Academic Session: Nottingham 2004
Visual Representation and the Politics of Memory
Convenor:
Dr Simon Faulkner S.Faulkner@mmu.ac.uk, Manchester Metropolitan University, School of History of Art and Design, Righton Building, Cavendish Square, Manchester, M15 6BG
Abstract:
Cultural memory has become a significant subject within the humanities during the last decade. Studies of cultural memory produced by academics working in a range of fields have explored how particular constructions of the past have been mobilized within contemporary politics. Within such studies, cultural memory is understood to be structured by relationships between the past and the present, through which the representation of the past gives meaning to contemporary actions. This makes memory a powerful political tool. As Edward Said has observed: ‘Memory and its representations touch very significantly upon questions of identity, of nationalism, of power and authority.’
This session will focus upon the use of visual images and practices within collective constructions of the past. The session aims to explore the ways in which visual representations contribute to the production of the simplified and usable pasts essential to the formation of cultural memories.
To do this, papers in the session should examine how images of landscapes, historical figures and events, or monuments, memorials and memorial spaces, have formed part of the politicized memory work of national communities and states, and of dissident and marginalized groups, at different times and in different places.
Papers could examine how visual images function within the often multiple and contested formations of memory involved in practices such as the maintenance of particular social formations, the collapse and replacement of states, the colonization of land, or the production of cultures of resistance. Papers could discuss how specific events in the distant or recent past are remembered in different ways, by different people and for different purposes.