Remembering Actors: Victims, Perpetrators, Communities, Bystanders and Beyond

This section aims to analyse the formation of subjectivities of victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and communities within the frameworks of cultural heritage, conflict and post-conflict societies. The central theme of this entry is that (difficult) heritage and conflict transcend mere site and object preservation and involved multifaceted process of ethical, political, and ideological dynamics that shape power representation and construct identities for these subjectivities, often excluded from mainstream representations. This section provide a diverse and interdisciplinary viewpoint on the ways identities of victims, perpetrators, communities and bystanders are created, assigned, asserted, or challenged through various practices of heritage and memory including museums, visual culture, literary studies, and political storytelling. Rather than considering these subjective categories as monolithic, the section explores how they can arise or be stifled through selection, institutionalisation, and cultural negotiation processes. The various entries in this section examine the construction of victim/perpetrator dualities, not only within the legal context but as a symbolic tool that influences ethno-nationalistic narratives, shapes collective memories, and legitimises political agendas and binaries. In addition, the entries serve as a testament to these complex phenomena and demonstrate how heritage and memory mediate affect, emotions, power, and ideological interests and violence. All the entries together have the merit to address in different ways the ethical risks involved in processes of categorisation and the potential for reductive binaries, the instrumentalisation of trauma as well as the marginalisation of uncomfortable narratives.