European societies have recently turned toward more austere political regimes. Evidence of this can be seen in budget cuts, management of the labor market and restrictions of welfare systems, as well as in new regimes of migration and citizenship.
In the wake of these changes new forms of social inclusion and exclusion appear that are justified through a reactivation of differences of race,class and gender, all this serving, in its turn, to justify new forms of labor extraction and the formation of a new underclass or “precariat”. Another consequence is that democracy itself has become precarious. While the agents and adherents of austerity programs impose themselves as democracy’s saviors, practitioners of democracy find themselves pushed toward the extra-parliamentary margins.
This symposium investigated how a current politics of austerity affects our cultural memory.Are we witnessing a turn toward austerity in theories and practices of historiography, as well as in pedagogies of history? Can we speak of an austere historiography, an enforcement of conformity on Europe past and present?
If this is the case, it helps explain that certain narratives of the European past are now privileged whereas other parts of the cultural heritage are weeded out. Strong tendencies and interests are apparently at work to purge the histories of specific European nations, but also those of Europe, the West, and globalisation from cultural plurality. In their stead, assertively heroic and homogeneous stories about the past of nations, regions, institutions and religions are being retold, reinvented, and re-launched. In brief, history (including public debate on history and history education) is again becoming either “nationalistic” or “cosmopolitan” – but cosmopolitan in a way that tend to celebrate the achievements of Europe and posit the West as a model of universality, humanism and perhaps also of the human as such.
Among the sacrifices of this tendency are multiculturalism, postcolonial memories, and minority discourses of all kinds. What is lost is the very complexity and contradictoriness of Europe and the West. Especially, colonial and postcolonial memories are evicted from their recently claimed habitats in the European past, and again placed at the outskirts, far beyond the limit of the Western world.
The symposium seeked to extract the correlation between how minorities, migrants and their descendants are treated by present policies and how memories and experiences of migrants,minorities and colonised peoples are treated in historiography and historical pedagogy. By bringing together a group of distinguished European scholars who have examined Europe’s colonial past in relation to migration, historiography and cultural heritage, the symposium elucidated how new regimes of historiography and memory culture relate to integration, discrimination, and social segmentation in the present.
Outputs
Read about the volume edited by Stefan Jonsson and Julia Willén that was produced as a result of the symposium at Rouledge.
Speakers
- Nicolas Bancel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
- Gurminder K Bhambra, The University of Warwick, Great Britain
- Manuela Boatca, Freie Universität, Germany
- Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, Université de Paris X, France
- Peo Hansen, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
- Lars Jensen, Roskilde University, Denmark
- Nicola Labanca, Università degli Studi di Siena, Italy
- Esther Captain, National Committee for the Remembrance of WWII, Netherlands
- Robbie Shilliam, Queen Mary, University of London, Great Britain
- Kuratorisk Aktion (Tone Olaf Nielsen & Frederikke Hansen), Copenhagen
Commentators, Panelists and Chairs:
- David Gaunt, Södertörn University, Sweden
- Stefan Helgesson, Stockholm University, Sweden
- Stefan Jonsson, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
- Carsten Juhl, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Denmark
- Mikela Lundahl, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
- Edda Manga, Uppsala University, Sweden
- Anders Neergaard, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
- Carl-Ulrik Schierup, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
- Anders Stephansson, Columbia University, USA
- Maria Stern, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
- Julia Willén, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
- Charles Woolfson, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
- Aleksandra Ålund, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
Organised by Stefan Jonsson, Professor, REMESO, Linköping University.