ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how to perceive memory of the Shoah follows the idea that both the discourse and practice of politics related to history, justice, and remembrance are based on the following two epistemological approaches: field paradigm and forum paradigm. It discusses field regime and forum regime in greater detail using examples including rather controversial cases of "vilified art". The field regime, however, uses media-based techniques to gain insight in the function of buildings, territories, maps, and communication technologies, thus seeking to bring new material sensibility to the process of dealing with the legal and political implications of state violence. In discussing a variety of forensic and aesthetic approaches to the reconstruction of conflict-laden pasts, the chapter finds that memories of genocide are performative negotiations – permeated by power relations and under the heavy influence of media attention – about the significance of these pasts in the ongoing process of their re-contextualization.
