Memory and the future

About this book

For those who study memory there is a nagging concern that memory studies are inherently backward-looking, that memory itself and the ways in which it is deployed, invoked and utilized can potentially hinder efforts to move forward. However, there are many memory scholars and practitioners who firmly believe that the study of memory is ultimately about and for the present and future. This view of memory as looking to the past as a way to shape the present and future is the basis for the increasingly relevant and pressing concerns about the relationship of memory to conflict and democratic politics: human rights and transitional justice, post-colonial memory, revenge and violence, testimony, imposture and forgery, social movements and utopian ideas, and the role of historical knowledge and testimony. This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of prominent scholars to examine the relationship between past and present, and especially past and future.