Concept: Memory

Definition: (noun) 

1. the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information.
2. something remembered from the past; a recollection.

Related Terms: Historical memory, place, affect, transcultural memory

Description: In the introduction to the book Memory and Migration (2010), scholar and filmmaker Julia Creet poses the evocative question: “How do we understand memory that has migrated or has been exiled from its local habitations?”¹ Memory may be seen as the affective entanglements that connect migrants with an originary place and time. As observed in Memories on the Move (2016) by Jelena Tošić and Monika Palmberger, mobility and memory are concomitant processes, with memories of an earlier way of life often serving as an anchor in times of movement or forced immobility.² Yet, rather than tying the migrant to a specific, static ‘home’ context, the ties of memory may be viewed as the negotiation of continually shifting sites of affect, material, politics, and history. Memory takes multiple dimensions: Physical, psychological, cultural, and familial, for instance, profoundly impacting the identity of immigrants, migrants, refugees, diasporas, and the displaced.² 

In the volume History, Memory and Migration (2012) edited by Irial Glynn and J. Olaf Kleist, memory is explored in relation to the politics of incorporating migrants into groups, societies, or nations. While Glynn and Kleist note that memory studies theories traditionally focused on how social memory enables Andersonian ‘imagined communities’ and the sense of belonging associated with nation-states, they instead hone in on how memory holds political effects.⁴ Here, media such as photography and film are potent vessels for historical memory. The work of Natalia Alonso Rey, for example, analyses the role of photographs for Uruguayan women migrants in Catalonia, Spain, demonstrating the importance for such media in migrant placemaking—remembering old homes in the creation of new ones.⁵

J.Y. 2024

Notes

¹ Julia Creet, “Introduction: The Migration of Memory and Memories of Migration” in Memory and Migration: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Memory Studies, ed. Julia Creet and Andreas Kitzmann (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 3–26.

² Jelena Tošić and Monika Palmberger, “Introduction: Memories on the Move— Experiencing Mobility, Rethinking the Past” in Memories on the Move: Experiencing Mobility, Rethinking the Past (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 1–16.

³ Creet, 3.

⁴ Irial Glynn and J. Olaf Kleist, History, Memory and Migration: Perceptions of the Past and the Politics of Incorporation (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 7.

⁵ Natalia Alonso Rey, “Memory in Motion: Photographs in Suitcases Natalia Alonso Rey,” in Memories on the Move: Experiencing Mobility, Rethinking the Past, ed. Jelena Tošić and Monika Palmberger (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 101–126.