{"id":47218,"date":"2025-07-03T13:01:49","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T13:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=47218"},"modified":"2025-07-03T13:01:49","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T13:01:49","slug":"cfp-nothing-to-remember-politics-practices-and-agents-of-commemorating-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/historiografija.hr\/?p=47218","title":{"rendered":"CfP: Nothing to Remember? Politics, Practices, and Agents of Commemorating Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Conference \u201cNothing to Remember? Politics, Practices, and Agents of Commemorating Peace\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

January 22-23, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In memory studies, scholarly attention has long been drawn to the remembrance of crises, wars, and periods of violence. These critical junctures have been explored as sites of trauma, reconciliation, and the foundation for constructing collective identities. For instance, commemorating decolonization struggles has foregrounded the legacies of imperial violence, and narratives surrounding the World Wars have often been used to shape national identities and international relations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is often overlooked is the memory of what happens in between the crises \u2013 the memories of peace. <\/strong>In academic, political, and everyday discussions, peace is either situated in the past or a distant future, never truly present today. In the first case, it is remembered as a \u2018lost paradise\u2019, a haunting reminder of a world that no longer exists. In the second, it is presented either as a realistic aspiration or as a utopia that remains on the horizon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demands, expectations and commemorations of peace are articulated differently. For example, gendered demand for justice as a way of achieving peace is practiced by the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and the Madres de La Candelaria in Colombia. These collectives of mothers publicly protest in search of their missing relatives, challenging oppressive systems despite social stigma and political repression. However, peace could also be instrumentalized to justify continuous militant efforts as in the case of the current war in Ukraine, where peace is depicted as an undefined in time and conditions end-goal, for the achievement of which the war must go on. On the other hand, the European tradition often marks peace as the end of war and commemorates it through memorials, remembrance days, and educational events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, the memories of violence still dominate our discussions. But what happens when we shift the focus? Can memories of peace offer more than nostalgia, maybe even an emancipatory potential? Does the revival of memories of peace contribute to peacemaking practices or trigger conflict and social polarization? How are memories of peace used and instrumentalized in political struggle? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In times of crisis and war, memory becomes a stumbling block to overcome. But memory also plays an important role in times of “peace”. Considering the multi-layered dimension of peace as a concept, it is possible to problematize its scope. Peace does not imply the absence of conflict; on the contrary, using different theoretical approaches, from realist and liberal to structuralist, Marxist, and post-structural analysis, peace can be seen as a wide range of social, economic, and political conditions in a permanent state of contestation. Thus, the memory processes, initiatives, and debates occurring during these periods are indispensable to understanding how cultural and social group practices are performed in terms of narrative building and identity production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broadly, the politics of memory, defined as the use of the past by social and political actors for present purposes, influences how we perceive both peace and its opposites, always with a specific intention. Thus, it never reflects a \u2018true\u2019 image of reality but instead shapes and produces it. The (re)production of memory is a normative-colored and selective process embedded in the system of social relations, which allows groups (in power) to impose their memory as dominant. Because of this, memory is often used for political purposes\u2014polarizing social groups, justifying violence, creating national myths, and prioritizing specific issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the conference, we would like to discuss how the memory of peaceful times unfolds in political debates and struggles. We welcome papers that elaborate on the memory of peace as a social, political, and cultural tool and explore its transformative potential. In addition, we are interested in the limits, effects, and selection processes in the field of the remembrance of peaceful times, as well as how and why peace is commemorated. The interdisciplinary scope of the conference allows contributions ranging from cultural, social, political, and historical studies to other similar disciplines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Possible papers could include (but are not limited to) topics and questions such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n