New Episode of Memory Cultures in Dialogue: „A Desirable Memory” (in BCS)

Over the past decade, there has been a growing interest in how the memory of past crimes informs and shapes state policies and international relations. Social scientists, except historians, had largely ignored the Holocaust despite its centrality to many of their concepts and theories and the need to view the crime from the standpoint of various disciplines.

A multidisciplinary perspective on the Holocaust is offered in the book „Politics, Violence, Memory: The New Social Science of the Holocaust“, published by Cornell University Press. The book explores the sources and measurement of antisemitism, explanations for collaboration, rescue, and survival, accounts of neighbor-on-neighbor violence, and the legacy of the Holocaust in contemporary Europe.

One of the book’s editors, Dr. Jelena Subotić, spoke in a new podcast episode about the construction of desirable memories, the goals that states aim to achieve by manipulating memory, and the suppression of undesirable memories. The discussion also covered why the European imposition of the Holocaust narrative as the foundation of post-war European identity has created tension and resentment in post-communist states and whether genocides can be compared. Citing the example of survivor guilt, present among both Holocaust survivors and Bosniaks who survived the genocide in Srebrenica, Dr. Subotić demonstrates the legitimacy and productivity of a comparative approach to the study of grave crimes.

Jelena Subotić is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Georgia State University. She is the author of the Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (2019) and Hijacked Justice: Dealing with the Past in the Balkans (2009).

The author and host of the podcast is Dr. Olivera Simić, an associate professor at the Griffith University Law School in Australia and a visiting fellow at the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University in Belfast. The conversation was conducted in BCS language.

Episode 30, „Desirable Memories“ is available in BCS at the following link, as well as on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Podcast.rs, Podcast Addict, accounts of the HLC