Administrations of memory

Director for Centre for Irish Studies at Aarhus University and research-partner at CRIC Sara Dybris McQuaid has along with Sarah Gensburger from Institut des Sciences sociales du Politique Nanterre, France edited a special issue in the International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society on 'Administrations of memory'

The special issue argues that studying the politics of memory should also involve studying the governance and policies of memory: its administrations. The increasing importance of transnational and local scales in memory studies seems to have made the nation a less relevant starting point from which to conceptualize memory. Yet, states progressively attempt to administer memory. This suggests that we should focus at once on transcending methodological nationalism and bringing back the state in the study of the politics of memory. This involves thinking about administrations of memory both in terms of the processes of dispensing or aiding memory and as the state bodies that are authorized and expected to manage memory.

The ambition is for memory studies to gain a firmer understanding of the governmental and technocratic co-production of political languages for memory as they are themselves shaped in the policymaking process by (trans)national institutional practices and bureaucratic conduits. In turn, political science approaches on the whole may gain from a firmer appreciation and conceptualization of the structures and carriers of collective memory in and across particular political cultures, which may also lead to more reflexive policy instrumentation and programming in contemporary societies trying to deal in and with the past.

Articles that will be brought in the special issue can be viewed through the following link: https://link.springer.com/journal/10767/onlineFirst/page/1