If the central role of memory in reparative justice processes has become better understood in recent years, the relation between these, as well as their historical transformations, are yet to be examined in-depth. The present moment of increasing claims highlights the importance of understanding how memories influence reparative justice discourse and shape the claims they make. Transnational distributions of wealth, statues of Western explorers, the consolidation of academic publications based in the Global North have all been considered indicators of imperial injustices capable of being addressed through reparations frameworks. This Global Memories Working Group panel will be exploring the many historical and imaginative ways that people and movements connect memory and reparative justice. At the 10th Annual conference of the Memory Studies Association, the GMWG panel brings together advocates, artists and academics working at the intersection of reparative justice and memory to map, analyze and theorize the meanings and functions of memories across these struggles. We aim to ask: why are the memories of reparative justice struggles becoming so relevant now? Which pasts do these reparative justice struggles tap into? In which ways do these pasts play out in the present across the reparative justice movements, related societies and cultures? How can we conceptualize and theorize these reparative justice memories? At this important historical juncture, the working group seeks to create a platform for these struggles and questions as they expand around the world, connect across movements, and articulate their claims through material, embodied, digital, and symbolic memory formations — in proven as well as creative new ways. Shohei Sato will chair the panel on African and African diasporic reparative memories. Stephanie Wolfe, Anna Marie DeBeer and Macy McCormack in "Memorialization and Symbolic Reparations: Post-Genocide Memory and Justice in Rwanda" will argue that memorials operate as evolving instruments of symbolic reparation. Christian Alvarado in probes into the reparations claims building on the memories of the Mau Mau in Kenia, asking how these memories are used effectively to inspire contemporary claims for reparative justice. In "Rupture and continuity: Conceptualisations of time in debates about reparations for slavery", Astrid Rasch will outline how defenders and opponents of reparations implicitly and explicitly conceptualise time, showing that the question of continuity and rupture is central to these debates and struggles. Jarula MI Wegner in "Beyond the Binary: Are there Backward Looking and Forward-Looking Reparations?" returns to a long-standing divide in reparative justice debates to argue against the idea that a return to the past cannot or will not orient us towards a better future for all.
Stephanie Wolfe (Weber State University), Anna-Marie de Beer (University of Pretoria), Macy McCormack (Weber State University), "Memorialization and Symbolic Reparations: Post-Genocide Memory and Justice in Rwanda" In the aftermath of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, Rwanda’s memorial landscape has shifted from 265 primarily community-led sites to a smaller number of larger, state-managed memorials. Initially, grassroots memorials reflected the intimate needs of local survivor communities, offering spaces of mourning, remembrance, and connection. As many of these sites have merged into district-level memorials, questions arise about how far centralized forms of commemoration remain responsive to survivors’ personal memories and healing needs. Using The Politics of Reparations and Apologies (2013) as a conceptual framework, this paper examines how Rwanda’s memorials function as both survivor-centered spaces and state-led initiatives of collective memory preservation. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2019, it explores the tension between survivor agency and state-managed memorialization - particularly how the institutionalization of memory redefines the meaning of reparative and symbolic justice in the absence of material restitution. As the number of direct survivors declines, memorials increasingly serve dual functions: as enduring educational institutions for future generations and as symbols of acknowledgment and justice. The move toward centralized memorials represents both a practical adaptation to shifting demographics and a symbolic gesture toward a unified national narrative. Yet, this centralization also risks flattening the diverse, personal experiences that earlier grassroots memorials preserved. In essence, it could distance memorials from the survivor communities that originally built and sustained them. By situating Rwanda’s evolving memorial practices within broader discussions of reparative justice and global memory politics, this paper argues that memorials operate as evolving instruments of symbolic reparation - bridging the gap between memory and justice while illuminating the tensions between recognition, representation, and the politics of repair.
Astrid Rasch (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) Rupture or continuity: Conceptualisations of time in debates about reparations for slavery The past decades have seen a proliferation of demands for reparations for colonial injustices. The basic premise of reparations demands is that the past is unfinished, that it impinges on the present, that we live with its toxic waste. For opponents of reparations, however, the past is in the past. Establishing a rupture rather than a continuity between past and present is, I argue in this presentation, central to their argumentation against reparations. This presentation explores how British opponents of reparations for slavery in the 2020s discursively construct such a rupture between the past and the present. Through examples from politicians, public intellectuals, and media pundits, I outline some of the most common ways in which such a rupture is established. I compare each of these strategies with some of the ways in which scholars positive towards reparations have promoted the idea of continuity between past and present. I propose four main rhetorical strategies for establishing a rupture between past and present in anti-reparation discourse: the insistence that you cannot be held accountable for other people’s actions, that the past is too distant or irrelevant, that contemporary values should not be anachronistically projected back in time, and that it is important to move on. While not exhaustive, this typology provides a map of some of the most commonly used ways of rejecting reparations by segregating past and present.
Jarula MI Wegner, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, “Beyond the Binary: Are there Backward Looking and Forward-Looking Reparations?” This contribution challenges the distinction between backward and forward-looking reparations claims, which relegates memory-oriented claims to the former category. In his influential essay “Making Whole What Has Been Smashed”, John Torpey offered an overview of different approaches to reparations, arguing that there are two basic types of reparations claims, those that are “backward looking” and others that are “forward looking”. The former ones, according to Torpey, do “not necessarily connect to current economic disadvantage” while the latter ones “view reparations as a means of transforming the current conditions of deprivation suffered by the groups in question” (Torpey 2001, 337). Torpey’s description here is indicative of a more generally shared notion in reparations debates (Rubio-Marín 2009, 382). Clearly, this division implicitly or explicitly considers forward-looking reparations claims as productive for present and future transformations while backward-looking claims, while it sees those that focus mainly or additionally on reconstruction, analysis and remembrance of the past as unproductive or even counterproductive (see for instance Rieff 2016, Taiwo 2022). Olufemi Taiwo, for instance, argues that such approaches to reparations “don’t treat material redress and the present-day living conditions of the recipients as the point of reparations” (Taiwo 2022, 136). Engaging with the painful past, these descriptions imply, do not benefit the present or future and therefore they suggest, let the dead bury the dead (Marx). In my contribution, I will suggest to move beyond this simple binary of past and future oriented reparations claims and argue instead that an orientation towards the past is foundational especially for claims hoping for a better future. In a first step, I will outline the division between backward and forward-looking reparations claims. Then I will suggest that this division is based on a misconception of the forms and functions of cultural memories. In a last step, I will show how even those claims described as forward-looking require a foundation in the past.
20260730T140020260730T1530America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires6.5. African and African Diasporic Reparative MemoriesSV101MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
