Introduction Memory Work: The Second Generation

Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed a growing preoccupation with memory in public discourses and in academia, with respect to both individual and collective memorial forms. Our times are characterized by considerations and articulations of the meaning of the past in the present, as we see in discussions about the if, where, and how of the United States National Slavery Museum; in the long path to the official apology made in 2008 by Australia’s government for its crimes against the country’s Indigenous populations; or the increase in migrant families’ ‘memory tourism’ to places of origin. In On Collective Memory, one of the seminal studies on memory beyond the individual, sociologist Maurice Halbwachs argues that communication is needed to create memory, asserting that memory is not ‘just there’; rather, it is a process and an activity (1992). Memory is in the hands of many: political decision-makers and private individuals, museums and memorials, life writing authors and documentary filmmakers, to name but a few. From a theoretical perspective, the emerging interdisciplinary field of memory studies has turned to the forms, media, and processes of remembering and forgetting. What unites all these endeavors is a dialogue with the past; whatever form it takes, these efforts show that memory requires and receives humankind’s attention and action.