The strategies of mnemonic battle: On the alignment of autobiographical and collective memories in conflicts over the past

Abstract

In this article, I compare contemporary mnemonic battles concerning three issues: child sexual abuse, the Vietnam war and American slavery. Analyzing the rhetorical dynamics between contentious mnemonic agents in each case, I detail the formal cultural strategies that define different mnemonic disputes in order to elucidate the ways agents use autobiographical memories in contests for mnemonic authority. Mnemonic battles take three principal forms: disputes over the existence, the nature and the relevance of the past. Each case I present is most aptly characterized as one of these three types. More, each illustrates a different way that actors achieve the formal alignment and social interdependence of autobiographical and collective memory claims when defining a contested past. Such an approach provides a useful analytic guide to understanding public struggles for mnemonic authority in a contemporary cultural milieu marked by a new ethic of autobiographical storytelling. Beyond demonstrating how dynamics of contention form around memory, I show how agents coordinate personal and collective memories to shape the dynamics of contention.