REMEMBERING DEATH, REMEMBERING LIFE: TWO SOCIAL MEMORY SITES IN BUDAPEST
REMEMBERING DEATH, REMEMBERING LIFE: TWO SOCIAL MEMORY SITES IN BUDAPEST

Summary/Abstract: The study explores the relationship between the politics of memory, the identity of a community and the social construction of places. This relationship means that place, identity and memory are mutually constitutive. Thus exploring the way past is represented offers insights into the ways in which the present is constructed. We analyze the place of social memory sites in the production and the reproduction of memories about the Holocaust, using as a reference point the case of Budapest. Our research rests on three important assumptions. First, there is a fundamental link between community’s identity and the historical events its members choose to remember. The identity of a community is usually built around such events therefore insights regarding their commemorations are also insights into the way identity is actively constructed. Second, the memory of these events is not only preserved, but also produced through social memory sites as the ones we observed in Budapest. Third, we assume a relational social world in which identities are products reinforced by socially constructed and continuously renegotiated stories. Our results shed light on the dialectical relationship between memory, its politics, and the ways in which social roles are selected and defined for communitarian identification.

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