Democratic Memory

The past is topical. Compulsive museumisation, retro modes, historical series and films and a growing ethical approach to the atrocities of the past would testify to this. Why, however? Memory studies have been making critical analyses of this memorial-safeguarding phenomenon which emerged during the last third of the 20th century. Despite their impact on the academic world, this interdisciplinary field’s conceptual proposals have not penetrated the context of Spanish society. The Memorias en Red [Network Memories] association is proposing a course for pooling and debating the basic issues and theories of memory studies. This course is aimed at anyone interested in researching the mechanisms and trends of current memory-safeguarding cultures, and their main features are interdisciplinarity and transnational approaches.

Studies on what?

03/10/2017, 7 pm – 9 pm

This session proposes a general introduction to memory studies and the seminary’s issues. This will present the various “forms” of memory — collective, social, historical, cultural, voluntary and involuntary, active and latent; explore their dynamics and dialectics between memory and oblivion, narratives and silence, traumas and re-elaborations; discuss and debate the differences and connections between history and memory, testimonies and narratives, before the idea of “truth” and set out reflection on the social role of researchers of memories, in tension between yearnings for justice and critical thinking.

MARIA CHIARA BIANCHINI (coord.). A historian and specialist in American Studies, she received her PhD from the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Roma Tre University. She has carried out both pre- and post-doctoral research at the History Institute at the Catholic University of Chile. She researches contemporary memory cultures and policies through monuments and constructed heritage. She is the author of Chile, memorias de la Moneda. La (re)construcción de un símbolo político (Madrid, 2012) and several articles that tackle these issues, above all with regard to cases in Chile, Spain and Italy and from a shared perspective. She has taught as part of several university programmes in these three countries.

Images and words: narratives of memories: between representation and performativity

10/10/2017, 7 pm – 9 pm

Memory is the past accumulated in the present, latent or in movement. Images and words, expressions and gestures that constantly circulate and update social narratives, constitute the various testimonies of the past that make up memory. This session reflects on the role of culture in the memory-safeguarding process, expanding on concepts such as “representation” and “expression”, “narrative” and “account” or “performativity” and “reenactment” through paradigmatic cases in literature, films and popular expressions that enable us to go beyond analysing the images and words that constitute cultural memory.

MARIJE HRISTOVA. A cultural critic and historian, she is a post-doctoral researcher on the European project “Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe” (UNREST) at the Institute of Language, Literature and Anthropology at the CSIC. She is the author of Reimagining Spain: Transnational Entanglements and Remembrance of the Spanish Civil War since 1989 (Maastricht, 2016). Her academic interests include literature, transnational memories, new materialism and forensic discourse in cultural realms. She has taught several courses on issues relating to memory, literature, the 20th century in Europe at several European universities.

LIDIA MATEO LEIVAS. Cultural researcher and manager. She has a Master’s in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture (Queen Sofia Museum) and is currently completing her thesis on clandestine films from the late Franco period and the transition to democracy (UAM-CSIC). Her research analyses the role of images in collective memory processes, the production of historical knowledge, collaborative work and seasonality. She has given talks and seminars at the Autonomous University of Madrid, the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo and the University of New York. She has curated two exhibitions, one entitled “Imatges desorientades” (CSIC) and another “Memoriadero” (Matadero-Madrid) in collaboration with the Memorias en Red association.

Memory policies: critical reflections on the case of Spain

17/10/2017, 7 pm – 9 pm

The 21st century has seen an explosion of measures implemented by public authorities on Spanish territory regarding the treatment and public recognition of the recent past. Analyses of these “memory policies” highlight several problems requiring reflection on the “uses of oblivion” as regards memory of the Civil War, though also in comparison with other more recent memories. Focusing on the case of Spain, this session will expand on memory policies: to what extent can institutions use victims and their past for partisan purposes? When the authorities are only concerned with some victims, do they promote the “forgetting” of others? What is the difference between ETA victims and victims from Spain’s Civil War and the dictatorship under Franco? Can public policies be established from a “truthful” vision of our recent past?

CARLOS AGÜERO IGLESIA. A collaborating lecturer from UNIR (the International University of La Rioja). His professional career includes work as a researcher in the field of political philosophy. He is a graduate in philosophy (UCM), has a Master’s degree in Advance Studies and is currently studying for his doctorate. He has been a memory activist since 2002, with the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, where he has taken part in and coordinated several areas, and is an adviser in Spain on the Spanish Civil War Memory Project, at the University of California San Diego. He has been a hired predoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at the CSIC and the Pluralismo y Convivencia Spanish State foundation. He has had several articles published in magazines and collective books on violence, human rights, memory and Francoism.

Memory practices: places and their visitors

24/10/2017, 7 pm – 9 pm

“Memory places” reflect the will to bring meaning to public spaces through evocations of the past. The memory places’ creation process relates to a political and ideological struggle between groups and individuals forming part of a complex historical process. Furthermore, dialectics, whose understanding requires new heritage categories, are being established between memory places and their visitors. This session will study the creation of memory spaces in Barcelona: focusing on who has taken part in them and how they have developed since the Franco dictatorship, during democracy. Critical analyses will also be performed on the various practices and tourist models developed around these spaces, in dialogue with several national and international examples.

RICARD CONESA. A historian at the University of Barcelona’s European Memories Observatory. He is a graduate in history, has two master’s degrees, one in Historical Culture and Communication and another in Historical Studies, and is completing his doctoral thesis on memory policies in Barcelona’s public spaces, from the Franco dictatorship to democracy. His field of study is social processes around representations of the past in public spaces and the political uses that are made of them. He has worked as an expert in projects and memorial spaces at the Democratic Memorial and has collaborated in several collective publications. He has also taken part in several conferences and seminars.

DAVID GONZÁLEZ. A graduate in history from the University of Barcelona, he has a Master’s degree in Cultural Tourism from the University of Girona and is completing a doctorate at the University of Barcelona in Education in Heritage, the Arts and Cultural Tourism. His speciality and areas of study are memory spaces and their heritage-making processes from a tourism perspective, an issue on which he has made several publications and taken part in several conferences and workshops. As for work, he has been collaborating with the educational service of the Memorial Museum of Exile (MUME) and is a member of a research team at the University of Barcelona’s Education in Heritage.

Registration times: work days, Mondays to Fridays, from 9.30 am to 7 pm, by phoning 932 566 850 or sending an email to reserveselbornccm@eicub.net