What does it mean for a culture to remember? Who and what form the understanding of history and subsequent varying values present in a culture? In the introduction to
Tangled memories: the Vietnam War, the AIDS epidemic, and the politics of remembering, Marita Sturken investigates these questions, as well as analyzing components of memory, such as individual, collective, cultural and national memory. Most importantly, how the American “popular culture” through cultural artifacts (technologies of memory), “…has produced (cultural) memories… and how these film and television images have moved between cultural memory and history.” (Sturken, 3). This concept of the formation of cultural memory is central to its distinction from other forms of memory such as collective and popular memory.
In the opening sentences to the Technologies of Memory portion of the article, Sturken states that, “Cultural memory is produced through objects, images, and representations.”(Sturken, 9). Most of this introduction is aimed at understanding the interactive relationship between mainstream American culture and the creation of memory and history through these tools. I, however, find it very interesting to try to apply these concepts attributed to the formation of my culture of remembering, to a culture which we Americans understand very little about. I believe our ignorance is central to our formation of History in relation to the War on Terror. Sturken writes that, “What we remember is highly selective, and how we retrieve it says as much about desire and denial as it does about remembrance.”(7). That which we “…’strategically’ forget…”(3) is as much a part of our formation of history and cultural memory as it is of those we consider “savage” or “terrorist”. Therefore we are very ignorant to the formation of Islamic societies in the Middle East; their plight, and formation of collective understanding, and social reactions.
More specifically, the collective memory (of radical groups like ISIS) would be considered “popular memory” as characterized by the war torn nation of Syria’s absence of “…access to publishing houses or movie studios.”(Sturken, 3). However Sturken doesn’t describe technologies of memory as televisions or newspapers only, she writes that, “even bodies themselves. These are technologies of memory in that they embody and generate memory and are thus implicated in the power dynamics of memory’s production.”(10). Therefore members of ISIS do form their cultural memory through violence. The narrative of history they describe is of suffering, exploitation and invasion by impure, unfaithful, infidels. The technology of memory they employ is meant to be “…practices that people enact upon themselves.” In Foucault’s view. This, “… embodiment of memory…is an active process with which subjects engage in relation to social institutions and practices.”(10). These are, “technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.”(Foucault qtd. 10). Violence is not only a signal of the history of this country, but equally an indicator of the processes in which collective memory and history are intertwined, always shaping each other.
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Peter Kowalski
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Peter Kowalski
Using the juxtaposition that comic books enable, Satrapi contributes a process of memory to the subject of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Using the juxtaposition that comic books enable, Satrapi contributes a process of memory to the subject of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Using memories of her childhood, she navigates the subject with a developing girl’s perception and opinion on the situation taking place around her. One very important theme being conveyed in “Persepolis” is trauma. Satrapi takes into account our inability to process the harsh actualities of normalized violence. She understands how in Western society the Middle East has become synonymous with violence, and she effectively conveys to the reader that this is not ok through her writing style. One tool she uses to capture our attention as a reader and not desensitize ourselves to the horrific violence we would see in an actual photo and not be able really to process properly, she presents violence from a child’s point of view, even illustrating gruesome occurrences in a child-like cartoon representation. For example, the image of a man cut to pieces is done in a way you might think a young child would conceptualize the image without really grasping it. I think the affect it has is it enables us to connect more to the Islamic revolution among other things by presenting us with a process of memory through a child’s eyes, written by an experienced adult, that takes us back to our childhood understanding to a certain degree. She facilitates this practice by using comic book form, and narrating from her childhood self, both of which helped me to escape my desensitized view of Middle Eastern conflict. This book is very important, especially in this day and age where the normalcy of violence in the Middle East is a huge part of our ignorance as westerners. We rarely consider it as shocking or horrifying when a wedding is hit by a drone strike and hundreds die as we do when another school shooting claims tens of lives in the state.
I think this book also helps us learn about the process of interpretive communities and collective remembering. My approach to this subject as an American would be hugely flawed in comparison to how I really should have understood it, and that I believe to be in part a result of Islamaphobia. The way we have collectively defined the “War on Terror” in the West says a lot about itself. We no longer seem to consider the suffering of those in the Middle East as significant as our own suffering, and we have defined much of this war as Patriotism, when so much of it was senseless suffering and loss of life which so many of us, certainly myself, have been far removed from. Satrapi’s style in conveying this practice of memory very effectively helped me to understand from a less convoluted standpoint what it meant to be Iranian in this time. -
Peter Kowalski
What are the limitations to the term “Global Citizen”?
There is no such thing as a global citizen. It is an oxymoron. So, in what ways are we inept from calling ourselves global citizens? The answer lies in the extent to which you cannot appreciate a different community’s shared experience and landscape of meaning associated with past events or their continuing repercussions.
In each nation and smaller society within, there are many set roles and relationships which contribute to something much greater. Within the organization of each community, the interactions between all groups, whether the most powerful or the least privileged, contribute to a collective memory and consciousness. However, there exists a significant power struggle within each nation between different classes or socio economic backgrounds and their influence.
Recently there was a viral video of a white women who had claimed to have African American ancestors getting ousted by her family and confronted on TV for it. Though this may be a somewhat rare and stupid example, this type of insensitivity towards a group to which you don’t really belong is inappropriate and I fear that in more subtle ways it is a very common flaw in our approach to appreciating other cultures. This woman took away from the struggles of African Americans both in the past, and the lasting impact and recurring racism and classism that impact members of this community today, by falsely including herself in that shared experience. I find this very relative to the idea of global citizenship. How can I claim to be a global citizen or even hope to be one without inevitably treating other cultures in an unconcerned regard. Therefore I believe global citizen to be an essentially contested term. Part of the definition of a global citizenship should be as much self awareness as possible in regards to trying to contribute to a society other than our own.
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