A European Memory?: Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance

by Małgorzata Pakier (Editor), Bo Stråth (Editor)

An examination of the role of history and memory is vital in order to better understand why the grand design of a United Europe―with a common foreign policy and market yet enough diversity to allow for cultural and social differences―was overwhelmingly turned down by its citizens. The authors argue that this rejection of the European constitution was to a certain extent a challenge to the current historical grounding used for further integration and further demonstrates the lack of understanding by European bureaucrats of the historical complexity and divisiveness of Europe’s past. A critical European history is therefore urgently needed to confront and re-imagine Europe, not as a harmonious continent but as the outcome of violent and bloody conflicts, both within Europe as well as with its Others. As the authors show, these dark shadows of Europe’s past must be integrated, and the fact that memories of Europe are contested must be accepted if any new attempts at a United Europe are to be successful.

Genres: History

372 pages, Library Binding

First published April 7, 2010

About the author

Dr Małgorzata Pakier is Head of the Research and Publications Department at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. She is a member of the Social Memory Laboratory at the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw. Pakier received her PhD degree from the European University Institute, Florence, History and Civilization Department. Her thesis titled ‘The Construction of European Holocaust Memory: German and Polish Cinema after 1989’ was published with Peter Lang in 2013. In 2010, she was a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC. Together with Bo Stråth she co-edited the volume A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance (Berghahn Books: Oxford-New York, 2010, 2012).

Her other publications include articles in English and Polish on Holocaust memory, film and mass media, Europeanization of memory, and memory studies in Eastern Europe. Recently published: “Prehistoria pamięci. Holocaust we wczesnym amerykańskim TV-show” (Prehistory of memory. Holocaust in an early American TV show), Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, 2011; “Pogranicza pamięci i postpamięci. O Zagładzie i kulturze masowej raz jeszcze” (Between memory and postmemory. On the Holocaust and mass media one more time), in: Peryferie i pogranicza, B. Jałowiecki, S. Kapralski (ed.), Warszawa: Scholar, 2011; “Scripting the Jew. German and Polish Holocaust Melodrama”, in: Der Holocaust in der polnischen Erinnerungskultur, A. Wolff-Powęska, P. Forecki (ed.), Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang, 2012. She is the editor of the Peter Lang book series Warsaw Studies in Jewish History and Memory. Academic interests include: Europeanization of memory, Holocaust representation, social/cultural memory, museum studies, film.