TY - JOUR
T1 - Time elapsed: untangling commemorative tragedies after conflict and tragedy
AU - McDowell, Sara
PY - 2013/8
Y1 - 2013/8
N2 - The time that elapses between a conflict or a traumatic event and its memorialisation can vary enormously depending on a range of social, economic and political circumstances. While the nuances of commemorative temporalities are not always amenable to ready synthesis due to the plethora of motivations involved in acts of remembrance, this paper marks an attempt to untangle some of the themes which have emerged from an analysis of the relationship between memorialisation and time. Conceptualising ‘time elapsed’ as a potentially important perspective in the study of memory and conflict, this paper has three intersecting objectives. First, it teases out some of the factors that may influence time elapsed; second, it questions whether the time it takes to memorialise traumatic events is lessening as society become more attuned to a ‘memorial vocabulary’; and finally, it determines the extent to which a ‘memory-boom’ is responsible for the recovery of tragedies seemingly forgotten.
AB - The time that elapses between a conflict or a traumatic event and its memorialisation can vary enormously depending on a range of social, economic and political circumstances. While the nuances of commemorative temporalities are not always amenable to ready synthesis due to the plethora of motivations involved in acts of remembrance, this paper marks an attempt to untangle some of the themes which have emerged from an analysis of the relationship between memorialisation and time. Conceptualising ‘time elapsed’ as a potentially important perspective in the study of memory and conflict, this paper has three intersecting objectives. First, it teases out some of the factors that may influence time elapsed; second, it questions whether the time it takes to memorialise traumatic events is lessening as society become more attuned to a ‘memorial vocabulary’; and finally, it determines the extent to which a ‘memory-boom’ is responsible for the recovery of tragedies seemingly forgotten.
U2 - 10.1179/1752627213Z.00000000017
DO - 10.1179/1752627213Z.00000000017
M3 - Article
VL - 6
SP - 185
EP - 200
JO - Journal of War and Culture Studies
JF - Journal of War and Culture Studies
SN - 1752-6272
IS - 3
ER -