Publisher Description

This edited volume addresses memory practices among youth, families, cultural workers, activists, and engaged citizens in Lebanon and Morocco. In making a claim for 'the social life of memory,' the introduction discusses a particular research field of memory studies, elaborating an approach to memory in terms of social production and engagement. The Arab Spring is evoked to draw attention to new rifts within and between history and remembrance in the regions of North Africa and the Middle East. As authoritarian forms of governance are challenged, official panoramic narratives are confronted with a multiplicity of memories of violent pasts. The eight chapters trace personal and public inventories of violence, trauma, and testimony, addressing memory in cinema, in newspapers and periodicals, as an experience of public environments, through transnational and diasporic mediums, and amongst younger generations.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction: Memory between Lieu and Milieu.- Chapter 2. A Life of Waiting: Political Violence, Personal Memory, and Enforced Disappearance in Morocco.- Chapter 3. The Civil War's Ghosts: Events of Memory Seen through Lebanese Cinema.- Chapter 4. Transforming Memories: Media and Historiography in the Aftermath of the Moroccan Equity and Reconciliation Commission.- Chapter 5. Testimony and Journalism: Moroccan Prison Narratives.- Chapter 6. Sites of Memory in Lebanon: The Hariri Mosque in Martyrs Square.- Chapter 7. Ressouvenirs in Dialogue: University Students Tell Their War Stories.- Chapter 8. ReMemory in an Intergenerational Register: Social and Ethical Life of Testimony.- Chapter 9. Memory as Protest: Mediating Memories of Violence and the Bread Riots in the Rif.

Feature

Stakes a critical claim for attending to the tension between the lieu and milieu of memory, a tension implicating site-specific social practices Brings together research from scholars across the humanities and social sciences within a cohesive framework Addresses themes of violence, trauma, and testimony to illustrate how they accrue conceptual relevance, and consequently a careful consideration of how concepts and theories "travel" and come to be exposed in different contexts and subsequently modified

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