Agonistic Memory Revisited

This chapter argues that an agonistic conception of democracy can revitalize the memory of past social struggles as a way to re-politicize the public sphere and unsettle the xenophobic and nationalistic narratives that have eroded the European project in the recent decades. Far from fearing the conflictual potential of the recalling of traumatic experiences, agonistic memory tries to bring to the forefront the complex subjective dimension of social representations and the adversarial character of the political processes to which they are connected. However, in order to activate its democratic capacity, an agonistic mode of remembering has to bring to the awareness its own historical contingency and to include the diversity of multiple and radically discordant perspectives without falling into the unintended collateral legitimization of the crimes committed.