and specific modes of activism where personal memories of violence
are re-socialized, made public, and act towards specific political and
transformative goals (27).
Chapters such as Ali Nehme Hamdan’s, which focuses on the Hariri
mosque in Martyrs Square Beirut as a site of memory, highlight the
usefulness of the concept milieu for engaging with the everyday
“messy stuff of contention” (146). It further allows for a focus on the
simultaneously conflicting and collective cultures of memory, without
“assuming the centrality of the nation-state to their production”
(146), which is necessary in a context such as Lebanon, but also more
generally enables a focus that highlights the multiple actors and the
ways in which they engage, negotiate, and create sites and spaces
of memory. It allows for an engagement with the “many cultures of
memory that coexist at any one time” (147), and not just at the level of
the nation state. Pamela Chrabieh’s chapter, focusing on the war stories
of university students in Lebanon belonging to the 1990’s generation,
adds a generational component to these cultures of memory, and
problematizes Hirsch’s notion of post-memory, stating that “many
memories that were transmitted not only constitute the memories or
are part of the ressouvenir processes of the new generations in their
own right, but also intermingle with other memories to the point of not
having clear boundaries” (189). Chrabieh employs Rothberg’s concept
of multidirectional memory, to enable a generational conception of a
malleable discursive space in which groups, their memories, and their
positions come into being through dialogical interaction. Similarly,
Norah Karrouche’s chapter, detailing how local memories of war
and violence in the Northern Riff region of Morocco have shaped
the agencies and identities of several generations of Berber activists
in both Morocco and its diaspora, shows how newer generations of
activists can attempt to inscribe themselves into and simultaneously
construct larger mythological and symbolic histories of activism. Like
Charbieh, Karrouche shows how multiple episodes of violence interact.
Karrouche further discusses how these histories of activism can act
as mythomoteurs, grand narratives about the specificity of a place in
historical and (trans)-national narratives (232-233).
In combination the two chapters however also highlight the large
contextual differences in the generational transmission of memories.
The interaction and the contradictions between the different chapters
is one of the book’s largest strengths. Instead of taking away from the
individual arguments, these contradictions work to show the many
nuances and contradictions attached to institutions, spaces, and milieus
of memory, when approached from different levels of analysis and with
different focus points.
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Observing Memories
ISSUE 2