Palgrave Memory Studies Agonistic Memory and The Legacy of 20Th Century Wars in Europe Stefan Berger Wulf Kansteiner Full Chapter

Palgrave Memory Studies Agonistic
Memory And The Legacy Of 20th

Century Wars In Europe Stefan Berger
Wulf Kansteiner
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/palgrave-memory-studies-agonistic-memory-and-the-l
egacy-of-20th-century-wars-in-europe-stefan-berger-wulf-kansteiner/
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN MEMORY STUDIES
Agonistic Memory and

the Legacy of 20th Century
Wars in Europe
Edited by
Stefan Berger · Wulf Kansteiner
Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
Series Editors
Andrew Hoskins
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK
John Sutton
Department of Cognitive Science
Macquarie University
Macquarie, Australia
The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends
that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to
that of memory, from ‘what we know’ to ‘how we remember it’; changes
in generational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory;
panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination
with the possibilities of memory enhancement; and the development of
trauma narratives in reshaping the past. These factors have contributed to
an intensification of public discourses on our past over the last thirty years.
Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts affect
what, how and why people and societies remember and forget. This
groundbreaking series tackles questions such as: What is ‘memory’ under
these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the prospects for its
interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual,
theoretical and methodological tools for its investigation and
illumination?
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14682
Stefan Berger • Wulf Kansteiner
Editors
Agonistic Memory
and the Legacy of
20th Century Wars in
Europe
Editors
Stefan Berger Wulf Kansteiner
Ruhr University Bochum Aarhus University
Bochum, Germany Aarhus, Denmark
ISSN 2634-6257 ISSN 2634-6265 (electronic)

Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies
ISBN 978-3-030-86054-7 ISBN 978-3-030-86055-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86055-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect
to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Michael Mueller/Alamy Stock Photo

Cover design: eStudioCalamar
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1 Agonistic Perspectives on the Memory of War: An

Introduction 1
Stefan Berger and Wulf Kansteiner
2 Agonistic Memory Revisited 13

Anna Cento Bull, Hans Lauge Hansen, and Francisco
Colom-González
3 The Production of Memory Modes During Mass Grave

Exhumations in Contemporary Europe 39
Francisco Ferrándiz and Marije Hristova
4 Memory Cultures of War in European War Museums 69

Stefan Berger, Anna Cento Bull, Cristian Cercel, David Clarke,
Nina Parish, Eleanor Rowley, and Zofia Wóycicka
5 “Krieg. Macht. Sinn.” An Agonistic Exhibition

at the Ruhr Museum Essen115
Daniela De Angeli, Wulf Kansteiner, Cristian Cercel, and
Eamonn O’Neill
v
vi Contents
6 ‘To Understand Doesn’t Mean that You Will Approve’:

Transnational Audience Research on a Theatre
Representation of Evil149
Diana González Martín and Hans Lauge Hansen
7 Taking Agonism Online: Creating a Mass Open Online

Course to Disseminate the Findings of the UNREST
Project179
David Clarke, Nina Parish, and Ayshka Sené
8 Agonism and Memory203

Wulf Kansteiner and Stefan Berger
Index247
Notes on Contributors
Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute

for Social Movements at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany. He is also
executive chair of the Foundation History of the Ruhr and honorary pro-
fessor at Cardiff University in the UK. He has published widely on the
history of memory, the history of deindustrialization, industrial heritage,
the history of social movements and labour movements, the history of
historiography, historical theory and the history of nationalism and
national identity. Among his most recent publications are A Cultural
History of Memory, co-edited with Jeffrey C. Olick, 6 vols, 2020;
Constructing Industrial Pasts, 2020; (De)Industrial History, co-edited
with Steven High, special issue of Labor: Journal of Working-Class History
16:1 (2019).
Anna Cento Bull is Emeritus Professor of Italian History and Politics at
the University of Bath, UK. Her research interests include the legacy of
political terrorism, political identities and agonistic memory in theory and
practice. She has published widely on this last topic, including ‘On Agonistic
Memory’ (with H. L. Hansen, Memory Studies, 2016, 9(4): 390–404);
‘Agonistic Interventions into Public Commemorative Art: An Innovative
Form of Counter-Memorial Practice?’ (with D. Clarke, Constellations, 2020,
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-8675.12484);
‘Emotions and Critical Thinking at a Dark Heritage Site: Investigating
Visitors’ Reactions to a First World War Museum in Slovenia’ (with D. De
Angeli, Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2020, https://www.tandfonline.com/
doi/full/10.1080/1743873X.2020.1804918).
vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Cristian Cercel is researcher at the Institute for Social Movements at

Ruhr-University Bochum. His areas of interest are memory studies, minor-
ity studies, nationalism studies, transnationalism and European history.
He has recently published Romania and the Quest for European Identity:
Philo-Germanism Without Germans (2019).
David Clarke is Professor of Modern German Studies at Cardiff
University. He has published on various aspects of the politics and culture
of memory, on representations of war in museums and on cultural diplo-
macy. His recent book, Constructions of Victimhood: Remembering the
Victims of State Socialism in Germany, was published by Palgrave in 2019.
Francisco Colom-González is Professor of Research of the Centre for
Humanities and Social Sciences at the Spanish National Research Council
(CSIC) in Madrid. Previously he was Associate Professor of Political
Sociology at the Public University of Navarre (Pamplona, Spain). He
holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Universidad Complutense and a
Diploma in Political Science and Constitutional Law from the Centre for
Political and Constitutional Studies, Madrid. His work has mainly dealt
with the normative relations between culture, political identity and social
change. More recently, his research interests have turned towards the
study of political spaces and urban theory. He has recently directed a proj-
ect on The Political Philosophy of the City and is preparing a new one on The
Just City. Among his recent publications is (ed.) Narrar las ciudades. El
espacio urbano a través de los textos (2021).
Daniela De Angeli has more than nine years of experience designing and
evaluating interactive experiences and digital content for museums. She is
co-director of the Community Interest Company Echo Games (echo-
games.co.uk) and a visiting researcher in Human-Computer Interaction
(HCI) at the University of Bath in the UK. Her research is interdisciplin-
ary, ranging from HCI and games to cultural heritage and memory studies.
Francisco Ferrándiz is senior researcher at the Spanish National Research
Council (CSIC). He holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology
from UC Berkeley (1996). His research focuses on the anthropology of
the body, violence and social memory. Since 2002, he has conducted
research on the politics of memory in contemporary Spain, analysing the
exhumations of mass graves from the Civil War (1936–1939). He is
Principal Investigator (PI) of the research project The Politics of Memory
Exhumations in Contemporary Spain, funded by the Spanish Ministry of
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix
Science and Innovation. His main books on this topic are El pasado bajo
tierra: Exhumaciones contemporáneas de la Guerra Civil (Anthropos 2014)
and, as edited volumes, Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the
Age of Human Rights (2015, with A. C.G.M Robben) and ‘Memory
Worlds: Reframing Time and the Past’ (special issue Memory Studies,
2020, with M. Hristova and J. Vollmeyer). He is a senior advisor in the
State Secretariat for Democratic Memory, integrated in the Ministry of the
Presidency in Spain’s central government.
Diana González Martín is Associate Professor of Contemporary Latin
American and Spanish Culture, Media and Society at the Department of
German and Romance Languages, School of Communication and Culture,
Aarhus University (AU), Denmark. She is specialized in performing arts,
aesthetics and cultural memory studies. Her interests focus on social
movements and the relationship between activism and institutions in Latin
American and European societies, on the one hand, and, on the other
hand, methodologies for the societal transformation through the arts.
Among her most relevant publications are the monograph Emancipación,
plenitud y memoria. Modos de percepción y acción a través del arte
(Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert, 2015) and the articles ‘Going to the
Theatre and Feeling Agonistic: Exploring Modes of Remembrance in
Spanish Audiences’ (Hispanic Research Journal, 21:2, 2020) and
‘Informantes, Escogidos, Ejércitos, Ene Enes, Testimonios: Múltiples
actores de la memoria en la literatura colombiana reciente’ (Iberoamericana,
Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 48:1, 2019).
Marije Hristova is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Culture and Literature
at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Previously she
was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Cofund fellow at the University of Warwick
and a postdoctoral researcher at the Spanish National Research Council.
She is a researcher in the project ‘Below Ground’, funded by the Spanish
Ministry of Science and Innovation. She is a member of the association
‘Memorias en Red’ and of the advisory board of the Memory Studies
Association. Her research focuses on the remembrance of mass grave
exhumations in art and literature. She has published widely on transna-
tional memory discourses and the production of cultural memories after
the forensic turn in Spain and in Europe. Her most recent publications
include the special issue ‘Memory Worlds: Reframing Time and the Past’,
Memory Studies 13(5) 2020, co-edited with Francisco Ferrándiz and
Johanna Vollmeyer.
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Wulf Kansteiner is Professor of Memory Studies and Historical Theory

at Aarhus University in Denmark. His research interests include the meth-
ods and theories of memory studies; the role of visual media—TV, film,
digital culture—in the formation of cultural memory; post-narrativist his-
torical theory; and Holocaust memory, and historiography. Recent publi-
cations include ‘Prime Time Nationalism: Patterns of Prejudice in TV
Crime Fiction’ in J. Barkhoff und J. Leersen (eds) National Stereotyping,
Identity, Politics, European Crises (2021); ‘Media and Technology’, in
Stefan Berger and Bill Niven (eds), The Twentieth Century, vol. 6 of Stefan
Berger; and Jeff K. Olick (eds), A Cultural History of Memory, 6
vols (2020).
Hans Lauge Hansen is Professor of Spanish and Latin American
Literature and Culture at the Department of German and Romance
Languages, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University,
Denmark. His principal research areas are contemporary Spanish and
Latin American narrative, cultural memory studies, narratives of migration
and Cultural Conflict Studies. He has published widely on the Spanish
memory novel of the twenty-first century. Selected recent publications
include ‘A Case for Agonistic Peacebuilding in Colombia’, Third World
Quarterly (forthcoming, co-authored with Diana González Martín y
Agustín Parra); ‘On Agonistic Narratives of Migration’, International
Journal of Cultural Studies, 2:4, 2020; and ‘On Agonistic Memory’ (co-
authored with Anna Cento Bull), Memory Studies, 9:4, 2015.
Eamonn O’Neill is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at the
University of Bath. His main research interests are in developing, evaluat-
ing and understanding innovative forms of human-technology interaction
and technology-mediated human-human interaction, with the goal of
contributing to an applied science of interactive systems. Topics include
mixed, augmented and virtual reality, and interaction with intelligent
machines and software. Primary application areas in his research include
cultural heritage visitor experiences, multisensory interaction and aug-
mented and virtual reality.
Nina Parish is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the
University of Stirling, and visiting researcher at the University of Bath. She
works on representations of difficult history, the migrant experience and
multilingualism in the museum space. She is also an expert on the interac-
tion between text and image in the field of modern and contemporary
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi
French Studies and has published widely on this subject, in particular, on

the poet and visual artist, Henri Michaux.
Eleanor Rowley is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Politics,
Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath, where she
is exploring the visitor experience at First World War museums. She is
interested in heritage education practices and the ways in which young
people interpret cultural memory messages during school field trips to
museums and heritage sites. She is also contributing to empirical work on
museums and memory to the Horizon 2020–funded project ‘Unsettling
Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe (UNREST)’.
Ayshka Sené is a research associate at the University of York working on
the ‘Archiving the Inner-City Project: Race and the Politics of Urban
Memory’. Her research focuses on the history and memory of British
women’s internment in Occupied France. She recently produced a pod-
cast on disease, contagion and confinement in France’s overseas penal
colonies.
Zofia Wóycicka is a researcher at the German Historical Institute Warsaw.
She studied history and sociology at the University of Warsaw and Jena
University and holds a doctoral degree from the Polish Academy of
Sciences. She worked as an educator at the Museum of the History of
Polish Jews, as an exhibition curator at the House of European History/
Brussels, and as a researcher at the Centre for Historical Research Berlin.
Her main research interest lies in Memory and Museum Studies with a
special focus on World War II. She authored, among others, Arrested
Mourning: Memory of the Nazi Camps in Poland, 1944–1950, 2013.
Among her recent publications is ‘A Global Label and its Local
Appropriations. Representations of the Righteous Among the Nations in
Contemporary European Museums’, Memory Studies, Online First (2021).
List of Figures
Fig. 7.1 Online stakeholder survey—Question 8 186

Fig. 7.2 Online stakeholder survey—Question 9 186
xiii
List of Photos
Photo 1 Exhibition poster. Copyright: Ruhr Museum; Design: Uwe

Loesch 124
Photo 2 Display window in the chapter “Flight and Expulsion”.
Copyright: Ruhr Museum; Photo: Andrea Kiesendah 128
Photo 3 Chapter “Aerial War”. Copyright: Ruhr Museum; Photo:
Andrea Kiesendahl 132
Photo 4 Still of the game Umschlagplatz ‘43134
xv
List of Tables
Table 2.1 The defining characteristics of modes of remembering. 17

Table 5.1 Guideline for the interviews 137
Table 7.1 Learner demographics per course run—data gathered
by FutureLearn 189
Table 7.2 Joiner professions per course run—answers in response to
Step 1.3 ‘Tell us about yourself’ 190
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Agonistic Perspectives on the Memory

of War: An Introduction
Stefan Berger and Wulf Kansteiner
‘Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe’

(UNREST) was a Horizon 2020–funded project that ran between 2016
and 2019 and involved researchers from different disciplines, principally,
history, literary studies, anthropology and memory studies, coming from
British, Spanish, Danish, Polish and German institutions (www.unrest.eu).
The researchers involved in the project set out to find agonism in different
memory settings across Europe. They analysed cultural memories of war
on display in history museums and took a close look at communicative
memories of war crafted in response to mass exhumations of victims of war
and ethnic cleansing. In addition, UNREST researchers sought to create
new sites of agonistic memory. They collaborated with playwrights, actors
and museum professionals to develop a theatre play and a history exhibit
S. Berger (*)
Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
e-mail: stefan.berger@rub.de; Stefan.Berger@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
W. Kansteiner
Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
e-mail: wk@cas.au.dk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
S. Berger, W. Kansteiner (eds.), Agonistic Memory and the Legacy of
20th Century Wars in Europe, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86055-4_1
2 S. BERGER AND W. KANSTEINER
promulgating agonistic interpretations of warfare. As a result of these

efforts, we are now in a position to define in more concrete terms what
scholarly, ethical and political potential agonistic memory possesses and
what important questions remain to be solved in future research about
agonistic memory.
In contrast to its predecessors and competitors, that is antagonism and
cosmopolitanism, agonism is seeking to advance a more complex and pre-
cise understanding of social memory processes. In the course of the
UNREST project, it has proven to be a formidable analytical tool to
expose shortcomings and contradictions in Europe’s primarily antagonis-
tically and cosmopolitanly structured memory-scapes. Adopting an ago-
nistic perspective helped the UNREST team identify the political challenges
and dilemmas of contemporary memory politics with greater precision.
The three paradigms of memory—antagonism, cosmopolitanism and
agonism—advocate for different perceptions of the world (Bull and
Hansen 2016). In an antagonistically structured universe, memory politics
serve the ingroup’s competitive mission and sense of superiority in relation
to clearly defined outside others (Anderson 1991; Hirst et al. 2018).
Modern antagonistic memories are, for instance, stories of national hero-
ism based on the kind of nationalistic values captured beautifully by
Donald Trump’s campaign slogan ‘America first’. Another example, not
related to nationalism, comes from the world of communism, where,
throughout the twentieth century, the construction of a working-class ‘us’
stood in an antagonistic relation to a bourgeois ‘them’. Cosmopolitan
memory considers that type of nativism, be it nation or class-based,
responsible for the wars and genocides of the twentieth century and seeks
to establish a different, global set of values and corresponding rules of
international relations. In a cosmopolitanly structured universe, human-
kind safeguards its survival by instituting human rights regimes which
derive legitimacy from vivid recollections of negative events including past
acts of collective violence like the Holocaust. The cosmopolitan vision of
the world relies on supranational legal frameworks and deterrent negative
memories (Levy and Sznaider 2006; Beck 2006).
Consequently, antagonism and cosmopolitanism outline competing
trajectories of collective progress pitching ambition of national superiority
against utopias of transnational reconciliation and cooperation. In contra-
distinction to such stories of progress, agonism is sceptical of progressivist
teleologies. It shares with antagonism the realization that human societies
are ontologically embroiled in all sorts of antagonisms, including national
1 AGONISTIC PERSPECTIVES ON THE MEMORY OF WAR: AN INTRODUCTION 3
and class antagonisms, that need to be articulated in conflictual political

relations. Yet agonism also agrees with cosmopolitanism in that inevitable
political struggle ought to be contained within a more or less stable nor-
mative framework for the purpose of safeguarding democracy (Mouffe
2005). Within such a democratic frame, agonistic memory strives to cap-
ture the complexity of past conflicts and the diversity of conflicting opin-
ions and feelings about said conflicts in an effort to promote a sense of
human solidarity within and beyond the nation state and end the hege-
mony of neoliberalism (Bull and Hansen 2016). Put succinctly, in the
historical conflict between antagonistic national(istic) memory and cos-
mopolitan transnational memory, agonistic memory claims the messy
middle ground in the name of realism and decency and seeks to overcome
the paralysing impasse between nationalism and cosmopolitanism.
Occupying that middle ground UNREST researchers remained com-
mitted to a left-wing, anti-neoliberal course of action in their desire to
provide useful advice to cultural practitioners. They had to decide in each
case they analysed and each intervention they created which controversial
voice, object or story should be sponsored as a potential site of cultural
memory because the voice, object or story in question is likely to help
subvert existing neoliberal hegemonies and advance a range of liberal
causes. They needed to figure out how agonistic insights can be brought
to bear on specific political and cultural institutions in such a way that said
institutions successfully promote collective solidarity and democratic tra-
ditions and facilitate open-ended dialogue between conflictual and contra-
dictory perceptions of past and present. That required a good grasp of
what is meant by democracy, often referred to as radical democracy in
agonistic parlance, and who is to be included in agonistic visions of collec-
tive solidarity. The task was complicated by the fact that the political the-
ory of agonism and the theory of agonistic memory are hoping to resurrect
left-wing grassroots movements after neoliberalism, but the UNREST
project did not collaborate with stakeholders from social movements—
something that was missing from the initial design of the project. Despite
this shortcoming of the project, its research results and its creation of
cultural products making agonistic interventions in historical debates have
produced a range of results which we believe deserve summarizing in a
volume presenting the key outcomes of the UNREST project.
The theory of agonism, as first formulated by Bull and Hansen, was the
theoretical backbone of the UNREST project and the presence of both as
key UNREST researchers ensured a constant reflection of the empirical
research results of UNREST in the light of the theory as well as the refine-
ment of the theory in the light of the empirical research results. In their
assessment of the changes the theory underwent, they are joined here by
Paco Colom, a political philosopher, who was also one of the key research-
ers of the UNREST team with a special interest in the theory of agonism.
Together they outline in Chap. 2 the theory of agonistic memory and
emphasize its heuristic value, underlining that the three categories distin-
guished in this theory, that is antagonistic, cosmopolitan and agonistic
memory, should be understood as ideal types rather than actually existing
social realities. They also significantly revise their original theory of agonis-
tic memory pointing out that their 2016 critique of cosmopolitanism did
not sufficiently take into account the diversity of relevant theories of cos-
mopolitanism. Some of the theories, they argue, have over recent years
made problems of structural power inequalities a key concern of the cos-
mopolitan political agenda. Discussing attempts to merge ideas of cosmo-
politanism with Mouffe’s conceptualization of agonism, they specify that
their main line of attack is not against all forms of cosmopolitanism but
rather at what they now describe as ‘universalistic-cosmopolitanism’.
Furthermore, they highlight how agonistic interventions vitally depend
on local memory frames and political contexts, thereby highlighting that
agonism is not the same everywhere but can change its form and content
significantly depending on local circumstances.
Addressing the impact of the empirical case studies of the UNREST
project, Bull, Hansen and Colom first turn to the analysis of mass grave
exhumations in Spain, Poland and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Especially in the
light of the Spanish case study, the authors conclude that cosmopolitanism
does not necessarily lead to the depoliticization of memory discourses. Yet
they also emphasize, with reference to Bosnia-Herzegovina, how a top-
down cosmopolitan discourse imposed from outside will only have the
effect of entrenching existing antagonistic memory positions in society.
And they point out that in cases such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, where we
encounter extreme forms of memory antagonism, it might be advisable to
combine cosmopolitan and agonistic interventions in memory debates in
order to allow for a meaningful engagement of antagonistic memory
groups with one another. The authors also suggest some revision in rela-
tion to the link between memory regimes and politics. In light of the
empirical research carried out by UNREST, they now question a direct
link between cosmopolitanism and transnational forms of governance, on
the one hand, and antagonism and national forms of governance, on the
other hand. Instead, they point to the possibility of different scenarios

depending on local circumstances. In relation to the empirical case study
on war museums, the authors point out that their original assumptions
had been wrong. The widespread adoption of cosmopolitan memory
frames within the museums did not make them into ‘cold’ memory places
but instead provided a highly emotional approach to the experience of
war, even if the war had taken place outside of living memory for most visi-
tors, as would be the case with the First World War. Distinguishing
between agonistic and cosmopolitan multi-perspectivity, they found more
potential for the former in temporary than in permanent exhibitions.
Overall, they confirm that the empirical research of UNREST as well as
the cultural products created by UNREST underlined agonistic memory’s
potential of revitalizing the memory of past struggles in order to repoliti-
cize the public sphere and in particular counter the antagonistic nationalist
memories that have been on the rise in Europe over recent years. In com-
parison to the original conceptualization of agonistic memory, Bull,
Hansen and Colom now stress that it is valuable to see agonism as fluid,
relational and strongly embedded in specific local contexts.
Chapter 3 subsequently summarizes the results of the analysis of war-
related mass grave exhumations in Spain, Poland and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Paco Férrandiz and Marije Hristova understand exhumation sites as
‘potential agonistic fora’ that, however, reveal features of all three memory
regimes, antagonistic, cosmopolitan and agonistic, alongside each other.
The benefits of the chosen comparative approach are very visible in the
results, as it allows the authors to draw out the many differences in the
construction of diverse memory landscapes in the three cases under exami-
nation. In Spain the three case studies reveal how an initially dominant
antagonistic memory mode gave way to more cosmopolitan ways of
remembrance from the beginning of the twenty-first century onwards.
The latter even incorporated some prominent cases of agonistic interven-
tions. In Poland we see the reverse trend with a move from an initial cos-
mopolitan frame of remembrance to more nationalist-minded antagonistic
forms of memory over recent years. The latter was accompanied by strong
top-down policies that included the replacement of museum directors and
the official prescription of antagonistic discourses about the past, espe-
cially the history of the Second World War. The antagonistic memory
regimes promoted by the current Polish government is heavily anti-
Communist and seeks to promote a historical revisionism that is in line
with key nationalist mythologies in Polish historical consciousness. Yet,
intriguingly, Férrandiz and Hristova also show how, in the Polish case, an
overtly cosmopolitan victim-centred memory regime can serve antagonis-
tic purposes. The three case studies for Bosnia again revealed the simulta-
neous presence of all three memory modes. Whilst antagonistic memory
modes are clearly dominant among all the ethnic groups in Bosnia, the
many humanitarian agencies and NGOs operating in the country have
introduced cosmopolitan memory modes that sit uneasily alongside the
dominant antagonistic ones. In this climate agonistic interventions are
rare and mostly associated with grassroots bottom-up initiatives of groups
often operating normally on a default cosmopolitan memory mode.
Overall, the nine case studies distributed over the three countries reveal
the need to study the dynamics of the three modes of remembering,
antagonistic, cosmopolitan and agonistic, in order to understand how they
can all be present at the same time and how it is precisely their interaction
and fusion that explains much about the specific memory regime that is in
place at different war-related mass grave sites.
Chapter 4 summarizes the results of the empirical research that was
done by UNREST on war museums in Europe. The largest number of
researchers were involved in this work package which is also why the arti-
cle here is co-written by Stefan Berger, Anna Cento Bull, Cristian Cercel,
David Clarke, Nina Parish, Eleanor Rowley and Zofia Wóycicka. They
found that the cosmopolitan mode of remembrance is the dominant one
in contemporary European war museums, although they certainly also
found, especially in East-Central Europe, strong doses of antagonism.
Had the team extended their research to places such as the UK or Eastern
Europe, they would have found even more evidence for antagonistic
modes of remembrance in war museums. Given that earlier in the twenti-
eth century war museums were often related to the promotion of national-
ist antagonistic memory, the need to revamp these museums and make
them conform to cosmopolitan modes of remembrance was arguably
strong, where such cosmopolitan memory had become increasingly the
norm, as was the case, for example, in Germany from the 1990s onwards.
As a result of this move towards cosmopolitan memory, most of the muse-
ums that have adopted such a memory frame do not focus on the memory
of the perpetrators, as this would not fit the victim-centredness of their
respective storylines. Only rarely did the empirical research reveal the pres-
ence of agonistic memory discourses in European museums, but where
they could be found, they tended to be powerful counter-hegemonic nar-
ratives. Consequently, UNREST researchers advocate for providing more
space for such agonistic interventions within the overall cosmopolitan

frame in which war is today remembered in Europe. As art projects as well
as projects with social movements were the ones that most often showed
agonistic potential, the increased collaboration of war museums with art-
ists and with social movement activists seems a promising avenue of
increasing the number and quality of agonistic interventions in war muse-
ums. The analysis of the reaction of visitors to the museum exhibitions
showed clearly the efficacy of the museums in conveying the intended
message, as visitors to cosmopolitan museums expressed broadly cosmo-
politan sentiments and visitors to antagonistic museums expressed broadly
antagonistic sentiments. Agonistic sentiments were virtually non-existent.
It is, of course, a question to what extent cosmopolitan and antagonistic
memory frames are hegemonic in wider society and therefore to which
extent the museum narratives are representative of these trends, so that it
is not necessarily the efficacy of the museum narratives that leads to the
visitor reactions but simply the fact that they already come to the respec-
tive museums with the ‘right’ memory frame in mind.
If agonistic perspectives were not the dominant memory mode in any
of the museums investigated by UNREST, and if, at best, one could talk
about specific agonistic interventions, it is clear that most museum makers
continue to be beholden to national audiences and national political cul-
tures endowing their officially sanctioned cosmopolitan stories with more
or less obvious nationalistic twists by channelling themes of national vic-
timhood or national cosmopolitan pride. Yet, in some cases, especially that
of the National Army Museum in London, the national orientation of
museums could coincide with particularly marked forms of agonistic inter-
vention. Hence, there is no clear-cut relationship between the national
frame and agonism. In some respects, it could even be argued that the
national frame and museums dedicated to national audiences have greater
scope for agonistic interventions, as most memory debates in Europe are
still rooted in national memorial debates (Berger 2020). Audience research
that has been carried out in the context of UNREST has shown how the
reactions of audiences were highly dependent on the national background
of the visitors, underlining the importance of the nation to contemporary
memory debates. Especially in Eastern Europe, antagonistic interpreta-
tions of past wars flourish and consistently ‘cosmopolitan modes of
remembrance represent a clear improvement and a step in the right direc-
tion’. Museum officials’ preference for officially sanctioned master narra-
tives and their concomitant reluctance to put on display meaningful
controversies about the interpretation of past wars causes a pervasive

depoliticization of European museum cultures and provides a lot of
opportunities for agonistic improvements and provocations. UNREST
researchers found that the representation of oral history narratives in
museums had a particularly strong potential to produce agonistic
interventions.
UNREST did not only provide scholarly analyses of existing war muse-
ums in Europe today, it also curated its own model exhibition that was to
demonstrate how an agonistic memory frame in relation to war might
look like. The temporary exhibition staged at Ruhr Museum in Essen,
Germany, between November 2018 and June 2019 was ambivalently enti-
tled ‘Krieg.Macht.Sinn’. One reading of the title translates into ‘War.
Power. Meaning’ while a second reading—now without the dots between
the words—translates into the more provocative line ‘War Makes Sense’
(Berger et al. 2019). Daniela De Angeli, Wulf Kansteiner, Cristian Cercel
and Eamonn O’Neill here provide an analysis of the exhibition and its
intentions as well as an analysis of visitors’ reactions to the exhibition. In
the German context with its strong cosmopolitan memory frame, the sug-
gestion that war was not necessarily a meaningless undertaking only result-
ing in senseless killing and suffering was meant as an agonistic intervention
producing a counter-hegemonic discourse. Thus, the concept of the exhi-
bition made it clear that many discursive battles had been and continue to
be fought about whether it makes sense or not to go to war over specific
issues. Furthermore, the exhibit highlighted the interests of the military-
industrial complex of all countries in having wars but also mentioned other
social groups who had benefited from or otherwise seen sense in war,
confronting their statements in favour of war with more pacifist and cos-
mopolitanly inclined voices. Controversiality and multi-perspectivity was
thus built into the exhibition at every stage in order to arrive at the desired
result of undermining the cosmopolitan consensus in German society that
war did not make sense. (For a virtual exhibition tour of the exhibit, go to
http://www.unrest.eu/exhibition/ [accessed 25 June 2021].) UNREST
researchers also specially developed two video games for the exhibition
which were designed with the explicit purpose of providing visitors with
an agonistic memory experience challenging their social, cultural and
political assumptions about war. The games contained multiple perspec-
tives on a given scenario forcing players to make decisions and face conse-
quences that were unsettling for them. Introduced into the context of an
exhibit resonating with multi-perspectivity, the games were meant to have
a meaningful agonistic effect on memories of war embraced by the players

(De Angeli et al. 2021). However, despite the best intentions of the exhi-
bition to unsettle the visitors, visitor research revealed that most visitors
reacted with strong cosmopolitan sentiments to the exhibition pointing to
the limits of exhibitions in changing dominant memory frames in society.
Agonistic provocations were apparently best understood where the visitors
encountered them through language rather than through visual stimuli
revealing perhaps a certain logocentrism in the concept of agonistic mem-
ory. Reflecting on the successes and failures of the exhibition, the article
concludes by underlining the need for strong counter-hegemonic narra-
tives underpinning agonistic interventions that cannot be satisfied with
simply presenting multiple perspectives on one and the same phenome-
non. Agonism, the authors conclude, needs to be narratively scripted into
an exhibition building on powerful emotions and unsettling images (see
also Jaeger 2020, 309–311).
A museum exhibit was not the only cultural product made by UNREST
researchers in cooperation with stakeholders, like the Ruhr Museum. They
also teamed up with a prize-winning theatre company from Madrid,
Micomicón, whose members, in dialogue with UNREST, scripted a the-
atre play that was intended to put agonistic memory on stage. ‘Where the
Forest Thickens’ was performed in the Teatro del Bosque in Madrid in
June 2017 (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtJg2jZmdHg)
and subsequent audience research was carried out among those who had
seen the play. At the centre of the play stands a perpetrator from the
Yugoslav civil wars who is living in Spain and, in the course of the play, is
revealed to be a perpetrator. The visitors who denied the value of this cos-
mopolitan frame and insisted on the need to identify only with the victims
in an antagonistic memory frame vis-à-vis the perpetrators were mainly
those who had close relatives or friends among the victims or who were
engaged in memory activism on behalf of victim groups. Those visitors
who were most prone to adopt the cosmopolitan frame were overwhelm-
ingly from Poland, a country that does not play an active part in the play’s
plot. Hence, respondents from Poland felt more distanced than those
from Spain or Bosnia and found it easier to relate to the cosmopolitan
memory frame of the play. A number of those who had seen the play drew
an important distinction between understanding the actions of the perpe-
trator and justifying them. This, as Diana Gonzales Martin and Hans
Lauge Hansen point out, is a central axiom within the agonistic memory
mode. Overall, the reaction to the play indicated to both authors that
agonistic interventions can indeed powerfully foster what they call ‘con-
tentious co-existence’ between different perspectives on past conflicts.
Last but not least, in terms of impact activities, UNREST researchers
disseminated the project’s findings to a wider public through a Massive
Open Online Course (MOOC). As David Clarke, Nina Parish and Ayshka
Sené argue in their article, MOOCs have by now established themselves as
a useful tool for disseminating scholarly knowledge to a wider public and
engaging the public with the findings of highly specialized researchers.
They explain the design of the MOOC entitled ‘How We Remember War
and Violence: Theory and Practice’ and then proceed to analyse the three
courses that were run between September 2018 and May 2019—towards
the end of the UNREST project. The MOOC was developed with the
intention to make learners aware of the theory of agonistic memory and
encourage them to engage with agonistic memorial practices so that they
might, in their everyday surroundings, become themselves agonistic mem-
ory activists. Crafted on the basis of a stakeholder survey, the four-week
course allowed for a maximum engagement of the learners with both the
theory of agonistic memory and the empirical research findings of the
UNREST project. Most of the learners who engaged in this way with
UNREST came from Europe and were over 65 years old; around two-
thirds of them finished the course, which, by the international standards of
a MOOC, is a high rate of completion. Evaluating learner responses to the
course showed that over 90% of them appreciated the new knowledge they
had obtained through the course and about two-thirds stated that they
had sought to apply what they had learnt in their professional surround-
ings since taking the course. Hence, the course was successful in achieving
its main goals. It is available for adoption and adaptation to anyone inter-
ested in continuing the MOOC in an educational setting and the UNREST
researchers certainly hope that it will become a popular form of learning
about agonistic memory.
The final article in this collection is not so much an attempt to sum-
marize the results of the UNREST project than a personal reflection of the
two editors on the usefulness and future application of the theory of ago-
nistic memory. It has to be emphasized that it does not reflect the view of
all UNREST researchers and some, in particular Hans Lauge Hansen and
Anna Cento Bull, have made it very clear to the editors that they are not
in agreement with the arguments put forward in Chap. 8. However, as
editors and UNREST researchers who engaged with the theory of agonis-
tic memory deeply, we felt that a reflection on where we see the theory of
agonistic memory within the field of memory studies and how we evaluate
its usefulness in years to come would be a suitably agonistic conclusion to
the volume.
It seems clear to us that six years after Bull and Hansen first published
their landmark article in Memory Studies, the theory of agonistic memory
has attracted a lot of interest among memory scholars. It has been applied
to many different areas of scholarship, including, among others,
national(ist) memory, the memory of war and violent conflict, the mem-
ory of deindustrialization and the memory of revolution. Several scholars,
as outlined in Chaps. 2 and 8, have attempted to develop further the ideas
first put forward by Bull and Hansen, and there is a significant body of
work that is closely related to notions of agonistic memory. With this vol-
ume we provide an executive summary of the main research results of the
UNREST project, as it unfolded between 2016 and 2019, and hope to
encourage further debate about the role and potential of agonistic memory.
References
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Beck, Ulrich. 2006. The Cosmopolitan Vision. Cambridge: Polity.
Berger, Stefan. 2020. National Museums of War in Britain Between Antagonism
and Agonism. A Comparison of the Imperial War Museum with the National
Army Museum. Annali dell’Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico in Trento 46
(1): 133–160.
Berger, Stefan, Theodor Grütter, and Wulf Kansteiner, eds. 2019. Krieg.Macht.
Sinn. Krieg und Gewalt in der europäischen Erinnerung. Katalog zur Ausstellung
des Ruhr Museums auf Zollverein 11November 2018 bis 10. Juni 2019.
Essen: Klartext.
Bull, Anna, and Hans Hansen. 2016. On Agonistic Memory. Memory Studies 9
(4): 390–404.
De Angeli, Daniela, Daniel Finnegan, Lee Scott, and O’Neill Eamonn. 2021.
Unsettling Play. Perceptions of Agonistic Games. Journal on Computing and
Cultural Heritage 14 (2): 1–25.
Hirst, William, Jeremy Yamashiro, and Aly Coman. 2018. Collective Memory
from a Psychological Perspective. Trends in Cognitive Science 22 (5): 438–451.
Jaeger, Stephan. 2020. The Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum.
Berlin: De Gruyter.
Levy, Daniel, and Nathan Sznaider. 2006. The Holocaust and Memory in the Global
Age. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the Political. London: Routledge.
CHAPTER 2
Agonistic Memory Revisited
Anna Cento Bull, Hans Lauge Hansen,

and Francisco Colom-González
The project Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational

Europe (UNREST) focuses on the recovery of troubling pasts within the
European context. It rests on the conviction that the way in which the past
is remembered and retrieved through social practices and cultural repre-
sentations plays a decisive role in our political understanding of the pres-
ent. We believe that the crisis of the European project and its erosion by a
variety of nationalistic and populist movements is related, on the one
hand, to the gradual neutralization of the national frame of political action,
but it is also linked to the use that different political actors have made of
A. C. Bull
University of Bath, Bath, UK
e-mail: mlsab@bath.ac.uk
H. L. Hansen
Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
e-mail: romhlh@cc.au.dk
F. Colom-González (*)
CSIC, Madrid, Spain
e-mail: f.colom@cisc.es
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Switzerland AG 2021
S. Berger, W. Kansteiner (eds.), Agonistic Memory and the Legacy of
20th Century Wars in Europe, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86055-4_2
14 A. C. BULL ET AL.
historical memory in order to shape political imaginaries. As a form of

social representation, memory plays a critical role in the political dynamics
of every society. This is particularly true in societies with a recognizable
traumatic past, like those issued from a colonial background, or which
have experienced civil, international war or genocide. The way our societ-
ies relate to the conflicts of the past is therefore an important parameter of
evaluation of how democracy works. However, since the post-war period,
the main debates on democracy did not pay particular attention to the
political meaning of memory. This was the case of the economic theory of
democracy in the 1960s, of the debates between liberals and communitar-
ians in the 1980s, and of the new strands of deliberative, multicultural and
republican democracy during the 1990s, with their advocacy of diversity,
participatory politics and the idea of a ‘strong’ democracy (Downs 1957;
Barber 1984; Mulhall and Swift 1992; Rawls 1993; Kymlicka 1995; Pettit
1997). The main theoretical inroads into the ‘politics of the past’ were
made indirectly, through the categories that dealt with ‘transitional’ and
‘restorative’ justice (Williams 2012). Either by taking a too formal stance
or by assuming an approach that normatively dissolves the conflictual
character of social relations, none of these debates seemed to be able to
fully confront the contentious nature of politics and to perceive the deci-
sive role that social memory plays in them. In a sharp contrast with the
academic paucity of the politics of memory, nationalistic and xenophobic
movements in Europe have made exhaustive use of traumatic historical
experiences in order to build antagonistic narratives of the past and make
political advances.
This project engages the memory of European social conflict from an
agonistic perspective. The general hypothesis is that an agonistic concep-
tion of democracy—that is, a conception that recognizes and values its
competitive, adversarial or conflictual component—might revive the polit-
ical core of the European democratic project, particularly if this type of
approach is extended to the field of memory. The agonistic remembrance
of some of the most troubling episodes of modern European history—like
mass crimes, civil wars and the two World Wars—might thus become an
opportunity for political and ethical growth by challenging the neutraliz-
ing effects of therapeutic memory discourses that expect the consensual
dissolution of political conflict, but also transforming the antagonistic
thrust typical of populist and nationalistic movements into a multi-
perspective, reflexive and critical elucidation of the divergent passions,
identities and values that are inherent to democratic politics.
2 AGONISTIC MEMORY REVISITED 15
Unlike liberal and deliberative conceptions of democracy, agonism, in

its various formulations, emphasizes the inherently conflictual nature of
society. Intellectually, this concept is—as Astrid Erll has noticed—a ‘travel-
ling’ one. Its origins lie in ancient Greece, where the term Agon (αγών)
originally referred to the competitiveness and the craving for victory that
ruled the great Panhellenic games, and which in Greek culture were asso-
ciated to the formation of character. It also found its way in the rhetorical
field, as a dialectical expression of the opposing principles of the main
characters in classical tragedy. In modern times this concept has been sub-
jected to many different interpretations: from Hannah Arendt and Bonnie
Honig to William Connolly, and Chantal Mouffe, just to mention a few
(Arendt 1958; Honig 1993; Connolly 2002; Mouffe 2013a; Mouffe
2005). The main difference between the first three and Mouffe is that
whereas the former consider agonism as a kind of individual self-realization,
the latter insists upon a collective and political interpretation of the con-
cept. According to Mouffe, the human species build collective identities
on ‘us’ versus ‘them’ relations, and the world is therefore ontologically
antagonistic and conflictual. Agonism is in Mouffe’s understanding a way
to mitigate and control antagonism, while the same concept in the under-
standing of the three aforementioned philosophers is, in Mouffe’s word-
ing, agonism without antagonism (2013: 10). In UNREST we have
adopted and adapted Chantal Mouffe’s conception of agonism to the
realm of memory, in particular her ideas that society is composed of asym-
metric power relations and collective identities are constructed through
the political relations between an ‘us’ and a constitutive outside in the
form of an ‘other’.
Mouffe’s concept of ‘the political’ as an inherently conflictual realm is
in itself a recognizable re-elaboration of Carl Schmitt’s original concep-
tion (Schmitt 1996 [1927]). According to this, since collective identities
are inscribed in potentially antagonistic relations, their conflictive nature
cannot be closed or dissolved by seeking a dialogued consensus. In her
view, the political process at the national and international level is always
dominated by conflicting hegemonies between political projects. The pur-
pose of agonistic politics is therefore not to try to dissolve conflict by
means of deliberation, but to transform the extant relations of power and
to establish a new hegemony. The concept of ‘agonistic dialogue’ can be
particularly useful in this context, a perspective to which Bakhtin’s open-
ended concept of dialogue is close (Bakhtin 1981). Agonistic dialogue
should allow for the expression of a full range of passions that derive from
the fact that in divided societies, apart from competing needs and inter-
ests, there are differences fuelled by identity (Maddison 2014). Agonistic
democracy revolves therefore around the permanent struggle between
hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects, in which opposed views,
political passions and social imaginaries compete, but can be democrati-
cally channelled through an adversarial dynamics of public contest and
confrontation. Far from increasing antagonism, in Mouffe’s view the rec-
ognition of the adversarial nature of the political can help to mitigate it. In
the last instance, agonistic democracy refers to the relationship between
political opponents who respect one another as adversaries, share the same
symbolic space and recognize the established democratic rules for the
struggle for hegemony.
In UNREST we have not tried to empirically ‘test’ or ‘confirm’ Chantal
Mouffe’s very own theory in a field that she has not directly worked in,
but to explore at large the cognitive and normative potential of agonism
for understanding the dynamics of social memory within the ongoing
debate on the European troubling past and uncertain common future.
Borrowing from Astrid Erll’s concept of ‘narrative modes’, Anna Cento
Bull and Hans Lauge Hansen claimed in a seminal paper that if we take
four basic parameters into consideration—conflictivity, morality, reflexivity
and the use of emotions—it is possible to distinguish between three
generic, ethico-political modes of remembering, which they labelled
antagonistic, cosmopolitan and agonistic (2016). Table 2.1 is an elaborated
version of the original table that gives priority to the four distinguishing
parameters and adds as supplementary the question of dominant narrative
perspective and the treatment of the historical context.
The antagonistic mode of remembering recognizes conflict as a means
to eradicate the enemy with the purpose of creating a conflict-free society,
typically represented in the image of a fictionalized or event mythologized
past of peace and ethnic purity. It tends to apply the moral categories of
‘good’ and ‘evil’ to the agents involved in the narrative, and as identities
are morally essentialized, it is not able to reflect upon its own constitutive
role in the construction of identity. The narrative perspective is that of the
‘hero’ who defends his (it is mainly a masculine characterization) people,
victimized by the foreign perpetrators (‘villains’). This remembering mode
is predominant not only in popular culture (e.g. film, computer games and
pulp fiction), but it is also present as micro-narratives in political discourse
and news journalism. After the economic crisis and with the rise of neo-
nationalism, this mode of remembering is (again) prospering.
Table 2.1 The defining characteristics of modes of remembering.

Nationalistic- Universalist-cosmopolitan Agonistic mode
antagonistic mode mode
Conflict Contemporary Society potentially Recognition of society

Morality: conflict necessary in harmonious built on as ontologically
good/evil order to ‘regain’ a humanitarian values and conflictive
future conflict-free human rights Moral categories are
society Related to abstract deconstructed through
Related to categories historical
characters Democracy/human contextualization
Us = good rights = good
Them = evil Totalitarianism = evil
Reflexivity Self-consciously Reflexive: exposing the Reflexive: exposing the
and dialogue unreflexive, constructed nature of constructed nature of
monologic memory. Consensually memory
dialogic (Habermas) and Open-endedly dialogic
ditto multiperspectivist (Bakhtin) and radically
multiperspectivist
Empathy and Empathy with our Compassion for human Passions for collective
emotions past sufferings, suffering on either side of solidarity, the defence
passion of the conflict of democratic
belonging, institutions and hope
demonizing the evil for social change
other(s)
Perpetrator/ Perpetrator Emphasis on victims’ Learning from the
victim perspective sufferings on all sides memories/perspectives
perspectives presented as victim of victims, perpetrators
Us = heroes and and third party
victims stakeholders
Them = perpetrators
Historical Manipulated, Transcended, Remembering historical
context historical events universalized context and socio-
turned into myths political struggles
The universalist-cosmopolitan mode of remembering has primarily

been developed through the transnational proliferation of the Holocaust
memory discourse with its focus on the perspective of the victim (Levy and
Sznaider 2002). It reflects the increasing individualization of self-reflexive
identities in the late-modern Western societies (Giddens 2006) and builds
upon an understanding of the world as one potentially harmonious entity,
united by a common culture based on humanitarian values and the recog-
nition of human rights (Alexander 2002). The moral categories of ‘good’
and ‘evil’ are applied to abstract systems such as democracy and dictator-
ship, and the narrative is, according to the requirements of reflexive
modernity, highly self-reflexive (Pentzold et al. 2016). Strong passions are
seen as problematic, and emotionally it engages its audiences in a feeling
of compassion with the victims. The historical context tends to be given
minor importance while priority is given to universal, ethical challenges of
human interest. Although we do not believe that it is possible to establish
a rigid temporal equation between historical period and remembering
mode (early or solid modernity = antagonism and reflexive or liquid
modernity = cosmopolitanism), the universalist-cosmopolitan mode of
remembering emerged as a narrative deconstruction of the antagonistic
mode in more artistically ambitious cultural products from the mid-1980s
and forward. The ‘invisible’ part of the active hero-villain confrontation,
the victim, is made the focal point of interest, whereby the agency in the
perpetration of evil is, if not eradicated, at least relegated to a secondary
position, treated like a black box labelled ‘evil’ and ascribed to ideologi-
cally repressive political systems (Hansen 2018a). The academic elabora-
tion of the term ‘cosmopolitan memory’ by Daniel Levi and Natan
Sznaider (2006) gave theoretical substance to this trend and thereby pro-
pelled the cosmopolitan memory discourse further on a global scale.
Finally, agonistic memory characterizes a kind of memory discourse
that unsettles the moral pitting of the other as an enemy by contextualiz-
ing conflict socially, politically and historically. The agonistic approach
aims to unsettle the predominant patterns of understanding history, as
well as reveals the socio-political struggles characterizing the public sphere
both in the past and in the present. On the whole, the memory discourse
that follows an agonistic mode reconfigures the identity positions of the
hegemonic identity construction, and as such they are also highly con-
scious of their own responsibility as social discourses in the construction
not only of the identity of the ‘we’ position but also of that of the ‘adver-
sary’. They allow for the overt representation and subjective perspective of
the invisible part of the victim-perpetrator dichotomy, that is, the bystander
and characters inhabiting the grey zone, and as they eventually even give
voice to the negatively valuated part of the two former memory modes,
the perpetrator of crimes against humanity, we might say that the agonistic
memory discourses perform a second-order narrative deconstruction.
Emotionally, the agonistic approach cherishes passion for social and politi-
cal resistance and feelings of solidarity within a firm defence of democratic
institutions (Cento Bull/ Hansen, 2020). As such, agonistic memory
appears as an instrument for the re-politicization of the public sphere by

unsettling both discriminatory and xenophobic discourses, on the one
hand, and a consensual approach primarily framed by human rights, on
the other, and by mobilizing new political cleavages in favour of pluralist
counter-hegemonic practices. Just as it happened to be the case with the
elaboration of the term ‘cosmopolitan memory’ that reinforced the prolif-
eration of social memory discourses in that vein, it is our hope that coining
the term ‘agonistic memory’, and thereby making this particular memory
mode visible, can have the same effect.
For Mouffe, agonism is mainly a quality related to the public sphere as
a way to recognize but also to mitigate political antagonism. This has two
consequences. Firstly, that an agonistic approach to the uses of the past is
supposed to oppose or unsettle hegemonic ways of understanding, but
also to reveal the socio-political struggles characterizing the public sphere
in the past as well as in the present. This is an entirely relational definition
and any kind of discourse that disrupts or unsettles hegemonic discourse
could be said to have an agonistic function in this sense. Secondly, an ago-
nistic approach is supposed to mitigate or sidestep the antagonistic pro-
pensities for violent conflict, inherently related to the asymmetric power
relations. As stated by Nico Carpentier (2018), discourses can be defined
as either antagonistic or agonistic according to the nodal points that char-
acterize the internal, textual relation between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’.
This definition is not entirely relational; rather, it is a definition of what we
could call the minimum defining traits of agonistic discourse. In her latest
book, Mouffe herself (2018) mentions the defence of equality and radical
democratic processes as indispensable features of an agonistic approach,
and she favours the expression that agonism is characterized by a relation
of ‘conflictual consensus’ between parties, a relation where the opponent
is recognized not as an enemy to be destroyed but as an adversary.
In line with Mouffe’s understanding of the concept, we argued in our
2016 paper that the universalist-cosmopolitan mode of remembering ‘is
unable to incorporate the perspective of the opposed “Other”, the perpe-
trator as a subject in his own right’ (Bull and Hansen 2016: 397). The
cosmopolitan mode of remembering with its compassion for the victim
has been theorized as a possible way of achieving a transnational moral
yardstick and as a lever for a global cosmopolitan identity by scholars such
as Daniel Levy and Nathan Sznaider (2002). By contrast, we believe that
learning from the past means listening to both victims and perpetrators,
and not to judge any absolute truth (Olick 2007). Agonistic memory,
therefore, should incorporate the perspective of the perpetrators. Whereas

Mouffe’s democratic theory envisions the ‘other’ as an adversary and not
an enemy, this obviously does not make sense when we are dealing with
representations of perpetrators of mass atrocities. In such cases we do not
advocate to ‘tame’ the representation in the image of an adversary but to
facilitate an understanding of the social and political contexts that made
such cruelty socially and politically possible. Does that mean that we will
have to understand the Nazi perpetrators responsible for the Holocaust?
Yes and no. Yes, because we need to understand what kind of social and
political conditions it takes to make normal people turn into war criminals,
believing they are doing the right thing. If we do not, we are not able to
see the same conditions emerging in contemporary society. And no,
because we cannot allow this understanding to become an excuse or legiti-
mation of the crimes committed. Agonistic remembering is in this sense
critical towards all historical agents who in the past instigated and/or esca-
lated violence as a political means.
How do we ensure that the understanding of the perpetrator and his or
her background does not turn into legitimation? There are probably many
different ways to ensure this, but one particular way we put forward in the
article and that we have elaborated further in the UNREST project, is
through a specific kind of multiperspectivism. Multiperspectivism, as
defined by Erll (2011), makes reference to a narrative which is simultane-
ously focalized through different subject positions. If we combine this
concept with the basic distinction of the ethico-political relation between
‘us’ and ‘them’, we are able to distinguish between what we have chosen
to call ‘consensual’ and ‘radical’ multiperspectivism (Cento Bull and
Hansen 2020). In consensual multiperspectivism, often applied by cosmo-
politan memory discourses, voices and perspectives belonging to charac-
ters who basically agree, or at least believe in the possibility of rational
consensus, coincide. In radical multiperspectivism, voices and perspectives
belonging to antagonistically opposed enemies, typically victims and per-
petrators, meet, alongside those of bystanders, traitors, collaborators and
so on (Hansen 2018b). The former could be compared to dialogue in
Habermas’ sense, while the latter, which offers us the perspective of the
perpetrator in dialogic interaction with the perspective of the victim and
other historical agents, could be compared to a dialogue in a Bakhtinian
sense (Bakhtin 1981; Gardiner 2004; Roberts 2012). It is our conviction
that radical multiperspectivism is an efficient strategy to provide under-
standing of why the perpetrators of the past did what they did without
legitimatizing their actions or excusing their intentions and maintaining a

critical stance towards solutions that include violence as a political means.
And we believe that this is the kind of understanding which is needed in
order to produce what Lisa Strömbom within the field of peacebuilding
has called ‘thick recognition’ (2014). Strömbom distinguishes between
‘thin’ and ‘thick’ recognition, and as ‘thin recognition’ produces the
acceptance of the Other as a human being, it belongs to what we have here
denominated the universalistic-cosmopolitan mode of remembering.
Thick recognition, on the other hand, is in Strömbom’s wording particu-
lar rather than universal and includes the other’s cultural identity and his-
torical background (2014: 171). We therefore believe that it goes hand in
hand with our concept of agonistic memory.
Having described so far the agonistic mode of remembering theoreti-
cally as distinct from the nationalistic-antagonistic and the universalist-
cosmopolitan modes, we need to call attention to the fact that neither of
these modes should be understood as rigid or compact memory regimes,
but as ideal types. Such a description of ideal types can be analytically pro-
ductive in the sense that it facilitates the identification of and distinction
between different modal traits in different cultural memory discourses,
but it can also be problematic and give in to reductionism and simplifica-
tion in order to achieve clarity. One way of doing this is to be reductive in
the description of the modes themselves. We today admit that we used the
concept of cosmopolitanism in a reductive and simplistic way in our 2016
article, in the sense that we based our critique of cosmopolitanism exclu-
sively on what decolonial theory conceives of as ‘universal cosmopolitan-
ism’ (Mignolo 2011), that is, the different versions of cosmopolitanism
which are based on the Kantian notion of rationally constructed universal
moral values. We believe that such versions, despite their mutual differ-
ences, could be found in David Held, Jeffrey Alexander or Ulrich Beck
(Held 2010; Alexander 2002; Beck 2002; Beck and Grande 2007), just to
mention a few. However, the concept of cosmopolitanism has been
claimed and appropriated by many different strands of philosophical and
sociological thinking throughout the last decades (Neilson 1999), some of
which do take power inequalities and hegemonic structures into consider-
ation. Among the more recent contributions which could be productive
for the further development of the notion of agonistic memory could be
mentioned Nikos Papastergiadis and Daniella Trimboli’s concept of aes-
thetic cosmopolitanism (2017), Miyase Christensen’s postnormative
cosmopolitanism (2017) and Walter Mignolo’s notion of decolonial cos-

mopolitanism (2011).
In recent years initiatives have also even been taken to merge or dialo-
gize Mouffe’s sense of agonism with different notions of cosmopolitan-
ism. One example could be Tamara Caraus, who simultaneously criticizes
the philosophical foundations of Mouffe’s vision of a global alternative to
the cosmopolitan vision of a global society and offers a way forward
(2016). According to Caraus, Mouffe’s vision of a multipolar world order
lacks a genuine alternative to the universal values such as human rights and
re-introduces in the form of the criteria ‘good regimes’ and ‘human dig-
nity’ the moral standards she herself criticizes so hard. On the other hand,
Mouffe’s insistence on the existence of multiple secularizations, enlighten-
ments and modernities is, according to Caraus, productive and she engages
in a discussion of how some of Mouffe’s basic assumptions such as the
pluralization of hegemonies at a global level, the conversion from enemy
to adversary, the conflictual consensus and the practice of contestation
could be reformulated and integrated into a new idea of an agonistic cos-
mopolitanism. Another example could be Nikos Papastergiadis inspiring
discussion of the relation between Sloterdijk’s antagonism and the ago-
nism of Mouffe, where he proposes to elaborate what he calls an ‘expanded
conception’ of Mouffe’s concept of agonism in dialogue with the concept
of cosmopolitanism (2017). Such an expanded version of agonism should,
according to Papastergiadis, consider culture as ‘a relatively open process
of sense-making through the incorporation of difference’ (Mouffe 2017:
21). These contributions do not specifically address the topic of cultural
memory, but they do provide inspiration for the development of agonistic
thinking within our field. Mignolo’s critique of the racialized and decolo-
nial power relations in contemporary society and Mouffe’s vision of a mul-
tipolar world order could provide an interesting background for the
discussion of established concepts like travelling memory (Erll 2011) and
multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2009; Rothberg and Yildiz 2011),
while Caraus’ initiative and Paperstergiadis’ expanded conception of ago-
nism might prove productive in a reflection upon how cultural memory
processes emerge in the tension between radical individualization and a
society structured upon social inequality, hegemonic power relations and
antagonistic identity relations. We find such appropriations of cosmopoli-
tan thinking interesting and stimulating and believe in a productive dia-
logue on how such notions could contribute to the further development
of memory studies and the notion of agonistic memory. In order to amend
such reductionism, we specifically talk in this article about ‘universalistic-

cosmopolitanism’ and not just cosmopolitanism.
Another way of being reductive in the treatment of the ideal modes of
remembering is to try to reduce social reality to the ideal types. In social
reality the memory modes merge and blend with multiple overlaps and
interactions between them. In our empirical research, we assumed that
mass graves and war museums, which we respectively characterized as
‘hot’ and ‘cold’ memories of wars in twentieth-century Europe, could
offer distinct comparative cases for studying the potential materialization
of the different modes of remembrance. The cultural products of the proj-
ect—the theatre play and the exhibition—were expected to provide the
tools for devising agonistic representations of past and present conflicts, as
well as confined environments in which to provoke multidirectional inter-
actions among diverse types of stakeholders. However, it is not the same
to apply these categories in order to classify the narrative constructions
that we find in relatively contained spaces, like museums or exhibitions,
than trying to identify them in multidimensional ‘memoryscapes’ like
those defined by the exhumation of mass graves. Again, both epistemo-
logical dimensions are different from the normative theorization of ago-
nism as a particular understanding of democracy. In order to better
understand the practices carried out by the different memory agents in the
exhumation processes, they should be inscribed in their own cultural and
political environment, since such practices are addressed to (or against)
this backdrop: the crisis of the political culture of the transition to democ-
racy in Spain, which was based in the forgetfulness of the civil war and
Francoist repression; the confrontation in Poland between liberal
Europeanism and ultra-conservative Catholic nationalism, together with
the revisionist debate on Polish responsibility for the persecution of Jews
during the Second World War; and the contextualization of the annual
commemorations of the Srebrenica’s massacre in Bosnia, within the ongo-
ing discussion on the responsibilities for the war and its insertion in an
environment that is highly mediated by international legal agents and by
the uncertain consolidation of the new country. Agonistic moments or
inroads depend therefore on local memory frames and political contexts,
so the ways in which the different social agents interact with them convey
a varied meaning to formally similar mnemonic practices. Agonistic
remembering must be able to include a multiplicity of perspectives that
generate controversiality and trigger certain types of passions—like hope,
indignation, solidarity or the longing for dignity—as a way to politicize

and bring into question the hegemonic interpretations of the past.
Learning from the UNREST Case Studies: Mass

Grave Exhumations
To test the applicability of our theory of agonistic memory in different
settings, both social and cultural, as well as to refine and revise the theory
itself in light of fieldwork findings, we opted for two contrasting case stud-
ies. One focused on social agents and modes of remembering relating to
mass grave exhumations in Spain (Casa de Don Pedro 1978; Villamayor
de los Montes 2004; Guadalajara 2016–17), Poland (Katyń 1990s;
Jedwabne 2001; Powazki Military Cemetery 2017) and Bosnia (Prijedor
2003–12; Budak 2007; Sarajevo 2012–13). The analysis of the mass grave
exhumations sites was able to draw upon diverse disciplines: social anthro-
pology, archaeology of conflict, forensic science, memory and cultural
studies.
We characterized mass graves as ‘hot’ memories of wars in twentieth-
century Europe since we were highly conscious of the fact that mass exhu-
mations often take place in post-conflict societies undergoing some form
of transitional justice in which the role of memory is both pivotal and
controversial. As Huyse (2003: 30) argued, ‘memory is a two-edged
sword. It can play a crucial role in making reconciliation sustainable. But
it also has the capacity to hinder reconciliation processes’. Group memo-
ries, in particular, can be mutually antagonistic and they may perpetuate
feelings of enmity across generations, explaining the long-term nature of
many conflicts (Tint 2010: 239; Volkan 2001). For this reason, many
scholars of transitional justice advocate a process of remembering focused
on ‘recasting social memory as a peace strategy’ (Brewer 2006: 217), espe-
cially by relying on storytelling and on sites of remembrance ‘that bring
together victims across the divide’ (2006: 224). In short, a cosmopolitan
approach to memory and storytelling is considered the best way to deal
with a traumatic past. By contrast, other scholars are critical of this
approach, arguing in favour of an ‘agonistic’ approach to transitional jus-
tice. Thus, Bell (2008) rejected the desirability of developing a single
overarching narrative of the past in favour of a multiplicity of perspectives:
‘a just society would strive to acknowledge the multiplicity of historical
narratives existing within it’. Focusing specifically on the role of memory
in transitional justice, Brown (2012: 465) argued that contrasting memo-

ries of the past should not be merged into a shared narrative but acknowl-
edged and worked through. As he stated, ‘what may be possible is
transitional justice processes that somehow allow for combative, challeng-
ing forms but that, crucially, encompass respect for the “other”’.
̵
With specific reference to post-conflict societies, Mouffe, Đordević and
Sardelić (2013b) argued that ‘what democracy should try to do is to cre-
ate the institutions which allow for conflict—when it emerges—to take an
agonistic form, a form of adversarial confrontation instead of antagonism
between enemies’. In other words, Mouffe maintains that total reconcili-
ation or indeed consensus is neither possible nor desirable. In contrast to
advocates of deliberative democracy, largely inspired by the political theo-
ries put forward by Habermas (1984, 1992) and Rawls (1971, 1993),
Mouffe argues that conflict is constitutive of democracy, even though she
accepts that conflict and contestation should take place within certain
shared parameters. As concerns mass grave exhumations, however, we
anticipated that an agonistic approach to memory would be largely absent,
not least because of its perceived risk of exacerbating divisions and even
reopening bloody confrontations. Rather, we expected to find a top-down
cosmopolitan approach to remembering coupled with bottom-up antago-
nistic practices. Our fieldwork in relation to the first case study brought to
light a more complex picture than we had anticipated, in the light of which
we revisited some of our theoretical assumptions.
To start with, the distinction between the ethico-political mode of
remembering in the cultural sphere and its function in the public sphere
modifies some of the traits described by Cento Bull and Hansen as intrin-
sic characteristics of the different modes. In particular, the adoption of a
cosmopolitan discourse by social actors and movements does not necessar-
ily equate either to depoliticization or to individualization of the victims.
In some cases, as in Spain, the resort to international human rights legisla-
tion and the universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity on the part
of certain victims’ associations has been a core element in the politiciza-
tion of memory and the erosion of the ‘1978 regime’, with its alleged
‘pact of oblivion’. The Spanish case showed us the relational character of
agonism in a socio-political context. This means that different modes of
remembering can be adopted in order to disrupt a hegemonic memory
discourse and that their degree of success will depend on (1) the specific
mode that characterizes the dominant discourse, (2) the level of contesta-
tion permitted in a specific context and (3) the strategies and alliances
social agents choose to develop. Thus, in Spain, as the dominant post-

Franco discourse was one of forgetting, promoting mass exhumations to
reopen the issue of the civil war and the mass extermination of republican
opponents during the Francoist regime was in itself a counter-hegemonic
disruption. In the post-Franco climate, in which contestation on this issue
was barely accepted in the public sphere, victims’ associations which
adopted a cosmopolitan mode, such as the Spanish Association for the
Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), proved more adept in estab-
lishing transnational links and obtaining international resonance and sup-
port than those which adopted an antagonistic mode, and also included
occasional agonistic tactics in their repertoire. Inversely, an association like
the Foro por la Memoria, which relies on the antagonistic opposition
between republican freedom fighters and Francoist murderers, was less
successful in challenging the hegemonic narrative of the transition to
democracy. However, the cosmopolitan nature of the ARMH’s memory
discourse does not promote an understanding of the social interests and
political power relations that led to the outlet of violence, nor of the exis-
tence of those same interests and relations in contemporary society.
Furthermore, once the cosmopolitan discourse established itself as a, if not
the, prominent discourse, it started to develop antagonistic traits, in some
cases stifling further contestation over the memory of the civil war.
As regards the cases of Bosnia and Poland, they highlighted a different
kind of risk linked to an unquestioning and unproblematic application of
cosmopolitanism as the best approach to history and memory in relation
to past conflicts. This risk consists in the relative ease with which cosmo-
politanism (admittedly, a ‘twisted’ version of cosmopolitanism) can be put
to the service of antagonism. As our colleagues Hristova/Ferrándiz
(2019) argued,
In Poland, nationalist and antagonistic memory frames are dressed in the cos-
mopolitan attire of victimhood and human rights […] In Bosnia, cosmopoli-
tanism has been imported by the international NGOs but it has been readily
incorporated into the local dynamics of ethnic antagonism.
We would contend, therefore, that a top-down imposition of the cos-

mopolitan approach can lead to the entrenching of deep-seated divisions
and rifts, which can be expressed bottom-up either in traditional antago-
nistic terms or, even more worryingly, in disguise themselves by taking
over the language and rhetoric of human rights and transitional justice.
The Polish case also demonstrated the importance of the temporal dimen-
sion and of political ‘windows of opportunity’ for memory politics. In
Poland, in fact, the initially predominant cosmopolitan mode of remem-
brance seemed to create a favourable ground for an agonistic approach to
Polish perpetratorship of several Second World War pogroms. However,
with the emergence of a powerful right-wing populism the debate recently
shifted towards an antagonistic mode, closing down space for any further
reflective debates.
What has been said above has various theoretical implications. First,
agonism in the sense of anti-hegemonic contestation is largely relational
and it develops even in the absence of social agents adopting an explicitly
agonistic mode of remembering. A human rights discourse, for instance, if
applied in a top-down manner, can be used as an argument for going to
war. Conversely, applied in a bottom-up manner it can be used to politi-
cize and reinforce a counter-hegemonic movement. Second, the cosmo-
politan mode, once it becomes hegemonic, can prevent any further
openings for agonistic contestation and even have problems recognizing
the contingency and plurality of its own constructed ‘We’. This raises
important questions for agonists themselves, as they need to develop and
reflect upon the ways in which they can build a passionately solidaristic
collective ‘We’ while acknowledging the constructed and contingent
nature of this community of interests. Thirdly, our findings point to the
need to distinguish not only between different strands of cosmopolitan-
ism, recognizing that some versions are closer to agonism (as argued in the
previous section), but also that a cosmopolitan mode of remembering can
be used in specific contexts in order to re-politicize the debate and effec-
tively challenge the hegemonic memory regime. Alternatively, what we
might term a twisted version of cosmopolitanism can be put to the service
of antagonistic relations. Finally, the need to inject agonistic elements into
the public struggles around memory at an early stage, seems to us strength-
ened by our findings, as the turn to a cosmopolitan mode of remember-
ing, far from ensuring conflict resolution, can prove fairly fragile and
short-lived, or indeed close up space for debate and contestation—if and
when it becomes hegemonic—or even, at worst, allow for the continua-
tion of antagonism under new guise.
This last point we would advocate even while we acknowledge the chal-
lenges of promoting agonistic interventions in a post-conflict case in which
the memory of conflict is still very raw, such as Bosnia, given the risks of a
return to antagonism. Specifically, in cases of extreme antagonistic
confrontation we would favour promoting an approach that combines

cosmopolitan and agonistic traits, as follows:
• exposing the socially constructed nature of cultural memory

• recognizing the ‘other’ as a human being or, as Viet Thanh Nguyen
(2019) recently put it, recognizing both US and THEM as human
beings imbued with good and bad traits
• accepting the need to respect basic human rights
In more settled cases, we would favour a variety of agonistic practices

aimed at
• questioning pre-established narrative templates and hegemonic

understandings of the past
• unsettling moral labels such as the innocent victim and the evil
perpetrator
• considering not only the differences between nations, classes, parties
of a conflict but also the differences within (socially, politically, stra-
tegically, etc.)
• Revisiting the socio-political struggles and conflicts of the past in
ways that question/cut across essentialist US and THEM collective
identities.
Questions remain around the issue of agency, not least as concerns poli-
cymakers. As Cento Bull and Clarke recently argued (2019: 248), this
issue is complicated by the fact that there is no clearly discernible pattern
relating specific levels of policymaking with certain modes of remember-
ing. While at first sight it might seem that supranational institutions tend
to promote a cosmopolitan approach to memory, while national level ones
still favour antagonistic stances and bottom-up civil society groups pro-
mote agonistic practices, in reality the picture is more complex, especially
if we take into account the point previously made concerning the reshap-
ing of cosmopolitan traits to suit antagonistic policies. As the authors con-
cluded (2019: 248), ‘It is difficult to envisage either the international or
the state level switching to promoting an approach that deliberately for-
goes closure in favour of ongoing contestation and acknowledges the need
for material as well as symbolic reparations for past injustices without the
concerted efforts of a diverse coalition of socio-political and cultural
agents’. From this perspective, as argued by our colleagues Ferrándiz and
Hristova (2019) and discussed in Chap. 3, we can view mass graves and
cemeteries, the focus of our first case study, as spaces with great agonistic
potential, in which the passionate involvement of the victim’s relatives,
interacting with the (often divergent) strategies of the memory activists
and political agents, can give rise to agonistic coalitions and practices.
Learning from the UNREST Case Studies:

War Museums
Our other case study analysed methodological approaches and modes of
representation in five European war museums. The selected museums
comprised the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne, France; the
Kobarid Museum in Kobarid, Slovenia; the German-Russian Museum in
Berlin-Karlshorst, Germany; the Oskar Schindler’s Factory in Kraków,
Poland; and the Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany. Analysis
of these museums relied on qualitative methods, including archival
research, interviews with curators and practitioners, as well as in-depth
group analysis of permanent exhibitions. Interviews with visitors and anal-
ysis of the visitors’ books at each of the five museums were also part of the
fieldwork and informed the analysis (Berger et al. 2019). While the case
studies themselves will be analysed in depth in the next two chapters, we
will now consider the theoretical implications of some of our empirical
findings.
We characterized war museums as ‘cold’ memories of wars in twentieth-
century Europe, not least because many of them dealt with the First and
Second World Wars, which can feel relatively remote to many visitors who
did not live through them and did not experience them first hand. We
anticipated, therefore, that visitors would react to war exhibitions at an
intellectual level though not at an emotional one, unlike the different
agents involved in mass exhumations. Our assumption turned out to be
wrong, not least because many war museums, as will be shown in Chap. 4,
have adopted a cosmopolitan approach to history and memory, tending to
focus on the terrible conditions of the soldiers in the conflict, in an attempt
to promote solidarity beyond winners and losers. This approach deliber-
ately elicits emotions from visitors—typically compassion and pity for the
war victims, including the soldiers from all sides, and revulsion against
war—and, judging from our fieldwork findings, largely succeeds in pro-
voking the sought-for reactions among them. Studying the reactions of
museum visitors to the dominant modes of remembering in exhibitions is

especially important, as they can trigger transformative experiences. The
idea is that experimentation and creativity can work with emotions and
shift them from an antagonistic to a cosmopolitan character or indeed to
a more agonistic one. Role reversal, for instance, has been one of the main
instruments used to trigger some degree of self-reflection and awareness
in the audience about the contingency of the socio-political circumstances
that surround historical conflicts and human agency. However, the types
of reactions elicited by museums with cosmopolitan exhibitions—like
revulsion, compassion or empathy—seem unable as such to facilitate the
engagement of the public with the contrasting views and socio-political
passions of the different historical actors, which in turn would facilitate a
contextualized understanding of the other’s perspectives and the struggles
leading to conflict. Furthermore, while many exhibitions strive to pro-
mote compassion for all victims and a generic revulsion to war, as opposed
to political passions, fieldwork findings indicate that visitors also harbour
stronger emotional reactions even in relation to a ‘distant’ conflict like the
First World War. Prima facie ‘negative’ feelings, like hate, indignation or
resentment, can be redirected in a counter-hegemonic sense, for instance
by helping to create some form of critical reflection about the circum-
stances in which the traumatic events happened or by unsettling visitors’
former ideological assumptions. In short, this finding brought to light the
need to distinguish between different emotions, assess their articulation
with the three memory modes discussed in the first section of this chapter
and probe their transformative potential in favour of an agonistic under-
standing of past and present struggles. We will address this issue in some
depth in Chaps. 5 and 6 which discuss the outcome of our impact prod-
ucts. Their aim, in fact, was not simply to confirm the intensity of the visi-
tors’ and viewers’ emotions but to ‘confront’ them in order to evaluate the
transformative potential of agonistic museal exhibitions and theatre
performances.
Our analysis of war museums also clarified that not every approach that
relies on multiple perspectives is by itself agonistic, precisely because cos-
mopolitanism also promotes multiperspectivism, albeit consensual, as
opposed to radical. This is especially the case with the uses of oral histories
and narratives in museum exhibitions. On the one hand, in fact, oral his-
tory has become increasingly incorporated in museum exhibitions, so
much so that, as Mulhearn (2008: 28) remarked, ‘it’s impossible to imag-
ine a new museum being planned without a significant oral history
component’. This was also the case with the war museums analysed in our
second case study, as most of them relied on first-hand testimonies by vari-
ous witnesses, striving to incorporate gender, age, social and ethno-reli-
gious differences. Indeed, presenting personal life stories can promote
empathy and interest in different historical actors and points of view
(Savenije and de Bruijn 2017). On the other hand, the use of oral history
in museums has been criticized for being subjected to strict curatorial con-
trol, rather than providing open-ended narratives. As Griffiths (1989: 51)
discovered, oral history’s potential for ‘transforming the social relations of
research’ was severely curbed, thanks to the curators’ overall control over
its uses. According to Nakou (2005:6), ‘oral history in museums would
have more fertile results if its material, partial and subjective character is
underlined by the presentation of different, alternative and even contra-
dictory oral narratives and human reactions related to particular themes,
events or situations’. In short, oral testimonies can lend themselves to
radical multiperspectivism but only if they offer visitors contrasting and
even opposing viewpoints, including the perspectives of the perpetrators,
and are presented in an open-ended manner, with the curators refraining
from imposing an overarching, authoritative narrative.
Can radical multiperspectivity be applied concretely to museal exhibi-
tions? We found a successful example of agonistic multiperspectivism
through oral history was provided by a recent exhibition, entitled Voices of
’68, which opened at the Ulster Museum in September 2018. The exhibi-
tion made use of oral narratives in providing contrasting perspectives on
1968 and the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland and giving space to previ-
ously marginalized voices (Reynolds and Blair 2018). Furthermore, as the
authors argue, ‘Voices of ’68 avoids seeking some sort of consensual narra-
tive on this period and embraces the notion of a “conflictual consensus”,
thereby presenting more fully the complexity and divergence of what was
such an important set of events’ (Reynolds and Blair 2018: 22). The
strong commitment of the Ulster museum and its Director of Collections,
William Blair, to experimenting with innovative methodological and theo-
retical approaches and collaborating with academics to this end, made the
exhibition possible. As part of the UNREST Project, a new war exhibition
with deliberate agonistic traits (discussed in depth in Chap. 5) was devel-
oped in collaboration with the Director and curators of the Ruhr Museum
and launched on 11 November 2018. It is not a coincidence, however,
that both exhibitions were temporary ones, therefore arguably more open
to experimentation. Our case study, in fact, highlighted a persistent
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
HON. BEEKMAN WINTHROP
Copyright, Harris-Ewing, ’08.
THE SICILIAN AND CALABRIAN

EARTHQUAKE
“Messina and Reggio destroyed by an earthquake” flashed over
the wires and appeared in our press the last days of the year. The
terrible news, with its story of the fearful loss of life and property,
seemed too appalling to be true. The world, though stunned by its
magnitude, was yet to learn that no pen could describe the horrors of
a disaster unparalleled in modern history, and that only those who
saw the scene of devastation soon after the catastrophe have any
realization of its terrible results. As for those who lived through the
earthquake and escaped, the mental fear and physical agony they
had undergone left their minds dazed and blank. When some
realization of the truth dawned upon the world a wave of sympathy
was awakened everywhere. It is especially for such times of disaster
that the Red Cross has its being, and the call for help was
immediately issued from headquarters at Washington. The President
and Governors of States were notified that our National Society was
ready to receive and transmit the contributions our people were glad
to make for suffering Italy. President Roosevelt, in his cables to the
King of Italy, expressing his own and his countrymen’s sympathy,
stated that the “American Red Cross has issued an appeal for the
sufferers.” Many Governors of States issued proclamations, asking
that all contributions be sent through the American Red Cross. How
promptly and how generously, our people expressed their sympathy
in tangible shape is known everywhere. Glad were we in America to
do what we could to help our suffering fellow-men in beautiful and
well-loved Italy. Something of what the American Red Cross, our
national member of that greatest of all institutions of international
brotherhood, has been able to do with the contributions it has
received is told in this Bulletin by those who in Italy have helped to
administer the funds. In all of this work the Society has had the most
valuable and untiring assistance of Mr. Lloyd Griscom, the American
Ambassador at Rome. It cannot too strongly express its appreciation
of all that he has accomplished in the line of careful and prompt use
of the money it has sent. What our Red Cross has accomplished has
been done with a sincere desire to be of help, with a deep
appreciation of the complex and difficult problem Italy has had and
still has to face, and with the hope that the wounds of this beautiful
country, so recently devastated by this terrible calamity, may soon be
healed and the people re-established in a happy and prosperous life.
MAJ.-GEN. GEORGE W. DAVIS
ERNEST P. BICKNELL
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ITALIAN

RED CROSS
Knowing that the Italian Red Cross was especially well organized
for carrying on hospital relief work, because of its field hospitals,
fourteen hospital trains and equipment for two ships’ hospitals,
besides an active personnel, the American Red Cross transmitted to
it through our Ambassador at Rome $320,000 to be applied to its
relief work in the earthquake district. The Italian Red Cross, in two
previous Calabrian earthquakes and at the time of the Vesuvian
eruption, maintained a number of hospitals and relief stations. At the
time of the latter disaster the American Red Cross received about
$12,000, which was transmitted to the Italian Red Cross. Later a
special report was made by this Society of the relief work it
performed at that time. A report of the relief operations in Southern
Italy will doubtless be issued sometime in the future, but this must
not be expected too soon, as experience has taught how long drawn
out is relief work after serious disasters. Baron Mayor des Planches,
the Italian Ambassador at Washington, in speaking of the Italian Red
Cross, said:
CHARLES L. MAGEE.
“As the representative of the Italian Government, I desire to

give the strongest indorsement of the Italian Red Cross, with
which the American Red Cross is in the most intimate
relation, and to say that my Government places absolute
confidence in this great national organization.”
On January 4, the following cablegram was received from Count
Taverna:
“The Italian Red Cross tenders sincerest thanks to

American Red Cross for conspicuous contribution of
1,538,500 Italian lire, received through American Ambassador
in Rome, toward the relief of the distressed districts of
Reggio, Calabria and Messina, and begs to express its keen
appreciation of the feelings of solidarity and warm sympathy
with the stricken populations, which have prompted their
generous act.
“COUNT TAVERNA, President Italian Red Cross.”
Since this despatch was received further remittances have been

made, bringing the total of the American Red Cross contributions to
the Italian Red Cross up to $320,000.
ROBERT W. DE FOREST
THE AMERICAN RED CROSS

ORPHANAGE
Hundreds of little
children were left
fatherless and
motherless amidst the
ruins of Messina and
Calabria. Scores of
them were even too
young to be able to give
any information in
regard to themselves or
their families. For years
these must be cared for,
and having been left
without property or
relatives, must be so
educated that, after
reaching mature years,
they will be able to
support themselves.
Queen Helena. Helpless childhood
appeals strongly to
everyone, and the Red
Cross, which after great calamities aims when the first temporary aid
is over, to rehabilitate and place again upon their feet the victims of
the disasters, was ready to accept the suggestion of the Italian
Government that some of the funds entrusted to its administration by
the American people should be devoted to the maintenance of an
agricultural colony in Sicily or Calabria for the care of a hundred or
more of the orphaned children. In national relief the American Red
Cross does not permit the use of its emergency funds for the
purpose of any permanent endowments, but in international relief it
believes it wisest to act under the suggestion of the American
diplomatic representative, the Government and relief committees in
the country where the disaster occurs. Therefore, when Mr. Griscom,
the Ambassador at Rome, after consulting with the Italian
Government, asked that such an agricultural orphanage colony be
maintained by a donation from the American Red Cross, the
suggestion was promptly complied with. Two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars are to be devoted to this purpose.
REAR-AD. PRESLEY M. RIXEY
The colony will be situated in Sicily or Calabria, and will consist of

model farms, where scientific agricultural instructions will be given by
agents of the Royal University of Agriculture. The Italian Government
will furnish the land, and the Italian National Relief, under the
patronage of Queen Helena will provide the buildings. It will be called
“The American Red Cross Orphanage,” and the American
Ambassador is to be an ex-officio member of its governing
committee. It is to be a lay institution, and not ecclesiastical. A yearly
budget of its expenses will be published, which must meet the
approval of the Minister of the Interior, who at present is also the
Prime Minister. A number of the poor women left widows and
dependent by the earthquake, and who in many cases also lost their
little children, will be given employment at this orphanage, and the
care of other little children will help to lift this sorrow from their
hearts. From these women the children will receive again much of
that mother-love and care of which this terrible disaster has robbed
them.
SURG.-GEN. WALTER WYMAN
Speaking of this orphanage, Mr. Griscom writes on February 19 to

the chairman of the Central Committee of the American Red Cross:
“I can assure you that this generous gift of the American
Red Cross has made a profound impression in Italy. I made
the formal presentation to Her Majesty, the Queen, on the
16th instant, and Her Majesty was overcome with emotion
and for a moment at loss to express herself. Finally she made
a beautiful speech and poured forth her admiration for the
organization of the American Red Cross.”
Ambassador Griscom, under date of February 18, forwarded to the

State Department for transmission to the American Red Cross two
letters from the Countess Spaletti Rasponi, the President of the
Patronato Regina Elena, and from the Honorable Bruno Chimirri,
President of the “Comitato di Vigilanza,” respectively, expressing the
gratitude of the Committee and Council of the Patronato Regina
Elena for the gift of $250,000, for the establishment of the
Orphanage. The letters referred to follow:
MAJ.-GEN. R. M. O’REILLY
Copyright, Harris-Ewing, ’08
“Excellency:
“The Council of the ‘Opera Nazionale di Patronato Regina
Elena,’ having known of the conspicuous offer of 1,300,000
lire made by the American National Red Cross in favor of the
children whom the recent earthquake has thrown into the
condition of orphans, has passed a vote of thanks to the
officers and to Your Excellency, to whose influential interest it
is due if so important a part of the funds collected in America
has been devoted to our institution.
“And I, interpreting the desire of the Council, warmly and
specially beg Your Excellency to kindly transmit to the
meritorious American Red Cross the expression of our
profound and heartfelt gratitude toward all the noble and great
American nation, not inferior to any other in all the
manifestations of human genius and solidarity.
“With the assurances of my highest consideration,
“The President,
(Signed) “COUNTESS SPALETTI RASPONI.”
HON. ROBERT BACON
“Mr. Ambassador:
“I have the honor to offer you the warmest thanks of the
Committee and Council of the ‘Opera Nazionale di Patronato
Regina Elena’ for the generous offer which you have made on
behalf of the Calabrian and Sicilian orphans.
“I beg you to be good enough to be interpreter of our very
grateful sentiments to the American Red Cross, which has
completed, with its splendid gift, its relief work in Calabria and
Sicily.
“The Agricultural Colony, which will be named American
Red Cross Orphanage,’ will perpetuate the remembrance of
this charity, and will contribute to render continually more
close the ancient ties of sympathy and friendship which unite
Italy with your mighty Republic, ties which you called attention
to in your brilliant speech on the occasion of the centenary of
the great President Lincoln.
“Accept, Mr. Ambassador, the assurances of my high
consideration.
(Signed) “B. CHIMIRRI.
“To His Excellency,
“Hon. Lloyd C. Griscom,
“Ambassador of the United States of America, Rome.”
MED. DIRECTOR J. C. WIRE
HOUSES FOR ITALY

Our own experiences
after serious disasters
in the United States
have taught us that in
nearly all of such cases
one of the most serious
problems to be met is
the providing of shelter
for the thousands—
sometimes hundreds of
thousands of victims.
Italy has had this same
serious problem to meet
after the late
unparalleled disaster in
Sicily and Calabria. The American Ambassador at Rome was
requested by the State Department to consult with the Italian
Government as to the best use to be made of the $500,000 left by
the Congressional appropriation of $800,000, after the supplies on
the Navy ships, Celtic and Culgoa, which were sent to the scene of
the disaster, had been paid for. The reply came in the nature of a
request that this fund be expended in the purchase and providing of
materials for houses. This suggestion has been admirably carried
out by the Navy Department, which has purchased and shipped, fully
prepared, materials for the immediate erection of 2,500 houses,
including window sashes, doors, etc., and the charter of four ships
for their transportation. Some eight expert carpenters and a large
number of tools have been sent on these vessels, that the erection
of these houses may go on promptly.

Palgrave Memory Studies Agonistic Memory and The Legacy of 20Th Century Wars in Europe Stefan Berger Wulf Kansteiner Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Palgrave Memory Studies Agonistic Memory and The Legacy of 20Th Century Wars in Europe Stefan Berger Wulf Kansteiner Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Palgrave Memory Studies Agonistic

Memory And The Legacy Of 20th

Agonistic Memory and

More information about this series at

ISSN 2634-6257 ISSN 2634-6265 (electronic)

Cover illustration: Michael Mueller/Alamy Stock Photo

1 Agonistic Perspectives on the Memory of War: An

2 Agonistic Memory Revisited 13

3 The Production of Memory Modes During Mass Grave

4 Memory Cultures of War in European War Museums 69

5 “Krieg. Macht. Sinn.” An Agonistic Exhibition

6 ‘To Understand Doesn’t Mean that You Will Approve’:

7 Taking Agonism Online: Creating a Mass Open Online

8 Agonism and Memory203

Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute

Cristian Cercel is researcher at the Institute for Social Movements at

Wulf Kansteiner is Professor of Memory Studies and Historical Theory

French Studies and has published widely on this subject, in particular, on

Fig. 7.1 Online stakeholder survey—Question 8 186

Photo 1 Exhibition poster. Copyright: Ruhr Museum; Design: Uwe

Table 2.1 The defining characteristics of modes of remembering. 17

Agonistic Perspectives on the Memory

Stefan Berger and Wulf Kansteiner

‘Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational Europe’

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

promulgating agonistic interpretations of warfare. As a result of these

and class antagonisms, that need to be articulated in conflictual political

other hand. Instead, they point to the possibility of different scenarios

space for such agonistic interventions within the overall cosmopolitan

controversies about the interpretation of past wars causes a pervasive

a meaningful agonistic effect on memories of war embraced by the players

Agonistic Memory Revisited

Anna Cento Bull, Hans Lauge Hansen,

The project Unsettling Remembering and Social Cohesion in Transnational

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

historical memory in order to shape political imaginaries. As a form of

Unlike liberal and deliberative conceptions of democracy, agonism, in

Table 2.1 The defining characteristics of modes of remembering.

Conflict Contemporary Society potentially Recognition of society

The universalist-cosmopolitan mode of remembering has primarily

appears as an instrument for the re-politicization of the public sphere by

therefore, should incorporate the perspective of the perpetrators. Whereas

legitimatizing their actions or excusing their intentions and maintaining a

cosmopolitanism (2017) and Walter Mignolo’s notion of decolonial cos-

such reductionism, we specifically talk in this article about ‘universalistic-­

indignation, solidarity or the longing for dignity—as a way to politicize

Learning from the UNREST Case Studies: Mass

in transitional justice, Brown (2012: 465) argued that contrasting memo-

social agents choose to develop. Thus, in Spain, as the dominant post-­

We would contend, therefore, that a top-down imposition of the cos-

confrontation we would favour promoting an approach that combines

• exposing the socially constructed nature of cultural memory

In more settled cases, we would favour a variety of agonistic practices

• questioning pre-established narrative templates and hegemonic

Learning from the UNREST Case Studies:

museum visitors to the dominant modes of remembering in exhibitions is

THE SICILIAN AND CALABRIAN

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ITALIAN

“As the representative of the Italian Government, I desire to

“The Italian Red Cross tenders sincerest thanks to

Since this despatch was received further remittances have been

THE AMERICAN RED CROSS

The colony will be situated in Sicily or Calabria, and will consist of

1 Agonistic Perspectives on the Memory of War: An

2 Agonistic Memory Revisited 13

3 The Production of Memory Modes During Mass Grave

4 Memory Cultures of War in European War Museums 69

5 “Krieg. Macht. Sinn.” An Agonistic Exhibition

6 ‘To Understand Doesn’t Mean that You Will Approve’:

7 Taking Agonism Online: Creating a Mass Open Online

8 Agonism and Memory203

Fig. 7.1 Online stakeholder survey—Question 8 186

Table 2.1 The defining characteristics of modes of remembering. 17

such reductionism, we specifically talk in this article about ‘universalistic-

social agents choose to develop. Thus, in Spain, as the dominant post-