Abstract
In its popular conception in both Britain and France, WWI is still often conceived of as a ‘European civil war waged in the trenches of Flanders’ (p. 17). Due to a pervasive racialization of the memory of the war, most global and colonial facets of the war have remained marginalized. The existence of colonial soldiers and labourers ‘violated the dominant narrative of the war and nation’ (p. 47), rendering them invisible in the memory of the war throughout the twentieth century. As the WWI centenary approached in 2014, this dynamic began to shift and the question of how colonial subjects are remembered as part of the war (and the nation) gained importance. Commemorating Muslims in the First World War Centenary: Making Melancholia, published in November 2021, is a compelling, multifaceted, and timely study, in which the author Meghan Tinsley investigates this process, exploring ‘what happens when a long-excluded group is newly included in national memory’ (p. 1). The book provides an empirical analysis of the ways in which WWI was commemorated in Britain and France during its centenary (2014–2018), with a specific focus on the position of Muslim soldiers in these commemorations as well as their political implications for the contemporary representation of Islam and Muslims in both nations. Moreover, the study provides a multitude of innovative theoretical contributions to various meaningful concepts related to memory.
For her empirical investigation of WWI centenary commemorations, Tinsley first interrogates national commemorative narratives and events in Britain and France between 2014 and 2018. She finds that a departure from established remembrance practices – decentralized memorials in France, devoid of large narratives (p. 53), and British commemorations seeking to nationalize and valorize the nation (p. 57) – generated some space for previously untold stories in both nations. Ultimately, however, for state elites in both contexts, the centenary remained primarily an attempt to reinforce national and moral unity, thus generating ‘new distinctions between insiders and outsiders, highlighting and rewriting some stories while forgetting others’. Shifting her focus subsequently to local commemorations, Tinsley identifies a number of memorial sites that specifically foregrounded the memory of Muslim soldiers, therefore presenting a countermeasure to their absence in national memory. Analysing a selection of 11 case studies, Tinsley demonstrates that local commemorations contributed to making histories of Muslim soldiers of WWI more visible through one of three memory strategies. Sites of mourning, for example, the kouba mausoleum and the Muslim graves in the municipal cemetery in Nogent-sur-Marne, included Muslim soldiers in the collective practice of grief, calling on the public to commemorate them among those who had fallen in the war (p. 59). Sites of mobilization celebrated the militarism of Muslim soldiers, as seen with the memorial plaques at the Great Mosque of Paris (p. 64), and affirmed the multiculturalism of the nation, as for example, during the Curzon Institute Lectures (p. 68). Finally, sites of melancholia aimed at making the forgotten history of Muslim soldiers visible, for instance, through telling stories of individual experiences as well as, crucially, drawing attention to the fact that these stories have been made invisible in hegemonic narratives, as demonstrated in the BBC documentary The World’s War (p. 74). Studying these local memorial sites enables Tinsley to demonstrate the ways in which national commemorations of the centenary were responded to and challenged by local actors. Yet, crucially, the three strategies generated different kinds of interventions. Mourning and mobilization were utilized as attempts to include and assimilate Muslim soldiers into dominant remembrance structures and into the contemporary nation. Melancholic sites, however, substantially disrupted the process that rendered marginalized stories invisible in hegemonic memory as well as the notion of national memory itself. They drew attention to the implications of these dynamic processes for imaginings of the nation in the present, therefore providing entirely new, transgressive narratives.
The author utilizes an impressive scope of methodological approaches, ranging from archival research, analysis of various discursive materials (including transcripts of speeches, media coverage, political discourse, published op-eds and social media posts), to qualitative interviews she conducted with key stakeholders. Similarly notable is the scope of memorial sites she examines, prompting the reader to appreciate the breadth of the concept of sites of memory (p. 31). The empirical analysis in Tinsley’s study is a compelling read and in itself testifies to the value of this monograph. Yet, the scope and impact of the study far exceeds this, as the work provides meaningful and productive theoretical insights into a range of topics relating to memory. For the purpose of this review, I will here outline key points we can draw from Tinsley’s work on three topics in particular, which are especially significant and timely within memory studies currently: national memory, cultivated melancholia and memory activism.
Turning first to national memory, Tinsley’s work is an insightful critical investigation of the concept and her application shows the manifold potential it holds. The choice to utilize this framework is a deliberate one, which Tinsley discusses in the first chapter. While Maurice Halbwachs’ widely cited concept of collective memory enables us to understand how ‘people make sense of the past collectively, and in organized ways’ (p. 8), Tinsley makes use of national memory in order to specifically draw attention to the ways in which memory narratives and practices of remembering contribute to the constitution of the nation, its boundaries and its citizens. Therefore, it accentuates the role memory takes in constituting a national collective’s insider and outsider dynamics, with significant political implications. Furthermore, paying attention to the nation as a category of analysis allows us to distinguish between different actors involved in various processes of memory making. It demonstrates the nation state as the key stakeholder in the making of the dominant, hegemonic narrative, and local, non-state actors, such as activists or historians, as central contributors in the development of responses to hegemonic narratives, as well as in the production of their own, independent, transgressive memory narratives. Finally, if national memory contributes to the discursive making of the nation, then transgressive memories from below constitute not only a challenge to national memory and to state-sponsored commemorative narratives and practices, but also to the contemporary imagining of the nation, its borders and membership dynamics. As such, Tinsley’s analysis of national and local commemorative narratives around Muslim soldiers in WWI is a reappraisal of the role of Muslim soldiers in an event long past as much as it is also a discussion of the position of Muslims and Islam in Britain and France at present and in the future.
A second notable theoretical offering of this book is the concept of cultivated melancholia. It is one of the commemorative strategies Tinsley identifies in her analysis of local memorial sites that foreground the memory of Muslim soldiers. Tinsley’s notion builds on Paul Gilroy’s postcolonial melancholia, an influential concept to describe the sense of loss, without understanding what has been lost, experienced by the imperial nation upon the loss of its colonies. Postcolonial melancholia manifests as a sense of unease, but can also appear as eruptions into racialized violence, when a formerly colonizing metropolis fails to understand its deeply racialized core and experiences a loss of its sense of self. It is not an intentional act but the result of the imperial metropolis neglecting a critical engagement with its imperial past and, thus, its failure to recognize its implications for the present. Tinsley stipulates that Gilroy’s analysis raises the question of ‘how new rituals and sites of memory might emerge through the grappling with the imperial past’ (p. 152), in other words: what opportunities arise when the metropolis decides to reckon with its past more intentionally in order to combat the state of postcolonial melancholia, as defined by Gilroy? Tinsley identifies cultivated melancholia as a commemorative strategy in three case studies in the book as possible responses to this question. It is not a rebuttal but an extension of Gilroy’s concept, which she refers to as latent melancholia (p. 74) in order to clarify the distinction. Tinsley defines cultivated melancholia as a ‘deliberate, localised disruption of national memory, unaccompanied by any narrative to repair that which it fractures’ (p. 75). Sites, where this emerges as the predominant commemorative narrative, highlight diverse and individualized stories of soldiers, and foreground racialized violence during the war and thereafter. Consequently, these sites draw attention to the deliberate historical processes of neglect and forgetting as well as the absences they create. They disrupt the project of national memory and prevent Muslim soldiers from being assimilated into a cohesive national narrative. Tinsley’s cultivated melancholia is not just an important expansion of Gilroy’s influential concept, but her theorization also emerges at a very timely moment. For many decades, but with increased energy in recent years, different stakeholders across Europe have investigated the ways in which formerly colonizing nations might be able to grapple and reckon with their imperial pasts. While Gilroy’s notion of postcolonial melancholia was instrumental in pointing out the need for this project, Tinsley’s expansion accentuates the work of those already proactively involved in this undertaking and what we can learn from them. As such, cultivated melancholia demonstrates the possibilities we have at our disposal to learn about our colonial past, understand its legacies in the present, disrupt hegemonic narratives, and, eventually, advance the project of ‘decolonizing the nation’ (p. 112).
Third, with its focus on localized sites of memory, which have been initiated, organized and implemented by a range of local actors, such as politicians, historians and community activists, Tinsley’s work is a noteworthy and timely contribution to a growing body of scholarship in recent years focusing on memory activism and grassroots memory initiatives. This focus on bottom-up memory work has several significant implications: it highlights that dominant, national narratives of memory are never univocal, never uncontested, and never the only narrative. Local memory sites demonstrate how different social groups respond to and challenge dominant narratives. More importantly, it demonstrates how local initiatives generate innovative, transgressive narratives themselves. This research trajectory accentuating memory activism was most recently confirmed with the publication of the Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism (edited by Yifat Gutman and Jenny Wüstenberg, 2023), to which Tinsley herself contributed a meaningful chapter on memory activism and Empire. Tinsley’s book demonstrates the potential of investigating the transformations provided by localized memory initiatives from below, the opportunities this activism holds to narrate the stories of previously excluded groups and underscores that memory activism ‘is not simply an abstract exercise in imagining the nation’ but that, ‘for people who have been excluded from national memory, it is a proclamation that they exist’ (p. 165).
Throughout the book’s five chapters, Tinsley continually weaves together empirical and theoretical contributions. At times, this lends itself to some repetition, however, the author’s consistent practice of signposting argumentative trajectories and of summarizing discussions and conclusions within each chapter as well as her illustrative and comprehensive language ensures the book’s readability and accessibility. The title of the volume appears to centre on the work’s empirical analysis, which is undoubtably relevant and timely. Nonetheless, the book offers much more than the sum of its empirical findings and has the potential to present theoretical insights of much broader relevance to a widespread readership.
At the end of the WWI centenary, national unity was even more contested in Britain and France than at its outset, as illustrated during events, such as Brexit and the Windrush scandal in Britain, the gilet jaunes movement in France, and not least the COVID-19 pandemic in both nations. These political developments highlight that national memory continues to play a decisive role in the present imaginings of nations and belonging. Therefore, 5 years after the end of the centenary celebrations, the significance, timeliness and pertinence of Tinsley’s work, both within and beyond memory studies, has not diminished, but only increased.