inds 502c historical memory and social...

SOWK 570k Historical Memory and Social Reconstruction The University of British Columbia

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Year/Term Winter 2014

Course Title SOWK570K/INDS 502c - Historical Memory and Social Historical Memory and Social

Reconstruction Reconstruction

Course Schedule Thursdays 2:00 – 5:00 pm

Course Location Room 324 Jack Bell Building

Instructor Office Location Office Phone e-mail address

Pilar Riaño-Alcalá Room 333

Room 210 (Liu Institute for Global Issues)

604-827-5493

604-822 5260

[email protected]

Office hours by appointment

“The question is, whose perception and whose needs? Who gets to decide what happened yesterday, then to tell the tale?

Erna Paris, “Long Shadows. Truth, Lies and History.”

In the aftermath of state repression, war, displacement or disaster, how do people reconstruct their social worlds? What are the ways in which memory is mobilized by various social groups to confront oppression and the serious violations of their human rights? In what ways and by what expressive practices and social tensions individuals, communities and societies make sense of their memories of the past and engage in actions towards change?

Through critical reading, presentations, activities, guest speakers and debates, we will examine these questions focusing on the relationship between memory and social reconstruction. Students will explore the complex tensions, agents and social disputes on memory in societies undergoing crisis, recovering from disaster, in transitional periods or in communities seeking to come to terms with systemic state abuse, repression and the breakdown of their social worlds.

Social reconstruction can take many forms including international led programmatic interventions, national relief or reconciliation efforts, organized social resistance, local level initiatives and micro practices of social repair. In this seminar, we will pay particular attention to local level and survivors processes and actions towards social reconstruction. We will approach memory as cultural practice, as a complex and expressive social field shaped by power relations and in which various social agents struggle for recognition in unequal fields of power. Memory, therefore, will be understood as a field in tension, where gender, race or class inequalities and social exclusions are constructed, reinforced or challenged and transformed. For this end, the seminar is organized around key debates and significant themes in examining the relationships between memory[ies] and social reconstruction. Several of the session will include a practical (applied) component/perspective.

Readings for this seminar come from various fields and disciplines (anthropology, oral history, cultural studies, transitional justice, memory studies) and genres (mostly academic articles but also comic book journalism; plays, nonfiction literature, movies and importantly storytelling


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and personal testimonies) and cover several case studies on mass violence, state repression, colonialism and disaster from Canada, Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Format: The seminar will consist of lectures, guest lectures/presentations, in class discussions and debates, movie reviews and in class and out of class activities.

ASSIGNMENTS

Note: Reading is critical for the seminar discussion to work and for a meaningful and engaged learning process. Participants in the seminar are required to read the assigned materials each week and come prepared to engage in class exchange of ideas and discussion. As there are several readings listed for each week, select at least two readings for critical review each week. One or two students will be responsible to facilitate the discussion of the topic each week but all the students must circulate questions or comments on the reading previous to class.

Class participation 15%

Class participation is absolutely critical for this seminar to become a place of meaningful learning. Your participation grade will consider the quality of your contribution and engagement with the class material, with your peers and the class discussions while acknowledging that there is a variety of styles and ways to engage. You will demonstrate engagement through: a) the questions / comments you post in the class blog every week or that alternatively you bring to the class and leave a copy with me; b) attendance and participation in class. Class facilitation 25%

You will select one week to facilitate the class discussion. For this purpose, you will prepare an introductory presentation based on the readings. The aim is to locate the topic of discussion and to get the discussion started. Your presentation should: a) briefly summarize main ideas from readings and questions or areas for critical enquiry; b) include an activity/process to discuss some of the key questions/comments from the readings (based on your own questions but also opening room to discuss other students’ questions. Creativity in facilitation style and resourcefulness in topic introduction and participation are encouraged. Class facilitation will be evaluated based on: clarity of ideas presented and linkage to the course material/discussions; thoughtfulness and coherence in the design of activity/process of engagement. Your presentation and introduction of activity should not last more that 20 minutes. Debate “A necessary trilogy? Truth, justice and reconciliation” 30%

(Handout to be circulated)

For the debate, students will work in groups preparing and conducting the debate. Two external experts/judges will be invited to evaluate the debate, provide feedback and share their own thoughts on the topic.


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Final paper / project 30%

Essay or project on a topic/issue of interest. Creative formats are encouraged and accepted (webpage, performance, video, display, poster, radio program,). Please submit a two-page proposal that includes topic, rationale and expressive form to be used (if it’s not a written essay) by February 27th.

COURSE SCHEDULE

January 9 Introduction: The art and performance of memory. Mapping the field

How can we explain the apparent high value ascribed to memory in recent years? How individuals and societies remember? For what to remember? How individuals and societies forget? For what?

*Connerton, Paul. 1989 How Societies Remember. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-40; 72-104.

Jelin, Elizabeth. 2003. State Repression and the Labours of Memory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. Introduction; 1-45 (Recommended: 76-88). eBook UBC Library

*Lambek, Michael. 1996. The Past Imperfect. Remembering as Moral Practice. In Antze, P. and M. Lambek, Eds., Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Memory and Trauma, 235-255. New York: Routledge.

January 16 Memory and Social Reconstruction

What is memory? Who does memory belong to? What is history? Who owns history? How is memory a sedimentation of macro social processes such as colonialism? What is the aim of social reconstruction? How does memory “do” social reconstruction?

Portelli, Alessandro. 2003. The Order has been Carried Out. History, Memory and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 1-20; 203-276. eBook UBC Library

*Sacco, Joe. 2009. Footnotes in Gaza. New York: Metropolitan Books. Henry Holt and Company, pp. 3-29

Theidon, Kimberly. 2012. Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, Preface and Introduction ix-24; Chapter 3 “Being Human” 54-66. eBook UBC Library

Shaw, Rosalind. 2002. Memories of the Slave Trade. Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Introduction 1-24.

Recommended:

La teta asustada / Milk of Sorrow [movie]. Directed by Claudia Llosa. UBC library.


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Berliner, D. 2005. Social Thought & Commentary: The Abuses of Memory: Reflections on the Memory Boom in Anthropology. Anthropological Quarterly, 78(1), 197-211.

Nora, Pierre. 1989. Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire Representations, No. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, Spring: 7-24

Simon, R. I. (2006). The pedagogical insistence of public memory. In P. Seixas (Ed.), Theorizing historical consciousness (pp. 183-201). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. eBook UBC Library

Chinnery, A. (2011). “What good does all this remembering do, anyway?” On historical consciousness and the responsibility of memory. In G. Biesta (Ed.), Philosophy of Education 2010 (397-405). Urbana-Champaign, IL: Philosophy of Education Society.

January 23 Sense of place, emplaced memories and displacement

What is the relationship between memory, place and identity? How are the relationships between people and places disrupted by displacement, atrocity or disaster?

Basso, Keith H. 1997. Wisdom Sits in Places. Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Cruikshank, Julie. 2005. Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters and Social Imagination. Vancouver: UBC Press, pp. 3-126. eBook UBC Library

Morrison, Toni. 2008. The Site of Memory. In G. Denard, ed. Toni Morrison. What Moves at the Margin, 65-80, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Recommended:

Riaño-Alcalá, Pilar. 2006. Dwellers of Memory. Youth and Violence in Medellín, Colombia. New York: Transaction Publishers. Rutgers; pp. Xvii-lvi and 65-95.

January 30 Time, history and nostalgia for the light

Movie: Nostalgia for the light

Gandsman, Ari. 2012. Retributive Justice, Public Intimacies and the Micropolitics of the Restitution of Kidnapped Children of the Disappeared in Argentina. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 6(3): 423-443

Sanford, Victoria. 2004. Buried Secrets. Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. Gordonsville: Palgrave MacMillan. Introduction, Chapters 7 “From Survivor Testimonies to the Discourse of Power” and 9 “Excavations of the Heart. Healing Fragmented Communities.” eBook UBC Library

Igreja, Victor. 2012. Multiple Temporalities in Indigenous Justice and Healing Practices in Mozambique. International Journal of Transitional Justice 6(3): 404-422

Recommended:

Schindel, Estela. 2012. ‘Now the Neighbors Lose Their Fear’: Restoring the Social Network around Former Sites of Terror in Argentina. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 6(3): 467-485


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Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Memory, History, Forgetting (K. Blamey & D. Pellauer, Trans.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Chapter 2. History and Time, pp. 343-401 eBook UBC Library

Stern, Steve. (2004). Remembering Pinochet's Chile. On the Eve of London 1998. Durham: Duke University Press. Introduction xxi- 34; Chapter 4 “From Loose Memory to Emblematic Memory” eBook UBC Library

February 6 Witnessing, Testimony and the Archive

How does one ‘care’ for the past? How to document? What is the archive and where does it “lives”?

Das, V. 2003. Trauma and Testimony. Implications for Political Community. Anthropological Theory 3:293-307

Hirsch, M., & Spitzer, L. 2009. The witness in the archive: Holocaust Studies/ Memory Studies. Memory Studies, 2(2), 151-170.

Kidron, Carole. 2009. Toward an Ethnography of Silence. The Lived Presence of the Past in the Everyday Life of Holocaust Trauma Survivors and Their Descendants in Israel. Current Anthropology. Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 5-27 Riaño-Alcalá, P. and Baines, E. 2011. The Archive in the Witness: Documentation in Settings of Chronic Insecurity. International Journal of Transitional Justice. Volume 5, Issue 3, pp. 412 - 433

Recommended:

Gourevitch, P. (2001). Among the Dead. In M. Roth & C. Salas (Eds.), Disturbing Remains. Memory, History and Crisis in the Twientieth Century (pp. 63-76). Hamburg: The Getty Research Institute.

Riaño, Pilar. 2013. Emplaced Witnessing: Political Imaginations and Commemoration among the Wayuu of Bahia Portete. Memory Studies. Forthcoming

Stoler, Ann. 2009. Along the archival grain: epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press. Recommended: Chapter 1 and 2

February 13 Occupied by memory: generational and embodied works of memory

Guest speaker: Wendy Mendez, HIJOS Guatemala

*Argenti, Nicolas and K. Schramm. 2010. Remembering Violence: Anthropological Perspectives on Intergenerational Transmission. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 1-42. Recommended: 251-260. On reserve at UBC library

Collins, John. 2004. Occupied by Memory. The Intifada Generation and the Palestinian State of Emergency. New York New York University Press. Pp. 1-74 eBook UBC Library

Taylor, Diana 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire. Chapter 6: "You Are Here": H.I.J.O.S and the DNA of Performance. Durham: Duke University Press. eBook UBC Library

Recommended:


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Foxen, P. (2000). Cacophony of Voices: A K'iche' Mayan Narrative of Remembrance and Forgetting. Transcultural Psychiatry, 37(3), 355-381.

Sosa, Cecilia. On Mothers and Spiders: A face-to-face encounter with Argentina's mourning. Memory Studies, 4(1), 63-72.

February 20 Mid term break

February 27th The skin of memory: Gendered memories and social suffering

Guest speaker: Chris Dolan, Refugee Law Project, Uganda

Documentary: They Slept with Me. Refugee Law Project, Uganda

*Dolan, Chris. Collapsing Masculinities and Weak States - a case study of northern Uganda. In Cleaver F. Ed., Masculinity Matters: Men, Masculinities and Gender Relations in Development, Zed Books, London, 2003

*Kleinman, A. a. K., Joan. (1994). How Bodies Remember: Social Memory and Bodily Experience of Criticism, Resistance, and Delegitimation following China's Cultural Revolution. New Literary History, Vol. 25 - 25th Anniversary Issue (Part 1)(No. 3), 707-723.

Leydesdorff, Selma. 2011. Surviving the Bosnian Genocide. The Women of Sebrenica Speak. Bloomington: Indiana Press, Preface, Chapter 6 “Violence” 140-177. eBook UBC Library

March 6th Memory soundscapes: Voicing memory, performing biography

Guest: Dara Culhane, SFU

Cavarero, Adriana. 2005 "Introduction", in For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 1-17.

Ward, Margaret. 1997. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington: A Life, Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, pp.1-26;

Cruikshank, Julie. 1998. The Social Life of Stories. Narrative and knowledge in the Yukon Territory. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Introduction.

Recommended:

Cruise O'Brien, Conor. 1973. States of Ireland, London: Vintage. pp. 48-84.

March 13th Social repair and the everyday: the textures of resistance

How do local concepts and practices of justice and repair facilitate a micro politics of reconciliation?

Guest speaker: Erin Baines [include a fragment from her book on the political / everyday lives of women abducted into the LRA]

Baines, Erin. 2010. Spirits and social reconstruction after mass violence: Rethinking transitional justice. African Affairs, 109(436), 409-430.


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Igreja, Victor. 2003. 'Why Are There So Many Drums Playing until Dawn?' Exploring the Role of Gamba Spirits and Healers in the Post-War Recovery Period in Gorongosa, Central Mozambique. Transcultural Psychiatry, 40(4), 460-487.

Fletcher, L. E., & Weinstein, H. M. (2002). Violence and Social Repair: Rethinking the Contribution of Justice to Reconciliation. Human Rights Quarterly, 24(3), 573-639.

Thomson, Susan. 2011. Whispering Truth to Power. The Everyday Resistance of Rwandan Peasants to Post-Genocide Reconciliation. African Affairs, Volume 110, Issue 440, pp. 439 – 456

Recommended:

Hoskins, Janet. 1998. From Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People's Lives, New York: Routledge, ‘Domesticating Animals and Wives: Women's Fables of Protest,’ pp. 59-82.

March 20th A necessary trilogy? Truth, justice and reconciliation.

The great debate: Does reconciliation betray truth?

What are the ethical implications of this era of remembrance and apology? What role “truth” plays? What constitutes “justice”? From whose perspective? Is there justice? What are the ethical implications of this era of remembrance and apology?

Adichia, Chimamanda. 2009. The danger of a single story [talk]. In http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

Okot Bitek, Juliane. 2012. A Chronology of Compassion, or Towards an Imperfect Future. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 6(3): 394-403

_________________. 2013. I am not reconciled. unpublished

Tzevan, Todorov. (2001). The Uses and Abuses of Memory. In H. Marchitello (Ed.), What Happens to History. The Renewal of Ethics in Contemporary Thought. New York: Routledge, pp. 11-22

Corntassel, Jeff and Chaw-win-is T’lakwadzi. (2009) Indigenous Storytelling, Truth-telling, and Community Approaches to Reconciliation. English Studies in Canada, Volume 35, Issue 1, March 2009, pp. 137-159

Mathur, A., Dewar, J. And M. DeGagné, Eds., Cultivating Canada. Reconciliation through the Lens of Cultural Diversity. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation. eBook UBC Library

March 27th Memory traces: A walkabout


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Details on the walkabout will be shared by the end of January

April 3rd Politics of reconstruction: Neighbours, intimate enemies and citizens

What is the weight that claims and emotions about the past hold in the transformation of neighbors, relatives and fellows into adversaries? Whose memory counts? Whose memories should be included?

Dorfman, Ariel. 1994. Death and the maiden. A Play in Three Acts. London : Nick Hern Books. [Movie: Death and the Maiden. Roman Polanski]

Halilovich, H. 2011. Beyond the sadness: Memories and homecomings among survivors of an ethnic cleansing in a Bosnian village. Memory Studies, 4(1), 42-52.

Loveman, B., & Lira, Elizabeth. 2007. Truth, Justice, Reconciliation, and Impunity as Historical Themes: Chile, 1814-2006. Radical History Review, 2007(97), 43-76.

*Theidon, Kimberly. 2012. Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, Chapter 7, 8, and 9 185-320 Shaw, Rosalind. 2007. Displacing Violence. Making Pentecostal Memory in Postwar Sierra Leone. Cultural Anthropology, 22(1), 66-93.

Recommended:

del Pino, Ponciano. 2003. "Uchuraccay: Memoria y representación de la violencia en los Andes," In del Pino and E. Jelin, eds. Luchas locales, comunidades e identidades [Local struggles, communities and identities]. Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores, pp. 11-62.

Eastmond, Marita and Johanna, Mannergren Selimovic. 2012. Silence as Possibility in Postwar Everyday Life. IJTJ (2012) 6(3): 502-524

Payne, L. (2008). Unsettling Accounts. Neither Truth nor Reconciliation in Confessions of State Violence. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 1-74 eBook UBC Library

Course Policies: In May 2013, The School Council of the School of Social Work approved the Equity Action Plan. The plan seeks to work towards the realization of an equitable learning and working environment and


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creating open accountability measures for monitoring the implementation of this action plan. A key element in attaining this goal is to ensure that instructors and students are committed to maintain a classroom environment that is free of any form of discrimination and that welcomes and respects different worldviews, ways of knowing and social locations. As an instructor, I am committed to a vision of working towards and equitable learning environment, free of discrimination and any form of violence.

The calendar says: Regular attendance is expected of students in all their classes (including lectures, laboratories, tutorials, seminars, etc.). Students who miss more than three (3) classes during a semester may either be expected to complete an additional assignment, to be developed in consultation with the instructor, in order to fulfil the requirements of the course, or be asked to withdraw from the course. Students who neglect their academic work and assignments may be excluded from the final examinations. Students who are unavoidably absent because of illness or disability should report to their instructors on return to classes. Attendance: Students are expected to attend all classes and to prepare for class by studying the required readings. In addition, all students are expected to participate in class discussions and to present their own study for feedback. The University accommodates students with disabilities who have registered with the Disability Resource Centre. The University accommodates students whose religious obligations conflict with attendance, submitting assignments, or completing scheduled tests and examinations. Please let your instructor know in advance, preferably in the first week of class, if you will require any accommodation on these grounds. Students who plan to be absent for varsity athletics, family obligations, or other similar commitments, cannot assume they will be accommodated, and should discuss their commitments with the instructor before the drop date. Late assignments: Grades may be reduced by 2 points for each day late unless an emergency outside the control of the student prevents meeting deadline. A medical certificate must be presented. Academic dishonesty: Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. Please read the UBC Calendar “Academic Regulations” for the University’s policies on cheating, plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty. For useful information to avoid plagiarism, visit www.arts.ubc.ca

inds 502c historical memory and social...

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