Revisiting memoricide: The everyday killing of memory

Abstract

Memoricide, it seems, is memory made rubble and ash. Its emblematic imagery is of scenes many would find familiar: burning ash-snow from Sarajevo’s Vijecnica; satellite images of Palmyra’s missing structures; the exploding Bamiyan Buddhas. Physically altering space is understandably a highly visible tactic. However, when explicitly built into definitions, the emphasis on physical destruction has been on specific forms targeted: archival institutions, monuments, memorials and heritage sites. This article revisits memoricide as a range of converging physical, social and discursive strategies. It introduces ‘everyday’ memoricide – the normalisation of memory erasure as mundane practices – which ordinarily masks its intelligibility as memoricide through ‘common sense’ or ‘greater good’ discursive frames. The sacred Djab Wurrung trees, threatened by the Victorian State Government’s Western Highway project, and a felled Directions Tree in particular, provide a still unfolding case study within the broader history of Australian memoricide.