Memory Labor and Nostalgia: When a Technology of Resistance Becomes a Tool for Control

• In Event: Collective Memory: Conflict, New Media, and Community Agency

Abstract

In this position paper, I draw from my own experience as an intern at a cultural heritage site in Nicaragua and from research on social memory studies and STS. I discuss the case of a design project to re-launch a museum installation about a literacy campaign during the Sandinista revolution. I explain how the entanglement of nostalgic reminiscing and precariousness shapes counter-productive discourses that compromise, rather than support, attempts to reconcile a post-conflict society. When nostalgia for a “better past” becomes the sole drive of remembrance, public memory becomes a technology of control rather than serving its intended goal of creating spaces for resistance.

Author

• Allan A Martell