1 00:00:03,880 --> 00:00:15,430 Hello. Welcome to our second panel in which we will explore the relationship between hegemonic memories, silence and nationalism. 2 00:00:15,430 --> 00:00:21,790 Please allow me to welcome our first panellist. The first speaker is Barbara Tornquist. 3 00:00:21,790 --> 00:00:23,810 Clever? 4 00:00:23,810 --> 00:00:37,220 Barbara is a professor of European studies and the dean of research for the John Faculty of Humanities and Theology at Lloyd University, Sweden. 5 00:00:37,220 --> 00:00:47,690 She's a prominent scholar, scholar in the field of memory studies and a prolific author with four monographs and 25 edited volumes and counting. 6 00:00:47,690 --> 00:00:59,750 Her research focuses on difficult heritage and contested identities of in between places such as Central, Eastern and North European Borderlands. 7 00:00:59,750 --> 00:01:08,960 Presently, she's working on a research project entitled Lessons from Communist and Nazi History and Genealogical Approach. 8 00:01:08,960 --> 00:01:20,020 Her presentation is entitled Changing National Changing Narratives about the Past of Wroclaw Struggles over hegemony in a city. 9 00:01:20,020 --> 00:01:28,950 Please, Barbara, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Johanna, for this very nice the present presentation of me. 10 00:01:28,950 --> 00:01:32,610 And they jump directly to my 12 minutes. 11 00:01:32,610 --> 00:01:40,250 I will see if I minuted. Let me start to present your main objective of my presentation. 12 00:01:40,250 --> 00:01:46,980 It is to discuss and describe and analyse the dynamics between the demonic memories and 13 00:01:46,980 --> 00:01:53,910 counter memories using the case of the local memory of the Polish city of Wroclaw. 14 00:01:53,910 --> 00:02:00,210 And this is based on the study am actually on two studies, 15 00:02:00,210 --> 00:02:12,750 one I did in 2014 2015 with my colleagues in the world 12 and on the second study that they started just this year, 16 00:02:12,750 --> 00:02:23,010 which is a follow up of the previous one, aimed to investigate how this dynamics is ongoing, 17 00:02:23,010 --> 00:02:35,220 how the local memories are influenced by the this nationalist conservative town on the national level of politics in Poland. 18 00:02:35,220 --> 00:02:46,290 So this is this kind of stages in developing off of her demonic memories and counter-narrative that they want to present. 19 00:02:46,290 --> 00:02:55,890 I would also like to touch upon the theoretical question, which I will not have time to to elaborate on, 20 00:02:55,890 --> 00:03:02,490 but I think it's important to think about that in the context of my presentation and this about the relation 21 00:03:02,490 --> 00:03:12,060 between the demonic narratives of the past and its relation to official memory and popular memory. 22 00:03:12,060 --> 00:03:18,870 The question which is important is to ask when a narrative becomes demonic, 23 00:03:18,870 --> 00:03:25,650 is it enough that it is dominating in official memory and promote it from above? 24 00:03:25,650 --> 00:03:32,550 Or do you need a swell to see the reflection in popular memory on the level of 25 00:03:32,550 --> 00:03:40,800 the good or how how they relate to this official narrative projected from above? 26 00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:45,690 So I think this is something which it was important to discuss Fonda. 27 00:03:45,690 --> 00:03:51,180 But why the case or whatsoever? Why is it so interesting? 28 00:03:51,180 --> 00:04:00,570 It is precisely because in context of this of this symposium, it's a good example of post-conflict city. 29 00:04:00,570 --> 00:04:10,190 Both of is situated on the territory of that before the Second World War belong to Germany, 30 00:04:10,190 --> 00:04:17,430 and it was taken over by Poland in 1945 due to the agreement. 31 00:04:17,430 --> 00:04:28,590 And what happened was that the inhabitants of the city were expelled and replaced by Polish people 32 00:04:28,590 --> 00:04:38,190 coming from east and central and eastern territories taken from Poland by Soviet Soviet Union. 33 00:04:38,190 --> 00:04:48,300 So the German inhabitants that completely dominated the battle to have this disappeared after 34 00:04:48,300 --> 00:04:57,990 the Second World War and the Polish inhabitants had to deal with this legacy of the German past, 35 00:04:57,990 --> 00:05:05,340 which was very problematic to them because not the least because of the Second World War. 36 00:05:05,340 --> 00:05:18,810 So what happens in the years following the war was that the new rulers of Poland on central 37 00:05:18,810 --> 00:05:27,960 level and local level established a narrative about Wordsworth is being ever polish. 38 00:05:27,960 --> 00:05:40,320 So in a way, they will claim that those who belong to Polish territory in the mediaeval times and later was lost for Germany. 39 00:05:40,320 --> 00:05:50,040 But but now returned so to say to mother ship and it was the justice of peace returned to Poland. 40 00:05:50,040 --> 00:06:06,300 And in line of this narrative, there was an idea that all remnants and traces of the German past of the German cultural legacy should be in a. 41 00:06:06,300 --> 00:06:08,810 What in principle? 42 00:06:08,810 --> 00:06:25,800 What actually it's actually happened and what we see here is a kind of interesting and it kind of coincidence of two wheels on the on the one side, 43 00:06:25,800 --> 00:06:32,250 it's the communist government that wants to have this erasure of the German past. 44 00:06:32,250 --> 00:06:46,020 But there is also it fits very well with the needs of the on the grassroots level of the inhabitants of both of the two things, two different factors. 45 00:06:46,020 --> 00:06:53,100 One is that there is a well established narrative template in the Polish culture about Germans 46 00:06:53,100 --> 00:07:02,820 as a kind of eternal and add this eternal enemies always want to control Polish people. 47 00:07:02,820 --> 00:07:12,490 And in the context of the world, after the Second World War, it was this template was even more strengthened. 48 00:07:12,490 --> 00:07:20,100 And there was also a need on the Polish migrants to the city to be rooted and make the city the home. 49 00:07:20,100 --> 00:07:27,780 Why? What they wanted and to make it all of us or to say to it to a place. 50 00:07:27,780 --> 00:07:35,270 It's alien, it's German. And the last factor, which was important in the context it was. 51 00:07:35,270 --> 00:07:42,200 Feeling of insecurity amongst the inhabitants that when we interviewed them, 52 00:07:42,200 --> 00:07:53,930 they always told us that for many years they were afraid the Germans will come back and take this, they'll take this territory again. 53 00:07:53,930 --> 00:08:03,470 So in this way, it was a very strong, modern national narrative of this local history. 54 00:08:03,470 --> 00:08:14,750 However, it is interesting that we could trace, but it started to be questioned by the generation born in both south after the war. 55 00:08:14,750 --> 00:08:25,490 So to say children to talk to the migrants and dispossessed started very slowly in the 1970s, and it was strengthened in the 1980s, 56 00:08:25,490 --> 00:08:32,690 especially within cycles of the democratic anti-communist opposition that inverdale 57 00:08:32,690 --> 00:08:41,880 to have local oppositional activists that questioned this this narrative. 58 00:08:41,880 --> 00:08:50,070 And it was precisely this, these people belonging to this activity and the people in opposition in this. 59 00:08:50,070 --> 00:09:02,370 But the later took over the local government in the 12th after the fall of communism in 1989. 60 00:09:02,370 --> 00:09:15,540 So since 1989, and the boats were ruled by by the liberal parties, even if they were, of course, several elections. 61 00:09:15,540 --> 00:09:27,300 But it is always the liberals who who won this elections and dominated and dominated until today, 62 00:09:27,300 --> 00:09:41,820 and the local government and these people were very much decisive on the point that they want to change this nationalist narrative, 63 00:09:41,820 --> 00:09:50,800 although to have and worked to present the bill to have a symbol of courage and reconciliation. 64 00:09:50,800 --> 00:09:59,910 So they walk through and acknowledge and recognise the German cultural legacy in the city by 65 00:09:59,910 --> 00:10:09,990 rewriting local history and putting up new monuments and new exhibitions in the local museums, 66 00:10:09,990 --> 00:10:15,570 even coming back to the some German names in the city. 67 00:10:15,570 --> 00:10:24,240 But this, of course, was not very much uploaded by all, but they was quite a strong resistance against that. 68 00:10:24,240 --> 00:10:32,790 They would say it was a conflict between this dominant narrative coming from above on the local rulers and the 69 00:10:32,790 --> 00:10:41,670 counter-narrative on the grassroots level that could be summarised in the question put quite many times in the media, 70 00:10:41,670 --> 00:10:52,260 especially social media, when the people ask, is it about the German memory of the German votes? 71 00:10:52,260 --> 00:10:59,970 Well, that the German it not in the Polish memo of votes that was objective here. 72 00:10:59,970 --> 00:11:03,040 So there were several conflicts. 73 00:11:03,040 --> 00:11:18,000 One especially interesting was about the changing of the name of this quite impressive building in the world with so-called Yahoo Natalia Sabino Hall, 74 00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:22,200 which was called in German times into a communist time. 75 00:11:22,200 --> 00:11:26,790 It was baptised two people a whole. 76 00:11:26,790 --> 00:11:38,310 And then the local authorities in the 1990s came back to their old name and suggested the recognition of the German cultural heritage. 77 00:11:38,310 --> 00:11:48,240 It was very much a post. I don't have time to to elaborate on on this question, but this conflict was rather illustrative for this. 78 00:11:48,240 --> 00:11:59,070 This tension between between the local narrative projected film at birth and the reactions on the grassroots level. 79 00:11:59,070 --> 00:12:12,930 So what happened after some decades of this despotic think of a new kind of narrative was that both to a authorities, 80 00:12:12,930 --> 00:12:18,720 local authorities in tune to down the German, 81 00:12:18,720 --> 00:12:26,160 this German menace of the city and instead started to promote new narrative about both What 82 00:12:26,160 --> 00:12:40,350 is it that could be called in a kind of myth because both were 90 45 was not multicultural, 83 00:12:40,350 --> 00:12:47,010 but very much dominated by Germans? But of course, if you dig down in in the past, 84 00:12:47,010 --> 00:12:54,360 you can refer to two times when the votes have belong to Poland, to Czech Clown, to hubs, book and so on. 85 00:12:54,360 --> 00:12:58,590 And so it was done in this in this new narrative, 86 00:12:58,590 --> 00:13:12,430 which was promoted also in order as it was playing to us by by the representative of the local rulers, that it was then to change. 87 00:13:12,430 --> 00:13:24,030 Local identity and votes were Workforce Bank City of in the counties and very much inscribed in EU politics of memory, 88 00:13:24,030 --> 00:13:35,480 emphasising the cultural diversity. Interesting example of this is the co-author of and for the New Nation, 89 00:13:35,480 --> 00:13:51,600 an initiative done in cooperation between and between local authorities and grassroots initiative, making it a symbol of multiculturalism. 90 00:13:51,600 --> 00:13:58,670 The Yohann, should they end now or can they continue some minutes? 91 00:13:58,670 --> 00:14:03,020 Unfortunately, I have to ask you maybe to do up here, I'm sorry. 92 00:14:03,020 --> 00:14:20,180 Yes, OK. So let me say just that after 2015, I feel the turn on in Poland after and after taking after the nationalist conservative town in Poland. 93 00:14:20,180 --> 00:14:32,360 In these local authorities, it has to meet a challenge of visibility of very strong even for counter-narratives. 94 00:14:32,360 --> 00:14:40,460 I don't have time to elaborate on this, but it includes verbal attacks on the liberal measures of those who are faking it 95 00:14:40,460 --> 00:14:47,510 to the courts because in accusing them of betraying Polish national interests, 96 00:14:47,510 --> 00:14:52,790 selling the secret to the Germans and so on and so on. 97 00:14:52,790 --> 00:15:06,920 So what what I am seeing now in my current investigation of the city that the local authorities that change their strategy, 98 00:15:06,920 --> 00:15:16,550 they don't want to approach the past in such a very challenging and way as they did before, 99 00:15:16,550 --> 00:15:24,200 but instead they they avoid the past and to focus on defence of the image of all too 100 00:15:24,200 --> 00:15:31,460 often tolerant and inclusive city by forming a new strategy so the past is avoided. 101 00:15:31,460 --> 00:15:38,860 But still, they try to use it as a springboard for the full keeping alive. 102 00:15:38,860 --> 00:15:45,650 This is creating new identity of both worlds. 103 00:15:45,650 --> 00:15:52,830 OK. I think I have to. Thank you for your attention. 104 00:15:52,830 --> 00:15:54,870 Thank you, Barbara. Sorry about that. 105 00:15:54,870 --> 00:16:07,030 It's OK, it's Craig's presentation is entitled Post Memory in Post-Conflict Societies Reflections from Lebanon Crake Over to you. 106 00:16:07,030 --> 00:16:16,200 Great. I and thank you once again for your kind invitation. 107 00:16:16,200 --> 00:16:20,040 It's a pleasure to be part of this symposium. 108 00:16:20,040 --> 00:16:27,390 The themes are indeed central to my own research in the Middle East and also my own personal experience growing up in Belfast. 109 00:16:27,390 --> 00:16:32,280 The title of my talk was memory and post-conflict societies reflections from Lebanon. 110 00:16:32,280 --> 00:16:39,870 I think it's a little problematic, and that is the nature of post when we understand memory and post-conflict. 111 00:16:39,870 --> 00:16:52,920 As Baraka has argued, the prefix of post is indeed deceptive because it implies a clean break from the past when, in fact, what what. 112 00:16:52,920 --> 00:17:01,860 In actuality, the past continues to haunt the present through lingering legacies of violence, humiliation and injustice. 113 00:17:01,860 --> 00:17:11,670 There are probably no more poignant a symbol of the legacy of the Lebanese Civil War than that of its new war museum, Beirut. 114 00:17:11,670 --> 00:17:23,910 This is a 1920s style alderman building the Barakat building that was at the junction and at the heart of the Lebanese Civil War and Beirut, 115 00:17:23,910 --> 00:17:28,500 and divided the East West along the Damascus Highway. 116 00:17:28,500 --> 00:17:32,910 And it also was a significant sniper point for the Lebanese forces. 117 00:17:32,910 --> 00:17:37,140 For years, it was a ruinous reminder of the destructive past, 118 00:17:37,140 --> 00:17:44,220 but pressure grew for the redevelopment, particularly through Solidaire of Beirut sine time. 119 00:17:44,220 --> 00:17:55,290 And it was only the intervention of architects and civil activists paved this building and turned it into Lebanon's first or Breeze's dam. 120 00:17:55,290 --> 00:18:01,020 So we can see here in the images it still remains quite empty as a shell. 121 00:18:01,020 --> 00:18:06,150 It opens in 2017, and it hosts art exhibitions and seminars. 122 00:18:06,150 --> 00:18:11,280 In fact, one of the first was by Zena El Charlene's sacred catastrophe, 123 00:18:11,280 --> 00:18:18,390 and she constructed 17000 gripping poles in the second and third floors of this 124 00:18:18,390 --> 00:18:24,070 building as a representation of the disappeared in the Lebanese Civil War. 125 00:18:24,070 --> 00:18:32,880 Despite an official recruitment process, Beirut still has no curator or even a permanent collection dealing with the war. 126 00:18:32,880 --> 00:18:37,350 It remains a minority very much in limbo, a reminder of the past, 127 00:18:37,350 --> 00:18:47,880 but mostly an aesthetic backdrop for cultural and civil society events unable to really provide critical historical examination. 128 00:18:47,880 --> 00:18:56,190 As Ella Davis and I argue, and she took these these wonderful images to install a permanent exhibition of Beirut, Beirut that is, 129 00:18:56,190 --> 00:19:04,530 to turn the building into a memorial site into a museum would be a radical step towards an official history of the Civil War, 130 00:19:04,530 --> 00:19:09,090 and this would be near impossible to agree on what that narrative should actually recount. 131 00:19:09,090 --> 00:19:17,430 But it would also implicate the sit and acknowledging the violent past of the present political elite Ba'ath Beirut, I think, 132 00:19:17,430 --> 00:19:23,550 asked challenging questions of Lebanese society and what can actually be remembered and forgotten particularly high. 133 00:19:23,550 --> 00:19:29,640 Can such a project be realised when there's recent instability and ongoing protests? 134 00:19:29,640 --> 00:19:32,220 In fact, has the right to tell less history, 135 00:19:32,220 --> 00:19:41,040 and Hajjah Incorporated incorporate conflicting and contested narratives on what should the next generation of Lebanese? 136 00:19:41,040 --> 00:19:47,970 How do they actually view this building? And in my work, I've been interested in the next generation. 137 00:19:47,970 --> 00:19:55,650 I interviewed Lebanese students many years ago during this process of reconstruction, and their views were very varied. 138 00:19:55,650 --> 00:20:05,490 For some, it was a total rejection. The building in the museum represents a Christian Lebanese forces symbol of death for others. 139 00:20:05,490 --> 00:20:13,080 It's not the right time. It's still too sensitive, as Ruben says, how many innocent people were shot from those windows? 140 00:20:13,080 --> 00:20:19,860 Another Lebanese young person, Pierre, said maybe they should just keep the shell images powerful enough. 141 00:20:19,860 --> 00:20:24,060 We don't know what actually happened inside. 142 00:20:24,060 --> 00:20:32,880 Some Lebanese youth are more sceptical, Rahsaan says it's an exploitive attempt to cash in on Beirut's violent past. 143 00:20:32,880 --> 00:20:39,800 Probably we'll be running Civil War tours and free militia T-shirts and baseball caps. 144 00:20:39,800 --> 00:20:46,350 Aya, 17, from Shia and Beirut, is much more reflective, she argues. 145 00:20:46,350 --> 00:20:50,250 It provokes us to remember and ask questions about the war. 146 00:20:50,250 --> 00:20:57,150 To think about what happened in these specific buildings and to decide it must never happen again. 147 00:20:57,150 --> 00:20:59,580 I think it needs diverging youthful responses. 148 00:20:59,580 --> 00:21:08,430 We see some of the post-war narratives and debates on whether memory is needed to stop a repetition of the conflict. 149 00:21:08,430 --> 00:21:15,950 Whether forgetting would actually provide a main. This is not returning to violence or a complete rejection. 150 00:21:15,950 --> 00:21:26,240 Lebanese war, which occurred between 75 and 1990, killing around 150000 people, displacing over two thirds of the population, 151 00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:39,260 was led by a Thai peace in 1990 that included amnesty, but also public censorship of any discussion on an official level of the conflict. 152 00:21:39,260 --> 00:21:51,080 But instead, memory discourses have been promoted by activists, by scholars, and they're still very much prevalent in local oral traditions. 153 00:21:51,080 --> 00:21:57,660 My research has explored these multiple polyvalent memories and the transcription and transformation. 154 00:21:57,660 --> 00:22:03,310 Synchrony in the lives of the next generation of posts, memory generation. 155 00:22:03,310 --> 00:22:05,690 That's what I want to briefly look at. 156 00:22:05,690 --> 00:22:14,720 The concept of post memory loss of memory is best defined as a residential type of memory, a recollection of an event, not personal experience. 157 00:22:14,720 --> 00:22:22,970 A socially felt a traumatic rupture that indelibly scars a nation, a religious group, a community or a family. 158 00:22:22,970 --> 00:22:29,750 Ryan Hersh posits this concept in relation to the overwhelming weight of Holocaust memory and its discursive power, 159 00:22:29,750 --> 00:22:36,410 particularly through photographs and visual images to share Jewish historical consciousness. 160 00:22:36,410 --> 00:22:44,300 Rehearsed post memory exists is this powerful particular form of memory because its connexion is to an object, 161 00:22:44,300 --> 00:22:50,570 it's not mediated through recollection directly, but imaginative investment and creation. 162 00:22:50,570 --> 00:22:57,650 It helps provide the gnomic frames and schemata for affirming social identities communal traditions, 163 00:22:57,650 --> 00:23:01,460 but also it can imprison people within historical discourses, 164 00:23:01,460 --> 00:23:08,870 she argues, that have silenced us verbally that defined narrative reconstruction and exceed comprehension. 165 00:23:08,870 --> 00:23:13,190 In other words, first memory suggests the traumatic historical events, 166 00:23:13,190 --> 00:23:20,810 whether distance by time or distorted by political design, they cannot easily be beverage or forgotten. 167 00:23:20,810 --> 00:23:25,910 And what I became interested in one plus memory read, such as focus on the Holocaust, 168 00:23:25,910 --> 00:23:31,070 its applicability to other post-conflict settings, settings of rupture, violence, 169 00:23:31,070 --> 00:23:37,310 genocide, displacement and increasing work across looking South America, Southeast Asian, 170 00:23:37,310 --> 00:23:42,590 Northern Ireland, the Balkans have applied post memory frames and in a way, 171 00:23:42,590 --> 00:23:48,470 looking to enter generational transmission of trauma, not just through photographs, 172 00:23:48,470 --> 00:23:55,670 as Hirsch highlights, but through visual sites, urban landscapes, the remnants of the past, 173 00:23:55,670 --> 00:24:01,910 how they affect the Senate because these are the memory skips that inform identity formation, 174 00:24:01,910 --> 00:24:07,910 the trauma skips that immediately connects us to past conflict. 175 00:24:07,910 --> 00:24:10,380 So how does both memory work? 176 00:24:10,380 --> 00:24:19,620 In a Lebanese context, a few years ago, I conducted over 100 interviews with Lebanese students for my book Memory and Forgetting in Lebanon, 177 00:24:19,620 --> 00:24:24,870 but also more recently to focus on the nine surveys reveal again whose memory at work. 178 00:24:24,870 --> 00:24:28,800 These are just some of the narratives, as Allen argues. 179 00:24:28,800 --> 00:24:36,690 I was born in 1990 when it all ended, but I hear all the stories like pictures of the war, life, memories of the buildings and what happened there. 180 00:24:36,690 --> 00:24:42,210 Sometimes when we drive through an area, I'm reminded of the past, the violence, destruction. 181 00:24:42,210 --> 00:24:47,100 It's still stateside to you. Rami instead talks about the deaths. 182 00:24:47,100 --> 00:24:50,400 The events, much like the Troubles in Northern Ireland, 183 00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:57,450 the Lebanese Civil War is referred to as the advance, and they remain a big void, a nebulous concept. 184 00:24:57,450 --> 00:25:01,070 You don't know what's inside. You know what's black. You know what's there. 185 00:25:01,070 --> 00:25:11,790 It's ominous. We don't know what's inside. George, a 21 year old as St. Joseph University student, says At times I wanted to close my eyes, 186 00:25:11,790 --> 00:25:16,080 ears and cover and cover my ears to my parents stories of war. 187 00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:22,330 It was their conflict, not mine. I don't want to carry their burdens if these memories are difficult to escape. 188 00:25:22,330 --> 00:25:27,570 Johnny, they appear late and sometimes in unexpected places. 189 00:25:27,570 --> 00:25:33,420 Both memory and Lebanon is light, foreboding and at times inescapable. 190 00:25:33,420 --> 00:25:43,050 I just want to very briefly look at some of the most prominent narratives post memory narratives that are prevalent within Lebanese society. 191 00:25:43,050 --> 00:25:50,550 And of course, this is understanding post memory is a dynamic, contextual phenomenon. 192 00:25:50,550 --> 00:25:58,320 Firstly, we see rejection the idea that this was not our war, it was theirs, and this is common. 193 00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:04,380 Our son, Tony wrote a book, The Lebanese War, and it was called the War of Others on our side. 194 00:26:04,380 --> 00:26:11,990 This popularised the idea that the Lebanese conflict was mostly due to external intervention that had limited Lebanese involvement. 195 00:26:11,990 --> 00:26:21,900 But I think this idea has been subverted by a generation who focus very much on the guilt and responsibility of the previous generation. 196 00:26:21,900 --> 00:26:34,410 There was some rejected. There is also an Easter, a strange attraction and curiosity, or is the same in one cafe 1975, 197 00:26:34,410 --> 00:26:40,590 this cafe was closed, but it became popular in a part of Beirut. 198 00:26:40,590 --> 00:26:50,280 It was a cafe, but you could come set in underground bunkers for life as part remnants, graffiti, 199 00:26:50,280 --> 00:26:58,320 and you were curious and asked to ask the owner of this bar what exactly was going on. 200 00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:04,650 He said the war is over, but many people need to think about what happened with many different ages of people, 201 00:27:04,650 --> 00:27:08,920 some older who love the nostalgia, the music, the songs. Some young people. 202 00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:16,970 They don't even know anything about the war, but they're interested in experiencing something about it. 203 00:27:16,970 --> 00:27:24,560 So there's rejection nostalgia, but I think also quite common is the narrative theme of recurrence. 204 00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:28,910 The idea that the war continues an invisible, visible war. 205 00:27:28,910 --> 00:27:37,910 Even though the war ended in 1990, the same protagonists, those former militia leaders of the politicians, 206 00:27:37,910 --> 00:27:45,790 there are recurring tensions and certain neighbourhoods of Beirut that the conflict and war is ongoing. 207 00:27:45,790 --> 00:27:49,060 Fourthly, there's the narrative of redemption. 208 00:27:49,060 --> 00:27:56,890 In fact, many young people do not want to focus just on victimhood and suffering on a personal resilience and bravery, 209 00:27:56,890 --> 00:28:00,940 why their family was able to move beyond the war. 210 00:28:00,940 --> 00:28:06,460 This has also turned into a narrative that is redirected to war. 211 00:28:06,460 --> 00:28:13,450 Instead of focussing on internal conflict, it focuses on an existential struggle against Israel. 212 00:28:13,450 --> 00:28:20,950 This is very much seen in Hezbollah's Museum of Resistance Tourism, a terrorist jihadi centre, 213 00:28:20,950 --> 00:28:27,910 as Nasrallah calls it, open in May 2010, 10 years after Israel withdrew from Lebanon. 214 00:28:27,910 --> 00:28:39,100 And it's a space where you can see Hezbollah weaponry and also Israeli tanks and confiscated material from former wars. 215 00:28:39,100 --> 00:28:49,270 It becomes the site of this both physical. It's built into a hill where there's there's resistance tunnels, but it's also spiritual or supernatural. 216 00:28:49,270 --> 00:28:58,570 The idea of sacrifice and the argument that Hezbollah have become the creators on site the fires of South Lebanon again, 217 00:28:58,570 --> 00:29:08,140 this is quite a controversial argument. Finally, war memory is provoked and resistance and revolution. 218 00:29:08,140 --> 00:29:14,230 In fact, what we see it is infused with contemporary struggles that becomes an idiom for political change. 219 00:29:14,230 --> 00:29:25,460 And it takes new forms and popular uprisings, whether in 2006 U.S. campaign of or 2019. 220 00:29:25,460 --> 00:29:29,680 And you said the protest over the recycling of Bloody. 221 00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:37,960 It's like our page and we can hear the Lebanese politicians and the argument that some trash should not be recycled 222 00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:48,250 through 2019 again as a critical attack on the Lebanese sectarian system as part of the new post-war legacy. 223 00:29:48,250 --> 00:29:52,520 So what are the findings very quickly on Lebanese post memory? 224 00:29:52,520 --> 00:29:59,170 And what I would argue my research suggests is the persistence of civil war memory resistance 225 00:29:59,170 --> 00:30:05,470 to official silence on selective and subversive and the discourses that it creates. 226 00:30:05,470 --> 00:30:15,070 What we find is that disorientated and disillusioned and liminal generation, they're trying to reconcile public censure and private anguish. 227 00:30:15,070 --> 00:30:22,750 They're trying to reconcile the history that is not really discussed in schools or publicly, but yet is on everyone's lips. 228 00:30:22,750 --> 00:30:30,560 This tension, and it's the mass migration depression ongoing within society. 229 00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:38,110 What evidence is also there or memories can be easily mobilised during periods of flux and instability, 230 00:30:38,110 --> 00:30:41,890 reactivating grievances and contemporary tensions. 231 00:30:41,890 --> 00:30:49,930 We've seen this very much in communal hostility around identity politics over anniversary dates of the war, 232 00:30:49,930 --> 00:30:58,810 particular neighbourhoods that were engaged in conflict, and just recently in the 7th of May, a Hezbollah takeover in 2008. 233 00:30:58,810 --> 00:31:02,440 We see this over war memory. 234 00:31:02,440 --> 00:31:05,530 No taking place on Twitter. 235 00:31:05,530 --> 00:31:17,360 Whether the 7th of May was a glorious day for many supporters of Hezbollah or a day of shame particularly looked at by the Sunni community. 236 00:31:17,360 --> 00:31:22,640 Thank you, sir. Finally, I just post memory work in post-conflict settings. 237 00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:25,190 I just want to make a few brief points. 238 00:31:25,190 --> 00:31:32,440 Another is that we see the proliferation of post memory studies, and it's also taking new interdisciplinary forms. 239 00:31:32,440 --> 00:31:37,940 Trauma studies, psychological accounts, post memory can fade into polarised identities. 240 00:31:37,940 --> 00:31:45,650 It provides a repertoire for future confrontations and violence, and there can be transgenerational attachment to victimhood. 241 00:31:45,650 --> 00:31:52,190 memorialisation sites of practise alive for this effect of an embodied connexion to the past. 242 00:31:52,190 --> 00:31:58,370 But I just also say while postmodernity can be used to to transfer conflict and hostilities, 243 00:31:58,370 --> 00:32:04,520 there is a possibility for greater interaction with transitional justice working through. 244 00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:11,420 As Hirsch herself argues, perhaps it's only in subsequent generations that trauma can be witnessed and work through, 245 00:32:11,420 --> 00:32:19,310 so we'll need to look at post memory and its interventions and education processes, and perhaps also mediation. 246 00:32:19,310 --> 00:32:24,920 I'll just end there. Thanks. Thank you very much. 247 00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:37,790 Unfortunately, we almost don't have time for a Q&A, but still let me through one for maybe all of you and whoever wants to take it, take it. 248 00:32:37,790 --> 00:32:54,080 What? What is needed for a narrative or a memory to become hegemonic? 249 00:32:54,080 --> 00:33:06,710 I may start because it was one of my questions, so when they worked with this paper, because in my view, that they really had the money. 250 00:33:06,710 --> 00:33:20,030 Can we speak of when we have this, this overlapping between on the one side official memory promoted by by the old elites or intellectual elites? 251 00:33:20,030 --> 00:33:33,380 But if they also can take roots in the popular memory in a way when they start to circulate and be internalised by people at large, 252 00:33:33,380 --> 00:33:38,600 then I think that's an but we can speak about the real hegemony. 253 00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:48,260 And so in my case, in votes for this post-war state, in local memory of well. 254 00:33:48,260 --> 00:33:59,690 But then we have this time of post-communist time when these strong official in memory promoted on the local level. 255 00:33:59,690 --> 00:34:12,080 And if they silenced to some, some to some extent, even sometimes a consciousness to silence the count, the memo is on the grassroots level. 256 00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:24,920 But the question is it as long is this this new narrative now to really become internalised in the popular memory? 257 00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:29,510 Is it? Can we speak about the alleged gunman or not? 258 00:34:29,510 --> 00:34:33,530 I wonder. Thank you. 259 00:34:33,530 --> 00:34:46,340 Thank you. Thanks to all our panellists for your insightful contribution and also many thanks to the members of the audience for the questions. 260 00:34:46,340 --> 00:34:56,810 I would like to strongly encourage you to stay online and to use the chat function to try to answer at least some of them. 261 00:34:56,810 --> 00:35:06,290 And now we will conclude our morning session and break for lunch and to let all the information sink in as well. 262 00:35:06,290 --> 00:35:14,240 We will, as I said, we will leave this room open for another approximately 20 minutes and enable the chip 263 00:35:14,240 --> 00:35:20,810 function so that you can chat with the panellists and the audience and if you wish. 264 00:35:20,810 --> 00:35:26,690 So we will meet again at 1:00 p.m. London time. 265 00:35:26,690 --> 00:35:31,490 1:00 PM British Summertime and to join us. 266 00:35:31,490 --> 00:35:39,380 That's very important. Please use the afternoon session link, which we sent you as well. 267 00:35:39,380 --> 00:35:44,080 Which we provided to you by email. See you again in one hour. 268 00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:48,950 Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Our pleasure. 269 00:35:48,950 --> 00:35:50,976 Bye bye.