684
Remembering of What Happened to My (Fore-)Father or Mother. Family Memories of Mass Violence and Slavery
Abstract Submissions Closed
RC56 Historical Sociology (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
This session invites researchers from a wide range of fields and geographical areas to highlight and discuss the remaining presence of History in family memories and the way it still affects further generations.
How the memory of the Holocaust, of other Genocides and Wars, but also of longer-lasting structural violences such as Slavery in North-America or Brasil is shaped, transmitted, silenced or reaffirmed among descendants?
How this experienced past and its indirect memories have been transmitted over time, even inside families where they seemed faded away? How do family secrets and difficult reminiscences reappear one or more generations after?
Jeffrey Olick and Joyce Robbins (1998) proposed a shift of perspective from « "collective memory" to the historical sociology of mnemonic practices », and one can question the intersubjective dynamics within families.
The focus of the study can also be broadened to local communities' memories, that are connected to a neighborhood (or topos), which contributes the form of remembrance, by contrast with a large-scale and more homogeneous collective memory of events.
Jan Assman (1992) considers social memory as "the connective structure of societies". As such, memory is a privileged object for historical sociology. And social memory is elaborated at many different levels, from the family to the State. This session can openly explore these interconnexions, interdependencies, tensions and contradictions between private sphere and institutional memories.
This one will be completed by a second session tackling similar issues in the case of migrations and diasporic experience.