Selma Leydesdorff - Memories of Mass Repression

NARRATING LIFE STORIES IN THE
AFTERMATH OF ATROCITY

NANCI ADLER
SELMA LEYDESDORFF
MARY CHAMBERLAIN
LEYLA NEYZI
EDITORS

First published 2009 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

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Copyright 2009 by Taylor & Francis.

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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2008035350

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Memories of mass repression : narrating life stories in the aftermath of atrocity / Nanci Adler ... [et al.], editors.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4128-0853-8

1. HistoriographySocial aspects. 2. HistoriographyPolitical aspects. 3. Collective memoryPolitical aspects. 4. MemorySocial aspectsHistory20th century. 5. MemoryPolitical aspects. 6. Social history20th century. I. Adler, Nanci.

D13.M437 2008

907.2dc22

2008035350

ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-0853-8 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-4217-4 (pbk)

This volume is comprised of a number of outstanding contributions that emerged from various professional gatherings. We are grateful to the authors for the high quality of their work, and for their forbearance during a rather long editorial process. We would like also like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to four institutions for organizing the forums that inspired this collection. In November of 2005, Sabanc University in Istanbul organized a workshop on Memory, Narrative and Human Rights that generated discussion on fundamental issues related to remembering mass repression. The idea of a collective volume on this theme came about during this time. The subject was further explored in March of 2006 when the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the University of Amsterdam) hosted a symposium entitled Memory and Narrating Mass Violence. There, a number of young scholars shared the results of their field work, and many cross-cultural similarities were observed. We also reflected on the critical differences in the way in which mass violence is remembered and related, and this discussion is set forth in the present volume. Also in March of 2006, the Oral History and Life Stories Network of the European Social Science History Conference organized two panels in Amsterdam on repressed memories and memories of repression. A number of the panelists addressed increasingly topical issues relating to memory and recalling mass repression. We were eager to become acquainted with their work, and to be able to include it in this volume. Lastly, in November of 2007 the University of Salzburg provided a forum, The Meaning of Narrative, which gave the opportunity to reflect upon the volumes conclusions. Finally, and in fact in the first place, we are deeply grateful to the subjects for their willingness to be interviewed. In the pages that follow, readers will better understand the extent of their feat, not only in their experience of repression itself, but in the very act of talking about it.

Nanci Adler, Selma Leydesdorff, Mary Chamberlain and Leyla Neyzi