Nikro, Norman Saadi;
Hegasy, Sonja (Eds.)
PALGRAVE, 2017
T
he Social Life of Memory: Violence, Trauma, and Testimony in Lebanon and
Morocco, edited by Norman Saadi Nikro and Sonja Hegasy, is part of the larger
Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict Series, which focuses on themes
such as heritage and memory of war and conflict, contested heritage, and competing
memories. Contributors to the book include Joey Ayoub, Pamela Chrabieh, Brahim El
Guabli, Ali Hamdan, Norah Karrouche, and Laura Menin. While the book focuses on the
specific contexts of Lebanon and Morocco, in this short review I would like to reflect on
some broader memory and heritage issues addressed in the book, while still keeping the
particular contexts to which they refer and in which they were addressed in mind.
One of the main thematic parameters of the book concerns the interaction between, and
“transformation of private memories into publicly shared memories, according to efforts
claiming public acknowledgment and public redress” (2-3). Memory, in the process of this
exchange, according to the authors of the book, “is acted on as a transformational site, a
milieu, whereby social and political engagement takes place, situating memory as a public
event” (3). The book points to an interaction and tension between Nora’s famous concept of
memory as lieu, as a memorial or other form of formal commemoration, and memory as a
milieu. By addressing memory as milieu the book enables a focus on overlooked processes
of memory that otherwise might not be classified as such. An example of this is given in
Laura Menin’s chapter, in which she focuses on the process of waiting experienced by the
families of victims of political violence that disappeared during the Years of Lead. Instead
of viewing waiting as a purely passive process, she instead views it as a “multifaceted
temporality that entails both passivity and proactive engagement” (27). Menin describes
how waiting in this context is perceived as an additional state-imposed source of pain,
trauma, and loss of agency, but simultaneously brings with it novel political subjectivities
Palgrave, 2017
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