9.18. Transnational and comparative perspectives on memory

The heritage of World War II left an indelible mark on relations between former Allied and Axis countries in postwar Europe. Republican and NATO-member Italy and socialist, non-aligned Yugoslavia were no exceptions. Although politically, economically, and militarily positioned differently during the Cold War, the two countries were nevertheless able, during the period of détente, to overcome many historical resentments and establish multiple forms of mnemonic cooperation. This paper examines engagement at the state, regional, and municipal levels and analyzes the role of twin cities in this multilayered process. By intertwining the involvement of non-state actors in transnational paradiplomatic initiatives with subnational commemorative activities at the regional and municipal levels, it reveals how the heritage of World War II played an important role in building new forms of postwar cooperation. Seen from this perspective, the commemorative practices of what have traditionally been labeled democratic and non-democratic regimes appear far less distinct. The analysis thus blurs the boundaries between ideological systems, revealing a more fluid and flexible set of practices shaped by historical ties, geographical proximity, individual agency, and economic interests, and demonstrating how local and regional actors in both contexts shared similar strategies of remembrance.

This presentation analyzes the tension between pluralistic memory practices and democratic resilience in the contemporary post-truth era. Traditionally, democratic systems value the coexistence of diverse, non-hegemonic memories as evidence of open public deliberation and critical civic engagement. The unsaid assumption here is that plural memories remain nonetheless grounded in mutually recognized epistemic norms. When collective memories proliferate without such shared frameworks, their plurality may cease to signal democratic vitality and instead reveal deep social fractures or the subordination of memory to partisan interests. I explore this paradox of mnemonic plurality through the lens of memories of collective suffering. These memories possess distinct epistemic and emotional valence: they are not perceived merely as products of collective imagination but as narratives anchored in irreversible past experiences. Contemporary legal and ethical concepts such as the “right to truth” and “memory as reparation” reflect the double conviction that such memories need to be anchored in truth and that their articulation contributes to justice. This joint orientation toward truth and justice traditionally functions as a unifying axis, allowing diverse social groups to confront past within a shared horizon. What happens, then, to the memories of suffering when this ground-framework becomes replaced by one characterized by epistemic erosion and the rise of post-truth dynamics? In such settings, plural memories may no longer support democratic dialogue but instead intensify conflict, reinforce identity polarization, and weaken the normative foundations of democratic life. The paper considers these implications and discusses avenues to reclaim ore reimagine memory politics in post-truth conditions.

How does heritage preservation intersect with displacement, memory, and democratic participation, and how have colonial frameworks shaped what counts as “authentic”? The paper demonstrates how world heritage designations often entail the erasure of living communities. I examine how local populations have lived with and reused ancient ruins thus constituting heritage as a living, contested process rather than a static, universal monument. Heritage sites across Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere have been shaped by overlapping practices of destruction, preservation, displacement, and memory. I argue that these dynamics are political, affect democratic imaginaries, and challenge dominant heritage policies. I employ a comparative and interdisciplinary methodology combining visual and archival analysis, ethnography, and critical heritage studies. Photographs, colonial reports, and oral histories are analyzed to trace how archaeological interventions have redefined living sites as “heritage”. Case studies include Palmyra (Syria), Bergama (Turkey), Baalbek (Lebanon), Petra (Jordan), and the Acropolis (Greece), yet the bridge will be made to other regions, including Latin America. I situate these within broader debates on memory politics, displacement, and the democratic dimensions of cultural preservation. The paper shows that preservation is not always opposed to destruction: many of these ruins remained inhabited into the twentieth century; their vernacular architecture evolved through layered repair by local communities. Temples served successively as pagan temple, church, or mosques until colonial expeditions expelled local inhabitants and redefined ‘authenticity’. In light of the conference theme Memory and Democracy, I ask: How do memory politics embedded in heritage institutions and archaeological practices affect democratic inclusion and participatory memory? How are preservation narratives used to marginalize local voices, and how does counter memory emerge through everyday inhabitation, repair, and reuse of ruins? I ask how democratic values are thus threatened or enabled by whose memory is preserved, how, and at what cost.

In the myriad of conceptual works that address memorialization, forgetting conventionally occupies a secondary position, being addressed due to its inevitability in the memory-making but never taken as the primary perspective of analysis. Inspired by the evolving cutting-edge debates on “negative methodology”, the research explores the mnemonic practices of erasures, void-generation, marginalization, and silencing, while empirically looking into case studies of domestic state violence across various national contexts in global perspective. In response to and building on the widely discussed “globalization of memory”, suggesting that there are shared and travelling memory tropes, this research proposes to rephrase and ask: Are there also common strategies of oblivion and mnemonic exclusion that transcend political systems, geographies, and cultural specificities? To explore these wide-ranging questions, I turn to specific cases of domestic violence in East Asia, specifically China and South Korea, and Latin America, with a particular focus of Argentina and Chile. These four case studies entail an interesting scope for relational comparative dynamics allowing for an analysis of regional as well as global trends. Through an investigation of urban sites of past violence, state policies, archives, national museums, as well as public discourses, this research addresses the mnemonic workings of nation states across political spectrums, challenging the limits of global comparative studies, and conceptualizing the role of “forgetting” as a political force.