Legacy work: three strategies of adversarial meaning-making of historical characters

Abstract

Memory struggles over historical characters in contentious politics have often been framed as reputation struggles in which the valence of a character is disputed by adversarial groups. However, antagonist actors often invoke and appropriate the same revered character to endorse contradicting political goals. These struggles often revolve around a different dimension of the character’s memory: the significance of the character’s legacy. In this study, I examine three strategies employed to battle over the political legacy of Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas. I introduce the term Legacy Work to explain how actors in contentious politics transform or preserve the meaning of political legacies and provide a sociological answer to the question “What would leaders of the past have us do today?”