#politicsofmemory

[berlinbrent]

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The allied bombing of #Dresden. 75 years later is history being revised & weaponized by the far-right? Plus, NYC attorney @SamBraverman on #Trump‘s assault on US justice. More at dw.com/TheDay @dwnews @DukeLaw #Dresden75 #politicsofmemory #AbuseOfPower (at Berlin, Germany) https://www.instagram.com/p/B8hZV0_o9Ei/?igshid=3m6owowruyxz

[travelers-delight]

“Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance.”

Hannah Arendt

Today, the flags flew at half-mast in Sarajevo. Today, 35 more souls were buried at the Potocari Memorial Center in a ritual that has continued each year for roughly 15 years. Today, people turned to familiar rituals to cope with pain and to remember - rituals that are not unique to this region alone.

Photographer, Tariq Samarah, the artist behind the lens of the first photograph of this entry and the creator of the gallery in which this photograph resides, describes his memories of the first burial ceremony. He attended the first burial ceremony in 2003 where 600 individuals were buried using 2400 shovels to accomplish the task - 4 for each grave. He remembers the solemnity and the power of the scale and scope of such a moment. He captured that day with an image of a single broken shovel in the foreground with a massive pile of shovels pictured behind. He shared the feelings of loss, the sense of broken dreams, and of life stories unfinished and unrealized.

In his pictures, the search for meaning in the face of atrocity is evident. Each picture tells a story about a part of the process of collective violence. It tells of the lives lived before, of the complicity of inaction, and of the suffering in the aftermath. They also tell of resilience, of creativity, of transitions and change.

Cautiously, I contemplate, on a day like today, on the politics of memory and memorialization. I consider the ways in which we strive for meaning in the wake of terrible and unfathomable violence. I consider both the positive and negative externalities of these processes and the life a narrative of violence continues to have when the acute phase passes. Collective memory is a force field. It is generated and generative.

In any case, for today, I pause and acknowledge. I hold space and I witness and I observe. I consider the nature of power and the nature of violence. Where one resides the other cannot thrive. And, I remember.