Politics of Memory in Southeast Asia

Memory and practices of memory-making and remembering—whether collective/social or individual, textual or non-textual—play a role in framing the reading of present and future situations, in articulating and legitimating moral and political discourses, and in structuring action in contexts of crisis, conflict, and peace. Memory is also significant in the formation of identity and production of subjectivities, in mediating social relationships, in forging a sense of belonging as well as producing exclusions, and in the (un)making of collectivities. Linked to an individual and group’s access to power, resources, and justice, memory can be contested, where the meanings, values, and portrayals of the past/s are subjected to competing definitions, interpretations, selection, and appropriations in the present. This is especially so since material, social, and political conditions impact which group’s memory is privileged, institutionalized, and authorized over others, and which memory gets forgotten or silenced. This seminar takes these themes up by looking at the various ways in which memory is produced, politicized, institutionalized, authorized, and contested, and what their consequences are, in several Southeast Asian countries.