third wave of memory studies” (Feindt et al., 2014), much research demonstrates the transnationalization of memory, yet it heavily focuses on digitally mediated practices of memory-making (e.g. Bond et al., 2016; Reading, 2012).

In such a “culture of connectivity” (Van Dijck, 2013), memory can no longer be considered to belong to only one collective. As such, transnational memory is conceptualized according to notions of mobility and movement. Within this framework, research has focused on the “relationship between multiple localities of memory” (see Wüstenberg, 2019: 374; see also Törnquist-Plewa, 2018) and “the scales of remembrance that intersect in the crossing of geo-political borders” (Rothberg, 2014: 130, emphasis in the original). For instance, Björkdahl and Kappler (2019), using the case studies of South Africa and Bosnia Herzegovina, examine how memory discourses of “never again” are translated to specific audiences. Kennedy and Graefenstein (2019) examined how Holocaust remembrance can be used as a platform to identify ongoing human rights violations against Indigenous Australians.

While memory can travel in various contexts and political spaces, it must comply with specific considerations. Accordingly, research has shown that, despite the adoption of universal frameworks the memory of the Holocaust provides, national legitimation profiles are bolstered (Karakaya and Baer, 2019). Similarly, transnational memory is used politically to gain recognition of “full Europeanness,” as can be demonstrated in Polish and Baltic post-Cold War processes (Mälksoo, 2009) and the Europeanization of collective memory of anticommunism (e.g. Dujisin, 2021).

In the political realm, this interchange of memories cannot be considered as the diffusion of memories, a mostly passive process, nor as the production and reproduction of memories through mass culture, an active process that is mostly devoid of political strategy. Rather, traveling memory in political rhetoric is an actively strategic practice. Since collective memory is typically constructed and reconstructed to strengthen notions that are oriented toward the nation (Black, 2020; Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983; Olick, 2016), when turning to the past in political speech, it is mostly to historical national events that are constructed and reconstructed as the dominating version of national collective memory (see e.g. Wodak et al., 1999), or memory “from above” (Sierp, 2014: 30). Introducing foreign memories in such a nation-oriented realm is thus the ultimate demonstration of political mobilization, since these are the sites wherein such memories are least expected.

Why turn to a foreign past event when there are ample national historical experiences from which to draw? The constructions of these imported memories in domestic political speeches lie mostly in the hands of the speakers and their decision to present and incorporate memories from beyond the boundaries of the nation. In this manner political leaders assume the role of prominent “agents of memory” (Vinitzky-Seroussi, 2002). It is they who decide to choose foreign past events as a resource to build on in their speeches, and it is the meaning they offer to give these imported events that may or may not resonate with their publics and other political leaders. Epistemologically speaking, their decisions then serve to create knowledge and justification by utilizing memories that do not necessarily originate within or only involve the nation. In an increasingly transnationalized age, collective memory is thus a dynamic, selective, present-oriented, domesticated, strategic, and political tool in the hands of political leaders. To quote Olick (2016: 27), “States govern memory, govern with it, and are governed by it.” Any attempt to contend with the political conveyance of memory between cultures and nations as it is accomplished in political speech must thus draw upon the epistemic considerations through which memory is politically and strategically used to provide meaning to current situations.

There remains a need to further explicate the connection between collective memory and political speech with regard to the ever-growing exchangeability of ideas and meanings between cultures. Insofar as political speech is a calculated setting within which (national) memories are strategically utilized, primarily to enhance the nation and the national (see Karakaya and Baer, 2019 on the Spanish and Turkish use of Holocaust memory; see also Adams and Vinitzky-Seroussi, forthcoming on how American presidents use foreign historical events to confirm the American ethos and way of life), turning outwards to rely on memories from across the border may embody additional functions that are not completely and solely focused on the domestic collective. Politically employing foreign memories may also serve to bring forth aspects and notions that are from beyond the borders of the group. Thus, the invocation of memories of past events may serve as a discursive device that has the power to influence political positions, policies, and actions as it opens up additional resources on which to rely in the process of making sense of the present.

Research method

The analysis and findings of this research build on previous research that used qualitative comparative long-term discourse analysis on more than 9000 political speeches made by heads of government in the US, UK, Israel, and Germany since the end of World War II (1945–2020). Since interest was focused on the notion of traveling memory in political speech, only public speeches directed to the domestic audience were included, making it possible to examine which memories qualified to enter the local space of the collective. The analysis applied a grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) approach, following the development of constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006). Speeches were examined using a discourse-historical method (Wodak, 2001) to identify which foreign memories were used in domestic rhetoric and how they were presented and addressed in the texts (Adams and Baden, 2020). Detecting and exploring the ways in which political leaders present and construct these past events, focus was drawn to uncover how memories were rendered relevant to domestic audiences and connected to present sense-making and political issues. Analysis thus focused primarily on the mechanisms involved in the utilization of foreign memories in domestic political speech, discussing by what means their use remained firmly rooted within the national context.

The current research builds on data and findings of this earlier research, yet extends it in a number of significant ways. First, it assumes a broader perspective of how past events are evoked in political rhetoric, taking into consideration not only the explicit references that political leaders made to past events but also the more implicit ones made to various issues. Examining clear-cut and straightforward references to past events alongside more ambiguous references enabled conceptualization of the factors that guide speakers within the larger framework of political and ideological work carried out in political speeches. Second, this research is based on the premise that construction of these imported memories lies mostly in the hands of the speakers and the decision they make to present and incorporate memories from beyond the boundaries of the nation. It relies on the idea that every evocation of a past event in the present is a form of memorialization, an active attempt to produce collective memory. Put differently, even past events that appear to be randomly brought up were examined as collective memories of others, since they undergo a process of memorialization within the very speech. This process includes not only deliberate consideration of how to present the past, but also how to utilize it to best suit the speaker's political agenda. Finally, this research assumes an epistemological framework to contemplate the utilization of foreign memory in domestic speech. Epistemologically speaking, political leaders’ decisions to evoke the past within political speech serve to create knowledge and justification by utilizing memories that do not necessarily originate within or only involve the nation. To the extent that this article is concerned with the utilization of memory as related to processes of knowledge-making and justification over time, its analysis concentrates on the epistemic considerations through which memory is politically and strategically discursively constructed to provide meaning to current situations. In so doing, the research contributes to current discussions on how the past is used in the present, yet pushes analysis forward to offer a conceptualization that discusses how memory travels in political speech at large.

How political leaders construct foreign memories in political domestic speech

The manner in which foreign memories are enabled to travel in domestic political speech has little to do with their original meaning, but rather that the memories gain symbolic importance through the active construction made by political leaders in the process of transnationalizing the narrative. Specifically, the importation and incorporation of traveling collective memories into domestic political rhetoric transforms the memory while still maintaining its origin. This simultaneity reflects Bakhtin's conceptualization of double-voiced discourse, according to which “someone else's words introduced into our own speech inevitably assume a new interpretation and become subject to our evaluation of them; that is, they become double-voiced” (Bakhtin, 1994 [1963]: 106). When political leaders refer to the past of other nations in their speech, they do so in “a more conscious and purposeful strategy to serve a double agenda” (Baxter, 2011: 236). They typically do so by referencing a past event in a symbolic shorthand, for instance, “When Europe tore down the Iron Curtain” (British prime minister Cameron in 2011), or “September 11, 2001 was just a worrying alarm as to what evil is capable of” (Israeli prime minister Olmert in 2007). At times, they offer some kind of explanation or elaborate on the memory evoked. Consider the following statement made by President Obama in 2015 during the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism:

The world hears a lot about the terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo in Paris, but the world has to also remember the Paris police officer, a Muslim, who died trying to stop them. The world knows about the attack on the Jews at the kosher supermarket in Paris. We need to recall the worker at that market, a Muslim who hid Jewish customers and saved their lives. And when he was asked why he did it, he said: “We are brothers. It's not a question of Jews or Christians or Muslims. We’re all in the same boat, and we have to help each other to get out of this crisis.” ¹

In his remarks, Obama refers to unacknowledged individuals and less familiar facets that contribute to and constitute foreign past events that have come to resonate in the collective memory. In this, he tries to render these memories relevant to the American public by highlighting details that were perhaps previously ignored or downplayed by others. Connecting between the “heroic acts” of specific and particular others and the American people (“we’re all in the same boat”), he uses the past of others to address the problem of current violent extremism.

On one level, importing memories from beyond the boundary of the nation may enable the speaker to frame “our” current political situation in a clearer and more coherent way (for an elaborate discussion on discursive constructions of “us,” and “them,” see Boukala, 2014). On another level, as collective memories transcend national borders, they may transform themselves into a meaningful frame that foreign collectives may contend with, while still retaining their national mnemonic form. The process wherein the speaker's voice in the present pervades the voices and interpretations of others via their mnemonic experiences (and vice versa) is an exercise in political power. It is calculated since the speaker provides and controls the dialogizing background (Bakhtin, 1981) against which foreign pasts are presented, and thus also positioned. In this manner, the speaker has the power over how others’ interpretations and understandings are conceived. Thus, this dual process postulates collective memories as a combination of the local and the global, an ongoing, ever-changing entity that is inspired by and dependent on various actors and contexts. It is especially this latter dimension of strategic utilization of foreign memory in political speech that this research seeks to highlight and conceptualize.

Drawing on the notion that reality is a social construction determined and influenced by human consciousness and perceptions (Edelman, 1988) brings us one step closer to the understanding of the role of political leaders as agents of memory and the process through which they use memories from beyond the realm of the nation to confer meaning on present situations. The leader must first choose which memory to incorporate in the speech, and then determine how to present the said memory and what meaning to attribute to it. Furthermore, the speaker must render the evoked memory relevant to the public to which the speech is addressed and to the current situation that necessitated the memory (Adams and Baden, 2020). The inherent selectivity of this process is clear (Zarecka, 1994), starting with the decision to evoke one specific memory and not another; through choosing to present certain aspects of the chosen memory; and, finally, deciding which connections to make between the memory, the public to which the speech is directed, and the current matter at hand. Thus, a closer investigation into this process of selection is key to understanding the mechanisms through which political leaders construct foreign memories in their rhetoric. As every mobilization of the past serves some substance in the present, this process requires the speaker to actively and strategically decide which memories to use and how.

These decisions remain somewhat constrained because the “pool” from which to draw a memory is limited by various considerations: the audience toward which the speech is directed, the context in which the speech is made, and the aims of the speaker’s agenda. Accordingly, the speakers do not have complete freedom in their choices. Construction of memories in political speech is thus a process that adheres to those considerations: audience, context, and memory.

Three considerations affecting memory construction

What to make of these foreign memories?

Assuming an epistemological approach, this research delves into the means and conditions for the discursive constructions of foreign memories in domestic political speech. Highlighting the considerations of audience, context, and memory imposed on political leaders in their presentation and construction of memory, it thus attempts to lay forth the resources and settings that enable the creation of a better understanding of past events and their relation to the present.

Goffman, in his classic book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) has shown how the self is a social process, and how social life is modelled on theatre. Acting, for Goffman, is an “existential metaphor” (Tseëlon, 1992: 116), part of the negotiation process individuals undertake in different contexts and interactions to determine their presentational behavior. In many respects, the presentation of a specific version of the past in political speech is similar to the presentation of self in any public appearance. According to Tseëlon (1992), Goffman's dramaturgical metaphor, when appropriated by impression management, portrays a different kind of actor and presentational behavior as a different kind of “game”: whereas the former postulates the process within which people offer definitions of themselves in different interactions as representation, the latter suggest this phenomenon is one of misrepresentation, that is, the actors’ attempt to create impressions. Accordingly, in any public appearance, political actors present different versions of the past of others reflecting the needs of the domestic society at the time (see Tileagă [2008] on the public (re)formulations of the 1989 Romanian “revolution” in commemorative speeches).

This is even more the case in a post-truth era wherein belief can account for more than actual facts. Insofar as collective memory is, by its very definition selective and subjective, constructed to adhere to the needs of the present, and a tool in the hands of public and political agents, its utilization in political speech is bound to be affected as well. Indeed, some have argued that “in the post-truth era, collective memory seems to have lost touch with historical facts” (de Saint-Laurent et al., 2017: 149). To evoke foreign past events in such an environment could be even more perilous since there is all the more freedom to interpret these experiences to align with one's will. At the same time, using the past in such a factually fluid era can be useful in questioning policy and political decisions, suggesting alternatives, and envisioning a different future (de Saint-Laurent, 2017). Evoking the past of others in the present can actually be an act of resistance (for example, the current global trend of toppling statues and destroying monuments). Moreover, as this research shows, relying on pasts of others in domestic speech can potentially help bridge over differences and culminate in new understandings.

Presenting foreign events from the past in domestic political speeches as prominent reference points, while adhering to considerations of audience, context, and memory, political leaders alter memories of others to become relatable memories of the collective and, through this process, convert the memory into something new. These memories are re-narrated and presented, continually being changed and revised, and new meanings and further utilizations conjured. Foreign memories in domestic political speech are thus double-voiced (Bakhtin, 1994 [1963]), and it is exactly this simultaneity that has political power. The use of foreign past events can have its impact in political rhetoric precisely because both sides’ interpretations and understandings are involved.

Drawing on the past of others is ultimately about the present. It is safe to say that many instances of importing other nations’ past events involves the strategic construction of political and historical analogy (see Edy, 1999; Lang and Lang, 1989). To be sure, evoking past events that occurred in other nations to present them in domestic political speech entails constructing general similarities between the foreign events that are recalled and their present topics and situations. Political leaders construct the foreign event to advance an agenda central to their administration of the nation. In accordance with the aforementioned considerations, they can enhance the effectiveness of their political objectives and their standing as people of authority. In this sense, political leaders who depict the past of others in their domestic speeches assume power that is similar to that of journalists who choose to invoke the past (see Zelizer [1992] on the role of journalists as authoritative storytellers; see also Kitch [2002] and Zandberg [2010] on the cultural authority to relate the past).

However, there is more at work. Foreign memories that are used are critical parts of broader social performances (Alexander, 2004; Alexander et al., 2006; see also Matoesian and Gilbert, 2020 on the sacred performance of cultural trauma). In the process, these foreign events no longer stand on their own. They are policy-related signifiers that have meaning in the speech primarily via their signification work. They are used to shape hearts and minds in relation to particular initiatives. They bridge over cultural differences, bringing new perspectives to the very heart of the nation. While there is plenty to rely on from national histories, it may be at times “safer” and less contested to use these memories of others, since it distances the domestic public from its minorities, its marginalized communities, and can open up new resources for political leaders build on.

Similar to previous studies demonstrating how constructions of memories involve “the interplay of actual events and the narratives that capture them” (Achugar, 2007: 526) when employing foreign memories, a third component comes into realization, namely the foreignness of the event. This foreignness can be made relevant to the collective at hand, and thus “legitimate” to rely on (similar to analogical reasoning). At the same time, foreign memories can be constructed in ways that distance or create space between the collectives, and between how the domestic collective perceives and interprets the foreign past This dialogicality (Bakhtin, 1986) and essence of double-voicedness (Bakhtin, 1994 [1963]) is at the very core of how providing new contexts—or backgrounds—for the meanings and understandings of the pasts of others can be accomplished. How political leaders choose to present and construct foreign memories is thus crucial since it not only determines the form and content of memories but also reflects how a certain public will consider another collective's history, identity, and narrative.

In conclusion

In a globalized world in which people, cultural products, and collective memories can travel, this research conceptualizes how political leaders present and construct foreign memories in their domestic speeches. These imported memories are transformed, politically used to advance a political agenda, and in the process are changed. I call this reorientation, as these memories are refocused on the collective towards which the speech is addressed. It is a skillful and careful handling of selected past events of other nations for the specific use of the present. Importing collective memories in political speech entails a selection process and an understanding of what would appeal to the receiving side. Delving into this practice conveys how meaning is attributed to the past in the present in a globalized world. This practice is not an attempt to reflect on the “truth” of the imported events, or their authenticity or objectivity; indeed, memorialization of the past is not the place to find historical truth. However, this research contributes by questioning previous understandings of the all-positive aspects of traveling memory in a transnationalized era.

One would expect this usage of memories to undermine the notion of their “authenticity.” Indeed, there is a need to closely examine the specific transformations applied to foreign ideas in their process of domestication. Specifically, to examine their possible resonance and naturalization in collective thought (see e.g. Achugar et al., 2013 on the receiving side), not only of the collective that “borrows” the memory, but also of that that “gave it away.” In this endeavor, this present study can be no more than a first step, which points to the importance of processes that merit closer examination in the future.

Incorporating this framework of political construction of foreign memory in domestic political speech in a world that is increasingly transcultural may serve not only to determine the issues or challenges that trigger the need to locate a foreign or remote collective memory that can assist in accounting for domestic policy, but also advance knowledge about the process through which collective memories travel in political rhetoric and the transformation they undergo. To put it differently, if a memory can manage to travel in political speech, arguably the most public site of a nation, at those times in which the nation and the national are at the focal point, it may very well be able to do so anywhere. Importantly, memories serve politicians to advocate agendas, legitimize actions, and further their aims. As such they are constructed and reoriented to best serve the interests and the agendas of the speaker and the collective that they are expected to serve. These intertwining and overlapping memories contribute further to the already existing blurring of frontiers, bringing to the fore once more the everlasting dialogue between history and memory, truth and post-truth, and the exalted role of politicians as agents of memory in the construction of past events.