other kinds of echoes and ricochets. Thus, to stick memory has been enabling for many people around
with that one prominent example: the rise of a global the globe. I’ve seen it taken up by scholars working
Holocaust memory has led to more memory of other on every continent in relation to numerous histories
traumatic histories, not less. that I know nothing about! Translations of the
I still stand by the fundamental argument of
book continue to appear—after recent translations
the book, but I also have seen the need to add some into Polish and French, a German edition is in the
nuance and to stress other factors as well. Among works. Even if there is also plenty of criticism, as
those other factors are the question of power: there should always be, I think I’ve helped move the
memories are surely shaped by relations of power debate beyond the deadlock of the zero-sum logic of
that are asymmetrical and contoured by political and competition.
economic factors, among other things. I have found
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s recent book Nothing Ever Dies,
on the memory of the war in Vietnam, helpful in this
regard: he talks about the asymmetrical resources
and impacts of different national “industries of
memory” that project their visions of the past
at different scales. In the context of the various
memory exchanges that interest me, the different
memories at play are not equal: some obviously have
2. This new issue of Observing Memories has
focused on the “tourism of memory”. Currently
we see how tourism is affecting different areas
of our daily life (from renting a flat to using
public transport). How do you think tourism
affects places of memory or ways of thinking
about the past?
more prominence than others. At the same time,
what interested me in Multidirectional Memory was I’m not a scholar of tourism, but of course you are
precisely how marginalized groups—marginalized right to focus on the relation of tourism to memory
because of political ideology, race, minority status, because it is a significant, global phenomenon.
and so on—were able to create counter-memories From my non-expert perspective, I would judge it
that challenged hegemonic memory regimes. I an ambivalent issue. First of all, there is no doubt
suggested that memory’s multidirectionality is a that the promotion of tourism is an important factor
resource that less powerful memory agents can in the commodification and reification of memory,
self-consciously deploy: mobilizing, for instance, as Enzo Traverso pointed out in an earlier issue
memories of the Holocaust to challenge colonial or of Observing Memories. Museums, memorials, and
racist memories. other memory sites have become well integrated
I’ve also tried to add nuance to the notion of
into tourist itineraries and are clearly part of the
multidirectionality by distinguishing different forms way that cities in particular market themselves. One
from each other. Although I see multidirectionality should certainly be skeptical about the depth of the
as a structural (i.e. unavoidable) feature of collective historical memory that is accessed in packaged tours
memory, not all multidirectional memory is the and quick visits to famous sites of memory. At the
same. In my essay “From Gaza to Warsaw,” which same time, such tourism is in no way new—think of
is also included in my new book The Implicated religious pilgrimages or, in a more secular vein, the
Subject, I “map” memories by placing them on a visits of school children to national capitals, such
grid defined by an axis of comparison that runs as Washington, D.C. In addition, I would not want
between equation and differentiation and an axis of to discount entirely the sparks of effective memory
political affect that runs between competition and work that might be produced by an otherwise banal
solidarity. Situating memories on this map allows us tourist visit. Who can say what seeds are planted
to think with greater subtlety about the ethics and for future reflection and action in children who are
politics of public remembrance. dragged to museums or in adults confronted with a
My sense is that the concept of multidirectional
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Observing Memories
ISSUE 3
Holocaust countermonument? If tourism is surely