Ius in Memoria: How to Commemorate

Abstract

For Ius in Memoria, the question of how to commemorate, this chapter outlines four criteria that reflect the Just War tradition’s Ius in Bello. Commemoration should transcend the collective, by encouraging people to treat each other as individuals rather than as group representatives. Remembrance should exit circular narratives that trap people in destructive ways of thinking about themselves and others. Through commemoration, people should assert their moral autonomy, by grounding what they do in what they aspire to be, rather than excusing their own transgressions with reference to what others have done to them. Lastly, commemoration should have an element of contained unfathomability. It should move us to act and yet not overwhelm our lives. Remembrance does not contribute to a better future if we have “the past eat the future,” as one perceptive journalist once put it. This chapter describes these criteria with reference to First World War cemeteries in Flanders, literary reimagination in Germany, revolutionary museums in Misrata (Libya), a remarkable Azerbaijani author exiled in his own country, the question of how to name trauma, discussions of the bombing of Dresden, and an exhibit that ended in controversy.