Join the workshop that builds on the preceding roundtable Laws on Memory and Legislation. Länk till annan webbplats, öppnas i nytt fönster. The focus area for this workshop is extended to the entire post-communist region.

Since the end of the cold war and the fall of the communist regimes, there has been a great interest in the public commemoration of the past. It has been described as a memory boom both in society and in the scholarly interest in cultural or public memory. Suppressed narratives have risen to the surface while other narratives got suppressed again. Different actors instrumentalize the past for different purposes and the politics of commemoration has been a significant area of interest and conflict in many countries. In Poland, Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski recently faced charges when writing about the role of Poles taking part in the Holocaust.

This is part of a long series of similar events concerning cultural memory and politics. Examples of earlier cases are the changed leadership at POLIN Museum, the controversies around the Second World War museum in Gdansk; the controversies around the movie Ida and the laws concerning the Holocaust and protecting the good name of the Polish nation.
In another example, verdicts of International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) led to instrumentalization of past and competitive reactions -among Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia- by establishing the factual truth about the past. Although these countries had collaborated with the ICTY to a certain extent, ruling elites questioned the court’s legitimacy and communicated the convictions to their constituencies through mythologized and nationalist narratives. Turkish-Armenian relations also inhabit an intense memory contestation. Turkey’s persistent denial of Armenian genocide has been countered by the Armenians’ call for third party support.

In Turkey, Article 301 of the Criminal Code prohibits any insult against Turkish nation. The broad definition of the article enables prosecution against anyone who publicly speaks about killings of Armenians as genocide, as it can be seen in the trials of novelist Orhan Pamuk and historian Taner Akcam. Concordantly, Armenians seek both recognition and implementation of laws banning the denial of Armenian genocide in third country parliaments.

The panel sets out from referred examples to approach the transnational dynamics of memory and legislation in a concluding discussion.

Panelists:
Jelena Subotic; Professor, Political Science, Georgia State University

Joanna Michlic; Honorary Senior Research Associate, Institute for Advanced Studies, Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University College London

Johanna Mannergren Selimovic; Associate Professor, Political Science, Södertörn University

David Gaunt; Professor emeritus, History, Centre for Baltic and East European Studies, Södertörn University

Barbara Törnquist Plewa; Professor, Eastern and Central European Studies, Centre for European Studies, Lund University

Moderators:
Cagla Demirel, Doctoral student, School of Social Sciences

Martin Englund, Doctoral student, School of Historical and Contemporary Studies

Join the roundtable in Zoom Länk till annan webbplats, öppnas i nytt fönster.
Meeting ID: 634 6621 6403
Passcode: 338195

N.B. Link to Zoom for this workshop is similar with the one for the preceding roundtable "Dealing with the Totalitarian Past: Laws on Memory and Legislation" Länk till annan webbplats, öppnas i nytt fönster.