Memorial landscapes and contestation: destabilising artefacts of stability

Abstract

Landscapes of memorialisation are, simultaneously, sites of remembering and forgetting. As sites of remembering, memorial landscapes are instructive. Their artefacts of commemoration do not simply recall events and/or people, they extol specific values and lessons that members of their given society are silently urged to aspire to and emulate. However, such landscapes are strategically curated presenting a historical narrative that reflects and supports the dominant socio-political paradigm. Those voices that do not reflect this paradigm are silenced, symbolically excluded and hence forgotten. However, the processes of silencing and forgetting are never absolute. Alternative voices contest dominant memorialisation practices, jostling to be heard in wider societal discourse. The papers in this special issue reflect upon these struggles. Drawing on case studies from across the globe the authors of each paper trace the complexity of and contestation over landscapes of memorialisation. In doing so, this special issue contributes to the multidisciplinary understandings of remembering and forgetting in and through the landscape.