Politics of memory
Political influence on collective memory / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Politics of memory is the organisation of collective memory by political agents; the political means by which events are remembered and recorded, or discarded. Eventually, politics of memory may determine the way history is written and passed on, hence the terms history politics or politics of history. The politics of history is the effects of political influence on the representation or study of historical topics, commonly associated with the totalitarian state which use propaganda and other means to impose a specific version of history with the goal of eliminating competing perspectives about the past.[1] In order to achieve this goal, memory regimes resort to different means such as narrating (the construction of a seemingly coherent narrative), strategic silencing (the masking-out of historical facts that contradict one's own interpretation), performing (ritualized forms of reifying the narrative) or renaming/remapping (inscribing the narrative into the monumental and toponymic landscape).[2]
Nevertheless, the term is contested and there is no common agreement on its meaning which is often a matter of contextual use.[3][4] Some authors have suggested that memory debates can be ordered by an Ethics of Political Commemoration, a framework similar to Just War theory.[5]
Memories are also influenced by cultural forces, e.g. popular culture, as well as social norms. It has also been connected with the construction of identity.[6]