Edited by Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone
Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone
Introduction: Contested Pasts

What makes a film a memory text, then, may be not so much a matter of its explicit content as of its form: it may enact mnemonic processes as well as, or instead of, being about memories. But this is perhaps equally true of every medium for memory. The form, the physical and conceptual structure, of the museum, it has already been suggested, is as significant in its representation of memory as the actual objects it contains; the choice and location of a war memorial is as revealing as its explicit injunction of remembrance. And the range of memorial materials and practices represented in this volume are a reminder of the complexity of defining a memory work. School projects, advertising campaigns, television, local traditions, graffiti, journalism; all these contribute to the formation of both individual and cultural memories.

If the past is contested, it is not for simple reasons. Institutions, governments, cultures, individuals, are all engaged in the work of making memory and in its repeated transformations. Contradictory accounts, or memories in direct contradiction to the historical record, are not always the sign of a repressive authority attempting to cover something up. Memory itself covers up: it reshapes, attempts to comfort, addresses changing needs. The tension between memory as a safeguard against attempts to silence dissenting voices, and memory’s own implication in that silencing, runs throughout the book; but that tension is precisely what gives memory the complex resonance it has in intellectual and political life.