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The Politics of Conflict, Reconciliation, Memory, and Trauma: Paving a Path for the Present and Future
The Politics of Conflict, Reconciliation, Memory, and Trauma: Paving a Path for the Present and Future
Wednesday, 13 July 2016: 09:00-10:30
Location: Hörsaal 34 (Main Building)
RC07 Futures Research (host committee) Language: English
What are the possibilities and limitations of depicting traumatic memory? How is the past related to the present, and how does it impact the future? How do groups remember past atrocities? Does the past exist in the past, or does it exist in the present when we think about things that have passed? How do memories of past conflict impact the future?
Memory provides the linkage between the past, present, and future. This session will address issues of conflict, reconciliation, memory and trauma, paying attention to how the aftermath of violence affects the present and future. Can traumatic memory be represented? If so, how and by whom? Who has the legitimacy to represent the trauma, and what are the political ramifications of various means of commemoration and representation? How has trauma, particularly from the aftermath of violence, served the politics of remembering and forgetting, the politicization of suffering, the use and abuse of representation, and impacted the discussion of future reparations and/or reconciliation?
The session will showcase sociologists dealing with any aspect of the memory of conflict, trauma, and/or reconciliation in the aftermath of collective violence – war, genocide, or terrorism. Papers that deal with the representation of traumatic memory by victims, ethnic groups, the media, nation states and/or museums are welcome. Papers could also be about memory and memorialization, commemoration, memory and identity politics (constructing victims and perpetrators), political sites of memory, or how memory impacts future negotiations of retributive justice, forgiveness and forgetting.
Session Organizer: