Memory And Trauma In International Relations

This work seeks to provide a comprehensive and accessible survey of the international dimension of trauma and memory and its manifestations in various cultural contexts. Drawing together contributions and case studies from scholars around the globe, the book explores the international political dimension of feeling, suffering, forgetting, remembering and memorializing traumatic events and to investigate how they function as social practices for overcoming trauma and creating social change. Divided into two sections, the book maps out the different theoretical debates and then moves on to examine emerging themes such as ontological security, social change, gender, religion, foreign policy & natural disasters. Throughout the chapters, the editors consider the social, political and ethical implications of forgetting and remembering traumatic events in world politics Showcasing how trauma and memory deepen our understanding of IR, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, memory and trauma studies and security studies.

Memory, Trauma and World Politics focuses on the effect that the memory of traumatic episodes (especially war and genocide) has on shaping contemporary political identities. Theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich, this book is an incisive treatment of the ways in which the study of social memory can inform global politics analysis.

In this interesting study, Jenny Edkins explores how we remember traumatic events such as wars, famines, genocides and terrorism, and questions the assumed role of commemorations as simply reinforcing state and nationhood. Taking examples from the World Wars, Vietnam, the Holocaust, Kosovo and September 11th, Edkins offers a thorough discussion of practices of memory such as memorials, museums, remembrance ceremonies, the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress and the act of bearing witness. She examines the implications of these commemorations in terms of language, political power, sovereignty and nationalism. She argues that some forms of remembering do not ignore the horror of what happened but rather use memory to promote change and to challenge the political systems that produced the violence of wars and genocides in the first place. This wide-ranging study embraces literature, history, politics and international relations, and makes a significant contribution to the study of memory.

This book traces the influence of collective memory in International Relations (IR). It inquires where a country's memory first emerges and how it guides states through time in world politics, and locates the origins of national memory in political strategies within the internationalenvironment.The study then turns to the domestic landscape, where among a country's public, it finds memory to be the carrier of national identity over time. From there, however, the analysis reverts to the international here: in the medium term, collective memory begins to channel international statebehaviour, whereas, in the long run, it circumvents a country's normative horizons. In this book, collective memory is thus assumed to become manifest in world politics in four varying forms: as a country's political strategy, as its public identity, as underwriting its international statebehaviour, and finally, as a source for its national values. All four theorized manifestations of memory are tested in a comparative study of (West) Germany and Austria and the impact their diverse post-war interpretations of the Nazi legacy had on their international policies over time. With theillustrative help of the empirical cases, the book not only explores whether collective memory has an influence on political outcomes but how and why it matters for IR.

This book critically examines the institutional curation of traumatic memory at the 9/11 Memorial Museum and its evocative power as a cultural storyteller. Memorial Museums are evocative spaces. Drawing on aesthetic practices deeply rooted in representing the ‘unrepresentability’ of cultural trauma, most notably the Holocaust, Memorial Museums are powerful, popular mediums for establishing cultural values, asking the visitor to contemplate "Who am I?" in relation to the difficult histories on display. Using primary data, this book poses important questions about the emotionally-charged site: what ‘moral lessons’ are visitors imparted with at the 9/11 Memorial Museum? Who is the cultural institution’s primary audience—the imagined community it reconstructs this traumatic history and safeguards its memories for? What does the National September 11 Memorial & Museum ultimately teach visitors about history, ourselves, and others? This work will be of interest to students and scholars in the areas of Human Geography, American Studies, Museum Studies and Public History, Cultural and Heritage Studies, and Trauma and Memory Studies.

This volume focuses on the uses of collective memory in transatlantic relations between the United States, and Western and Central European nations in the period from the Cold War to the present day. Sitting at the intersection of international relations, history, memory studies and various "area" studies, Memory in Transatlantic Relations examines the role of memory in an international context, including the ways in which policy and decision makers utilize memory; the relationship between trauma, memory and international politics; the multiplicity of actors who shape memory; and the role of memory in the conflicts in post-Cold War Europe. Thematically organized and presenting studies centered on the U.S., Hungary, France, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the authors explore the built environment (memorials) and performances of memory (commemorations), shedding light on the ways in which memories are mobilized to frame relations between the U.S. and nations in Western and Central Europe. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and historians with interests in memory studies, foreign policy and international relations.

This work seeks to provide a comprehensive and accessible survey of the international dimension of trauma and memory and its manifestations in various cultural contexts. Drawing together contributions and case studies from scholars around the globe, the book explores the international political dimension of feeling, suffering, forgetting, remembering and memorializing traumatic events and to investigate how they function as social practices for overcoming trauma and creating social change. Divided into two sections, the book maps out the different theoretical debates and then moves on to examine emerging themes such as ontological security, social change, gender, religion, foreign policy & natural disasters. Throughout the chapters, the editors consider the social, political and ethical implications of forgetting and remembering traumatic events in world politics Showcasing how trauma and memory deepen our understanding of IR, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, memory and trauma studies and security studies.

This volume explores the relationship between place, traumatic memory, and narrative. Drawing on cases from Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and North and South America, the book provides a uniquely cross-cultural and global approach. Covering a wide range of cultural and linguistic contexts, the volume is divided into three parts: memorial spaces, sites of trauma, and traumatic representations. The contributions explore how acknowledgement of past suffering is key to the complex inter-relationship between the politics of memory, expressions of victimhood, and collective memory. Contributors take note of differing aspects of memorial culture, such as those embedded in war memorials, mass grave sites, and exhibitions, as well as journalistic, literary and visual forms of commemorations, to investigate how narratives of memory can give meaning and form to places of trauma.