Archiwa Conflicts of Memory

no. 13 (2013)

Archival

Conflicts of Memory

Each community devises specific modes of remembering, but also of forgetting uncomfortable facts. Ars memoriae and ars oblivionis constitute an inseparable pair. Common memory is a sphere that we reconstruct anew every day, even though people claim that the essence of their identity is unchanging. While history itself is a closed structure, memory is open both to individuals and to the collectivity. Collective memory reconstructs rather than registers the past; and memory is not necessarily explicit.

The issues today include not only reclaiming memory and polyphony of memory, but also – and perhaps above all – conflicts of memory, the problem of “our memory and yours”, difficult memory, manipulation of memory, and its sacralisation, appropriation and instrumentalisation. Following this idea, in this edition of Herito we try not only to become oriented in the nature of conflicts of memory, but also to look around the landscape of memory that surrounds us, Central Europeans. For, above all, one needs to start with oneself.