Pierre Nora | Picture: LPLT [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL
The internationalization
of memory-driven
causes goes hand in hand
with an increase in the
number of institutional
arrangements for
bringing about
reconciliation and
rapprochement, and at
a more general level,
with the development
of a grammar of norms
and rules for managing
post-conflict situations.
Arrangements and
grammar cannot
be dissociated from
normative memory-
driven issues and policies.
38
Observing Memories
ISSUE 2
The internationalization of memory-driven causes
goes hand in hand with an increase in the number
of institutional arrangements for bringing about
reconciliation and rapprochement, and at a more
general level, with the development of a grammar
of norms and rules for managing post-conflict
situations. Arrangements and grammar cannot be
dissociated from normative memory-driven issues
and policies. Their number, and the variety of
situations they treat and solutions they propose are
well known: for example, how to exit armed conflicts
(former Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland), authoritarian
and/or segregationist regimes (South Africa, Central
America, southern Europe, central and Eastern
Europe), or inherited bilateral conflicts (England/
Ireland, Germany/Czech Republic, Germany/Poland,
Poland/Ukraine, Italy/Slovenia, Greece/Turkey
and others). A heterogeneous set of arrangements
have been developed to handle these “painful
pasts”. They range from Truth and Reconciliation
Commissions, bilateral historian commissions,
Institutes of Memory in post-communist countries,
to professional peacekeeping activities and
include specific museographic arrangements and
interventions in international institutional arenas
such as the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the EU.
This institutional density is sometimes interpreted
as proof that history and its memory-driven
mediations have been dropped in favour of legal