Spaces of Memory

In the last decade, museums, memorials and monuments have become the battlefield for competing and conflicting visions of the past and the hegemonic or counter memories of the so-called “difficult heritage” or “traumatic heritage”. Far from being mere spaces of musealization that freeze and fix dominant narratives of the past, spaces of memory are increasingly turning into sites of negotiations and reconfigurations of meaning in which social and political identities are debated, strengthened, or weakened in reference to the traumatic experiences of the past which they “represent”. Yet, what does it mean to spatially represent a (traumatic) memory, and what is a space of memory? In expanding and, simultaneously, problematizing Pierre Nora’s (Nora 1996) category of lieu de mémoire, the way we think of spaces of memory aims at an in-depth examination of the peculiar yet specific ways of re-thinking the nexus between space and memory: how do we elaborate, activate, and make visible spaces for memory? This question points to the dynamic construction that underlines the production and connection of spatiality and memory, as well as to the coexistence of a plurality of meanings and experiences that characterize spaces of memory.