Commemorating Jewish Past in the Turbulent Present: the Implications of the Virtual-Space-Bound Projects for the Politics of History and Memory

• In Event: Talking about Jewish Past in the Turbulent Present: International Case Studies

Abstract

Drawing on Jeffrey Olick’s observation that mnemonic practices express the changing interactions between the past and present (Olick 2015), we need to perceive the current decade of commemorations of events from history of Jews, as it has been happening against an intriguing and challenging backdrop of contradictory socio-political dynamics. On the one hand the continuing generational shift of the audiences and participants of commemorations invites new ways of addressing them, by on-going increase of interest in micro-narratives and strong appeal to vernacular memory (Bodnar).
On the other hand, recent political tensions caused by the rise of nationalisms and the top-down agendas of re-shaping exclusivist narratives about the past have been transforming commemorative practices of the recent years.

I will be looking at the selection of virtual commemorative projects conceived in the past three years to study implications of the virtual space for the politics of history and memory. How are these spaces the real-and-imagined Thirdspace (or perhaps a Fourthspace) of memory (Soja)? What transformations in our understandings of politics, history, and memory of commemorations (Olick) do they bring? What are new potentials and limitations of their dialogical form in the context of commemorating the events and shaping the narratives about the past in the turbulent present?
Case studies from in Poland, Germany, the US, Israel, and Ukraine will inform my presentation.

Author

• Malgorzata Bakalarz-Duverger, The New School