Individuelle und öffentliche Erinnerung im Libanon und in Marokko in Form von zeitgenössischen Kulturproduktionen beider Länder
Final Report Abstract
The key scientific finding of the overall project concerns how critical and creative engagements of memory in Lebanon and Morocco involve emergent practices of social exchange and social viability that work both within and beyond established, predominating distributions of material and imaginary resources. Such resources are distributed in ways that political advocacy, constituency and sensibility are managed as particular forms of governance, framing how social and cultural practices addressing memories of the violent past can be initiated. This is related to the project’s finding that such practices involve modes of both conforming to and challenging predominating, more formal and official processes of addressing the violent past. Another key finding relates to the comparative dimension between Morocco and Lebanon. We came to realize that much of the research in the MENA region has necessarily to adopt a paradigm of state repression and/or state-directed practices of reconciliation and counter or oppositional practices. Our research challenges this more predominant paradigm. In Lebanon past violence was organized and directed along communal and sectarian lines (indeed, such violence worked towards the constitution of communal and sectarian allegiances), while in Morocco past violence and human rights abuses were administered by governmental practices coordinated through state agencies. Corresponding findings include the relevance of intergenerational and gender implications. In both Lebanon and Morocco an emerging younger generation articulate their dissatisfaction with violent and traumatic pasts that are inadequately dealt with by existing modes of governance. In terms of capacities to address public cultures, women face greater challenges than men to have themselves heard. Potential applications have thus to adapt intergenerational and gender research perspectives to more adequately consider variable modalities of the social life of memory in Lebanon and Morocco. A main surprise concerns how existing research models addressing memory, violence and trauma are inadequate when directed towards postcolonial contexts in general, and towards Lebanon and Morocco specifically. This is because existing models do not adequately address memory as sites of exchange between cultural production and social practices. One compelling surprise in our research involves the social significance of intergenerational dynamics, which tends to be occluded by existing research in memory, cultural and historiographical studies. Articles Published in the Media Reporting the Success of the Project: http://zmo.de/forschung/projekte_2008_2013/Transforming_Memories_2008_2013.html
Publications
- 2012. The Fragmenting Force of Memory: Self, Literary Style, and Civil War in Lebanon. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishers
Nikro, Norman Saadi
- Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. Special Issue on “Gendered Memory in the Middle East and North Africa: Cultural Norms, Social Practices, and Transnational Regimes”. Winter, Vol 8 (2012), No. 1, 119 pp.
Hegasy, Sonja, B. Dennerlein
(See online at https://doi.org/10.2979/jmiddeastwomstud.8.1.1) - 2013. “The War of the Mountains in Lebanon 1982-1984: Oral History and Collective Memory”. ZMO Working Paper Series, No 7
Rabah, Makram
- 2014. “Rewriting the World: Gendered Violence, the Political Imagination and the Memoirs from the ‘Years of Lead’ in Morocco”. International Journal of Violence and Conflict
Menin, Laura
(See online at https://doi.org/10.4119/ijcv-3044)
