Abstract
I claim that all cultural memory must ‘travel’, be kept in motion, in order to ‘stay alive’, to have an impact both on individual minds and social formations. Such travel consists only partly in movement across and beyond territorial and social boundaries.
‘Regions’ of memory form the fabric of social memory that extends beyond the borders of nationhood, but does not necessarily reach the supranationalism of globalism or universalism. Discussions and debates between the national and the cosmopolitan continue to motivate the development of scholarly attention within memory studies, and the globally focussed academic community is becoming increasingly aware of the spaces of memory that exist between prominent discourses. It therefore demands the greatest of cohesive interdisciplinarity to pay attention to the vast comparative potential between geographical and temporal spaces.
With these issues at the forefront of their considerations, the editors of 2022’s Regions of Memory: Transnational Formations have scoured the interdisciplinary areas of discussion to better understand the complexities of histories within, across and beyond the demarcation of statehood. This highly challenging and ambitious set of essays, collected and edited by leading scholars in the field, makes a greatly important contribution to memory studies because of its ground-breaking attention to the challenges of navigating memory and past traumas within the context of transnational modernity.
Regions of Memory is a valuable continuation of important foundational discourse that has helped push the development of the field of global memory studies, such as Gutman et al. (2010) Memory and the Future. However, whereas Gutman et al.’s findings result from studies which are concerned with the futurity of memory and its transformations across time as well as spaces, Regions of Memory is concerned with these transcultural, and multicultural, formations in their immediacy. The overall presentation of the collection, and the order of the discussions within, builds on previous important discussions that we find in such works as De Cesari and Rigney’s (2014) Transnational Memory. The text reflects the evolution of the study of globalized memory and seeks to make an impactful contribution in light of recent, global developments in academia. Regions of Memory has an urgency and a pressing contiguity with discussions that have contributed to the transnational memory cultures we see presently. Whereas current discussions elaborate on the importance of looking to the future, Regions of Memory is an impactful reminder of the fluctuating day-to-day cultures of memory, delving deep into how that memory is consolidated, curated and transmitted to the global community.
When reading the text in its entirety, it is apparent that this global consideration is firmly at the forefront of the editors’ and contributors’ research, and the text itself has an emancipatory and inclusive investigative tone. For example, as Jeffrey Olick candidly points out, ‘[t]here are distinct discourses about different issues in different parts of the world’ (p. 237); the text follows this simple premise to thoroughly investigate the root of these diasporic approaches to memory. Instead of satisfying itself with the different-cultures-are-different-in-different-ways reasoning that has so far restricted Western-centric academic studies into globalism, Regions of Memory takes great care to analyse the linkages that are shared by different memory cultures, both closely proximate and distantly observed. This opens up a fresh and lively discussion on the mutual influences that memory cultures have on each other – influences that transcend borders, statehoods and regimes of governance. The discussions as a whole have a welcome, decentralised – and despatialised – tone to them, and this has been long overdue in established academia.
The research presented in Regions of Memory expertly balances the vast transcontinental cultures of memory, while stressing the importance of connecting memory on a personal level, of appealing to individual minds as well as institutional memory culture. Each individual contribution is exemplary of this, and has been collated expertly by the editors. For example, Laura Pozzi’s essay, ‘China, the Maritime Silk Road, and the Memory of Colonialism in the Asia Region’, is a fine example of this analytical balance. It homes in on China’s curatorial project, ‘One Belt, One Road’, which seeks to make Asian transnational historical memories accessible to the public, and how the project continues the observance of transcultural formations that shape a globalised world. This chapter exemplifies how the collection as a whole communicates investigative rigour and thoughtfulness to delineate the ways in which spaces that have been preconceptually categorised as ‘distant’ or ‘far-flung’ have profound and impactful influences on modern global approaches to memory. Essays such as Pozzi’s exemplify the importance of specificity when discussing such complex memorial topics and discussions.
Another example of how the volume stresses plurality and cohesion in transnational memory is found in Lowe and Joel’s essay, ‘The Cold War and Regions of Memory’, which expertly demonstrates the diasporic manifestations of memory concerning a single, seismic referent, and how evolutionary changes in attitudes to confronting memory influences the formation and evolution of memory on both sides of aggressively conflicting political climates. Lowe and Joel’s analysis is a celebration of the transcendence of cultural memory over obligatory memory that is either politically motivated or gate-kept. These observations do not go unsupported in this collection, and are reinforced by authors of other chapters, such as Krishan Kumar, Hanna Teichler and Ksenia Robbe, who also demonstrate what is possible in the modern global community when cultural trends influence administrative or state-approved curation of uncomfortable histories, rather than the state solely dictating the cultural perceptions of memory. As the fluctuating demarcation of statehood and institutionalisation shifts and changes, the continuance of cultural memory, nurtured by the increasing openness of globalisation and dissemination of information, aids cohesion and consolidation of traumatic pasts that are shared by people and cultures, if not necessarily states.
It goes without saying that the volume’s contributors are engaged in a highly complex interrogation of the now well-established lexicon in global memory studies. As a volume, it is unafraid to approach difficult issues surrounding uncomfortable histories. It carefully considers the detrimental vicissitudes of the modern cultures of memorialisation around the legacies of Cold War trauma, postcolonialism, partisan history, and responses to international human rights abuses. It seeks to unravel the intricacies of institutional – and often biased – memory, and discusses whether traditional cultures of remembrance are mainly a cathartic confrontation of postcolonial/postwar traumas, or whether, by acknowledging the violence and tumult of the past, a community is able to mediate resolution and negotiate transition (p. 205). These considerations continue to press the reader long after they have read and reflected upon the essay collection, demonstrating that this is a highly impactful study. Taking the collected topics together, Regions of Memory truly homes in on how regions shape our memory, while also being shaped by our undulating conceptualisation of memory itself. Regions of Memory is an excellent example of how we, as memory scholars, can look to the future of memory culture, while grounding our work in shifting attitudes to globally problematic stories among interweaving memory cultures.