“The Memory-Activism Nexus”

For more details please contact cziesielsky(at)mmg.mpg.de.

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In “Remembering Hope” (2018) I argued for the need to go beyond the traumatic paradigm in memory studies and proposed the memory-activism nexus as a new area of research. This nexus entails the interplay between memory activism (how people actively seek to change collective memory), the memory of activism (how acts of civil resistance are culturally remembered) and memory in activism (how the memory of earlier activism plays into new protest cycles). In my presentation to the Empires of Memory group, I will contextualise “Remembering Hope” and further develop some of its findings with reference to my recent work on late nineteenth-century socialism in Britain and the role that the memory of the Commune played, not just in mobilizing members, but in steering the movement.