Public debate today often focuses on uncertainties about the future: what to do about climate change, how to prevent the next pandemic, how to cope with technological revolutions? But many issues that divide societies also have to do with the past. How do we ensure continuity with the values that have shaped us? How should we remember the crimes of the past? How should victims and descendants of victims be recognized or compensated? What role should glorious and inglorious events play in the stories societies tell about themselves? What is the role of collective memory in shaping a nation’s identity? Should a nation rally around one single narrative or should it accommodate multiple views and perspectives about the past?
An illuminating book entitled La mémoire collective en question(s) (Collective Memory in Question), published by Presses Universitaires de France, explores, in 50 chapters, some of these crucial questions. In order to cast light on these issues, Vis A Vis is honored to welcome Sarah Gensburger, the book’s co-editor, and Carol Gluck, one of its contributors.
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Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History. She specializes in modern Japan, from the late nineteenth century to the present; international relations; World War II, and history-writing and public memory in Asia and the West. She received her B.A. from Wellesley (1962) and her Ph.D. from Columbia (1977). She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society; former President of the Association for Asian Studies; currently co-chair of the Trustees Emeriti of Asia Society and member of the Board of Directors of Japan Society. She is a founding member and now chair of Columbia’s Committee on Global Thought.
Sarah Gensburger, “My research interests lie at the intersection of political science, ethnographic sociology and contemporary historiographic issues. I am interested in the social dynamic of memory. Since 2015, I have been working on the memorialization process in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Paris, as well as on the social appropriations of the past by visitors at memorials and commemorative sites and exhibitions. During the past two years, I have been studying the transformation of the contemporary state, the governmentality of memory and the way it has become a category of public intervention in western democracies. Finally, and as a micro-social historian, I have been studying everyday life, housing issues and social networks in Paris during World War Two, at the intersection of urban history and Holocaust history.”
Host: Dr. Emmanuel Kattan
Editor and Producer: Monica Beatrice Hunter-Hart
Producer: Georgia O’Neil