Memory, Identity and History
This workshop was co-developed and co-taught with Fouad Halbouni
This workshop focuses on the politics of social memory and forgetfulness by examining the ways narratives, rituals and practices of commemoration contribute to the construction of specific interpretations of the national past in the present. The workshop engages with major theoretical literatures since the advent of the twentieth century by shedding light on the conceptual links between history, memory and the formation of identity. The major theoretical debates concerning the fields of history, philosophy of history, sociology and anthropology has primarily focused on ‘universal history’ of the West against which other experiences can be read and understood. The profound transformation of modernity under capitalism from global colonialization to the cataclysmic events of two world wars, gave rise to urgent questions on whose ‘narrative’, ‘memory’ and ‘history’ matters and why. The workshop also examines the institutionalization of the social memory of war and genocides in the light of post-WWII memorialization of the Holocaust. The workshop focuses on the ways in which commemorative projects of the holocaust influence how historical grievances are summoned and articulated in the present. Through looking at literature that critiques the practice of history as preordained history of Europe, the workshop tries to extend the ethos of ‘memory as grievance’ to the regional and local contexts of Egypt and the Arab world. Looking at the Nakba as a moment in close connection with the Holocaust, and to the formation of the modern state in Egypt as a moment of reckoning for the Copts and Egyptian Jews.
The workshop addresses whether commemorative projects open the horizons of historiography to address and uncover historical grievances of colonized populations or to engage in different modes of historical narration of the grievances of its pasts. More specifically, we focus on the possibilities and limitations of identitarian approaches to history asking how marginalized groups can rewrite their own historical narratives (Haider, Haj-Saleh).
Workshop Components
The workshop spans over five sessions that are held on weekly basis. In the first session, we focus on the main bodies of literature that center on social memory (Halbwachs, Le Goff, Lowith), The second section alternatively centers on postcolonial critiques of Eurocentric historiography and its attempts to open up horizons for decolonization of history for the people outside of the boundaries of Europe by tracing the history of colonial violence and exclusion (Chakrabarty, Traverso). As for the third week, we focus on critiques of nationalist historiography and the institutionalization of memory in which the nation becomes the telos of history. In this section, more specifically, we address the implicit forms of exclusions and marginalization of disfranchised communities in such nationalist historical narratives (Anderson, Chatterjee). The fourth session focuses on the institutionalization of the social memory of war and genocides in the light of post-WWII memorialization of the Holocaust (Bauman, Rothberg). We simply ask whether the commemorative projects of the Holocaust have shed light on the historical legacies of colonialism, slavery and ongoing processes of decolonization, or contrary to such beliefs, the selective memorialization of the Holocaust reflect the intricacies of a politics of memory, which limit our ability to learn from past catastrophes and transform commemorative and memorialization projects into a meaningful repertoire of political-ethical actions that prevent the repetition of such catastrophes (Esmeir, Haj-Saleh). In the fifth and final session, we bring our theoretical engagements on social memory into Arab and Egyptian contexts raising crucial questions about what constituted 'the national community' on the eve of national independence and the efficacy of the historical process of decolonization and how can we identify Egypt's others and what would be alternative ways to reimagine such history in the present (Mahmood, Louis, Naguib).
In the workshop we will engage with different bodies of literatures that focus on the subjects of social memory and historical grievance. We will focus on a diverse set of texts by Benedict Anderson, Partha Chatterjee, Ernest Renan, Karl Lowith, Saba Mahmood, Enzo Traverso, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Michael Rothberg, Asad Haider, Maurice Halbwachs, and lastly, Jacques Le Goff. Those texts will be put in conversations with the political essays of Egyptian historians and novelists such as Shady Lewis, Shehata Haroun, and Tarek el-Bishry, By the end of the course, students will have developed an introductory understanding of basic issues in memory studies such as the theoretical foundations of nationalist historiography and the contemporary processes of national commemoration and the politics of memorialization.
Workshop Schedule
Week 1 – History and Memory
Karl Löwith. “Introduction”. Meaning In History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History.[Chicago]: Univ. of Chicago Press 1949. 1-19
Maurice Halbwachs. Selections from On Collective Memory. Univ. of Chicago Press [1952] 1992. 37-83
Jacques Le Goff. “Preface”, “Past/Present”. History and Memory. Columbia Univ. Press. 1992. 1-21
Week 2 – Europe and Memory
Enzo Traverso. “Memory and Marxism”. Left Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History and Memory. 54-84
Dipesh Chakrabarty. “Introduction”. Provincializing Europe. 2000. 3-26
Week 3 – Nation and Historical Memory
Ernst Renan. “What is a Nation?”. The Collective Memory Reader. Oxford University Press. 2011. 1-11
Benedict Anderson. “Memory and Forgetting”. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 1991. 187-206
Partha Chatterjee. “Nationalism as a Problem in the History of Political Ideas. Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. Zed books. 1986. 1-35
Week 4 – Grievance, Identity and History
Zygmunt Bauman. The Uniqueness and Normality of the Holocaust. Modernity and the Holocaust. Cornell Univ. Press. 2001. 83-116
زبغمونت باومان. ترجمة: ياسين الحاج صالح. إعادة الإنتاج الذاتى للمظلومية. موقع الجمهورية. 2017
https://www.aljumhuriya.net/ar/38701
ياسين الحاج صالح. الضمير الخارجى: فى المظلومية وأصول الشر السياسى1 . موقع الجمهورية. 2017
https://www.aljumhuriya.net/38443
Samera Esmeir. Memories of Conquest: Witnessing Death in Tantura. Nakba: Palestine, 1948 and the Claims of Memory. Columbia Univ. Press. 2007. 229-252
Enzo Traverso. “Right-Wing Identitarianism”. The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right. 2018. 1-15
Asad Haider. How Identity Politics Has Divided the Left: An Interview with Asad Haider. The Intercept. May 2018 (Interviewer: Rashmee Kumar)
https://theintercept.com/2018/05/27/identity-politics-book-asad-haider/
Optional Reading:
Michael Rothberg. “Introduction”. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford Univ. Press. 2009.
Mohandesi, Salar. 'Identity Crisis'. Viewpoint Magazine. 16 March 2017
https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/03/16/identity-crisis/
Week 5 - Egypt and its Others
Saba Mahmoud. Secularity, History, Literature. In Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report. Princeton Univ. Press. 2016. 181-207
طارق البشري. مختارات من المسلمون والأقباط في إطار الجماعة الوطنية. دار الشروق. 2004
شادى لويس. 2017. “مروية الاضطهاد القبطية ولاهوتها.” الجمهورية.نت April 17, 2017. https://www.aljumhuriya.net/ar/37674.
شحاتة هارون. مختارات من "مذكرات يهودي في القاهرة". دار التقدم
Naguib, Saphinaz-Amal. “The Martyr as Witness Coptic and Copto-Arabic Hagiographies as Mediators of Religious Memory.” Numen, vol. 41, no. 3, 1994, pp. 223–254. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3270350
