TY - JOUR
T1 - Does Memory Make Safe in the Wake of Atrocity?
T2 - Pacification of Violent Pasts, Memory Labour & Everyday Security
AU - Purdekova, Andrea
PY - 2025/1/9
Y1 - 2025/1/9
N2 - Does commemoration of violence enhance or undermine everyday security? Whilst memorialisation has become a staple of peacebuilding processes, the everyday security dimensions of memory remain understudied and undertheorized. Drawing on three case studies of recent transitional justice memory initiatives in Eastern and Central Africa – Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya – the paper shows that elites are vested in the pacification of memory – careful management of the perceived threatening aspects of memory- rather than in its emancipatory potential, with profound implications for everyday material and physical security. As shown here, people’s production and consumption of memorialisation in context of securitised memory reproduce forms of insecurity– in material sense of extractive labour when producing witness testimony or research on memory, but also in the sense of physical threats when probing silences or alternative renderings of the past, and powerful retraumatisation during memorialisation. These everyday insecurities constrict the emancipatory and peacebuilding potential of post-atrocity memory initiatives, as evidenced by very different types of war-peace transition, mass violence, and political regime. The paper contributes to debates on critical security and everyday IR by theorising the memory-security nexus as a domain of lived experience in conflict-affected contexts.
AB - Does commemoration of violence enhance or undermine everyday security? Whilst memorialisation has become a staple of peacebuilding processes, the everyday security dimensions of memory remain understudied and undertheorized. Drawing on three case studies of recent transitional justice memory initiatives in Eastern and Central Africa – Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya – the paper shows that elites are vested in the pacification of memory – careful management of the perceived threatening aspects of memory- rather than in its emancipatory potential, with profound implications for everyday material and physical security. As shown here, people’s production and consumption of memorialisation in context of securitised memory reproduce forms of insecurity– in material sense of extractive labour when producing witness testimony or research on memory, but also in the sense of physical threats when probing silences or alternative renderings of the past, and powerful retraumatisation during memorialisation. These everyday insecurities constrict the emancipatory and peacebuilding potential of post-atrocity memory initiatives, as evidenced by very different types of war-peace transition, mass violence, and political regime. The paper contributes to debates on critical security and everyday IR by theorising the memory-security nexus as a domain of lived experience in conflict-affected contexts.
M3 - Article
SN - 0020-8833
JO - International Studies Quarterly
JF - International Studies Quarterly
ER -