The Antagonism

special-focus events

Sigmund Freud Foundation

und

IFK

im Rahmen der Serie "Kunst in der Musiksammlung".

of Memories

• Autumn topics 2005
• 24 October
  Do States Need a Memory?
• 8 November
  Architecture for Memory
• 11 November
  Memorial, Memory and Language after the Holocaust
• 23 November
  Remembrance and Violence in Former Yugoslavia
• 29 November
  Brusatti reads, Dobrek plays
• Imprint

Deutsch

The Antagonism of Memories

An autumn of special-focus events presented by the IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies and the Sigmund Freud Foundation

Sixty years after the end of the Second World War and ten years after the country's accession to the EU, Austria is faced by questions regarding its handling of its recent history: not only in a narrow national context, but also in terms of its comparable importance both nationally and internationally. Locally, despite restitution efforts and an admission of Austria's share of the responsibility for the Shoah, the problem remains that the country's culture of memory continues to be highly ambivalent and that its manifestations are always accompanied by a "but" and a poorly disguised myth of victimization. Internationally, the problem has arisen that although collective memory of the Holocaust and genocide has been formulated as a challenge to European politics, it has not been sufficiently able to give rise to a European culture of memory &ndash as the bloodbath in the Balkans and the most recent incidents of racism and anti-Semitism have shown.

The series of events presented by the IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies and the Sigmund Freud Foundation in Vienna under the title "The Antagonism of Memories" seeks to put questions regarding the remembrance of the victims of the Nazi extermination machinery into a comparative context. Thus it will endeavor to free the complex issues surrounding the politics of memory from the corset of emotions and from the blind spots that are specific to Austria. Through comparisons with the politics of memory in other nations and with recourse to warring cultures of memory in the Balkans, a twofold aim will be achieved: firstly, a critical distance toward the moralization of the discourse of memory will be sought; secondly, an appeal will be made that democratic solutions to the social, economic and political challenges posed by the 21^st century cannot be found without a comprehensive knowledge of the deeper structural causes of the 20^th century's human catastrophes. The series of events will encompass a transdisciplinary linking of scholarship, architecture, literature and music that is intended to make knowledge into a resource with long-term effects.