Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:17:56.256Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Transnational Memories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2014

Aleida Assmann
Aleida Assmann*
Affiliation:
Universität Konstanz, 78457, Konstanz, Germany. E-mail: Aleida.Assmann@uni-konstanz.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The ‘transnational turn’, which is challenging bounded views on national belonging, also opens up promising perspectives for memory studies. It fosters a rethinking and reconfiguring of national memories in the context of transnational connectedness. My sketch of seven types of transnational memories points to different empirical contexts in which states, politicians, jurists, activists, artists and scholars go beyond national borders and interests to conceptualise new forms of belonging, solidarity and cultural identification in a world characterised by streams of migration and the lingering impact of traumatic and entangled pasts.

Type
Focus: Transnational Memory in the Hispanic World
Information
European Review , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 546 - 556
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References and Notes

1.Seigel, M. (2005) Beyond compare. Comparative method after the transnational turn. Radical History Review, 91, p. 63.Google Scholar
2.Pease, D. E. (2011) Introduction: re-mapping the transnational turn. In: W. Fluck, D. E. Pease and J. C. Rowe (eds), Re-Framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies (Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press), p. 5.Google Scholar
3.Assmann, A. and Conrad, S. (eds) (2010) Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), p. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4.Levy, D. and Sznaider, N. (2006) The Holocaust in the Global Age (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press).Google Scholar
5.Rigney, A. (2012) Transforming memory and the European project. New Literary History, 43(4), p. 618.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6.In 2012, the ITF was renamed as the ‘International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’ (IHRA) and changed its logo, thus abandoning possible military or colonial associations lingering in the terminology. The new logo of the IHRA is a global emblem designed by Daniel Libeskind.Google Scholar
7.Kroh, J. (2008) Transnationale Erinnerung. Der Holocaust im Fokus geschichtspolitischer Initiativen (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag), p. 107.Google Scholar
8.Meier, C. (2001) Das Verschwinden der Gegenwart. Über Geschichte und Politik (München: Hanser), p. 24. (my translation).Google Scholar
9.For a more detailed view of this transnational memory in the making, see Kaiser, W., Krankenhagen, S. and Poehls, K. (2012) Europa ausstellen. Das Museum als Praxisfeld der Europäisierung (Köln: Böhlau Verlag), lines 408, 417 and 446.Google Scholar
10.Foucault, M. (1971) The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith) (New York: Pantheon Books), p. 23.Google Scholar
11.Rothberg, M. (2009) Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. 1.Google Scholar
12.Chakrarbarty, D. (2007) History and the politics of recognition. In: K. Jenkins, S. Morgan and A. Munslow (eds), Manifestos for History (London and New York: Routledge), p. 82.Google Scholar
13.Dan Diner, for instance, has opposed such a comparison most emphatically and disqualified any such attempt as a priori ideologically warped. He suspects that such a comparison is not immune to the hidden agenda of proving that ‘Stalin’s crimes are more reprehensible than those of the Nazis’. D. Diner (1995) Kreisläufe. Nationalsozialismus und Gedächtnis (Berlin: Berlin Verlag), p. 53. See also Heidemarie Uhl, who still sees these two memories as incompatible: H. Uhl (2009) Konkurrierende Erinnerungskulturen in Europa: Neue Grenzen zwischen ‘Ost’ und ‘West’?. In: H. Fassmann, W. Müller-Funk and H. Uhl (eds), Kulturen der Differenz – Transformationsprozesse in Zentraleuropa nach 1989. Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven (Göttingen: Vienna University Press), pp. 165–177; Troebst, S. (2005) Jalta versus Stalingrad, GULag versus Holocaust. Konfligierende Erinnerungskulturen im größeren Europa. Berliner Journal für Soziologie, 15(3), pp. 381–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14.Faulenbach, B. (1993) Probleme des Umgangs mit der Vergangenheit im vereinten Deutschland. Zur Gegenwartsbedeutung der jüngsten Geschichte. In: W. Weidenfeld (ed.), Deutschland. Eine Nation – doppelte Geschichte. Materialien zum deutschen Selbstverständnis (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik), p. 190.Google Scholar
15.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdictionGoogle Scholar
16.Capdepón Busies, U. (2013) Universelle Gerichtsbarkeit zur Auseinandersetzung mit Diktatur und Staatsterror: Transnationale Narrative des Verschwindenlassens zwischen Argentinien und Spanien. Paper given at the University of Konstanz on 10 May 2013.Google Scholar
17.Reiter, Janusz, ‘Geteilte Erinnerung in vereinten Europa,’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 7 May 2005.Google Scholar