Silence, Memory and Migration
Silence, Memory and Migration
复制标题
沉默、记忆与迁移
DOI：
10.3138/jcfs.44.6.715
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发表时间：
2013
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Irene Levin
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Irene Levin
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INTRODUCTIONWhen moving from one country to another, one is faced with a situation where at least two social realities are included. One is related to the country emigrating from; the other is connected to the new beginning in the country moving to. Often they would experience to look forward with hope and backward with fear (Sluzki, 1979: 379). Regardless of the feelings in the personal experience, one can say that there are two social realities that might not easily be connected. Between these two, there is a link and that is memory. Within memory there are things one wants to remember and other parts that one does not want to remember or take to the new country. These then become part of silencing processes. Sometimes in order to understand or connect between the two social realities, the concept of silence will help in order to make it one narrative. For the emigrating person silence within memory is relevant in the moving process. Silence is part of meaning making either for the migrant as an explicit or implicit part of the processes or for the outsider in order to understand the behavior of the migrant.This article is about how memory and silence relate to migration processes. Every country consists of a set of contexts and in the migration processes, the migrant is faced with the challenge of integrating those of the host society as well as the home society. I will start with the silence processes related to the individual well aware that the personal dimension of transmission of meaning, interpretations and affective relations are related to powerful cultural representations. Judith Butler sees subjectivity as embedded in the core of 'passionate attachments' (1997). The silencing processes of the person or the family are linked to silencing processes in the public sphere as well as formation and negotiations of memories (Seeberg, Levin & Lenz, 2013:2). This article starts by focusing on silence at the micro level well aware that the individual lives in a society approving or rejecting behavior or meaning. Later, the article will extend what can be learned from silencing at micro level to a macro perspective.SILENCE AS PART OF BAGGAGE OR THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM?All migrants bring all sorts of baggage with them to their new countries. Their baggage consists of items or things that can be useful in the new country. These "items" can be material things such as tools, but they can also consist of memories of experiences from their earlier lives However, the migration process consists also of matters connected to how to organize these memories-especially involving what to bring and what to leave behind. Sometimes these are expressed in rituals and other symbolic acts, routines and language. The materialization can also be through a thing symbolizing relationships such as a family photograph or a farewell gift, or it can be non-material in the form of memories representing past experiences. Yet, when it comes to which memories are to be included in the ideational baggage of the migrant, choices are also made about which memories are to be left behind. As Carlos Sluzki (1979) writing about migrating families has warned, there are often temptations to deal 'surgically' with ties and memories of the old society by removing or otherwise silencing them.In the newly published Holocaust as Active Memory drawn from the Committee on Family Research conference on "Families and Memories" in 2009, the editors metaphorically calls this silence "an elephant in the room." This metaphor, inspired by Eviator Zerubal's book of the same name (2006), is used to describe any object or matter of which everyone is definitely aware, yet no one is willing to publically acknowledge. When trying to describe silence in the migration processes, one often talks about something unlike the elephant as it has no shape. But similar to the elephant, the silencing processes are omnipresent. Sometimes they are communicated through small fragments, remarks or even jokes. …