Memory and Popular Culture

Memory and Popular Culture:

The central theme of this special issue of Latin American Perspectives is to interrogate the diverse forms of articulation of cultural memory in Latin America in the Post-dictatorship period.

The period that followed the restoration of democracy in Latin American countries after diverse massive human rights abuses and repression that occurred during the military dictatorships of the seventies and eighties has been marked by a twofold process: the need to come to terms with the recent historical past and to respond to demands for justice put forward by the relatives of the victims and the society as a whole, and the need -on the other hand- by the part of the state, to foster hegemonic interpretations of the recent past that would allow for the necessary social stability required during the redemocratization processes. This would provide the bases for the political stability of the new democratic governments, grounded as they are, within the democratic restrictions imposed by the different forms in which democracy was recovered through particular forms of political negotiations with the militaries and the sectors of the economical right.

On the one hand there is the need for political stability that will ensure economic prosperity as the neoliberal models imposed by military dictatorships has continued within the framework of democracy and reconciliation. On the other hand the traumatic experiences the population suffered during this processes demands, from the part of its mourners, diverse forms of national recognition and the exercise of justice.

In this regard, the Latin American nations who experienced these processes are confronted with the need to rearticulate the narratives of national identity and cultural memory that will provide the necessary stability to carry forward the neoliberal economical program. The need to establish a hegemonic interpretation of the recent past is then put into question through diverse forms of cultural resistance as they construct alternative forms of popular memory through a diversity of cultural discourses.

Topics to be addressed could be:

· Theoretical discussion of the interrelations between memory and national identity

· Memory and mourning in interdisciplinary discourses related to the recent past

· Mourning and trauma: crisis of witnessing

· Popular culture as a site of historic memory

· Memory as process versus fixed comfortable site. Memory and comfort

· Globalization and memory: discourses of memory and forms of resistance to cultural globalization

· Capitalism and memory, memory value

· Transnational neoliberalism and its need to be grounded on the oblivion of the past

Agency

· What are the spaces from which memory is being ‘reconstructed?

· How is memory rearticulated by the subaltern sectors of society?

· What are these discourses of memory?

· How subaltern groups are able to articulate alternative and contesting notions of recent history within the current democratic states?

· What are the forms of rearticulation of memory?

· How are these discourses of memory produced, conveyed and negotiated within particular cultural communities?

· Memory and social movements: what are the strategies used by the new social movements to convey alternative interpretations of recent history?

· How the task of mourning constitutes a form of creating agency and constituting mourning Subjects (sujetos dolientes).

· The questions of agency: state and social movements.

Narrative

· How are these discourses of memory dealing with the notions of continuity and fragmentation at the content and structural level of their narratives?

· How is trauma affecting the capability of symbolizing and narrating and constituting “narrators” and “narratives of memory?

· How are the issues of legitimacy dealt with, who has the right to remember?

· How are mourning subjects constituted through art and culture?

· How are multiple narratives of memory inscribed in diverse forms of public commemorations of the recent past?

· Memory and oblivion: the task of mourning as the task of forgetting.

· Desmemoria and social amnesia.

· Memory and new technologies: new forms of recording and erasing memory.

· Memory and mourning of the 70’s and 80’s in relation to the need to rearticulate discursive practices within the context of the delegitimization of socialist “utopias” after the cold war.

· Left and mourning: discourses of apology and nostalgia.

Revolutionary memory

· The memory of revolutionary movements as sites for cultural resistance.

· The social memory of revolutionary triumphs as a form of resistance.

Practical case studies:

· Sites, agencies and negotiations.

· Visibility and immediate functions of the discourses of memory.

· Narratives/theatrical discourses of memory.

· Narratives of memory in film, theatre, music, photography, murals, public and private rituals of memory, sites and events of commemorations, state and private practices of memory, institutional interventions/negotiations.

· Cases of state sponsorship of memory narratives as forms of consolidating hegemonic views of the recent historical past.

· Trauma, symptoms and disruptions: erupting fragments of memory.

· Popular culture and discourses of resistance to official history : collective memory movements vis a vis truth and commemoration as stagnation (‘the need to go on’).

· Disruptive subjects: stagnation, repetition and the uncomfortable symptoms that disrupt reconciliation practices and discourses.

· Transnational memory: solidarity and resistance, receptions of a discourse of memory (i.e., reception of arpilleras in Los Angeles vs. Latin America).

· Memory and archive: new technologies and the issue of memory.

· Globalization and memory: discourses of memory as forms of resistance to cultural globalization.

This issue is being coordinated by Alicia del Campo and Arturo Arias. Prospective contributors should feel free to communicate with them at the following address:

Alicia del Campo
California State University, Long Beach
1250 Bellflower Blvd. - MHB 613
Long Beach, CA 90840-2406
Email: delcampo@csulb.edu

Arturo Arias, Director
Latin American Studies
University of Redlands
1200 E. Colton Avenue
P.O. Box 3080
Redlands, CA 92373-0999
Arturo_Arias@redlands.edu

Manuscripts should be no longer than 25 pages of double-spaced text in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. If possible, submit two copies along with a cover sheet and basic biographical information. With these items, we also require that the manuscript be sent on a CD-R, by e-mail, or on a floppy disk if the other formats are not available. The LAP style guide is available on request or online.

Please send any manuscript submissions to:
Managing Editor, Latin American Perspectives¸ P.O. Box 5703, Riverside, California 92517-5703