Lectures, talks and seminars

MY401 (Murphy Building Level 4) Kelburn Campus

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Description

This paper explores how insecurities in and about the past and ambivalences in dealing with it can productively be used by political actors to assert a hegemonic interpretation of this past and contribute to societal ordering along lines favourable to their political objectives. In particular, ascriptions of perpetrator and victim, as well as bystander and hero, are fundamental for creating legitimacy and purporting this hegemonic narrative.

The talk will draw on the concept of ‘mnemonic role attributions’ as categorisations of actors, their roles, their responsibility and their suffering as they are remembered regarding a certain period of time in analysing how political actors can utilise the past for their opportunistic gain.To exemplify this, the talk will draw on examples of transitional justice mechanisms, such as the international criminal justice, memorials and civil society dealing with the past projects in Cambodia and Rwanda. As such, the talk will highlight these insecurities and contestations about how to categorise actors’ past roles in violence, showing how these mnemonic role attributions shape the effect transitional justice mechanisms have and how they contribute to the politics of memory.

This seminar is co-host together by the School of Sociology and Cultural Studies and the School of History, Philosophy, Political Science, and International Relations.


Speaker Bios

Timothy Williams is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Conflict Studies at Marburg University, Germany. Here he also concluded his PhD in 2017 (summa cum laude) and has since been acknowledged with two awards, one by the university of Marburg, the other by the German Peace Psychologist Association. His research deals with violence, focussing on its dynamics, particularly at the micro-level, as well as its consequences for post-conflict societies and the politics of memory these evoke. He has conducted extensive field research in Cambodia, as well as Rwanda.


For more information contact: Gill Blomgren

gill.blomgren@vuw.ac.nz 04 463 5677