Who has the authority to speak about the past? Who are the gatekeepers of historical knowledge, and whose voices carry more weight in the construction of collective memories? At the heart of these questions lies the concept of ‘epistemic authority’ and the questions of how it is claimed by (and attributed to) memory actors, discourses, and practices. Zagzebski (2012: 2-3) speaks of epistemic authority as the basis on which self-reflexive persons accept the sources of their beliefs. Reflecting on the practice of historians, Herman Paul (2011) speaks of ‘epistemic virtues’ to analyze historians’ performances within their scholarship. These concepts have significant meaning for memory studies as well, since the acceptance or rejection of memory narratives is ultimately influenced by the authority attributed to its proponents, epistemic foundations, discourse, and the practices through which they are shared.
This panel reflects on processes through which people negotiate epistemic authority on different ‘scales’ of remembering (Keightley et al. 2019). On the scale of mass-mediated memories, Louise Ballière’s presentation focuses on newspaper discourse and examines the attribution of epistemic authority on two levels: first, the positioning of authors and audience in order to claim the authority to speak about the past; secondly, the production of this discourse, examining who is given the floor to speak, and who is considered as ‘expert’. Iadine Degryse’s contribution discusses memory controversies on the (semi-)public scale and presents an auto-ethnography on the role of historians among other actors involved in the resignification of controversial memorial markers. Finally, Wouter Reggers presents a paper on the scale of family memory, illustrating how family members of Belgian former colonials negotiate epistemic authority of testimony and mediated discourse in order to deal with inconsistencies between their family member’s experience-based memories and collectively constructed cultural narratives of colonialism.
Louise Ballière, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle, DE) - Our history, our responsibility? Epistemic authority and historical accountability in Belgian newspapers (1945-2020)
Newspapers are typically assigned strong epistemic authority, offering a type of knowledge that enjoys great credibility. On different occasions, this knowledge is not restricted to the present. Ranging from journalists and witnesses to politicians and experts, a wide variety of actors engage with history in newspapers, thus participating in a co-production of social representations of the past and contributing to related memory debates. This presentation will explore who is given the floor between 1945 and 2020 in Belgian newspaper accounts of WWII collaboration. In doing so, it will focus on the changing role of ‘experts’, such as historians, as temporal distance from the event increases and broader societal discourses on how to deal with the past evolve.
That said, epistemic authority is not a one-sided process on the part of the news writers, but involves a complex relationship between those claiming the authority and others recognising it (Carlson 2022). Through a discourse analysis of Belgian newspaper articles on the collaboration between 1945 and 2020, the presentation will explore how these different news-writing agents address this relation and how they position themselves and their readers relative to the historical events in question. More specifically, it will examine how the use of addressee-inclusive (“we”) and third-person exclusive (“they”) pronouns establishes a relation between the author, their audience and the past that acknowledges or refutes collective responsibility for historical harm. Especially the increase in op-eds by or interviews with historians since the 1980s reveals a tension between attempts at maintaining a distance between past and present, and an entanglement between historical and current responsibility.
Iadine Degryse, Université Libre de Bruxelles (BE) - The role of historians in addressing a controversial memorial marker: lessons from a case in Brussels
This communication presents an in-depth case study of the decommemoration of the bust of a former xenophobic mayor, Roger Nols (1922-2004), in Schaerbeek (Brussels, Belgium), to analyse the dynamics of conflictual memory in (semi-)public space. Following the 2017 complaint by the Movement against Racism, Antisemitism, and Xenophobia (MRAX), the controversial bust was addressed through a negotiated procedure (2019–2023) involving political, civil, and associative actors with divergent perspectives, nevertheless culminating in a unique agreement.
Research questions: This research focuses on two axes: 1. How did the mediation devices (pedagogical and didactic) enable very different actors to negotiate and agree on a new semantic meaning for the controversial memorial marker, transcending the binary opposition between removal and status quo? 2. What are the epistemological implications of the historian's intervention as a facilitator in the management of conflictual memory in public space, and how does this role reveal both the specific tools (historical method, didactics) and the limits of academic expertise facing political and citizen issues?
Methodology: Employing an auto-ethnography of my role as historian and as the negotiation facilitator, supplemented by discourse analysis (municipality minutes and media coverage), the study deciphers the mechanisms of narrative framing and the semantic compromises that led to the bust’s 'contextualized turning' in 2023.
Key findings: This research elucidates how these processes can help move beyond the binary opposition between removal and the defense of the status quo, offering a rare model for the management of controversial mnemonic signifiers and sheds light on the potential for historians to actively shape democratic negotiation around contested heritage.
Wouter Reggers, UCLouvain/Ghent University (BE) - ‘Not the Congo I Knew’: Epistemic authority between experience and mediation in family memories of Belgian colonialism
Family memory is widely considered an ‘indispensable framework’ of mediation between individual experiences and collective memories (Erll 2011: 311). Scholars have spoken of its ‘radical potential’ for memory work due to its individualization of collective pasts (Evans 2011). Yet, in my interviews with Belgian former colonials and their descendants, interlocutors regularly rejected these connections between their family past and collective memories of colonialism, evoking a sense of dissonance between cultural narratives and the personal experiences of themselves or their family members.
Underneath this narrative dissonance, there was often a fundamental tension between the epistemic authority attributed to lived experience vs. mediated historical accounts. For example, interviewees argued that the historical contextualization of colonialism does not reflect ‘the Congo they knew’, or rejected any analysis from non-colonials. I believe this tension is the product of popular attitudes towards epistemic authority, testimony, and historiography. In this regard, some historical theorists point to the tendency to privilege testimony as ‘evidence of experience’ (Scott 1991), while others have written about the suspicion of historians towards testimony, speaking of a ‘crisis of testimony’ (Ahlskog 2018) or the idiom ‘testimony stops where history begins’ (Ahlskog 2025: 37).
In this presentation, I show how family members of former colonials negotiate epistemic authority between direct experience and mediated narratives. Barnwell (2021) illustrates how the keeping or breaking of silences within families could harness or question collective colonial memory. I propose that the negotiation of epistemic authority goes beyond this and shapes family members’ relations to the past by accepting or rejecting memory narratives. Furthermore, I show how these negotiations also shape the transmission of family memory by subdividing witnesses and non-witnesses within the family.
20260731T140020260731T1530America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires9.11. Epistemic Authority and Memory ControversiesSVE2MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
