This essay is a revolutionary academic analysis that reflects on the usefulness of memory policies and questions the mantra “forgetting the past condemns us to repeat it”. By reflecting on the effects of the social and political contexts when transmitting democratic values, the text invites refocusing memory policies so that they can have a genuine impact both on individuals and on societies.
Technical data
Title: Weaving the past
Subtitle: What are memory policies for?
Authors: Sarah Gensburger and Sandrine Lefranc
Translation: Alberto Haller and Lucía Navarro
Prologue: Jordi Guixé
Design: Irene Bofill
Collection: Barlin Landscape
Pages: 160
ISBN: 978-84-128032-0-4
Format: 14 x 21 cm.
Price: €18
Published in collaboration with the European Observatory on Memories of the University of Barcelona’s Solidarity Foundation
Significance of the work
Weaving the past analyzes why memory policies, as we understand them and how they function today, do not necessarily build more democratic and peaceful societies. In recent decades, the leitmotiv “the ones who forget their history are condemned to repeat it” has guided these policies based on memory and evocation of the past without taking into account, according to the authors, the many other fields of reference in which these policies operate.
In the current context, despite this “unprecedented memorial obsession”, conflicts continue to occur in different Western countries, and certain political and ideological tensions still coexist at the center of the debate regarding memory. Is it true that in order not to repeat the violent past, it is enough to remember what happened?
The reason for this book relies on the need to redefine memory policies so that they can become more effective. In this sense, the authors analyze all the factors that influence the social and political context when transmitting democratic values, discussing the processes of social memory. In addition, their analysis highlight also the individual learning and how the work of social units such as families, schools, museums, etc., are aimed at making these policies effective so that they have an authentic, tangible impact.
Curiosities
- Weaving the past, by sociologists Sarah Gensburger and Sandrine Lefranc, is a critical essay, with fresh and revolutionary ideas in their field, which takes stock of the expected social results of memory policies.
- Jordi Guixé, prologue of this title, is a historian and director of the EUROM of the Fundació Solidaritat of the UB, a very important international observatory for research into memory.
- The authors, based on the evidence, come to the conclusion that memory policies are being carried out ineffectively, since they do not necessarily seem to build more peaceful or just societies.
- This essay questions the dogma that “you have to remember to never repeat it again” and questions if it is enough to know the past to avoid repetition.
- In this sense, Gensburger and Lefranc reflect on all the social and political variables that intervene while memory policies are operating, variables that, in turn, are intertwined with the habitus of the individual himself. Among the many contexts where memory policies are applied, memorial museums are one of the main sources of transmission of the violent past, although schools, truth commissions and memory trials also stand out.
- Curious fact to reflect on: the Caen Memorial Museum, in Normandy, although is the first—and only—memorial among the fifty most visited museums in France, has less than 400,000 visitors per year. Or what is the same: barely 5% of the tickets sold annually by the Louvre.
- Another fact: the authors point out that visitors to places of memory and extreme violence, such as Auschwitz, do not go there trying to know more about the past or wanting to satisfy a macabre desire. Rather, these visitors frequent these places to affirm their adherence to the universal values of humanity, so these places do not convince, but reaffirm.
- The essay brings us closer to concrete examples that reveal how the reality of memory policies is crossed by multiple factors, which beyond being a handicap, reveal the bases for rethinking its direction in the future.
Synopsis
For a few decades now, our societies have been plagued by an unprecedented memorial obsession. The need to remember traumatic pasts has thus been imposed, almost without us realizing it, as a moral obligation that, supposedly, will lead us to avoid future confrontations and tears. The mantra “the ones who forget their history are condemned to repeat it” perfectly summarizes this idea, already forming part of the common sense of the time. In Weaving the Past, political scientists Sandrine Lefranc and Sarah Gensburger fundamentally question this widespread conception.
This incessant bubbling of the past into our present has led to the emergence of an entire memory industry whose efforts, in the authors’ opinion, are directed inefficiently. And, as they argue, the deployment of all these memorial actions does not necessarily contribute to enlightening more peaceful or tolerant societies. Its analysis, therefore, does not start from the preconceived idea that it is necessary to remember to never repeat past mistakes, but rather focuses on the way in which, according to the social sciences, individuals operate in our fields of reference. How can memory policies be truly effective?
In this way, this brilliant study dynamites a common place as a starting point, to then establish a new promontory from which to rethink the way in which we should remember – or not – collectively, in order to build more just societies.
About the authors
Sarah Gensburger is a French sociologist. She has a doctorate in Sociology, she works as a Political Science researcher at the CNRS at the University of Nanterre, west of Paris. She has published several books and articles in different languages where she explores the social processes of memory and how memory policies are constructed in the public sphere, especially those related to the Holocaust, an issue on which she has curated several exhibitions.
Sandrine Lefranc is a French political scientist. She is research director, political scientist at the CNRS, she teaches at Sciences Po Paris and at the University of Paris I-Panthéon Sorbonne. As a researcher, she has focused her academic work on different forms of justice—transitional, criminal, restorative—as well as peace and memory policies. She is also a member of the editorial boards of Raisons politiques and Revue française de science politique. Since 2022 she has been part of the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics.
About the publishing house
Barlin Libros is an independent non-fiction publisher founded in 2017 in the city of Valencia, Spain.
To capture all the nuances of our present reality, it is necessary to dive into it not only from the now, but also to investigate beneath the layers and intricacies of a past that suggests, warns and affects us.
Analyzing the interaction between what was, is and will be is the leitmotiv of our project. Thus, we understand the reality that surrounds us as “a whole”, so within the label “non-fiction” we cover diverse genres, ranging from history to journalism, including illustrated books on social themes, biography or literary studies.
If there is a word that we like to define ourselves, it is “mainstreaming.” This universalist vocation makes our books dialogue in a heterodox and multidisciplinary catalogue, in which our ultimate objective is the understanding of human nature and its multifaceted and diverse condition.
Download the Spanish version (PDF)