Collective Memory After Violent Conflict: A New Framework for Analysis

Introduction

When practitioners and academics from the field of Peace and Conflict Studies (PCS) seek to manage, resolve, or transform the violent appearances of social conflict, sooner or later “dealing with the past” is seen as a necessary task. So, why another contribution to what can be called a commonplace in PCS? Because there is a gap between PCS’ need for dealing with the past on the one hand, and meaningful theoretical debates in the field of Memory Studies (MS) on the other. For PCS, this gap leaves an oft-cited notion undertheorized: collective memory.

Part one of this chapter illustrates how the concept of collective memory is discussed in MS. Taking Olick’s call for a processual and multidimensional understanding seriously, it argues that Assmann’s theorizing along distinguishable interrelated memory dimensions comes close to what is needed as an answer to this call, but would benefit from explicit discourse theoretical clarifications. A closer look at how PCS make use of these theoretical advancements reveals that a new framework for analysis is needed in order to make collective memory a useful heuristic device, especially when it comes to sustainable peacebuilding interventions. Part two introduces Hansen’s poststructuralist discourse analysis as an appropriate ontological and epistemological clarification of Assmann’s theorizing, which provides the framework with a heuristic capable of depicting the struggles over memories as one form of discourse. This emphasis on the ontological significance of language also impacts on how memory discourses should be studied. Adopting a “mind-world monist” (Jackson, 2011) position, the author reasons that the framework for analysis should use ideal-types, that is deliberately oversimplified categories. Part three synthesizes the framework by developing Assmann’s memory dimensions into such ideal-typical categories. It furthermore theorizes about their interplay and adds “impulses” as intervening factors. Listing potential key actors and presumably important discursive traces for each category, ideal-typical expectations regarding the behavior and characteristics of these actors and factors are discussed. A distinction is made between short- and long-term constellations of collective memory in post-conflict settings, before it is finally demonstrated how the framework’s ideal-types and ideal-typical expectations may be used practically. For the latter purpose, indicators and techniques to assess the internal consistency and external hegemony of memory discourses are sketched out.