The starting point for our examination of transnational memories is the observation that stories migrate with and around the people who tell and hear them. These stories move via individuals, groups, and (perhaps especially) media (Erll, 2011). The mass migration of peoples leads to new perspectives on the past influenced by both the physical migration and the intellectual migration (Landsberg, 2004; Assmann, 2014).
The study of memory – both personal and collective – began in earnest with Pierre Nora’s groundbreaking work Les lieux de mémoire (1984; published in English as Realms of Memory in 1992). Nora argues that the modern relationship with the past is changing because of two competing ideas: memory and history. A collective memory is the traditional strategy for societies to transmit value from one generation to the next. This collective memory preserves a common identity and helps the group define and understand itself (Nora, 1992, p. 7). History, on the other hand, is a modern phenomenon that changes the how these memories are constructed and reconstructed under the auspices of the state and academic institutions (Nora, 1992, p. 8). Nora’s argument uses physical places (lieux) as a means to examine how the idea of a proper, real, factual history changes memories.
Critics of Nora have questioned the focus on the nation-state. Some scholars (Confino, 1997; Ho Tai, 2001; Anderson, 2004) have noted that official national memories have suppressed opposing and minority voices in the quest for a coherent narrative. Indeed, in the modern age, nation-states have created and imposed campaigns of education, information, and legislation to ensure that the official history is given primacy at all levels.
Yet the modern age of free-flowing information gives us a chance to re-evaluate history and memory. The concept of transnational memories, while messy, gives us a lens through which we can investigate the creation, rise, and suppression of memories and even histories. Along the way, transnational memory studies can help create a broader, more inclusive archive of memory practices. It can help those who are far from home – the conceptual home, the ancestral home – feel closer, feel like they are contributing to national histories and collective memories.
We have developed this project with that idea in mind.
