Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ReAct (Remembering Activism: The Cultural Memory of Protest in Europe)
Reporting period: 2022-01-01 to 2023-06-30
Mass demonstrations regularly make the headlines. This project studies how they are also remembered when they are no longer news. Focussing on developments in Europe since 1871 it examines how stories about protest are produced and shared in different media and how that culturally produced memory informs later generations of activists. Where previous research has focussed on particular movements and the actors involved in them, ReAct examines the cultural work that happens in the intervals between protest cycles. We investigate how stories of civil resistance are produced, shared, and transmitted across generations and national borders in the form of documentaries, memoirs, commemorations, and archiving projects as well as in the visual arts and literature. ReAct shows how and why cultural memory is important to new protest movements.
Relevance for society: ReAct posits that the cultural memory of earlier protests informs civil resistance by shaping expectations and offering models for action. Scenarios for the future are informed by narratives about the past. More insight into the way stories about protest are culturally constructed, disseminated, and adapted to new circumstances will help us understand better the nature of protest in today’s world. ReAct is set to provide new critical literacies about how the meaning of protest is produced across different media and cultural forms. By offering a historical perspective reaching back to the late nineteenth century, it will also offer insight into long-term trends and provide valuable context for analysing contemporary developments. More generally, it will help us understand how collective identities are produced outside traditional ethno-national frameworks within the realm of the civic. Our focus is on protest movements in Europe, but given the transnational entanglements our project is bringing to light, our findings also have relevance for the understanding of movements elsewhere.
Overall objectives: The overall objective is to provide new insight, on the one hand, into the ways in which narratives about protest are produced and transmitted across generations and national borders and, on the other hand, into how that cultural memory informs new social movements. In terms of its empirical focus, ReAct will provide the first in-depth account of the remembering and forgetting of civil resistance in Europe since 1871. In terms of its disciplinary positioning, it effects a necessary reorientation within the field of cultural memory studies, hitherto dominated by trauma and victimhood, towards the cultural memory of civic life and of hope in social transformation. Finally, it will complement ongoing research in social movement studies, where memory is also emerging as a theme, by highlighting the role of cultural production and providing tools for its analysis.
Relevance for society: ReAct posits that the cultural memory of earlier protests informs civil resistance by shaping expectations and offering models for action. Scenarios for the future are informed by narratives about the past. More insight into the way stories about protest are culturally constructed, disseminated, and adapted to new circumstances will help us understand better the nature of protest in today’s world. ReAct is set to provide new critical literacies about how the meaning of protest is produced across different media and cultural forms. By offering a historical perspective reaching back to the late nineteenth century, it will also offer insight into long-term trends and provide valuable context for analysing contemporary developments. More generally, it will help us understand how collective identities are produced outside traditional ethno-national frameworks within the realm of the civic. Our focus is on protest movements in Europe, but given the transnational entanglements our project is bringing to light, our findings also have relevance for the understanding of movements elsewhere.
Overall objectives: The overall objective is to provide new insight, on the one hand, into the ways in which narratives about protest are produced and transmitted across generations and national borders and, on the other hand, into how that cultural memory informs new social movements. In terms of its empirical focus, ReAct will provide the first in-depth account of the remembering and forgetting of civil resistance in Europe since 1871. In terms of its disciplinary positioning, it effects a necessary reorientation within the field of cultural memory studies, hitherto dominated by trauma and victimhood, towards the cultural memory of civic life and of hope in social transformation. Finally, it will complement ongoing research in social movement studies, where memory is also emerging as a theme, by highlighting the role of cultural production and providing tools for its analysis.
In the first two years, the ReAct team has worked on building a common theoretical and methodological framework that integrates social movement studies into cultural memory studies. We also designed a multimedia MySQL database using the program Nodegoat (nodegoat.net) in order to collect diffuse cultural carriers recalling protest and to map patterns in the reproduction of images and narratives. After several rounds of revision, the data structure is now fit for purpose so that we can concentrate in the next 30 months on further populating the database and developing a public interface. A project website was developed (www.rememberingactivism.eu) and it includes a regular blog (13 to date) written by team members.
Our research has been organized on a case-study basis around three intersecting lines of inquiry: (1) Changing Mediations (on the role of specific media in remembering protest); (2) Afterlives of Activism (how particular movements are later recalled); and (3) Memoryscapes of Activism (how activists mobilize the memory of earlier movements).
(1) Changing Mediations: Images (completed) has yielded new digital methodologies for the study of the reproduction of online images and new insights into their role in mobilization. It also entailed the organization of an interdisciplinary expert meeting on The Visual Memory of Protest (January 2021) which will result in an edited collection (under contract with Amsterdam UP). Changing Mediations: Words only started in January 2021 but preparations are well advanced for applying digital techniques to identify changes in the vocabulary used to recall protest.
(2) Remembering Defiant Women (ongoing) has completed two case studies on Sylvia Pankhurst and Emma Goldman respectively and, besides tracking the changing narratives about their careers, has uncovered the importance of individual stakeholders in keeping their memory alive. Remembering Deniz Gezmiş (ongoing) has focused on the first decades following the execution of the Turkish student leader and revealed the unexpected importance of trial records in shaping the dominant narrative. Remembering Anti-Austerity is set to start following the expert meeting on Archiving Activism in the Digital Age (3-5 November 2021).
(3) Memoryscapes of The Socialist League (completed) has shown how activists in the 1880s formulated their agendas by invoking predecessors. Memoryscapes of Protesting Youth (completed) has shown how youth movements in Germany and Greece in the 1960s and 1970s also articulated their agendas by mobilizing collective memory. 15-M (ongoing) focusses on how the protest repertoire of anti-Austerity activists (especially slogans) mobilized the memory of predecessors.
In tandem with the above, work on a synthesis of all findings is progressing with the aim of developing a new theoretical understanding of the interplay between memory and activism.
Our research has been organized on a case-study basis around three intersecting lines of inquiry: (1) Changing Mediations (on the role of specific media in remembering protest); (2) Afterlives of Activism (how particular movements are later recalled); and (3) Memoryscapes of Activism (how activists mobilize the memory of earlier movements).
(1) Changing Mediations: Images (completed) has yielded new digital methodologies for the study of the reproduction of online images and new insights into their role in mobilization. It also entailed the organization of an interdisciplinary expert meeting on The Visual Memory of Protest (January 2021) which will result in an edited collection (under contract with Amsterdam UP). Changing Mediations: Words only started in January 2021 but preparations are well advanced for applying digital techniques to identify changes in the vocabulary used to recall protest.
(2) Remembering Defiant Women (ongoing) has completed two case studies on Sylvia Pankhurst and Emma Goldman respectively and, besides tracking the changing narratives about their careers, has uncovered the importance of individual stakeholders in keeping their memory alive. Remembering Deniz Gezmiş (ongoing) has focused on the first decades following the execution of the Turkish student leader and revealed the unexpected importance of trial records in shaping the dominant narrative. Remembering Anti-Austerity is set to start following the expert meeting on Archiving Activism in the Digital Age (3-5 November 2021).
(3) Memoryscapes of The Socialist League (completed) has shown how activists in the 1880s formulated their agendas by invoking predecessors. Memoryscapes of Protesting Youth (completed) has shown how youth movements in Germany and Greece in the 1960s and 1970s also articulated their agendas by mobilizing collective memory. 15-M (ongoing) focusses on how the protest repertoire of anti-Austerity activists (especially slogans) mobilized the memory of predecessors.
In tandem with the above, work on a synthesis of all findings is progressing with the aim of developing a new theoretical understanding of the interplay between memory and activism.
1. Empirical. React is designed around case studies that together offer complementary perspectives on the interplay between memory and activism in Europe in the last century and a half. The individual projects have been yielding a wealth of information about the extent and nature of cultural production relating to the memory of protest and showing the changing importance of different media at different periods. Moreover, building a database of cultural carriers of the memory of protest (texts, images, monuments, songs, etc.) has made it possible to bring together diffuse information. Together with the detailed case studies, the historical range of the materials collected will significantly increase scholarly awareness of the importance of cultural production in the legacy of social movements.
2. Theoretical. Together the projects have been yielding new insights into the memory-activism nexus that complicate existing theoretical models. Particular factors to emerge are the role of stakeholders in actively promoting narratives; the importance of archiving to activists themselves; the importance of state violence in the memory of peaceful protest. More generally, the materials and cases encountered are helping us develop a new model for understanding how collective narratives are formed as content passes, in more or less expanded form, across different media and different generations.
3. Methodological. The project has generated new methodologies for the study of repetitions in cultural production and transmission through the design of our database and through the use of digital tools for the collection and analysis of visual and verbal materials. These methodologies go beyond the state of the art as described in the original grant agreement and promise to have broader relevance both in cultural memory studies and reception studies.
2. Theoretical. Together the projects have been yielding new insights into the memory-activism nexus that complicate existing theoretical models. Particular factors to emerge are the role of stakeholders in actively promoting narratives; the importance of archiving to activists themselves; the importance of state violence in the memory of peaceful protest. More generally, the materials and cases encountered are helping us develop a new model for understanding how collective narratives are formed as content passes, in more or less expanded form, across different media and different generations.
3. Methodological. The project has generated new methodologies for the study of repetitions in cultural production and transmission through the design of our database and through the use of digital tools for the collection and analysis of visual and verbal materials. These methodologies go beyond the state of the art as described in the original grant agreement and promise to have broader relevance both in cultural memory studies and reception studies.