Holocaust Memory in the Shadow of the Wars in Gaza and Ukraine

Lecture by Wulf Kantsteiner, Aarhus University

Abstract

The current wars accelerate the transition from Holocaust memory to postcolonial memory as the primary narrative framework of transnational memory politics. In principle, the new framework possesses significant self-critical potential although the ethical value of a given postcolonial intervention depends on the communicative setting and the memory actors’ integrity. A significant share of postcolonial mnemonic interventions reflect dubious motives, as has been the case with some gestures of Holocaust memory.

Bio

Wulf Kansteiner is a Professor of Memory Studies and Contemporary European History at Aarhus University. His research interests include the methods and theories of memory studies; the role of visual media -- TV, film, digital culture -- in the formation of cultural memory; post-narrative historical theory; and Holocaust and genocide history, memory, and historiography. Kansteiner has been President of the Memory Studies Association (MSA), is co-founder and co-editor of the Sage-Journal Memory Studies, and a member of Mnemonics: Network for Memory Studies.

Key publications include the monograph In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz (Ohio UP); the co-edited volumes Agonistic Memory and the Legacy of 20^th Century Wars in Europe (Palgrave), Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture (Harvard UP), Den Holocaust erzählen? Historiographie zwischen wissenschaftlicher Empirie und narrativer Kreativität (Wallstein) and The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe (Duke UP) and numerous articles.