Non-memory: Remembering beyond the discursive and the symbolic

Abstract

Central and Eastern Europe—scenes of brutal genocides in the past century—are dotted with sites of trauma. Only some of those potential sites of memory are currently marked with plaques or memorials. Mnemonic responses to such sites do occur but are not part of an easily readable symbolic system within official culture. They are often contradictory: at once supporting and blocking memory about a given event. The concept of “non-memory” developed by Polish sociologists might be helpful in grasping vernacular memorial activities that do not privilege verbal contact as the norm in the transfer of memory. Non-memory tends to combine dismantled symbolic means and extra-symbolic embodied tools and performative acts. Non-memory therefore takes part in the transmission of an experience of the past in particular when the past turns out to be difficult or impossible to inscribe within available cognitive frameworks.