Search

Search Results

• Dispositif Dynamics: State Narratives and Counter-Memories in the Fabric of Collective Memory

  Hayarpi Sahakyan

  Article Preview

  Abstract

  Collective memory is never neutral: it’s constantly being shaped, curated, and challenged. The state decides which events are remembered, how they are presented, and whose voices are prioritized. Historiography is therefore not simply the recording of history; it’s embedded in the dispositif described by Michel Foucault (1980): the network of institutions, narratives, and practices that form public perceptions of the past. In this context, state-sanctioned narratives tend to shape a dominant, united memory that often confronts with counter-memories rise from marginal positions. Counter-memory question omissions, challenge “official” rewrites, and open up the field of competing interpretations.

  This tension is maintained by the dispositif, which operates through mechanisms and discourses that not only shape social behavior but also regulate the production, circulation, and legitimacy of historical knowledge (Medina, 2011). Historiography, ensuring that the "official" version of history conforms to the ideological and political interests of those in power, becomes a subtle but powerful tool of governance. It reinforces some worldviews to a position of primacy and pushes others to the periphery, and transforms collective memory from a neutral archive of facts into a battlefield. In this field, historical narratives struggle for recognition, legitimacy, and continuity, some rising to the status of unquestioned truth, while others are marginalized, contested, or even erased, reflecting and amplifying the deep contradictions of the social and political order.

  Digital technologies bring new dynamics to this context. Digital platforms enable marginalized voices to amplify counter-memories and challenge dominant narratives. These interventions often adopt archiving practices that resist institutional erasure. However, such digital spaces also comply with algorithmic control and commercial management, which determine what becomes visible and what remains in the shadows.

  References

  Agamben, G. (2009). What is an apparatus? And other essays. Stanford University Press.

  Akçam, T. (2012). The young Turks’ crime against humanity: The Armenian genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton University Press.

  Balakyan, P. (2004). The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. New York Times Book review.

  Buckley-Zistel, S. (2006). Remembering to forget: Chosen amnesia as a strategy for local coexistence in Rwanda. Africa Spectrum, 41(3), 393–414.

  Butalia, U. (1998). The other side of silence: Voices from the partition of India. Duke University Press.

  Equal Justice Initiative. (2018). National Memorial for Peace and Justice. https://eji.org/national-memorial-for-peace-and-justice/

  Fileborn B., Loney-Howes R. (2019), #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change. DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0

  Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge (trans. by A. M. Sheridan Smith). Pantheon Books.

  Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (trans. by A. Sheridan). Pantheon Books.

  Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 (C. Gordon, Ed.). Pantheon Books.

  Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be defended: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976 (trans. by D. Macey). Picador.

  Garland, D. (2001). The culture of control: Crime and social order in contemporary society. University of Chicago Press.

  Harrell, S. (2001). Ways of being ethnic in Southwest China. University of Washington Press.

  Joseph, C. L., & Cleophat, N. S. (Eds.). (2016). Vodou in Haitian memory: The idea and representation of Vodou in Haitian imagination. Lexington Books.

  Ladson-Billings, G. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 7–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/095183998236863

  Loewen, J. W. (2007). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. The New Press.

  Markwick, R. (2012). The Great Patriotic War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Collective Memory. DOI:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199560981.013.0035

  Medina, J. (2011). The epistemology of resistance: Gender and racial oppression, epistemic injustice, and resistant imaginations. Oxford University Press.

  Miller, J. R. (1996). Shingwauk’s vision: A history of Native residential schools. University of Toronto Press.

  Noakes, L., & Pattinson, D. (2011). British cultural memory and the First World War. Continuum.

  Papacharissi, Z. (2015). Affective publics: Sentiment, technology, and politics. Oxford University Press.

  Ricoeur, P. (2004). Memory, history, forgetting (trans. by K. Blamey & D. Pellauer). University of Chicago Press.

  Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge University Press.

  Straus, S. (2006). The order of genocide: Race, power, and war in Rwanda. Cornell University Press.

  Tutu, D. (1999). No future without forgiveness. Doubleday.

  Weir, S. (1989). Palestinian embroidery: Tatreez as memory and identity. Textile History, 20(1), 53–60.

  Zuboff, Sh. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs.