Since the 1980s and 1990s, European memory cultures have increasingly begun to focus on the experiences of historically victimised, marginalised and oppressed people. In this context, however, this lecture critically explores the »reverse side« of this memory boom: the experiences of those who used to identify with previously dominant memory paradigms.

It builds on oral histories conducted in Austria (on memories of Nazism and World War II) and Northern Ireland (on memories of the Northern Ireland conflict) as case studies to interrogate these memory processes: How do those who grew up in previously more dominant memory cultures tell their family’s history and their own life stories in the context of these shifts? How do they reflect on potential personal »implication« in these histories of violence? And how do they negotiate politically charged meanings of these violent pasts between »private« and »public«? Vanessa Tautter focuses on emotional responses to these shifts, which were often experienced as challenging to subjectivities, identities and family histories, and on memory work taking place in the private arena of the family. By doing so, this work seeks to broaden our understanding of the politics of such »private« memory and, as such, aims to create space for the critical study of heterogeneous cultures of implication and perpetration, and their meanings for society until today.

Vanessa Tautter is a Ph.D. researcher at the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories at the University of Brighton with a focus on oral history, memory and cultural studies. Their Ph.D. project critically explores the »reverse side« of memory change in Europe since the 1980s and heterogeneous memories of »implication« in the violent histories remembered. Currently they are an IFK_Junior Fellow.

THE LECTURE WILL BE HYBRID.

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