Exploring the role of nation states in managing memories of disputed territories
In January 2020, the DisTerrMem project published four literature reviews, surveying existing knowledge and research on the respective roles of nation states, regional organisations, civil society groups and cultural practitioners in managing memories of disputed territories. Here, the University of Bath’s Shauna Robertson introduces and summarises the review on the role of nation states.
“Histories of shared suffering or of shared triumphs will often be the key focus of official narratives”
A nation state’s sense of identity, as well as its political policies, are strongly influenced by its history. However, most national histories, rather than being objective facts, are a combination of multiple narratives: official and unofficial versions, written and oral accounts, divergent perspectives from the various ‘sides’ of conflicts and debates, and citizens’ diverse individual and collective memories of events.
Histories of shared suffering or of shared triumphs will often be the key focus of official narratives, since these serve the purpose of making people ‘rally around the flag’ and support the sense of a unified, top-down national identity, rather than allowing for the more complex and multidimensional reality.
One contemporary example (of many possible) is Russia’s Victory Day. In Russia, the national holiday of Victory Day (May 9) celebrates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. As a recent article in The Moscow Times describes, “The memory of victory… is the glue of the nation, binding together the most diverse of ages and social groups. It’s the single most important event in history that elicits such a strong feeling of pride among more than 80 percent of Russians.” In celebrating the past, the commemorations play an important role in shaping national identity, creating unity and legitimising political leadership the present.
A top-down approach can equally focus on forgetting as much as remembrance. In Spain, after the 1975 demise of the Francisco Franco dictatorship, “the nation’s leading political parties negotiated the so-called ‘Pact of Forgetting’, an informal agreement that made any treatment of the most difficult episodes of Spanish history, such as the horrific violence of the Civil War, unnecessary and unwelcomed.” (New York Times, 2014). Rather than moving towards some form of justice, truth or reconciliation, a comprehensive amnesty law was passed making it all but impossible to prosecute the human rights abuses that occurred during Franco’s 36-year dictatorship”.
However, nation states equally have the power to allow and enable different narratives and memories in order to promote democratic diversity within that territory.
The literature review: key research questions
This literature review sets out to explore the role of the state in managing the nation’s historical memory. Key research questions include:
· How do nation states manage collective memories?
· Do specific state structures and political regimes lend themselves to particular approaches to historical memory?
· What are the perceived roles of borders, which can have both inclusive and exclusive characteristics, in the modern nation state?
· How do nation states promote and/or challenge antagonistic memories of disputed territories?
· What are the roles of education systems, political leaders and diaspora groups?
· What is the role of gender, and other socio-economic considerations?
· What possibilities exist for agonistic approaches to managing collective historical memories?
The review report explores these questions in seven distinct but inter-related articles.
Collective memory and the state: an introduction
Ryan Brasher
Ryan Brasher (Forman Christian College, Pakistan) introduces key debates on the relationship between collective memory and the building of nation states.
Ryan explores how the state shapes the collective memories through which national identity is constructed, and also how memory can, in turn, shape the state. His exploration links the growing field of memory studies with political science research on the nation state. Since both fields are vast, the focus here is not on a complete literature review, but rather a thematic overview that points out major areas of current research and suggests potentially fruitful avenues for further study.
Drawing on a diverse range of case studies from around the world, Ryan mines the literature on how memory is used by different types of regime (liberal democracies to authoritarian) and different state structures (centralized to federal systems) to ask where space might exist for agonistic approaches to managing collective historical memories.
Borders, ethnic groups, ‘tribes’ and memory
Vahe Boyajian
Vahe Boyajian (National Academy of Sciences, Armenia) draws on a wide-ranging body of literature to outline some fundamental connections between the phenomena of borders and borderlands, boundaries, ethnic groups, ‘tribes’, nationalism, state politics and memory. How do each of these different actors draw on, use and manipulate memory in their relations and negotiations with one another?
Borders have both inclusive and exclusive characteristics, as well as having both territorial and socio-cultural significances. They are places where the similarities and distinctiveness of certain groups expose themselves more vividly. This also applies to ethnic groups, therefore ideas of ethnic identity, otherness, uniqueness and related phenomena more explicitly are found at borderlands.
Vahe illustrates these issues with reference to a specific geographical area incorporating Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
State education systems: memory, identity, nationalism
Agnieszka Nowakowska
Agnieszka Nowakowska (University of Warsaw, Poland) explores the relationship between the nation state, school education systems, memory and nationalism.
There is no doubt that the school system plays a key role in educating the citizens of a nation, through processes of knowledge exchange and socialization simultaneously. While school knowledge may profess to be neutral and objective, it always involves the sharing of values and ideologies. Schools in most countries are financed by the state, and school curricula and textbooks are either set by, or at least approved by, the state. Thus, most school systems and curricula legitimize and reproduce the existing social structure and focus on homogeneous narratives written by the dominant community. In the teaching of history in particular, there tends to be a high degree of selectivity – showing students the nation’s glories while forgetting about its wrongdoings, and fostering narratives of ‘us’ and ‘them’, my nation versus other nations.
Agnieszka highlights a number of case studies from Australia, Estonia and Poland, presenting different relationships between nation state and education system. She concludes by setting out the possibilities offered by adopting agonistic approaches to teaching, where the emphasis is placed on developing critical thinking in education, and students are encouraged not to memorize information but to examine and understand it from multiple perspectives. Finally, she asks the question: are contemporary schools ready for agonistic history teaching?
The politics of remembering
Ammar Ali Jan
Ammar Ali Jan (Forman Christian College, Pakistan) explores how the study of history has evolved alongside notions of the nation state. A central question in memory studies is: how do memories of the past play a role in (re)shaping the past, present and future of a society? The discipline of history has tended to emphasize linear narratives that compartmentalize time and place into neat categories, and which aim to be seen as ‘objective’ by homogenizing historical events. This is in sharp contrast to more popular and cultural ways of remembering the past, such as through myth, folklore, poetry, literature and the arts. These latter approaches do not create a rigid distinction between past and present, and so the past perpetually seeps into the present (and vice versa) in order to reshape it.
The overlap between recorded history and state power has led to major debates on methodology among historians, leading modern historians to develop the notion of ‘history from below’. This puts ordinary people at the centre of historical research by focusing on day-to-day perceptions of, and reactions to, major events from the past. Ammar explores the case study of partition in 1947 between India and Pakistan, and discusses how the processes of forgetting and silencing are as crucial as those of remembering, when engaging with the study of memory.
In conclusion, he points to the possibilities offered by the agonistic approach to memory. He argues that what is at stake is not only politics, but also the way we conceive history in the modern world.
Nations, gender and memory
Sophie Whiting
Sophie Whiting (University of Bath, UK) surveys the feminist literature on state building and violent conflict, and considers the relationship between memory and gender in nationalist politics.
Key themes emerging in gendered narratives of state-building include the role of ‘motherhood’ and female biological reproductive capacity in support of 'national stocks'; violence against women and the relationship between the rape of the body or the nation, and territorial borders; the role of women as primary care givers in cultural transmission to the next generation; and the reinforcement of gender roles through commemorative practices that deny the agency of women.
Sophie asks whether a more agonistic approach to memory, which embraces multiple perspectives, could help to move beyond constructions of women as ‘passive victims’, and award agency by acknowledging the various roles that women play in conflict and peace building. She also argues for the importance of appropriate methodologies, given that women’s experiences of past conflict are often found in the silences rather than the history books, state narratives, public commemorative spaces or dominant discourses.
In unravelling the relationship between memory, gender and nation, Sophie also raises the importance of considering how gender intersects with other social divisions such as class, ethnicity, sexuality and age.
The role of diaspora in fostering the memory of the Armenian genocide abroad
Philippe Lecrivain
Focusing on the case of Armenia, lawyer Philippe Lecrivian (Educational and Cultural Bridges, Armenia), discusses the role of diaspora (scattered populations living outside their original homeland) in supporting and challenging domestic politics and foreign policy.
Philippe sets out how, from the 1960s onwards, the Armenian diaspora intensified its efforts for the Armenian genocide of 1915 to be internationally recognized, and how the diaspora influenced the politics of the ‘homeland’.
Collective memory: the politics of remembering and reminding
M. Usman Farooq
M. Usman Farooq (Forman Christian College, Pakistan) surveys the literature on the politics of remembering (or reminding) and the role of politicians in reproducing state-led narratives on national identity.
He explores one of the fundamental questions of memory studies: the link between individual and collective memory. Modern sociologists argue that all ‘individual remembering’ takes place within social contexts and in response to social cues, and that even when we remember alone, we do so as social beings with reference to our social identities. Therefore, the groups to which any individual belongs are central to their individual remembering.
Usman then considers how politicians use memories of the past strategically, manipulating memories of key historical events to legitimize their own current actions. He highlights several studies that investigate the role of particular politicians, quoting examples from Israel and Germany. He also points to a need for more research on the influence of past memories on the policy choices made by current politicians.
View a short video introduction to the literature review (left)
View and download all four literature review reports in full at www.disterrmem.eu/publications.
Shauna Robertson is DisTerrMem’s project administrator, based at the University of Bath, UK. Discover more at www.disterrmem.eu/university-of-bath