In the shadow of amnesia:\u00a0 the struggle with power is the struggle of memory with oblivion<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nCollective memory is a perception of the past created, constructed, and shared by members of a nation, religion, or (ethnic) group. How the past is interpreted or understood affects today’s identity and the vision for the future. Collective memory can be used to legitimize the political power structure or\u00a0challenge it. The State or power actors, by constantly recalling certain events whilst remaining silent about others, try to engineer or shape collective memory, or parts of it, and weaken or forget other parts of it. This dynamic is also present in the collective memory of war, in the way war is legitimized and challenged. Collective memory and perception of the past influence ongoing current processes.<\/p>\n
The way a Nation remembers a particular war collectively reflects its relation to the conflict. Whilst during the war, this memory is repeatedly altered by different power dynamics and violence such as the destruction of cities and cultural heritage,\u00a0which have symbolic values and are embodied in tangible collective memory of a nation. These destructions and engineered selection of collective memory in fact impact the social, cultural and political relationship and the co-habitation\/togetherness forming the basis of a nation. War and conflict, in all its forms, seeks to destroy the collective memory of a nation, by destroying cities, places, the forced migration of peoples, and at the same time create the collective memory of war. There is a complex link between a nation’s cultural memory and the political concerns of power actors.<\/p>\n
A nation’s collective memory may be weakened but not destroyed. Forgetting is not possible, especially as long as there are people talking about the events (his-story, her-story live). That is why it is important to preserve and reactivate the collective memories of past conflicts. Collective memory processes can help end past violent conflicts, particularly through the involvement of marginalized, vulnerable groups, shifts in war victims’ representations, and transitional justice mechanisms such as truth commissions, reconciliation and reparation (emotional memories accumulated by war and violence, if not addressed by transitional justice processes, prevent compromise).<\/p>\n
For those who have witnessed the humiliation of humanity during armed conflict, the old adage “Time heals all wounds” may not always be true. It is impossible to forget, especially for those who have experienced war and violence in their flesh or heart.<\/p>\n
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International conference: Of War and Collective Memory. In the shadow of amnesia:\u00a0 the struggle with power is the struggle of memory with oblivion. 196th Conference\/dialogue held in framework of OPEN ASIA\u2019s 8th Edition of Human rights week marking 25th anniversary celebration year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,90,16,800,37,12,48,10],"tags":[349,1123,100],"class_list":["post-11022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conferences","category-editor-selection","category-expert-narratives","category-human-rights-week-celebrations","category-international-conferences","category-transitional-justice-and-peace","category-war-and-peace","category-world","tag-collective-memory","tag-open-asia","tag-war","country-world","Documents-statements-multimedia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11024,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11022\/revisions\/11024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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