Seminário: Sites, Mobility, and the Making of Modern Memory
12 de Fevereiro de 2008

Sites, Mobility, and the Making of Modern Memory
Seminário
Data: 12 de Fevereiro de 2008
Local: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa

In pioneering work on collective memory, Maurice Halbwachs argued that collective remembrance has a topographical dimension, in that it tends to be associated with specific locations (literally: sites) that can be visited in the here and now, and that provide points of stability in which changing social configurations are measured. However, modern remembrance is as much associated with mobility as it is with specific places since people move increasingly around as tourists and as migrants. This has profoundly affected the relationship between location and memory: tourists go to memory sites, while memory sites are recalled at a distance by those who have relocated (by choice or by necessity) elsewhere. In my paper I shall revise Halbwachs's model and explore some of the relations between 'stable' sites and modern forms of remembrance and consider the way in which remembrance is a spatial practice.