“And now what?”: Agitating Collectivity in Collective Memory-Work

• In Event: Collective Memory-Work for Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: A Feminist, Collective Approach to Inquiry

Abstract

Purpose: We discuss ways we have agitated the praxis and possibility of collectivity in participatory narrative research with collective memory work (Haug, 1999; Nagar, 2006, Connolly-Schaffer, 2012). Author 1 has worked with preservice and novice teachers in the US Midwest, and Author 2 with SWANA refugee youth in the Balkans. Our respective collectives engaged in collective memory work (CMW) by sharing specific memories in response to urgent and shared issues about belonging in schools. The memories analyzed across contexts excavate truths about schooling and set the foundations for solidarity movement building.

Epistemic and methodological framework: Breathing with the Marxist-Feminist pulse, and practiced in Berlin and Hamburg, Germany in the 1980s, Haug and Frauenformen pivoted feminist projects globally as the emergence of CMW was a practice of emancipatory learning and research. Frigga Haug (1999), a German poststructuralist-feminist, viewed CMW as an act of resistance, one which might challenge “power, dominance, hegemony [and] inequality” (p. 1). Central to the process is the belief that we know more about ourselves than we assume, and that there is value in examining constructions of self through written memories. Our work to agitate collectivity integrates understanding from Richa Nagar and Sangtin Yatra/Playing with Fire which emerged through reflexive activism in Uttar Pradesh in India. Nagar (2006) suggests, “collectively produced methodology in which autobiographical writing and discussions of that writing became tools through which we built our analysis and critique of societal structures and processes, ranging from the very personal to the global" ( p. xxviii.). Sangtin Yatra critically interrogated "the manner in which social hierarchies based on caste, class, religion, and geographical location become central to understanding the interrelationship among women's empowerment, NGO work, and the politics of knowledge production" (Ibid, p. xxiii) while intentionally blurring the boundaries between creative, academic and other forms of writing across genres and languages. Moreover, emerging at the US-Mexican border as a transformative and healing project of feminist testimonies, Connolly-Schaffer (2012) writes about polyvocal sharing in Staging Cross-Border (Reading) Alliances: Feminist Polyvocal Testimonials at Work. She asserts that testimonies brought into dialogue pave the path for the narration of the truths that create new social knowledge. Relatedly, the collective work with women, and arguably with the refugee youth and novice teachers has yielded the production of social knowledge critical for political claims and the social movement in the making.

Inquiry and Scholarly Significance: Collective memory work has instigated important methodological and ethical directions for the situated praxis of collectivity. Through a shared inquiry on the experiences of schooling, specifically for preservice teachers and refugees, our work examines our respective engagement with CMW towards an understanding of efforts and future directions of collectivity: How can collectivity lead to empowering and accountability to a valued, agentic, and collective praxis? In what ways does collectivity foster rapport, trust and safety to co-evolve? Grappling with these questions set us on a collaborative journey between two of us, and simultaneously focuses each of us to further our relationships and agitational work with our collectives.

Authors

• Anna Schick, University of Wisconsin - River Falls

• Emina Buzinkic, Institute for Development and International Relations