Transcript Les lieux de mémoire – sites of memory (Pierre Nora)

Making History
War Remembrance
Week 1, Spring Term
Outline
1. Collective Memory and Sites of Memory
2. War remembrance: functions and forms
3. War remembrance: Britain today
4. Divisive memories: World War II in Ukraine
5. Conclusion
‘It is in society that people
normally acquire their
memories. It is also in
society that they recall,
recognize, and localize
their memories’
(Halbwachs, 1925, 1992,
p. 38).
Maurice Halbwachs
1877-1945
The Social Frames of
Memory (1925)
The Legendary
Topography of the Gospels
in the Holy Land (1941)
Les lieux de mémoire – sites of memory (Pierre Nora)
‘There are lieux de mémoire, sites of memory,
because there are no longer milieux de mémoire,
real environments of memory’
Les lieux de mémoire – sites of memory (Pierre Nora)
‘If we were able to live within memory, we would
not have needed to consecrate lieux de mémoire
in its name. Each gesture, down to the most
everyday, would be experienced as the ritual
repetition of a timeless practice in a primordial
identification of act and meaning’
Les lieux de mémoire – sites of memory (Pierre Nora)
History and Memory
‘Memory installs remembrance within the sacred;
history, always prosaic, releases it again. Memory
is blind to all but the group it binds… At the heart
of history is a critical discourse that is antithetical
to spontaneous memory, History is perpetually
suspicious of memory, and its true mission is to
suppress and destroy it.’
But… is this dichotomy true? What is the relationship between memory and
history?
Memory and Power
The past is constructed not as fact
but as myth to serve the interest
of a particular community.
‘National memory ... is constituted by different, often
opposing, memories that, in spite of their rivalries,
construct common denominators that overcome on the
symbolic level real social and political differences to
create an imagined community‘
Alon Confino, Collective Memory and Cultural History,
p.1400
Outline
1. Collective Memory and Sites of Memory
2. War remembrance: functions and forms
3. War remembrance: Britain today
4. Divisive memories: World War II in Ukraine
5. Conclusion
Functions of War
Remembrance
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To give meaning to war
To stabilise the existing political order
To integrate the nation
To comfort the bereaved
To educate the next generation
Cenotaph in Whitehall
Photograph: The British Unknown
Warrior’s cortege passing the
Cenotaph, November 11, 1920
Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, London, Westminister Abbey
Outline
1. Collective Memory and Sites of Memory
2. War remembrance: functions and forms
3. War remembrance: Britain today
4. Divisive memories: World War II in Ukraine
5. Conclusion
Welcome to Somme and Ypres Battlefield Tours Ltd
the specialists in ‘then & now’ Self-Drive tours to the
Somme and Ypres battlefields
of the
GREAT WAR
1914-1918
Festival of
Remembrance, 2016
Poppy Girls, 2013
Outrage as football star
James McClean
REFUSES to wear poppy
on his shirt
WEST Brom player James McClean came
under massive fire for refusing to wear a poppy
to honour Britain's war dead.
By TOM PARFITT
02:50, Sun, Nov 8, 2015 | UPDATED: 14:39, Sun, Nov 8, 2015
Outline
1. Collective Memory and Sites of Memory
2. War remembrance: functions and forms
3. War remembrance: Britain today
4. Divisive memories: World War II in Ukraine
5. Conclusion
Different views of World War II
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Version 1
The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists
(OUN), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA),
Stepan Bandera fought for the freedom of
Ukraine against Nazi-Germany and against
the Soviet Union
They are heroes and freedom fighters and
need to be honoured in public space
(together with the soldiers of the Ukrainian
SS division Galicia who fought against the
Soviet Army)
The Soviet victory over Nazi Germany did not
end Ukrainian suffering. Ukrainian
nationalists resisted the Sovietization of
Western Ukraine, about 100,000 Ukrainians
were killed, hundreds of thousands were
arrested and deported to Siberia
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Many Western Ukrainians and activists on the
Majdan see in the OUN and in Bandera
heroes and carry OUN flags and emblems
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Version 2
The Ukrainian nationalists were
collaborators of Nazi Germany, fascist
and anti-Semitic
The real heroes of Ukraine are the
Ukrainian soldiers of the Soviet Army
and the Ukrainian red partisans who
joined forces with the Russians and
the other Soviet nations to liberate
Ukraine from the Nazis and their
Ukrainian agents.
Ukraine was liberated and united by
the Soviet Army, the Ukrainians should
be grateful to the Soviet Union (and
Russia)
This shows that many Western
Ukrainians are fascists and that the
Ukrainian revolution was actually a
fascist coup d’état supported by the
EU and USA
Soviet Army Memorial in Lviv, Ukraine
Lviv - Monument and cemetery of the soldiers of the two
Ukrainian SS divisions
Lviv - Monument on
the new Ukrainian
memorial
„To the soldiers of the
Ukrainian National
Army, fallen in battle faithful successors of
the heroes of the fight
for liberation for the
freedom of the
Fatherland“
Lviv - tomb of a soldier of the SS Division Galicia
„Here rests an unknown warrior of the division „Halychyna“
who gave in July 1944 at Brody his life for the freedom of
the Ukrainian nation“
Lviv - Monument of the
leader of the Organisation
of Ukrainian Nationalists
(B), Stepan Bandera,
unveiled in November
2007 in Lviv
Outline
1. Collective Memory and Sites of Memory
2. War remembrance: functions and forms
3. War remembrance: Britain today
4. Divisive memories: World War II in Ukraine
5. Conclusion
Conclusion
• Memory is a social product – individual memory is
dependent on society
• Individual and collective memory changes over time
• The task of national memory is to integrate the nation
• The functions of war remembrance are to give meaning
to war, to stabilise the existing political order, to comfort the
bereaved and to educate the next generation
• Power matters but collective memory cannot just be
imposed from above and is not identical with public
memory