The Politics of Memory: Contested Cultures of Remembrance

10808 Culver Boulevard,Culver City CA 90230

24 September, 2022

Description

“Memory culture” (Erinnerungskultur) is a central concept in current debates about the ways Germans remember, commemorate, and historicize the era of National Socialism and its aftermath. The term relates to the question of whether Germany has largely accepted responsibility for and learned from its past crimes. From school education and memorials to art monuments, films, and public discourses, the idea of an active and successful memory culture plays an important role in contemporary German discourses, for instance, about a post-Berlin Wall united identity for Germany after 1989. While many international voices praise Germany’s self-reflexive commemoration of its national trauma, a new generation of German-Jewish artists and intellectuals raises an important point of critique: What if Germany’s memory culture is merely a “theater of reconciliation”? Whom does this form of remembrance actually serve, and to what end? German poet Max Czollek, who writes about contemporary Jewish life in Germany, argues that German memory culture created a “symbolic Jew” as a counterfigure to a German “we.” According to him, Germany is mistaking remembrance for reconciliation, with the recent rise of racist and anti-Semitic violence and right-wing populism as a consequence. For Czollek, a functioning and productive culture of memory must confront its “fantasies of homogeneity,” question concepts of national greatness, and include contemporary minority voices into its discourse. Yasemin Yildiz, Professor at the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, engages with questions of German memory culture from another angle. She is currently working on the book project Citizens of Memory: Migrant Archives of Holocaust Remembrance, in which she explores the effect of transnational migration on cultural memory relating to National Socialism, the Holocaust, and World War II, opening up new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between memory and migration at present. Yasemin Yildiz and Max Czollek will discuss cultures of remembrance: What new perspectives and critiques do minority discourses offer on the questions and debates surrounding contemporary German memory culture? And what is the takeaway for those of us in the United States? How can these discussions inform our local debates and controversies about commemoration and memory practices? The conversation will be moderated by Joes Segal, Chief Curator and Director of Programming at the Wende Museum.