Between Moral Activism and Archival Memory: the Testimonial Project of ‘Breaking the Silence’

Abstract

Viewing public memory as a cultural field of struggle over meanings and values, we address the question of how oppositional voices can insert themselves into an institutionally controlled conversation about a nation’s past and thereby reshape its memory-scapes. In particular, we are interested in two themes: (1) the interplay of ‘archival memory’ as a depository of knowledge about the past and its enactment as lived or usable memory in the immediate or distant future; (2) the role played by personal memories in renegotiating public memory.