Landscapes of Commemoration: The Relationship between Memory, Place and Space

Abstract

In his discussion of memory, truth and victimhood in post-trauma societies, John Brewer (2006) suggests that the convergence of memory, nationalism and ethnic violence often constitutes an ‘unholy trinity’. Yet, he continues, memory can also dichotomously play a pivotal role in the negotiation and realisation of peace in societies emerging from violent conflict. A wide range of social practices can be employed to make memory ‘functional’ within such societies (Brewer 2006). These include: the correction of distortions which fostered divisions in the first instance; developing a pluralist approach to remembering that incorporates memories of the ‘other’; the recovery of memories that were formally denied or avoided to illustrate unity rather than enmity; establishing new narratives of nationhood to underpin the post-violent society (for example, the report of the Northern Ireland Consultative Group on the Past [2009] advocates the ‘cathartic’ value of storytelling in reconciling former enemies); and the need to forge new collective forms of commemoration. It is that latter factor, the interconnections of peace processes and commemoration, that provides the focus of this book, although we also argue that this can be considered fully only by adding ‘territoriality’ to Brewer’s ‘unholy trinity’. Memory, nationalism and violence mesh together, as in Northern Ireland, in a spatial framework that can perhaps serve to exacerbate identity politics and reify competing territorial ideologies (see for example, Graham and Nash 2006; Graham and Whelan 2007; McDowell 2007).