May 2019 WNC Dialogue: Collective Memory and National Narratives

Dialogue Description:

Collective memory is the memory of a group of people, passed from one generation to the next. Those groups could be families or entire nations. How do these groups form collective memories, and how do collective memories–of an event, a history, or a narrative–form groups? How do these memories shift over time, how are they different from one group to another, and how do these collective memories reflect or reify existing power structures? What action or affective stances do collective memories demand?

In this dialogue, we will discuss how memory is deployed toward nationalist and oppressive narratives as well as toward narratives of resistance. We might think about the power of MAGA–the “America” that is being nostalgically recalled, the “greatness” referred to, the question of “again”. We might consider how right-wing political movements across Europe are also calling on (or creating) a collective memory of another time to amplify white supremacy and facism. We can also think about the way collective memory is used to further nationalist projects, such as shifting narratives about the Holocaust. We can also think about how different historical and political eras recall moments from the past differently–how memory is shaped by the current moment, by our group identities, and by our political hopes and fears.

Finally, we might ask: What is the role–and limits–of nostalgia in creating communities of resistance? What might it look like to resist a political landscape that leverages collective memory for nation-building, for imperialist projects, and for patriarchy and white supremacy? What might memorial resistance look like? How might we form our own memorializing collectives and projects that honor loss and generate hope while also refusing to be flattened into linear narratives of false optimism?

Suggested Readings:

 

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

Checkin

  • How our individual and collective bodies store/share memories, how are stories told through the body
  • Nakba is today, commemoration of day when Palestinians forcibly removed from homeland, in context of active struggles there, as queer/trans anti-zionist person, what memories do we claim
  • Role of nostalgia and collective memory, ie MAGA, but also happens on the left in radical spaces
  • Heard the critique of Malcolm X around white folks doing the work with other white people.
  • Want to tease out the nuances of conversations in radical spaces, trying to re-nourish the soil of believing we can build something kinder from where we are with whiteness
  • Looking at two sides of my family, one side with no stories, more colonizing side (other side with survival stories)
  • Going to Israel/Palestine next week, raised in WASP culture, feeling longing to re-member myself to my lineage, fear of being intellectually unprepared for the context that I’ll be in
  • How memory is erased, and can be remembered
  • Nationalism.. entering a place with all of it.
  • Didn’t come from direct lineage of freedom fighters, passing down of knowledge and how we work together, how do we know what we know. How does it function? ie. Zapatista stories getting linked into our collective stories. What are the memories and legacies and traditions that we operate on? How does that evolve? How is it informed by politics and power?
  • Caliban and the witch- connecting the witch hunt in medieval Europe, peasants uprising against the lords and church, and the witch hunts were part of squashing the uprising. Primitive accumulation, prior to the enclosure of the commons, had more access to resources including our own bodies. Heretics, were folks who used birth control, were homosexual and other things to not reproduce as way to control their bodies and labor. Witches, women and something else is a more accessible version of the caliban and the witch. Witch hunts in western Africa is not a great part of the book though
  • In direct contradiction to my personal relationships, we have babies and we work.
  • Telling or thinking about history, we have a particular memory of what was available for people before lands were privatized, but I want to be careful about idealizing past times. Certain moments in history means something to us. There will be mythologizing. We need stories to tell us about what we want.
  • Caliban is useful to contextualize the current fight for reproductive rights, core of capitalism and state control.
  • Almost sounds like with the privatization of land, there is a counter movement to share our stories because there is no public space. When the stories don’t get told its easier to believe the collective story.
  • Individual story inform collective memory – people from any freedom fighting group claiming their family story as a way to reclaim their heritage.
  • Polarization – trump, the way that conservatives believe that when leftists claim their identity
  • Tyranny of the self.
  • Personal narrative of family had been erased by the process of whiteness. Immigrant story of boot straps narrative. How do family members factor in white privilege
  • In many Jewish radical traditions – the partisan fighters song. Have sung that song against colonial.
  • But recently had to go to a Zionist holocaust event, there was a partisan fighter there amongst all propaganda. This song was very personal to me. Then seeing this song being about very different political projects being used to different ends.
  • Immediately after WWII was not when the holocaust became part of the US national narrative, but actually in the 70s under carter. It was linked to the cold war international politics, where the US was adopting this memory as the liberator of the concentration camps and home to the Jews after. It was an optics strategy to be seen as a liberator in contrast to the soviet union. That’s when the holocaust became part of education
  • My mom recently shared with me that she will be voting for trump and supporting the wall. She said how would you feel if someone moved into your house, and I tried to counter with maybe they can if we burned their house. And then she had a narrative about we aren’t a country where people run from something, but come to work.
  • Civil rights movement happening while they applaud themselves for saving the Jews.
  • McCarthyism – Jews targeted in a racialized way at that time, and now the holocaust it being utilized as saviors.
  • Interested in the family story. Told by my family not to trust anyone who wasn’t Jewish. They may look like you, you may have things in common, but remember you are not like them. They hate you, they hate Jews and Israel, so watch your back.
  • These are our stories, don’t forget your lineage, don’t tell them you are Jewish. Some amount of bullying for that.
  • Story about your grandfather, both embodying memory and creating memory.
  • Being a witness but not claiming. That is one of the actions we get to take today. Get to be a witness to it.
  • Told that in Berlin, specific monuments. State incited way to acknowledge history.
  • Is the work that Germany doing, does it actually heal it. Does it continue to have life while
  • Where school curriculum is written to counter the narrative of erasing slavery and structural racism.
  • Memorializing in physical place.
  • Time – That Germany was able to make such a huge shift from the holocaust to reckoning with it within a 100 years. But the history of slavery and current oppression of black people, indigenous and brown folks have been happening for so long. We are so deep.
  • Visions of safety- when were we safe, when we not safe.
  • People are constructing their own imaginary pasts, as we always are.
  • In leftist space, we lift up resistances within a really fucked up context. It’s never good enough, always imperfect.
  • Because of the fear of erasure or giving it up to another narrative (leftist narratives).
  • I wish instead of the constant grind and criticism, “Make it better”, is there anti-capitalist pleasure centered way of moving towards liberation. There is a way to liberate ourselves in this moment.
  • Being a witness to a story is powerful related to accessing liberation in each moment.
  • What does it mean to retell a story that isn’t yours for the sake of not having that story being erased? How do we navigate intention versus impact? I am afraid to speak up often, for example with the abortion ban. When is it right to speak up?
  • Liberated zones, Alexis Pauline Gumbs
  • There are ways to identify with liberated zone with parts of myself that are marginalized, and then parts with dominant identities it can be oppressive.
  • Criticism of scientists purely “observing”.
  • If I have been in nonwhite communities, I highly preface why and how I got to be in those spaces if I share.
  • Is it liberatory to claim a marginalized space you don’t hold if it is your non-marginalized identity?
  • I feel hope hearing stories of resistance.
  • Ritual as important site of resistance that transcends time.
  • Description of liberated zones and maroon communities, how it is resourced in current prison abolitionist communities.
  • Starhawk’s trilogy is powerful depictions of liberated zones. Aligned with Octavia Butler and the Handmaid’s Tail.
  • Handmaid’s tail visuals in response to Alabama legislation. Why that image? Image of puritans.
  • Myth-making as an opportunity. We’ll never really know about a past moment because many histories have been purposefully forgotten or erased, first hand accounts not ‘reliable’. Interrogating my own investment in myths of the past. What is it that I am seeking? What is it that I am yearning for? A lot of the time it is my own fear of countering things that we haven’t seen yet. I am comforted when something has happened before, and can make meaning.
  • I’ve been interested in radical communist Jewish collectives in the 1930s, into the aesthetics, the pictures and the Yiddish. People were probably fucked up in that community. I am hungry for living in community that shares a complex history and culture, and a real shared political vision. Not being sure what that looks like now, that I have largely imagined.
  • Herbalism and connections to earth based systems as a mythology related to witches. Reconnection to witch lineages. There has been a strong rupture in much of the knowledge. Problematizes connection to the witches. White indigenous appropriation in herbalism.
  • It is hard to think about anti-racist RJ lineages in my memory that are white people not just individuals. Most of the people are individuals. I don’t have a strong collective white anti-racist culture to draw from in history.
  • I get to feel free and in the pleasure of life as I contend with whiteness with other anti-racist white people. A trust that we are on the same page in our yearning. I feel ok to release in those spaces.
  • What are self-identified white collective groups to draw from? Weather Underground, anti-lynching societies, abolitionist, ect. Examples of white abolitionists not allowing Black people generally in their space. Why did they want abolition if their practices were so racist?
  • When are you pandering to your audience versus creating a compelling story to draw people in? What stories get told and what gets left out?
  • I’m reading Native Son by Richard Wright. Story reflects dynamics of white people reproducing liberal dynamics of racism.
  • It is easier for me to connect to resistance and resilience rather than suffering. When I think about ACT UP, it takes me more to think of the actual lives.
  • There was a spiral dance a couple years ago, I was invited to hold an altar for the 25 year anniversary of ACT UP. It was profound to connect more to the suffering.
  • The yearning implies that there is a disconnect – there is some “ghostage” in lineage. I have very few friends who can claim parents or friends who are also queer. I don’t have anyone in my family who is queer. We are all told stories growing up, and are searching for a story that is your own. We want to see ourselves.
  • I think suffering is a lot of what brings people together, when you witness suffering you are often able to witness another’s. A lot white anti-racist spaces are about grappling with suffering related to be politicized.
  • I did the self-flagellation thing as a white person for a long time.
  • I like the myth of Morgan Lefay. I draw from my Irish ancestors.
  • Hamilton musical as a myth-making story. There is an elevated story about the guy who wanted to create story about enslaved men.
  • Hearing about Act Up makes me cry. Not just the suffering, the togetherness. Huge rooms of people. Creating powerful oppositional queer spaces about tangible desire/demand. Organizing around something material. A deep longing for real interdependence that ACT UP reflected, and also coming out of political struggle. Often fighting in more abstract ways than ACT UP was.
  • And also it is happening.
  • I think about interdependence with prisoner solidarity. That is very real. Winning and interdependence feel hard. Having deep relationships across prison walls I really feel that interdependence.
  • Interdependence across time. Those before depend on us so that the story continues to be told, maintain the integrity of the work that keeps happening. Stonewall as an example of something getting commercialized and commodified.
  • Ghosts as people of the past, or people who aren’t seen. Future people as ghosts. After the sunrise training, I felt moved by future ghosts – future children and creatures. I feel called and pulled forward by the future. Ghosts are beyond time. In the moment that I felt future child ghosts, it was an inevitability, I felt funneled into this role, this is my duty as a human, and also so strong and clear. Feeling at the center of it.
  • Creating a sense of warmth as important to build movement spaces, and especially white spaces.
  • I am in a poly support group. We live in this polarized time where we have perfectionism ingrained into our activism. I am always on edge in a group of other white people. Feeling like this situation is “fake”. Rituals that invite warmth. Having a potluck and having food. We are almost conditioned to see ourselves as white people as cold and problematic. What are the things that make me feel warm? Touch and hugs, food. This space feels warm because of the space. During ACT UP and AIDS activism, there was a level of physical expression of touch and connection present too.
  • There are a lot of other cultures that do that much better in terms of embodiment. White is an umbrella. Disembodiment has been a very important part of our assimilation and training.
  • We don’t as white people have a collective story that we want to claim. When I think about movements of oppressed people, there are more stories people claim.
  • I think we as white people have collective stories. Some of the work in white nationalist movements and on the right are trying to form white collective narratives. They have a nostalgia of their own.
  • We are currently in a fight over what the white identity will be. I am claiming it, including a set of stories. I am in active struggle to shape what that is.
  • There was a point in time in which white became a concept, and emerged in a political moment. Some people are re-leveraging whiteness in terms of its threatened nature.
  • When people talk about MAGA, I think about how they are talking about Jim Crow and slavery. They want to go back to the origin of whiteness.
  • What story do we want to tell about WNC looked like 20 years from now? Do we want it to be different? If I were telling this story right now, I want POC to know this is not a “comfortable space”, it is a space to suffer and untangle shit, be better for you. I don’t know if that is actually useful. We want to be in a space of discomfort, and also sustainable.
  • Healing is irresistible to me. I don’t know how much work it took for me to get there. Dancing, art, healing.
  • Interdependence is my answer. How to make the revolution irresistible is reconnecting with our humanness – food, touch, love feeling belonging, like you are wanted and your opinion is valued. That is what I think RJ is all about.
  • I feel much more in the past years more resistant to the ways identities get so simplified. I am not about the binaries, about you’re white, there fore be like this…
  • I am more interested in being messy and human. I will continue to have experiences with POC who will tell me to be more real. It feels more deeply good in my body. I struggle more with the ways I act when I am outside of integrity. It is because I can feel when I am practicing outside of my own sense deep down, I don’t need someone else singularly to maintain the moral compass for me. It is a lot more dangerous to focus on others perception.
  • So much about these spaces can be about being with each other in the ways we consider how to be accountable, feelings of shitiness, cultivating practices of vulnerability. It is ok when we say stupid shit as white people. Let’s figure out how to hold each other and ourselves in a process.
  • Process focus.
  • I wanted to be the “best white girl”. I had a time where I marinated in my specialness. Professors told me to start finding other people like me, because otherwise why are you in an ethnic studies program.

Closing Check Out

  • I am so happy I was here. Looking forward to the next dialogue. I felt very privileged to be here.
  • I also have really enjoyed this. This is my first time facilitating. Feeling warm. Shared about a book about US history textbooks talk about different moments in history in different moments in history.
  • I haven’t been to a dialogue in a long time and I appreciate being in your home and for the facilitation and contributions. This space over the years have taught me to feel less shame, love myself better. Considering all those who have come before. I want to close in honoring all those in my lineage and those I claim in my lineage who have made me possible and it sustains me to honor their memory. And a bookmark about GHOSTS.
  • How long it has been since I have spent time with the stories I am holding and the stories I am living. I did when I was first forming some of my identities, and now I am just in them. Haunting can be really beautiful and inspiring.
  • It has been a long time since I have been to a dialogue. This space is an anchor for me as I am re-navigating my political home. I am feeling brought back in the healthy ways. This has felt so sustaining for so long. I feel interested to be rereading histories and learning about them. I want to learn more about the AIDS crisis, and James Baldwin. Aspiring white identity formation in collective that is happening now and all over the country. How do we make those beautiful spaces. We have learned so much about how to make them enticing and relational through trial and error and want that knowledge to be memorialized by living it. Continuing to be in relationship, stay in connection, how culture ripples how. How do we connect to future generations.
  • Feeling grateful for each of you. I feel like a pressed a released valve, feel more release having this conversation. I am in a very emergent relationship as identifying as queer. I still have ten question marks behind the word. I am slowly starting to incorporate it and see how it feels. It felt good to end with queerness and ghosts. There is a turning of a page in my life right now. I feel huge blessing before setting off next week. Feel reaffirming of threads of my life I want to carry forward.
  • Thank you for this space and for facilitating. I am having this experience of wonder in realizing that there is both an organic and structural quality to this dialogue. Feels very rare. I was in a very conservative, white people wedding, including many conservative people. Today is the one year anniversary of when I moved to the bay. Feels like an interesting time marker, quality of circle of cycles. Memory recreating itself. Creating a memory here right now that is also a collective memory. Not expecting that anything would be resolved. When it was time to wrap up, there is so much more to talk about and we haven’t resolved. To just have a space to go to not to spiral to hash out, and not spiral. That is the purpose.