Transformative Memories In Political Violence: An International Network

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In the wake of political violence, how and what do people remember, and how do they assign responsibility? Over the past thirty years, transitional justice (TJ) models have dominated responses to periods of political violence. While such approaches are laudatory, they often conceive of memory and violence in static ways, as if reconstructing events to retrieve truth or facts from the past can set the record straight and promote unified healing. These top-down efforts often fail to heal social wounds as they do not transform systems of oppression, dispossession, and exclusion. Thus highlighting as the 'International Year of Peace and Trust'( IYPT) does, "peace not only is the absence of conflict". We, therefore, need to critically interrogate the use of memory and responsibility for political violence, recognising that without this we undermine sustainable peace at the heart of the IYPT. The IYPT notes the importance of a "dynamic participatory process" to foster understanding and build sustainable peace. Our research inquiry responds to these critiques and the call for participation by actively engaging in generative forms of memory work through our Transformative Memory Network. Established in 2019 following nearly a decade of informal exchange and research collaboration between partners, the Transformative Memory International Network is a collective of scholars, artists, social movement leaders, community-based organisations and policymakers, engaged with the question of what makes memory transformative. Network members are from Colombia, Uganda, Indonesia, Canada and Northern Ireland. Our lines of inquiry and methodology build on knowledge exchange amongst Network members and partners around key questions: How do we remember responsibility for mass and state-sponsored violence? What do we learn from the strategies of powerful actors to deny responsibility? How does remembering responsibility shape present and future relations and ways of being together in land, community, country, and global politics?We address these questions by adopting a methodology that situates the work of memory in the web of living beings, relationships and places that co-constitute it as a powerful force field of action. Building on two previous exchanges (Uganda 2019, Colombia, 2020), we will host a MemoLab in Belfast in 2022. The MemoLab will interrogate memory practices and the research questions by fostering exchanges of knowledge that are place-based, reciprocal and embodied and through the use of dialogical methods such as theatre, textile creation, storytelling, mapping (and visiting the divided landscape of Belfast), visual engagement, soundscape and performance. The six-day MemoLab will be hosted by Ulster University and partners and collaborators: Healing Through Remembering, Conflict Textiles, the Smashing Times Theatre company, and National Museums NI on their new "Troubles and Beyond" exhibit at the Ulster Museum. Healing Through Remembering will identify participants from Northern Ireland, including artists, practitioners, victims, former combatants, civil society members to join the MemoLab with international Network participants. The MemoLab will include a Graduate Conference, and space to work on six articles for a Special Issue. Concurrent to the MemoLab selected pieces from Network members and partners will be shown in the annual Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival (DAHRF) and the Ulster Museum's "Troubles and Beyond" exhibit. Pieces emerging from the MemoLab (e.g. installation, poster art, music, poetry and performance) will be added to the annual DAHRF online exhibit. The MemoLab will coincide with the annual DAHRF (October 2022). This will inform an a) exhibit that travels to Colombia, Canada, and Uganda after the MemoLab and b) research-creation among Network's members with at least 2 additional journal articles. The full results of the MemoLab will be housed in the current Digital Archive of the Network.