introduction to "Constructing Social Memory. Identities, Conflicts, Communities"

The book has both a political and a methodological intent. It underlines how the circulation of conflicting and unresolved narratives of past events may take multiple forms through a wide range of communicative, aesthetic and cultural codes. The empirical contributions deal with traumatic, silenced, stubborn, and insurgent memories, whose narration is able to have an impact on present and future. Thus, each chapter is an attempt to give back the right to speak to people and stories often placed on the margins of dominant narratives.