Collective Memory, Personal Pain: The Circulation of 9/11 Unidentified Human Remains

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh ◽  
Ventura Perez ◽  
Heidi Bauer-Clapp
2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Crossland

AbstractThis paper writes a history of the forensic excavations in Argentina of the remains of ‘the disappeared’; people who were abducted and murdered under the military governments of the 1970s and early 1980s. The physical remains of these people were, and still are, located at a nexus of desires and attempts to reconstruct both individual and national collective memory, through creating and sustaining the individual and collective identities of the disappeared. As such the human remains have become a vigorously contested site for different and irreconcilable constructions. This paper considers the ambiguity of human remains; the tensions between humans as bodies and as people, the difficult issue of human embodiment after death, and the incompatible narratives that arise from these ambiguities. A textual analysis of the narratives created around the excavations of the disappeared in the Argentinian and English speaking media is used to illustrate the ways in which archaeological narratives about the dead are used in the creation of conflicting societal and personal constructions of the human body in Argentina, and the effect that this has had on the ways the disappeared are remembered.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Clegg
Keyword(s):  

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-78
Author(s):  
Sophie Richardot

The aim of this study is to understand to what extent soliciting collective memory facilitates the appropriation of knowledge. After being informed about Milgram’s experiment on obedience to authority, students were asked to mention historical or contemporary events that came to mind while thinking about submission to authority. Main results of the factorial analysis show that the students who do not believe in the reproducibility of the experimental results oppose dramatic past events to a peaceful present, whereas those who do believe in the reproducibility of the results also mention dramatic contemporary events, thus linking past and present. Moreover, the students who do not accept the results for today personify historical events, whereas those who fully accept them generalize their impact. Therefore, according to their attitude toward this objet of knowledge, the students refer to two kinds of memory: a “closed memory,” which tends to relegate Milgram’s results to ancient history; and an “open memory,” which, on the contrary, transforms past events into a concept that helps them understand the present. Soliciting collective memory may contribute to the appropriation of knowledge provided the memory activated is an “open” one, linking past to present and going beyond the singularity of the event.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Eduardo Acuña Aguirre

This article refers to the political risks that a group of five parishioners, members of an aristocratic Catholic parish located in Santiago, Chile, had to face when they recovered and discovered unconscious meanings about the hard and persistent psychological and sexual abuse they suffered in that religious organisation. Recovering and discovering meanings, from the collective memory of that parish, was a sort of conversion event in the five parishioners that determined their decision to bring to the surface of Chilean society the knowledge that the parish, led by the priest Fernando Karadima, functioned as a perverse organisation. That determination implied that the five individuals had to struggle against powerful forces in society, including the dominant Catholic Church in Chile and the political influences from the conservative Catholic elite that attempted to ignore the existence of the abuses that were denounced. The result of this article explains how the five parishioners, through their concerted political actions and courage, forced the Catholic Church to recognise, in an ambivalent way, the abuses committed by Karadima. The theoretical basis of this presentation is based on a socioanalytical approach that mainly considers the understanding of perversion in organisations and their consequences in the control of anxieties.


1986 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Lehane
Keyword(s):  

Summary Three cists were discovered during the rebuilding of a house in Tayvallich. They appear to have been inserted into a roughly oval pit. All three cists contained cremated human remains and Cist 3 also contained a food vessel with beaker affinities. Lithics from among the cairn material appear to be a redeposited Mesolithic assemblage.


2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ala Al-Hamarneh

At least 50 per cent of the population of Jordan is of Palestinian origin. Some 20 per cent of the registered refugees live in ten internationally organized camps, and another 20 per cent in four locally organized camps and numerous informal camps. The camps organized by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) play a major role in keeping Palestinian identity alive. That identity reflects the refugees' rich cultural traditions, political activities, as well as their collective memory, and the distinct character of each camp. Over the past two decades integration of the refugees within Jordanian society has increased. This paper analyses the transformation of the identity of the camp dwellers, as well as their spatial integration in Jordan, and other historical and contemporary factors contributing to this transformation.


2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-169
Author(s):  
Paul R. J. Duffy ◽  
Olivia Lelong

Summary An archaeological excavation was carried out at Graham Street, Leith, Edinburgh by Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD) as part of the Historic Scotland Human Remains Call-off Contract following the discovery of human remains during machine excavation of a foundation trench for a new housing development. Excavation demonstrated that the burial was that of a young adult male who had been interred in a supine position with his head orientated towards the north. Radiocarbon dates obtained from a right tibia suggest the individual died between the 15th and 17th centuries AD. Little contextual information exists in documentary or cartographic sources to supplement this scant physical evidence. Accordingly, it is difficult to further refine the context of burial, although a possible link with a historically attested siege or a plague cannot be discounted.


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