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The Mnemonic Black Hole at Guantánamo: Memory and Counter-Memory Digital Practices on Twitter

Sat, May 26, 12:30 to 13:45, Hilton Prague, Floor: M, Chez Louis Salon

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the acts of remembering and forgetting in militarized U.S. detention facilities as they are performed in digital spaces. I map the heterogeneous memory practices adopted by militarized institutional stakeholders affiliated with the post-9/11 war machine at the U.S. Naval Station-Guantanamo. I focus specifically on three case studies related to the official Twitter feed of the Joint Task Force of Guantanamo Bay. I intend to use these three cases to demonstrate the ways in which divergent digital memory practices situate Guantanamo as different types of sites; I argue specifically that the modern American war machine’s efforts to code institutional military narratives through official social media accounts and governmental reports represent memory practices that seek to dissolve its status as an Gambian space of exception.

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