ABSTRACT
The unspeakability and contestation of traumatic histories reveals the complexity of memory and the nature of competing truths in the aftermath of conflict. Memory fever can be seen through the dramatic rise in memorialization in recent times. The contemporary interest or fascination with memory extends to individualized as well as collective, cultural or social forms of memory. The origins of contemporary studies of memory and the interrelationship between individual and cultural forms can be located in studies of the Holocaust. In the sociological tradition, contemporary studies of memory fundamentally recognize the interrelationship between the individual and society. The conceptual confusion is in part due to the disagreement among scholars over personal memory; collected memory; and collective memory. The extent to which law plays a pedagogical or didactic function has become part of an absorbing debate among scholars seeking to explore the link between law and memory.
