Uneven “genocide” memorialisation: a hindrance to achieving post-colonial equality?

• Published in: Dialectical anthropology Vol. 47; no. 1; pp. 57 - 70
• Main Authors: Robins, Steven, Spiegel, Andrew
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01-03-2023; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anthropology; Colonialism; Cultural heritage; Descendants; Equality; Ethics; Forum Commentary; Genocide; Holocaust; Marginality; Massacres; Memorials; Pain; Postcolonialism; Reminders; Restitution; Social justice; Social Sciences; Victims
• ISSN: 0304-4092; 1573-0786
• DOI: 10.1007/s10624-022-09672-7

 
Diverse memorials of the Nazi-engendered Holocaust are legion in today’s world. They sustain a sense of painful heritage for that genocide’s survivors and their descendants while also providing ethical and political lessons and reminders for present and future generations. While the historical record provides evidence of many other massacres, some of them genocides, those committed by European colonialism in particular have been only minimally memorialised or monumentalised; and scant literature exists about the pain they have caused or the consequent, often unspoken, legacy of their victims’ and their descendants’ long-term suffering and marginalisation. This often results in little substantive, “formal” memorialisation available for mobilisation in efforts to effect recognition for those who have so suffered and, ultimately, to effect restitution for them and their descendants. The article uses present-day South African examples to illustrate the consequences, in an already profoundly divided society rife with identitarian thinking, of how such unequal memorialisation reproduces persisting senses of colonial suppression and exacerbates structural impediments to achieving social justice and equality.